Sometimes, while driving in Shenzhen or Beijing, I see so many luxury cars on the road. I can't help wondering how wealthy the Chinese have become compared with 20 years ago.
Take a classmate of mine as an example. She came to Beijing 10 years ago from a town so small and isolated that most of the people living there had never even seen a BMW. Now, she works for a Beijing newspaper, drives a European car and has just bought an 800,000 yuan condominium. Yet according to my college classmates, she is doing 'just so-so'. As a returnee who lived in Silicon Valley for 10 years, I see that young urban Chinese are catching up with the middle-class life of the west. And the effects of this change are both positive and negative.
Today in China, to get rich is glorious. But does a higher standard of living make people better? Are the rich more generous than the poor? What about the tension between rich and poor? Can money buy satisfaction? Our protagonist Niuniu's experience may give us some answers.
One Saturday night, Niuniu is waiting in a line of cars to get out of a crowded outdoor public parking lot. There are five cars ahead of her. For 10 minutes, the line hasn't moved.
She soon discovers that the owner of a BMW sports vehicle, a man in his 30s, is refusing to pay the one-yuan parking fee because he didn't like the way the attendant had knocked on his car.
His car is undamaged, but the driver remains defiant. So does the parking lot attendant, who is wearing cotton-padded clothes and looks to be at least 50 years old.