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China's Bling Dynasty_National Geographic Magazine 5/2008 355 images Created 1 Apr 2021

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  • The Yumin Restaurant in Guangzhou is a huge, live reef fish restaurant employing 400 Chinese chefs that has live crocodiles on the floor of the mall-like area. The crocs’ mouths are taped shut, and they will be meals soon, but people just walk by, talking on their cell phones, not paying attention and tripping over live, hissing, charging crocodiles. The pricey, exotic meat—steamed, braised, or stewed—is believed to cure cough and prevent cancer. “People don’t care about the cost,” says manager Wang Jianfei, “they just care about health.”
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  • A  flamboyant bar in south China attracts new wealth. In the Baby Face Club in Guangzhou, the bartender sets up a stack of glasses, then pours a flaming liquid over the top to make one of the most popular drinks, a Flaming Lamborghini. Young people demand nice places to eat and drink. The news bombards us every day about how China’s economic engine will change our world. At the center of this engine is the “Little Capitalist” class or ”Comfort Class.” This group embraces Deng Xiaoping’s revolutionary proclamation, “To get rich is glorious.” After 50 years of pent up frustration and stoically weathering the worst social experiment in history—Mao’s Cultural Revolution—this class is ready to lead the charge for the most voracious consumption on the planet. Of the five major commodities (grain, meat, oil, coal and steel), only oil consumption is less than the United States. This consumption is estimated to increase by 18 percent each year for the next decade, compared with 2 percent for the U.S.<br />
<br />
The number of Chinese adults under 30 was expected to swell 61%, to 500 million by 2015, equivalent to the entire population of the European Union. Ironically populated by children whose parent’s lives were ruined by Mao precisely because they were capitalists, this “Comfort Class” came of age after Tiananmen Square in 1989. They are politically apathetic. To them, Tiananmen Square was a failure and they just want a nice life. Estimates vary, but the higher claims are that there are 150 million in the comfort class, which would equal the size of the U.S. middle class. As their culture turbo-evolves and our culture devolves it is hard not to compare both in terms of political apathy, cushy lifestyle, and preoccupation with the pursuit of consumer goods.
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  • The dancers, wait staff, and performers are all migrant workers from Xinjiang Province in Northwest China. Migrant workers in China are mostly people from impoverished regions who go to more urban and prosperous coastal regions in search of work. According to Chinese government statistics, the current number of migrant workers in China is estimated at 120 million (approximately 9% of the population). China has been experiencing the largest mass migration in history. An estimated 230 million Chinese (2010), roughly equivalent to two-thirds the population of the U.S., have left the countryside and migrated to the cities in recent years. About 13 million more join them every year—and 500 to perhaps 800 million by 2025. Many are farmers and farm workers made obsolete by modern farming practices and factory workers who have been laid off from inefficient state-run factories.
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  • Huaxi Village (Farmers Village), a model farm for the last 45 years, is in the foreground of this photograph and the businesses owned by the “farmers” are in the background. These “model farmers” were capitalists before it was allowed in China. They started factories, but worked in them secretly (no windows). When government officials came around, all the workers ran out into the fields and pretended to be peasants. They became the first and most successful capitalist exploitation of the collective. There have been 30,000 official government visits to this place to see how it is run every year. There are not many model farms left in China, and none with this wealth. This model farm runs about 80 factories, including garment factories and steel mills. As China changed, this village has been in and out of bankruptcy.
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  • Scenes from the Bund – Including giant illuminated screen that shows commercials as it motors up and down the river. This screen is so bright that it throws a massive amount of light pollution into all of the condo buildings and fancy hotels along the Bund. There were so many complaints from wealthy building owners that the LED screen had to be parked in one spot rather than going up and down the river at night.
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  • Susanne is marrying her boyfriend in Hong Kong. They take a cab to the knock-off mall to get clothes made for the ceremony. Statistics show that there are many more western men marrying Chinese women, but you don’t see that published in the media. The government promoted a soap opera about the opposite situation, however, called “Foreign Babes in Beijing,”  featuring western women falling for Chinese men.
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  • Yvonne, founder of Diva Life, in her closet trying to decide what to wear for the day—she rarely wears the same outfit twice. Her boutique spas in Shanghai offer 13 types of facials, plus $48 chocolate pedicures. Her father escaped China in 1949 with his family and two of his siblings died in the crossing (there were ten children, his father had multiple wives). Yvonne’s family is typical of the Chinese who were smart enough to get out when it was bad and smart enough to get back in when things were improving. Diva Life is set up for two types of clients—the ex-pat tai tai wives of diplomats and the wannabe Chinese who follow that crowd into Yvonne’s spa. Yvonne has the Diva life. She designs her own furniture, spa, clothes, etc. She spends the morning at the fabric market and meeting with her tailor, and then goes to her office. But the main reason she started the spa is so that she can have a couple hours of spa treatment any day she likes.
