Xinhua informs us that the women of Shanghai are the second happiest group of women in China. They lost the title to the women of Harbin. Shanghaiist wants to know why this article was titled "Shanghai women happiest in China, almost" instead of, say, "Harbin women happiest in China, end of story". That's totally unfair to the women of Harbin, who no doubt have been working on being happy for decades but lost out because the media is too busy fawning over Shanghai and, in particular, its women. Even though we're Shanghaiists, just for this moment, we are all Harbinists in spirit. We perused some related articles and found this CRI piece about the Chinese middle-class. Underneath its title and not yet into its lead paragraph we saw this:
Chinese middle class are termed as one who owns an Audi A4 2.4 and works with an IBM ThinkPad in office.
We're not sure what that means -- if that's something they found in their surveys, or just some random factoid made up by some bored intern, but they're right, of course. Who would want to be caught driving a Benzo and using a Powerbook? Shanghaiist can't afford either right now, so we'd like to ask another question: What do middle-class Chinese people smoke? Every group in Shanghai has its own particular affinities for certain brands of cigarettes. This is more within our economic means -- so if you wanted to look like part of the affluent middle-class, the "backbone force in the Chinese society," as CRI put it, what would you smoke?

Week Around the Ists


A pipe?
FYI. When I visited Harbin back in 2004, no one seemed particularly happy. And that was in August, before the winter freeze set in.
Obvious really. The article was written in Shanghai for a Shanghai audience - it was on Eastday and also in Shanghai Daily - and Xinhua syndicated this version instead of the original in Beijing Morning Post. Presumably because an international audience is not likely to know what Harbin is. Simple.
sounds about right. nonetheless, it's still a funny title.
...almost.