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Letters and Blogs
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-13 07:45 Immaturity among the 'new rich' Comment on "Time we stopped spilling blood on streets", Aug 6, China Daily China has a lot already, and there is a growing number of what we in the West would term "new rich". One finds this total disregard for what they see as "social inferiors" - especially typified by pedestrians - among the "new rich", as lack of maturity in their ability to cope with their "wealth". In other words, their minds have not grown along with their bank accounts. Immaturity is hard to handle, like an unruly child. There must be punishment designed to correct that behavior which hits at that which totally opposes their mind frame at the time of their anti-social, and/or criminal behavior. In the case of the young Porsche driver, he must be banned from driving a car for at least three years, after release from prison, and forced to take a further test. These are just some suggestions, which should be taken. It has to be a warning to others - especially his peer group. Will this happen? No. There is something which guides criminal law, and anti-social behavior in seemingly most countries today, and that is one law for the rich, and another for the poor, irrespective of the nation's political ideology. We call it "the old boy's network". Ray Newton On China Daily website Cultural element or cost consideration? The "Forbidden City Restaurant", opened on Aug 8 near the Palace Museum or the Forbidden City, started off by offering tourists a kind of imperial palace noodles, at 30 yuan ($4.4) a bowl. Such a price is widely held to be much too expensive compared to the 10 yuan or so for a bowl of lamian (a type of hand-made or hand-pulled Chinese noodle). Operators of the Palace Museum explained that the pricing was connected with cultural elements and other cost considerations. And the cultural element they mentioned is: to present tourists from all over the world the culture of China's lamian. To be frank, the cost consideration for the overpricing is acceptable, given the high rental fees of the Forbidden City and the dinning atmosphere it offers. That's akin to the fact that you can't expect to buy a bottle of spring water in a 5-star hotel at the same price of 2 yuan it is sold on the streets. However, the so-called cultural element seems far-fetched. First of all, the lamian itself is a surprise. I thought it would be traditional Beijing noodles with soybean paste, which is part of original Beijing culture, not lamian, which is culturally rooted in northwest China. And even when we accept lamian in a wider range of Chinese food culture, we know low cost is part of lamian's culture. So the only possible link with cultural elements is not the food, but the place offering the food. Many netizens suggested that the government's pricing department should intervene against such high pricing, but I don't think it's necessary. The market has already responded: the restaurant had only 100-odd customers on its first day. Thirty yuan a bowl? No way! Why not buy much cheaper bowls of instant noodles from outside instead? Nuo Song http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_48e7892b0100ekkq.html (China Daily 08/13/2009 page8) |