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  • The first Wal-Mart in China is in Shenzhen, the city where Deng made his famous “to be rich is glorious” speech. This store sells all that a family needs or wants. The cosmetics area is much more plush than any Wal-Mart in the U.S. The signs that hang overhead in this store proudly announce, “Made in China.” This is very different than the best store I could find in China 17 years ago. The best store then was a government “Friendship Store” that had a photo of a female employee on the wall with a sign underneath, “Worst Employee of the Month.” The way they decided to motivate workers at that time was to shame them. Cosmetics are a major business in China and women in the China Middle Class see this as an important part of their lifestyle. Wal-Mart aims for the Comfort Class consumer earning between $5,000 and $20,000 a year.
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  • Mass weddings used to involve gold jewelry, but DeBeers initiated an advertising push to make diamonds synonymous with weddings. Couples sign their best wishes on a giant mirrored diamond outside the shopping mall before going to the park where 70 couples will be married.
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  • Southern Metropolitan News surveys since 1989 cite Guangzhou residents as saying that “love” comes after “money” on the value ladder. In 2008 “love” slipped even lower for most people, according to a survey by the Guangzhou Social Trend and Public Opinion Study Center. The center has conducted a survey each year since 1990. Another finding of the survey is that money has universally meant more than love in the eyes of women in Guangzhou for all years the survey has been given.
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  • Inside a house at the Mission Hills Golf Club's housing development.
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  • The Window on the World amusement park in Shenzhen allows Chinese to travel the world in an afternoon. Behind “Mount Rushmore” in this photo are actors playing Africans in huts and Egyptians at the Great Pyramids of Giza. Historically, during Mao, Chinese have not been able to travel. But for now they have to look at the “Eiffel Tower” and “Mount Rushmore” at Window on the World. Because of China’s one-child policy, instituted in 1978, this is the first generation in the world’s history in which a majority are single children, a group whose solipsistic tendencies have been further encouraged by a growing obsession with consumerism, the Internet, and video games. At the same time, today’s young Chinese are better educated and more worldly than their predecessors. Whereas the so-called Lost Generation that grew up in the Cultural Revolution often struggled to finish high school, today around a quarter of Chinese in their 20s have attended college. The country’s opening to the West has allowed many more of its citizens to satisfy their curiosity about the world: some 37 million will travel overseas in 2007. In the next decade, there will be more Chinese tourists traveling the globe than the combined total of those originating in the U.S. and Europe.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176285.TIF
  • Lu (the father, not shown) lives with his daughter-in-law and son who is trying to do a start up GPS business and often works from home. Lu was sent to prison during the Cultural Revolution and tries to keep pace with today’s values, but still has questions about his son’s world. The “little capitalists” that live with their Cultural Revolution parents often have conflicts of ideology. The older generation thinks in a more Confucian way—never rise above your teacher, never rise above your father, others’ needs are more important than your own.
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  • Weary Chinese middle class groom to be on wedding shopping street in Guangzhou, China
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  • City Planning Museum is just off People’s Square in the Puxi side of Shanghai. Models show not only the buildings that are already done, but also those planned for the future.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176325.TIF
  • The need for electrical power is so great in Shanghai that migrant workers are hired to hook them up by strapping a high voltage wire around their waist and pulling it across an already stressed grid by walking on the actual wires that bring the electricity.  There is a (dirty) coal power plant coming online every four to five days in China that could power a city the size of San Diego. Energy is wasted on an epic scale. One hundred cities with populations over 1 million faced extreme water shortages last year. China’s survival has always been built on the notion of a vastly powerful, infallible center. Thus, China has poor foundations on which to build the subtle network of institutions and accountability necessary to manage the complexities of a modern economy and society. The lack of independent scrutiny and accountability lies behind the massive waste in the Chinese government and destruction of the environment. Air pollution contributed by these plants kills 400,000 people prematurely every year.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176327.TIF
  • Deng Xiaoping’s strategy after Tiananmen was to buy off the people by means of economic growth. Part of that growth is to bulldoze the old buildings and make gleaming new high-rise condos for the newly affluent to live in. Chinese prefer to buy into a brand new condo. Newspapers advertise homes for sale by owners as “used.” Buildings look good when they go up, but they will only look good for 20 years or so.
