In Shanghai, which is China’s New York, locals and expats are doing their best to foist American-style consumerism onto China’s rising masses—with mixed results.

    Starbucks has opened several hundred stores, even though China has no coffee-drinking culture to speak of. Dickie Yip, executive vice president at Bank of Communications, lamented that 80 percent of the 11 million Chinese people who have opened up credit card accounts with the bank pay off their accounts in full every month. “We’re encouraging our best customers not to repay,” he said.

    But there’s one distinctly American habit the Shanghaiese seem to have picked up easily: talking about money, profits, and real estate prices without self-consciousness.

    I’m traveling in China this week and next with a group of American journalists. And we were instantly schooled by our interlocutors on the divide between the political capital (Beijing) and the financial capital (Shanghai). Beijing is all about politics, analysis, debate. In Shanghai, it’s all pragmatism, getting things done, and making money. “To get rich

    As in New York, real estate in Shanghai is a topic of near universal conversation. And as in New York, those fortunate enough to acquire property in the 1970s have done extraordinarily well.

    We visited the home of the Gao family on the 31st floor of a tower in Hongye Gardens, a 12-building complex of high-rise buildings cleaved by gardens, fountains, and a children’s playground—the sort of thing you might find on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

   The parents, in their 50s, are both longtime employees of Shanghai’s public bus company. Their daughter, Yang Gao, a recent graduate of Fudan University, is going to start work at Ernst && Young. They were happy to share details of their personal finances. The Gaos were given the opportunity to buy workers’ housing elsewhere in Shanghai very cheaply a few decades ago. That apartment, which they still own and rent out, has soared in value. The apartment in which they currently live, with finishes and features typical of a nice Manhattan apartment is around 1,300 square feet (120 square meters), and they paid about $200,000 for it a few years ago. The government workers, in other words, had morphed into landlords and residents of a fancy high-rise development.

    The society is in fact bifurcating—between urban and rural, between the coast and the interior, between those who were fortunate to get in on the ground floor of reform and those who are just now arriving on the scene.

    Source: www.mobile.newsweek.com

在上海看美式消费主义

       上海被称为“中国的纽约”。那里的本地人和外来者都在尽最大努力向富起来的中国民众推销美国式的消费主义，结果好坏参半。

       星巴克开了数百家分店，虽然中国人基本没有喝咖啡的习惯。交通银行的一名副行长叶先生抱怨，在该行开设信用卡账户的1100万中国人中80%每月会全额还款。他说：“我们正鼓励我们的最佳客户每月不要全额还款。” 但有一种美国习惯似乎很易为上海人接受：不自觉地谈论钱、利润和房价。

       我正随一个美国记者团在中国考察。我们很快就从受访者那里知道了政治中心（北京）和经济中心（上海）的区别。北京的一切都围绕着政治、分析和辩论。而上海的一切都围绕实用、行动和挣钱，“致富光荣”。

       和在纽约一样，房地产在上海是一个极为普遍的话题。和在纽约一样，那些上世纪70年代获得住房的幸运儿们过得格外好。

       我们拜访了高先生一家。他们住在某花园小区公寓楼的31层。这个小区有12座高层公寓楼，楼下有花园、喷泉和儿童游乐场——你会在曼哈顿上东区看到这些。 

        老两口已年过50，都是上海公交公司的老员工。他们的女儿高杨(音)刚从复旦大学毕业，即将去安永会计师事务所上班。他们很乐意透露家庭财务情况。数十年前，高家获得低价购买职工住房的机会。那套房子的价格如今已经涨了很多，他们仍是房主，并将其出租。他们现在住的房子约有1300平方英尺(约合120平方米)，室内装潢和布置很像典型的曼哈顿公寓，他们几年前花了约20万美元将其买下。换句话说，这两位政府雇员变成了房东和高级公寓的业主。

        这个社会其实正在分化——在城市和农村之间，在沿海和内陆地区之间，在那些改革初期的获益者和现在才慢慢富裕的人之间。