Since When the World Has Changed

I got a real blow from the American edition of Vogue recently. Yes, although we have the Chinese edition of Vogue here as well as a few dozen other fashion magazine, I'm actually buying the American edition. And that's because of a DVD.

 

Monthly ago I watched a movie called "Sept Issue" on DVD - it's a documentary about the publication of the Sept issue of Vogue magazine in year 2007, the thickest magazine ever by then. Obviously the materials were collected long time ago for some internal purpose but at the aspiration of the commercial success of Devil Wears Prada, the people involved decided to get it make into a documentary.

Anyway, it's a job well-done coz my admiration for the Vogue magazine grew to such an extent that I actually went online to buy the American edition and get it mailed to Shanghai every month. I feel quite indignant that it cost only RMB200 for a year in U.S. and there's a promotion of buy one get one free, so it's essentially RMB100 a year, but to get it mailed to China, it costs RMB460. At the same time, the Chinese edition here it costs RMB240 for a year and it's simply not as good.

 

Two months later, the first issue of my long-waited American Vogue landed in my lap and the first impression is that the Recession must be over in U.S. already, coz the Mar edition is filled all of advertisements � I can hardly find the beginning of the "contents" coz it starts only on page 198.

A much bigger, way more profound revelation came after I went page by page on the advertisements, to put it in simple English: it is cheaper to live in U.S. now than to live in Shanghai, if you live on the same fashion items in the advertisements of Vogue.

 

It has long been no secrets that to buy any Luxury brand in China is way much more expensive than to buy it in U.S. or Europe, and that is usually explained away with the import tax. And it's fine because the Luxury stuff has only to do with the rich people, in case the enlightened ordinary citizen decides she needs a LV handbag or a pair of Ferragamo shoes and is willing to hand in two or three months of salary, it's fine too because that is called exactly an Luxury Item.

 

Nevertheless, what we're having now is no more a luxury problem but a mass market problem. And the window to the problem opens from the price announcement on the advertising of American Vogue: Brahmin "Lydia" leather hobo at USD295, roughly the same price vs. any mass market handbag in any department store of Shanghai; Adrianna Papell floral print dress with rosettes, USD 138, cheaper than any clothing item you randomly pick up in Shanghai's department store, which usually lay above USD150, Calvin Klein "Dylan" boa print birdcage sandal, USD119, cheaper than any new arrival I just checked over the show department…. As hard as I find this amazing and unbelievable, it is as real as what they say "black and white" or, "printed words".

Actually I may be very late for this realization; the Chinese who immigrated to U.S. in the recent years have known it much earlier. My friend who immigrated to U.S. twelve years ago used to make bulk purchase of clothing and shoes when she came back to Shanghai on rare occasions, but a few years ago, she told me, a pair of shows in Shanghai costs the same as in London (she lived in London then). I wasn't paying attention then, but now I looked back at that moment and see it is the first sign of uninhabitality of Shanghai, that is, on top of the poor quality of air, water, processed food… And oh by the way, an average apartment in Shanghai costs more than an average apartment in NYC too.

 

So the world has really changed, I bow my head and think, but when? I'm thinking of a piece of information from a recent report by Booz-Allen or Boston Consulting, it says over 50% of American business surveyed by the Amcham reported above than average profit margin from China over its global average. So China has, before we take notice, lifts itself from the cheap supply of labor, to an unlimited land of affluent, or at least, willing, consumers; and the multinational companies have been harvesting profits from not only the market's sheer volume, but wide margin too.

 

Lamenting as deep as I am as a consumer, considering my newly gained insight (that the booming China economy also provide exceptional opportunity for earning), I decide to console myself with the prospect of retire aboard in Canada or Australia one day with my hard-earned money from China, I can have pure air and pure water one day, perhaps. And if I could be lucky in the stock market, I might upgrade my retiree vision to a Mediterranean terrace. Keep dreaming, as the American movies advise.

 

Still, if I could have a choice. I want to move to America, now. 

A Roadmap of iPhone

The first person I know who uses an iPhone is Shirley. It was year 2006 and Shirley was the marketing manager of a Fortune 500 company. She's a beautiful lady and takes pride in the fact that she could and she is willing to consume a reasonable level of self-indulgence. One day she showed us an iPhone that we have only heard of before. She had asked a friend to get it for her from Hong Kong, it was not available officially in China yet. It looked nice with the sliding view under her slender finger.

 

Only two months later, we sat in together in a meeting with a PR agency, they were three girls and two of them use an iPhone too. It was funny to watch three identical iPhones lying on the meeting room table. What's more, the two PR girls are only some junior staff in their twenties. Shirley looked dampened and almost awkward coz once she laid out her iPhone, there's no way to retrieve it and hide it.

 

To make things worse, only three months later, Shirley's own assistant also got an iPhone as a gift from the boyfriend. Shirley didn't wait for more humiliation on her iPhone, she left the company soon.