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  • Marriage is different in China, from mass weddings like this, to the “bare branches” phenomenon where there are not enough women for all the men to marry. Couples aspire to the ideal of the billboard above them—the one-child family. But will their son be able to find a girl? According to the 2010 census, there were 118.06 boys born for every 100 girls, which is 0.53 points lower than the ratio obtained from a population sample survey carried out in 2005. However, the gender ratio of 118.06 is still beyond the normal range of around 105 percent, and experts warn of increased social instability should this trend continue. For the population born between 1900 and 2000, it is estimated that there could be 35.59 million fewer females than males. So maybe everyone eventually has a car, but can every boy have a girl? It is important for China’s leaders to placate the Comfort Class. From issues of grave consequence to trivialities, the government has made clear that it will do whatever it takes to keep the swelling middle class happy. In Beijing, for example, newly prosperous residents are snapping up automobiles at a rate of 1,000 a day. The number of vehicles on the capital’s sclerotic roads has doubled in the past five years, to 3 million, or about a million more vehicles than in all of New York City.
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  • Brides numbered 32 through 43 line up in their queue at the Rose Wedding Festival. Seventy couples in this mass marriage ceremony started at a shopping mall, then traveled to Century Park for the ceremony. The marriage-age consumer is a prime target for first-world companies. The middle class’s under-30-consumer market alone will be the size of the entire EU market in the next decade.
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  • This is the Armani Club in the Liu lin Road area. This scene is a mix of young folks, mistresses, and male and female prostitutes. Bars are a little crazier in the south of China where there is new wealth.  Young people demand nice places to eat and drink. By 2015, the number of Chinese adults under 30 is expected to swell 61%, to 500 million, equivalent to the entire population of the European Union.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176391.TIF
  • This is an over the top spa, massage parlor, and hotel in the Suzhou Creek area of Shanghai. Guys walk from the men’s locker room through an aquarium tunnel filled with endangered species to the bath area. From there they can turn left and play ping pong or watch a movie with their family in their bathrobes, or they can turn right and meet their mistresses in a discreet room.
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  • The Chinese food culture has been finely tuned for 3,000 years. But when a fast food culture is adopted, Chinese become overweight unlike traditional Chinese practicing customary Chinese eating habits. Chinese growth has accomplished in 10 years what the U.S. did in 50. Our history, fast forward times five, applied to China’s infrastructure, housing, factories, service industries, and stress, is affects the newly wealthy “Comfort Class” in China. Forty-five percent of urban Chinese are at health risk due to stress. They call it “inner heat,” and most Chuppies can cite the physical symptoms. Companies like Avon or Wrigley define and target the comfort class as those earning between $400 and $4,000 a month.
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  • These buildings will disappear because the property is just too valuable to leave them. For the moment, however, the government has cooled the housing market by imposing a 20 percent resale tax. If you want to see what this block will look like in the future you can just go to the City Planning Museum off People’s Square in the Puxi side of Shanghai. A 3D model shows not only the buildings that are already done, but also those planned for the future. These buildings will all be torn down.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176420.TIF
  • This scene is a mix of young folks, mistresses, and male and female prostitutes. Bars are a little crazier in the south of China where there is new wealth.  Young people demand nice places to eat and drink. By 2015, the number of Chinese adults under 30 is expected to swell 61%, to 500 million, equivalent to the entire population of the European Union.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176429.TIF
  • October Holiday week along the Bund on the Puxi side of Shanghai where this couple is one of the lucky ones. “Bare Branches”—a phenomenon where a boy just cannot find a girl is becoming more and more of a social problem. According to the 2010 census, there were 118.06 boys born for every 100 girls. For the population born between 1900 and 2000, it is estimated that there could be 35.59 million fewer females than males. Maybe everyone eventually can have a car, but can every boy find a girl?
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176439.TIF
  • This mass wedding took place at the Great Wall outside Beijing. After reading many surveys about how money was more important than love, I watched and photographed this woman all day. She never smiled.  Marriage can be a great social and financial leap forward.
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  • The government has made clear that it will do whatever it takes to keep the swelling middle class happy. Like anyone else, their experiences and those of their families shape members of the comfort class. When their parents talk about the Great Leap Forward (the disastrous Mao campaign in the late 1950s that left 20 to 30 million dead of starvation) and the subsequent chaos of the Cultural Revolution, they mostly tell horror stories that would put anyone off politics forever. One event that the comfort class does remember is the crackdown on Tiananmen Square in 1989. But to young Chinese, the Tiananmen protests are less a source of inspiration than an admonishment. Continued popular uprisings like Tiananmen, they believe, would have have provoked a counter reaction by conservative forces that would have led to a return to fortress China, meaning no more iPods, overseas shopping trips or snowboarding weekends.
