C.C. wonders if, perhaps, China just has a shortage of men.

Niuniu, who has been quiet, finally opens her mouth. 'No,' she says. 'Actually, it's the other way around. Chinese men far outnumber Chinese women. The proportion is far greater than in most other countries.'

Unable to hide her enthusiasm, Lulu asks where all these men are.

Niuniu thinks her friends are as naive about the world outside the big cities as she was before her recent trip. She thinks this is a golden opportunity to direct the conversation towards her experiences. 'Many men are in the countryside,' she says.

Beibei nods. 'Oh yeah,' she says. 'Those peasants need sons to do all the hard labour on the land, and traditionally, girls leave their family to join their husband's family when they're married. Boys earn you money and girls cost you money. So, of course, everyone wants sons instead of daughters.'

Lulu pipes up. 'How can I forget about the peasants?' she says. 'China has 800 million of them. Everybody here originally came from a peasant family. I guess we city people forget about our roots from time to time. It's too bad.' Lulu is half joking, although she senses they're about to get a lecture from Niuniu about the plight of rural China.

Niuniu says girls make money for their families in one way. 'Because women are so scarce, the groom has to pay a lot of money to the bride and her family for the wedding,' she says. 'The poorest ones sometimes have to save money until they are in their 50s, and still end up without a wife. Some families have to marry off their daughters in order to get the money to pay for their sons' weddings. In some extreme cases, two brothers have to share the one wife.'

Lulu cuts in. 'Polygamy? So, unlike us, who can't even find ourselves one man to marry, these peasant women can easily find a husband - or two. Why, it sounds almost too good to be true.'

Niuniu shakes her head, 'Don't be silly,' she says. 'Their lives aren't that easy. Many husbands in the countryside beat their wives. The wives are exploited. Unlike us, they work from dawn to dark. And there are no beauty salons or foot massages to pamper them at the end of their hard day's work.'

Beibei says no city girls would want to marry a peasant, even though city men are happy sometimes to take a peasant women as their wife. 'I guess they think they are caregivers and good mothers,' she says. 'Remember that famous Harvard-educated scholar from the May Fourth school in the 1920s, Hu Shi? He had so many intellectual female friends, but his wife was an illiterate peasant.'

Lulu says China may not lack men - just urban men of high quality. 'The best ones have all gone overseas to become doctors and engineers,' she says. 'That's why the leftovers - even though they're second-rate - can still afford to be so choosy.'

C.C. says good men can become bad after living in China for too long. 'They become arrogant and selfish,' she says. 'They get used to the attention they get from women. Look at those returnees and foreigners who live in China for ever. Even the ones who are married are usually still looking.'

Niuniu says she is puzzled by that peasant women look so much older than their age. 'They don't have any kind of make-up or skin-care products to help them look beautiful,' she says. 'They even use coarse paper made from cow dung as sanitary pads. But, despite all that, they tell me that they're happy. The peasant women I talked to were smiling from ear to ear when I saw them, even in the harsh conditions in which they were living.'

Lulu asks: 'So, why can't we be as happy? We have youth, beauty, money, a good education, nice apartments, cars ...'

'Perhaps we don't have the one thing that the peasant women do,' Niuniu says.

'What's that?' everyone asks. 'Innocence,' Niuniu says.

The girls are quiet for a moment. Finally, Beibei asks where they're all going tonight. Lulu says she heard there was an MTV party on at Vics, but C.C. says she doesn't want to drive. All of a sudden, nobody wants to talk about the countryside. 'Great,' says Niuniu, 'I'll drive.'