Books
A girl named Ikea
by Angie Knox
Meet the new face of China for the 21st century: she’s seven and sassy, overloaded with homework books, which she wheels around in a little pink Barbie suitcase, and her name is Ikea, after the Swedish homewares giant – which has taken Chinese consumers by storm.
Ikea is just one of the stereotype-shattering Chinese we meet in Getting Rich First: Life in a Changing China. There’s Easy, who likes to dress up as Japanese cartoon characters; Shirley, who went to school seven days a week for three years in order to pass China’s gruelling university entrance exam; and Cai Liang, who used his Chinese stockmarket windfall profits to build a Tuscan villa on his section in Shanghai’s desirable oriental Hollywood residential development.
Author Duncan Hewitt was the BBC’s first Shanghai correspondent. He speaks fluent Mandarin and has lived on and off in China since the mid-1980s. In this book, he mixes storytelling and analysis to give readers a glimpse into the lives of ordinary Chinese grappling with a nation in motion. The transition from the old “iron rice bowl” cradle-to-grave work and welfare system to a “socialist market economy” has left some yawning chasms, particularly for those who haven’t got rich first.
Liu Yumei was laid off from a state-run chemical factory at the age of 42 after 20 years’ service; she now clears tables at a fast-food outlet, and is thankful for the opportunity to work. Xiao Yang trained in martial arts at the Shaolin Temple before chucking it in when his peasant parents could no longer afford the fees; he’s joined the millions of migrant labourers working on Shanghai’s building sites for a pittance.
Elderly Mr Zhao and his wife resisted the developers for as long as they could, but ultimately their 400-year-old courtyard house in the heart of Beijing was demolished to make way for new development along a planned six-lane highway. This continuous remaking of China’s cityscapes is perhaps the most visible indicator of how fast the country is changing, and Hewitt devotes a chapter to chronicling the demise of traditional hutong (alleyway) living in Beijing and Shanghai, and the shifts in new urban architectural fashion.
He also throws light on changing social mores, and the gulf many Chinese feel is opening up between the generation who lived through the austerity of Mao’s 1966-76 Cultural Revolution and their pampered progeny – the “little emperors” of China’s strict one-child policy who are growing up into tech-savvy, individualistic young people of sometimes alarming naivety. This book goes a long way towards demystifying contemporary China for a western reader.
GETTING RICH FIRST: Life in a Changing China, by Duncan Hewitt (Chatto & Windus, $39.99).