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  • Migrant workers in China are mostly people from impoverished regions of the country moving to more urban and prosperous coastal regions in search of work. An estimated 230 million Chinese in 2010, roughly equivalent to two-thirds the population of the U.S., have left the countryside and migrated to the cities in recent years. About 13 million more join them every year. Many are farmers and farm workers made obsolete by modern farming practices and factory workers who have been laid off from inefficient state-run factories. Men often get construction jobs while women work in cheap-labor factories. So many migrants leave their homes looking for work they overburden the rail system. In the Hunan province, 52 people were trampled to death in the late 1990s when 10,000 migrants were herded onto a freight train. To stem the flow of migrants, officials in Hunan and Sichuan have placed restrictions on the use of trains and buses by rural people. In some cities, the migrants almost outnumber the residents. One young girl told National Geographic, “All the young people leave our village. I’m not going back. Many can’t even afford a bus ticket and hitchhike to Beijing.” Overall, the Chinese government has tacitly supported migration as means of transforming China from a rural-based economy to an urban-based one. From the New York Times: “As a result, China’s rulers face a dilemma: the very policies that cater to the urban middle class come at the expense of the rural poor. The revised law on property ownership pushed through despite objections from old-line conservatives, the law for the first time gave equal weight to both state- and private- ownership rights. But a look at the fine print shows that the law only protects things dear to the rising middle class: real estate, cars, stock-market assets. Farmers, on the other hand, will still be unable to purchase their land and instead will be forced to lease plots from the government.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176463-2.tif
  • This is outside of Total Fitness Club in the mall in Guangzhou, Guangdong province. There are 900 million cell phones in China and the West has long predicted that economic growth would eventually bring democracy. As James Mann points out in his new book, The China Fantasy, the idea that China will evolve into a democracy as its middle class grows continues to underlie the U.S.’s China policy, providing the central rationale for maintaining close ties with what is, after all, an unapologetically authoritarian regime. But China’s comfort class could shatter such long-held assumptions. As the chief beneficiaries of China’s economic success, young professionals are more and more tied up in preserving the status quo. The last thing they want is a populist politician winning over the country’s hundreds of millions of have-nots on a rural-reform, stick-it-to-the-cities agenda. All of which means democracy isn’t likely to come to China anytime soon.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176463-3.tif
  • These are spokes-models at a Johnny Walker event at Granvill Mall. This event had something to do with sponsoring a formula one racing car and hard alcohol—not a good mix by most standards, but, whatever. A camera club showed up to photograph the models and use all their brand new, expensive gear. Survey young, urban Chinese today, and you will find them drinking Starbucks, wearing Nikes and blogging obsessively. But you will detect little interest in demanding voting rights, let alone overthrowing the country’s communist rulers. “On their wish list,” says Hong Huang, a publisher of several lifestyle magazines, “a Nintendo Wii comes way ahead of democracy.”
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176463-4.tif
  • The potential spending power of Chinese women could be enormous in the next decade. According to estimates from MasterCard International, the total purchasing power of young Chinese women living on their own or in married households with no children is likely to rise from US$180 billion in 2005 to $260 billion in 2015.<br />
<br />
Young Chinese are the drivers and chief beneficiaries of the country’s current boom. According to a recent survey by Credit Suisse First Boston, the incomes of 20- to 29-year-olds grew 34% in the past three years, by far the biggest of any age group. And because of their self-interested, apolitical pragmatism, they could turn out to be the salvation of the ruling Communist Party—as long as it keeps delivering the economic goods.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176596.TIF
  • Women from the rural countryside learn skills at the Fuping Vocational Skills Training School to be maids for the newly wealthy comfort class. Since opening up its economy in 1978 and moving toward a market economy, China has lifted about 400 million people out of poverty, but this has led to wide income inequalities. The Communist Party is trying to address this through its notion of a “harmonious society” that has a more even distribution of the benefits of recent decades of speedy economic growth. Migrant workers in China are mostly people from impoverished regions who go to more urban and prosperous coastal regions in search of work. According to Chinese government statistics, the current number of migrant workers in China is estimated at 120 million (approximately 9% of the population). China is now experiencing the largest mass migration of people from the countryside to the city in history. An estimated 230 million Chinese (2010), roughly equivalent to two-thirds the population of the U.S., have left the countryside and migrated to the cities in recent years. About 13 million more join them every year—an expected 250 million by 2012, and 300 to perhaps 400 million by 2025. Many are farmers and farm workers made obsolete by modern farming practices and factory workers who have been laid off from inefficient state-run factories. Overall, the Chinese government has tacitly supported migration as means of transforming China from a rural-based economy to an urban-based one.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7890_1386317.TIF
  • The dancers, wait staff, and performers are all migrant workers from Xinjiang Province in Northwest China. Migrant workers in China are mostly people from impoverished regions who go to more urban and prosperous coastal regions in search of work. According to Chinese government statistics, the current number of migrant workers in China is estimated at 120 million (approximately 9% of the population). China has been experiencing the largest mass migration in history. An estimated 230 million Chinese (2010), roughly two-thirds the population of the U.S., have left the countryside and migrated to the cities in recent years. About 13 million more join them every year—an expected 250 million by 2012, and 300 to perhaps 400 million by 2025. Many are farmers and farm workers made obsolete by modern farming practices and factory workers who have been laid off from inefficient state-run factories.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176492.TIF
  • Xidan shopping area in downtown Beijing just off the side of Tiananmen Square and Forbidden city has been a commercial street crowded with shops since the Ming dynasty.
