To give you an idea of the standard of living here in China let me make a couple of comparisons. Usually you can compare the yuan, the currency here, with the euro (or dollar). Which means that most things are ten times as cheap. But this is not the same for some of the long lasting items. Clothes, food, shoes, personal hygiene products and small household items are cheap here. But a durable Siemens washing machine, like the one I had in Holland, runs about 400 Euro ($500). A 104 cm (42 inch) flat screen TV runs about 1600 Euro ($2000). It’s cheaper but the difference is less. You can get a Chinese flat-iron for about 15 Euro ($19), but I have a Philips iron (with steam) which cost me about 65 Euro ($80) because I don’t trust the Chinese irons. All large household items are also available from Chinese manufacturers and are of course cheaper than the Western brands especially when those brands don’t have branches in China.

When I go to the supermarket to buy my weekly groceries, my shopping cart is filled to the rim. Here in the supermarket you can also buy towels, DVD’s, TV’s, clothing etc. It is a sort of cheap version of Vroom & Dreesman (for the USA a sort of Walmart superstore).

I will buy for example towels, make-up for Jinghua, a new pan and a new bathrobe because it’s getting cold and houses here have no heat etc. etc. When I check out, the total bill is between 30 and 50 Euro ($40-$65).

I’ll buy American DVD’s in the store here, they are the illegal ones though, for about 60 Eurocent ($0.80) a piece. They look like the original with cover and all. The same holds by the way for Chinese DVD’s. A legal DVD runs between 2 and 4 Euro ($2.50 - $5.00). You can get 10 blank CD’s for 1 Euro ($1.30). 50 Eurocents ($0.65) buys you a large plate of fried rice and food in a very luxurious restaurant, the kind where there is more personnel than customers, runs between 8 and 12 Euro ($10-$15). To get a roll of film developed and put on CD is relatively speaking pretty expensive. The cost to develop a roll of 36 exposures, and get prints 10 x 15 cm (4 x 6 inch), is about 6 Euro ($8.00). I bought a new winter coat for about 15 Euro ($20) and that was one of the more expensive ones. There are special Boss stores and stores with other foreign brands but if you pay attention you’ll notice that the quality isn’t better and that you’ll just pay extra for the brand name. To take a ride on the city bus, a city of 4.5 million people, will cost you about 10 Eurocent ($0.13). Very nice and fancy Christmas cards, which people here aren’t quite accustomed to yet, are about 40 Eurocent ($0.50) these are complete with insert and envelope. So that is expensive, but to get an artificial Christmas tree of about 1.25 meter (4 ft.) including Christmas ornaments, lights and additional decoration for the room home delivered (!) will cost you about 10 Euro ($13)You still have to pay attention to how much you spend though because, especially when you think about how cheap it is, you tend to spend more than what you planned on.

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