This one is for my Mom Part II

My Mom, as many of you know, is a kitchen designer and she loves looking at pictures of kitchens in other cultures. Indeed, as many of the urban preservationists in China tell me, you can see a culture and lifestyle, and therefore a society, embedded in the structure of the home. So here are pictures of my friend's apartment, where we cooked dinner together one night last week. Although I want to stress that all homes and kitchens in China are different, from what I've seen this is a pretty typical middle-class apartment. The only time I've seen kitchens that are "better" than this (read: kitchens that look like kitchens you would find in the States) are when I go to visit extremely wealthy Chinese families. Maybe I will post pictures of a wealthy family's kitchen next week.

As the Chinese say, the differences you can see in pictures of Xiaoyu's kitchen (below), Old Nanjing's kitchens and the rich family's kitchen I will post illustrates 贫富差距很大, meaning "the gap between the rich and the poor is very big." The picture of the advertisement below is from an article I found online that discusses this gap. The title of the article is "我国贫富差距正在逼近社会容忍“红线”" which means, "My country's gap between the rich and the poor is now imminently a society that tolerates "crossing the warning boundary." The article basically says that the gap between the rich and the poor in China has "exceeded reasonable limits" and that the gap is rapidly widening and in danger of causing social instability. The most shocking statistics cited are (note: do not know how reliable these are, but I thought it was interesting to see what is being posted in Chinese news anyway): 

The top 10% richest members of society make 23 times more in average yearly income than the top 10% poorest members (up from 7 times more in 1988). 

State-owned enterprise executives make 128 times more than the overall average salary for Chinese workers.

(Probably a migrant) worker sitting in front for a Lancome advertisement.

 My friend commented the other day about how frustrated he gets when he sees Westerners in ads in China: "Will Western ethnocentrism go so far as penetrating Chinese society?" he asked. There's a 成语 (chengyu, idiom) for that! "崇洋媚外， 丧失国格," or "to blindly worship foreign things and forfeit national dignity." According to some of the people I've talked to, this phenomenon is becoming more prevalent in Chinese society, and Westerners in Chinese advertisements is one example. Chinese people discuss this societal and cultural conflict all the time: how to preserve your Chinese identity, while opening to the West? Anyway, I digress. Pictures of kitchens on the next page!

Xiaoyu washing the lettuce

Stove-top

Bathroom- the pipes are the shower pipes

Refrigerator in the dining room

Wireless Internet router next to the rice cooker- one thing that Chinese people must have no matter what: an internet connection.

Kettle and hot plate

Xiaoyu making dinner!

Chinese word of the day:

固执, gu4 zhi2, literally "to firmly and strong stick or hold on to something," aka stubborn