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  • This is from Leslie Chang’s story that accompanied these photographs in National Geographic Magazine:<br />
<br />
"By the time she was ten, Bella lived a life that was rich with possibility and as regimented as a drill sergeant’s. After school she did homework unsupervised until her parents got home. Then came dinner, bath, piano practice. Sometimes she was permitted television, but only the news. On Saturdays she took a private essay class followed by Math Olympics, and on Sundays a prep class for the middle-school entrance exam and piano lessons. The best moment of the week was Friday afternoon, when school let out early. Bella might take a deep breath and look around, like a man who discovers a glimpse of blue sky from the confines of the prison yard."
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  • Rachel shops for a new outfit to go on an upcoming date. The fashion store called Thre3 is run by her friend on the Bund in Shanghai. Her dressing room takes two assistants to close—another example of some of the over-the-top culture. The green frock has a $2,200 price tag.
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  • Leaving  a Johnny Walker/Formula one car event at Granvill Mall, I came upon a woman with a broken shoe and her friend who was trying to fix it by using his cell phone as a hammer. Cell phones are changed up so frequently, so why not use it as a hammer? Their friends were laughing at the scene so she was embarrassed.
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  • Guang Hui Plaza | Shanghai, China  in the west part of Shanghai–Xugiahui area. Public displays of affection are rare, but these two young people are comfortable sitting close to each other and watching the world go by.
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  • A statue of Mao Tse Tung at the gate to Wuhan's Iron and Steel plant.
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  • Health clubs are surging in popularity, partly as an antidote to work stress. The Total Fitness Club, with 11 branches in Guangzhou, offers six kinds of yoga, and classes in salsa and pole dancing.
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  • The joke is the "crane" is the official bird of China. They are everywhere. This is the China (Guangzhou) International Automobile Exhibition, and one of the biggest auto shows on the planet. When people have MORE STUFF it also creates more demand for resources. China already consumes more of seven of the eight most basic resources on the planet (the eighth being oil). They need THEIR plastic objects, their cars, their air conditioning. There is a (dirty) coal power plant coming online every four to five days in China that could power a city the size of San Diego.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176261.TIF
  • Shopping in a childrens' clothing store.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176298.TIF
  • Lu (pushing carriage) lives with his daughter-in-law and son who is trying to do a start up GPS business and often works from home. Lu was sent to prison during the Cultural Revolution and tries to keep pace with today’s values, but still has questions about his son’s world. The “little capitalists” that live with their Cultural Revolution parents often have conflicts of ideology. The older generation thinks in a more Confucian way—never rise above your teacher, never rise above your father, others’ needs are more important than your own.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176300.TIF
  • A water fight at China Folk Culture Villages.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176301.TIF
  • All over China, young architects design buildings that are just experiments: throw in a bit of classical modern, a little Prairie style, a few Roman columns. This restaurant with the longest name I saw in China, decided one day they would just photograph the interior of the restaurant with all the customers and then have it printed on huge canvas sheets so it feels like you are sitting inside the restaurant – inside the restaurant.
