Note

We have discovered, in our brief time here, that although, in general, the Chinese people believe that us Brits have a lot more money than they do and a better standard of living we've seen evidence that China is booming and it won't be very long before the Chinese standard of living is equivalent to the UK. There is so much more development of better infrastructure and buildings here than in Britain. In all the major cities here they have an underground mass transit system and an elevated railway. In Britain these types of development are virtually non-existent. We have one underground system in London and no monorails. These systems tend to be better designed, cheap to travel on and reliable. Still, our tour guides we speak to complain their wages are lower and they cannot afford the expensive clothes in the shops. Perhaps this is a ploy to incur a decent tip! but we reason that, a inflation increases in China, peoples' wages will realign also and in the not too distant future there should be more fairness in the employment sector. Of course they are jealous of us being able to afford to travel and we feel ourselves to be really lucky. When the yuan increases and sits alongside or even overtakes the dollar, they will become a nation of travellers, holidaying in countries outside their own. There is still today a huge gap in the wealth status of the rich and poor in China however. The rice farmers of the countryside still live in rundown, inadequate accommodations and there isn't a system of social care to look after people when they lose their income, become sick or grow too old to work. Children are expected to look after their parents when they reach old age and this can often prove a big ask. Because of the one child policy introduced by the Chinese government to curb the country's population growth resulted in so many only children, this puts a great burden on them as they are required to look after both theirs and their wife's or husband's parents.