Word: yuan
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...Here Mao lives, a hero still. In his long shadow, fan-twirling line dancers stomp through a traditional peasant rite. Doctors in grubby white coats offer herbal medicines, acupuncture or blood-pressure tests. Vendors proffer savory kabobs or key chains. Children rent old-fashioned roller skates for a few yuan, while their elder brothers play badminton without any nets. The throng does not disperse until the blazing phosphorus lights dim near midnight...
...brought wealth, yes, but it's wildly uneven. The typical Sunday shoppers crowding middle-class Beijing Street are looking, not buying. Most of Guangzhou's workers have little disposable income. Two 18-year-old youths stand in the spiffed-up Xinhua bookstore gazing at a paperback that at 8 yuan is beyond their means. For fun, they go to the zoo because it's free...
Johnny Chan stands glumly behind the counter at his Hong Kong Optical Shop. The 1,080-yuan ($130) Ray-Bans gather dust, while the 100-yuan models are moving briskly. Nearly five years ago, Chan came back to Guangzhou from Australia because he thought fortunes were to be made here. But business has soured since 1994, he says, and his two city shops are losing money. Even worse is crime. "Guangzhou is very bad," he says. "So many bad men, pickpockets, they all steal." Ever since he was mugged and badly beaten one morning, Chan takes two bodyguards when...
...independent entrepreneurs here: restaurants, but that takes capital and there are few customers; street vending, but that requires a product to sell; and driving a cab. Liang chose the cab, a ramshackle Lada he must hot-wire each time he starts it. He rents the car for 194 yuan ($23) a day, and from 5:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. he roams the city, picking up enough fares to keep his family alive. He says he takes home about 3,000 yuan ($365) a month, riches compared with his theoretical factory salary of 300 yuan...
Liang has earned enough driving his cab to share purchase of a 10,000-yuan ($1,220) house with his father, a low-ranking city bureaucrat, but he worries constantly about financing his daughter's education now that the factory will not. "That costs me 300 yuan a month," he mutters, "plus extra for the English tutor." Liang is determined that his 11-year-old daughter will "never, never have anything to do with the factories." Somehow he's going to find the 40,000 yuan it will take to put her through high school and training as an accountant...