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  • A man tries out a chair at a Sam's Club store in China. The first Wal-Mart in China is in Shenzhen, the city where Deng made his famous “to be rich is glorious” speech. This store sells all that a family needs or wants. The cosmetics area is much more plush than any Wal-Mart in the U.S. Women who work in offices will have a cheaper brand of lipstick in their homes, but carry a nice brand in their purse so they can be seen using it in public. The signs that hang overhead in this store proudly announce, “Made in China.” This is very different than the best store I could find in China 17 years ago. The best store then was a government “Friendship Store” that had a photo of a female employee on the wall with a sign underneath, “Worst Employee of the Month.” The only way you could motivate workers at that time was to shame them. Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, beauty in China is seen as utilitarian. Cosmetics for instance are a major business in China and women in the China Middle see this as an important part of their lifestyle. Wal-Mart aims for the Comfort Class consumer earning between $5,000 and $20,000 a year.
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  • Mannequins for displaying clothing.
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  • A couple in a restaurant decorated with fish tanks.
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  • Men sitting outside a shop on a street known for wedding attire. Migrant workers in China are mostly people from impoverished regions who move to more urban and prosperous coastal regions in search of work. According to Chinese government statistics, the current number of migrant workers in China is estimated at 120 million (approximately 9% of the population). China is now experiencing the largest mass migration of people from the countryside to the city in history. An estimated 230 million Chinese (2010), roughly equivalent to two-thirds the population of the U.S., have left the countryside and migrated to the cities in recent years. About 13 million more join them every year—an expected 250 million by 2012, and 300 to perhaps 400 million by 2025. Many are farmers and farm workers made obsolete by modern farming practices and factory workers who have been laid off from inefficient state-run factories.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176322.TIF
  • City Planning Museum is just off People’s Square in the Puxi side of Shanghai. Models show not only the buildings that are already done, but also those planned for the future.
    RANDY OLSON_MM7493_1176326.TIF
  • Workers repair electrical power lines above pedestrians. The need for electrical power is so great in Shanghai that migrant workers are hired to hook them up by strapping a high voltage wire around their waist and pull it across an already stressed net by walking on the actual wires that bring the electricity.  There is a (dirty) coal power plant coming online every four to five days in China that could power a city the size of San Diego. Energy is wasted on an epic scale. One hundred cities with populations over 1 million faced extreme water shortages last year. China’s survival has always been built on the notion of a vastly powerful, infallible center. Thus, China has poor foundations on which to build the subtle network of institutions and accountability necessary to manage the complexities of a modern economy and society. The lack of independent scrutiny and accountability lies behind the massive waste in the Chinese government and destruction of the environment. Air pollution contributed by these plants kills 400,000 people prematurely every year.
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  • The IKEA store in Shanghai, China is packed daily, but Sundays are particularly crowded. Sometimes one can’t maneuver through the aisles.
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  • Outside an American chain coffee-house in the Xintiandi mall area.
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  • Backlighting through yellow curtains at a restaurant in Shanghai.
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  • Rachel broke up with her ex-pat boyfriend and is well-versed in the social scene of Shanghai. She prefers ex-pats but doesn’t like the dynamic that many of them think that women like her prefer them and use this to their advantage. Even though the statistics show that there are many more western men marrying Chinese women, those statistics are not discussed in the Chinese media. For example, the government would never allow a soap opera about all the western men connecting with Chinese women, so they promoted a soap opera about the opposite situation called “Foreign Babes in Beijing” featuring western women falling for Chinese men.
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  • Parkson Mall Intersection of Huaihai Road and Shanxi Road.
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  • This is a pick up club for mistresses and there is a room of male prostitutes that get signaled to come over to a table where the women will choose.
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  • Dancing at a pick up club for mistresses and male prostitutes.
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  • A dancer at a bar.
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  • Men watch a dancer at a bar.
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  • A drunken woman showing her emotions.
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  • A cocktail party celebration at an Evian spa.
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  • This easy migration of people from city to city is still hard for me to get used to. Seventeen years ago when I was traveling between Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, they all had a ring of policemen around them checking identity papers. I was in China trying to get through those rings of security during the Tiananmen Square uprising. I remember traveling with wire service photographers and driving through those checkpoints at 90 mph and seeing the policeman jump up and down on the dais—literally hopping mad—but there was nothing they could do because they did not have guns or radios. After being absent 17 years, I made (technically) five trips to China in about a one-year period. The growth is so fast paced I could feel the energy and the stress on the street. It makes you realize that our empire is over, but you can’t really understand that without being there. Even though the NYT has multiple stories, every day, on the growth and complexity of the Chinese economy, the average American has little idea what this means other than a fear that increased Chinese fuel consumption will somehow affect what they put in the tank of their SUV. Robert Frank photographed twentieth-century America, recording our coming of age—the baby boom, the start of television, car culture, modular housing, and relative wealth distributed throughout the middle class. His photographs are of progress, technology, plenty, but also the weary faces of waitresses and elevator operators who were desperately trying to join the economic party. Those 1950s faces remind me of a line in Leslie Chang’s story about modern China: “What looks like freedom just feels like pressure.”