 

By the end of year 2008, iPhone has become essentially a "Street Phone" as we call it in China (a name for the most popular mobile phones coz you go to the street and everybody you see uses such a phone). Our regional sales manager, a successful woman in her 40s, sports an iPhone too. Let's call her Cindy for convenience.

 

In December, our company was having an annual meeting in Shenzhen, the major production base of the world's electronics and naturally, it also hosts the most famous markets for counterfeit mobile phones in the country. In the afternoon when we arrived in Shenzhen, Cindy went to the famous counterfeit mobile phone market with some of her team, a dozen or so sales reps in their late twenties. I also went along in a spirit of a tourist and speculator. The market is stuffy and a full of people, a feeling of temptation, chaos, entrepreneurship, salesmanship, free economy hanging in the air, everyone guarded their backpack or handbag with a high alertness. We went out after two hours and the twelve-person group bought eight counterfeit iPhones and a few others in total, the cost is around RMB800, about one fifth of the real model.

 

Cindy was not very flattered by the new acquisition of her team. She proclaimed "I can't use my iPhone anymore". Coming back from Shenzhen, she did have her phone changed into NokiaE71, another big Street Phone of 2009.  

 

Then as of last week, I also become a proud user of iPhone personally. And that's because I went to an industry conference and everybody is busy typing to their smart phones and I feel I've become obsolete without one. More so, people talked a lot about mini blogging and it's said the mini blogging of Sina has already 6 million users and some famous celebrity was making a sensation on Sina sitting in the Paris Fashion Season, sending pics to her mini blog. That sounds cool, I thought. That's how I have finally adopted into iPhone and I made sure I didn't use it until I bought a pretty cover which I think is unique enough.

   

2010: How do women live in Shanghai

My colleague Alice was eating audibly from her panel, without turning around, I knew that she's having her breakfast which her father prepares for her and makes her take to the office every day: a bottle of milk or yogurt, a small cake or two pieces of bread (different type everyday), two hard-boiled egg, an apple or a banana. It's a big and rich breakfast and Alice will eat it in a playful way, a few bites in the morning, a few bites before lunch and a few bites in the afternoon and she often have a big portion of it left on her desk by the end of day which she wonders whether to take back home or throw in the garbage bin.

Alice also likes wearing white pants, white shirts and white wool coat and I often marvel: Gee, you bought another white pant, how are you going to maintain it? But of course I know that her mother is the one who wash all her clothes, so she's not worried.

Alice is 34 years old and because she's not married, she still lives with her parents, like most Shanghai girls do before they're married, sooner or later, eventually or hopefully.   

 

Feeling quite indignant, out of envy of course, I turn around to Jane, who's married and a mother of a 6-year old son. "Jane, who wash your cloths?" Jane was not prepared for this attack and replied honestly "My mother or my mother in-law --- Ah, but I wash my own underwear of course".  

Jane, her husband and her son live with her parents so that the parents could help take care of the household. Her in-laws live not far away too. Jane's father did all the cooking and he's reportedly a big fan of cooking, every day he would make eight dishes and a soup for dinner and he always seeks new recipes. Jane earns more than her husband and therefore she does no cooking or washing back at home. However, she also has a soft spot. One day her son asked "mother, why you never cook? I want you to cook this weekend", she hence complied and did one dinner (part of it) on the weekend. The next weekend, she pleaded to her son, "son, I'm rather tired this weekend, can I not cook?" and her son agreed with a condition "OK, then you cook more next weekend".    

 

The other day I talked briefly with an American lady who's a senior executive at a major advertising firm who just did a big research on the condition of Chinese women from where she learned that many young working mothers in Shanghai have to send their child back home in some other cities to be taken care of by the grand parents. "It's so hard" the American lady had commented. Yet my instinct is not "what a difficult thing it is for a mother" � as the traditional value calls for, my instinct on the contrary, according to my experience with the women around me is "what a release".

 

I don't know if I'm in a circle with strange, selfish women. But my gut feeling is not. There's this ex-colleague who's name I already forget, let's call her Daisy coz she is as delicate as a daisy. Daisy looks exactly like a Barbie doll in the window but she also has a young daughter, who lives with her parents some one thousand miles away. And it was said that Daisy didn't want to hold her daughter out of fear that the baby will mess up with her cloths. Now this does not sound nice. I guess it's always the bad, extreme, or scandalous things that people talk about and remember.

 

Yet Daisy is not alone. Here's Jessica. Jessica works for a famous cosmetics company and she married a very successful young man who had been the coveted target of many women indeed. Jessica always complains that her husband only decided to get married because he wanted to have a child. So she gave him a child very soon. And two weeks after delivery of the big mission, she went on a vacation around the world with other girl friends. Now coz the couple work very late and none of their parents live in Shanghai, the baby was sent to live with the grand-parents in another city.

 

Now this is how some women live in Shanghai, the ultimate Chinese city penetrated with thriving, throbbing female desires that you could almost hear, you could almost feel. We ask for too much, and we give too little, and we're always chasing after a moving target. So we're never really happy, not yet.