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  • There is a reason Guangzhou was the first city in China to reach first world status (2008). Everyone in Guangzhou, aside from the migrant population, is making an average of $830 a month. Money has approximately four times more buying power in China than the U.S., so that $830 equals $3320 a month in our economy. That is the same buying power of average citizens in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico.
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  • Workers preparing for a festival take a break.
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  • Yvonne’s boutique spas in Shanghai offer 13 types of facials, plus a chocolate pedicure for $48. Her father escaped China in 1949 with his family and two of his siblings died in the crossing (there were ten children, his father had multiple wives). Yvonne’s family is typical of the Chinese who were smart enough to get out when it was bad and smart enough to get back in when things were improving. Diva Life is set up for two types of clients; the ex-pat tai tai wives of diplomats and the wannabe Chinese who follow that crowd into Yvonne’s spa. Yvonne has the Diva life. She designs her own furniture, spa, and clothes. She spends the morning at the fabric market and meeting with her tailor, and then goes to her office. But the main reason she started the spa is so that she can have a couple hours of spa treatment any day she likes.
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  • A fish tank separates patrons from the kitchen at a restaurant on East Nanjing Road | Shanghai, China
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  • A shopper inside a store looks out past a poster.
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  • Flower girls at a wedding.
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  • Young workers at a rising web company sponsoring the Olympic Games. There is a new phenomenon breaking through the “factory of the world” culture of China. New businesses cater to the newly wealthy Chinese, so instead of ‘B to B,’ these businesses are ‘C to C’ (Copy to China). The idea is to find something that is working spectacularly well in the U.S. or Europe and then import it for newly wealthy Chinese consumers. SOHU.com wants to be the Google of China and was one of the main sponsors of the Beijing Summer Olympics. Personalization of cubicles goes a little over the top, and I noticed that the workspaces that had American fast food wrappers and liter bottles of Coke also had some of the first overweight Chinese I had seen.
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  • There are 2.6 billion armpits in China, according to an ad man, and someone has to sell them deodorant. This shop-owner (right) thinks a guy wandering Nanjing Road in a full knight suit will do the trick for his snack shop.
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  • Migrant workers with jobs as moving men, play on the street outside an office building.
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  • At eyou.com they have a climbing wall and the CEO’s computer (that was used to found the company) is embedded partially into the wall of the conference room. These employees work in a faux-silicon-valley atmosphere. Eyou wants to bring Facebook to China, which brings up some serious issues. Facebook is based on knowing and trusting your community of friends. But many Chinese only feel comfortable using pseudonyms and eyou forces them to be who they are when they talk about issues with their parents, girlfriends or boyfriends.
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  • The Fortune Land International Hotel has embraced the boutique hotel concept of the U.S., but on steroids. Giant mushrooms hang from the lobby ceiling above strange-looking and not always comfortable chair-pods.
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  • A mass wedding at the Great Wall of China.
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  • Singles try to find each other at an event at amusement park sponsored by a web site (www.juedui100.com) that caters to Chinese singles. The web pages of prospective Chinese partners hang all over the walls and trees and there are so many that they have to be changed every few hours. Julie, the president of the company, says that she counsels folks about going for love over stability but no one listens. She says they all want to find someone with a good job, a house, and a car before worrying about loving them or not. Even with this counseling, there is a surreal scene where young singles get up on an AstroTurf stage and recite their particulars: My name is John, I am 28 years old and I have a condo with two bedrooms. I make X amount of money a year, and I have a 2006 Volkswagen golf with a garage. This is backed up by a China Daily report: If you’re a single male living in Beijing, you need to make a mental note of this figure: 1,068,000. No, it’s not the lottery payoff you dream you’ll win next week. It’s the number of yuan you’ll need to shell out to get married. It’s going to take you exactly 12 years to save the sum on the condition that you don’t spend a penny on food, lodging or anything else.
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  • The parents on the left and a newly married couple on the right eating oranges under a marriage photo.
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  • Women from the rural countryside learn to be maids for the newly wealthy class. They learn to cook and iron at the Fuping Vocational Skills Training School. Li responds to flying grease in one of the cooking classes.<br />
<br />
Since opening up its economy in 1978 and moving toward a market economy, China has lifted about 400 million people out of poverty, according to the World Bank. But this has led to wide income inequalities that the Communist Party is trying to address through its notion of a “harmonious society” that has a more even distribution of the benefits of recent decades of speedy economic growth. Migrant workers in China are mostly people from impoverished regions who go to more urban and prosperous coastal regions in search of work. Many are farmers and farm workers made obsolete by modern farming practices and factory workers who have been laid off from inefficient state-run factories. Men often get construction jobs while women work in cheap-labor factories. So many migrants leave their homes looking for work they overburden the rail system. In the Hunan province, 52 people were trampled to death in the late 1990s when 10,000 migrants were herded onto a freight train. To stem the flow of migrants, officials in Hunan and Sichuan have placed restrictions on the use of trains and buses by rural people. In some cities, the migrants almost outnumber the residents. One young girl told National Geographic, “All the young people leave our village. I’m not going back. Many can’t even afford a bus ticket and hitchhike to Beijing.” Overall, the Chinese government has tacitly supported migration as means of transforming China from a rural-based economy to an urban-based one.
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  • The Armani Club is in the Liu lin Road area attract a scene of young people.
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  • Susanne is marrying her boyfriend in Hong Kong next week and they are moving in together. This is the view from her apartment.
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  • Susanne is marrying her boyfriend in Hong Kong next week and they are moving in together. Her daughter looks over the view from her apartment.
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  • At the check-out of the first Sam's Club store in China.
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  • Street Scene Beijing China.
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  • Profiles on display at blind date event organized by a dating agency.
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  • A worker fixes a power line standing on a ladder.
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  • The staircase of an opulent home in Huaxi.
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  • Photographing the gate to Wuhan's Iron and Steel plant.
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  • A steel worker at the Wuhan iron and steel plant.
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  • A young woman sits on a barstool in a crowded bar.
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  • A pet lover with her dogs and friends.
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  • China (Guangzhou) International Automobile Exhibition that began in 2003 is one of the largest international auto shows in China. This event has an exhibition ground measuring 85,000 square meters and it filled eight exhibition halls. Over 370 exhibitors from 20 other countries and regions, took part in this exhibition, which was covered by more than 1,600 news reporters representing upwards of 510 TV and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, and online media at home and abroad. 120,000 people attended.
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  • An English teacher presents the letter F to preschool children.
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  • A parent peers through a window keeping a close eye on her child.
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  • From Leslie Chang’s story that accompanied these photographs in National Geographic Magazine:<br />
<br />
By the time she was ten, Bella lived a life that was rich with possibility and as regimented as a drill sergeant’s. After school she did homework unsupervised until her parents got home. Then came dinner, bath, piano practice. Sometimes she was permitted television, but only the news. On Saturdays she took a private essay class followed by Math Olympics, and on Sundays a prep class for the middle-school entrance exam and piano lessons. The best moment of the week was Friday afternoon, when school let out early. Bella might take a deep breath and look around, like a man who discovers a glimpse of blue sky from the confines of the prison yard.
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  • Rachel is a “headhunter” for the Comfort Class, which is the buffer class between first world needs and third world sweatshops or between first world companies and third world consumers. Rachel is single and lives at home with her parents, who were part of one of the worst social experiments in history. Mao unified the country, but then was responsible for the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, countless famines. Then, Deng proclaimed, “To get rich is glorious” and opened the flood gates to the “Special Economic Zone” cities on the south coast, creating the largest peacetime human migration in history. Many 20-somethings say that Tiananmen Square had to be put down or it would have hurt Deng’s economic plans and they would not have their nice apartments with flat screens in every room.
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  • A wedding photo on a bridge with the Pudong skyline in the background.
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  • A mass wedding at the Great Wall of China.
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  • Beijing at the time of this photo had a "one dog policy." The dog on the treadmill is a Siberian Husky and Beijing police are starting another crackdown on large dog ownership. These folks are starting to train their pet on their friend’s treadmill because if they take it outside for a walk, they risk having it beaten to death in front of them by a Beijing policeman. Owners of big dogs (over 35cm) that live within the sixth ring in Beijing have an illegal pet. Many have purchased treadmills after the crackdown began when pets were pulled out of the hands of their crying owners. A group protested in front of the zoo because there was suspicion that some of the dogs were being fed to the tigers. The activists claim dog owners tried to take policemen to dinner to bribe them, but it did not work. They say the policemen sold some of the nice animals and sent the rest to the zoo.
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  • In a complicated family life, the grandparents were farmers and lost the land and their occupations to development. If the grandparents did not have a child they would be homeless. Ironically, the same development that took his home now supports their daughter, Ding, who works in the industrial park occupying the land that was once the father’s farm.
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  • New products bombard Chinese consumers daily. Just keeping up with the new air freshener and portable camera . . . and . . . and . . . and . . . can be overwhelming.
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