[LeifCarrotson]

I'm friends with a "working class" translator (4 year Business English degree) in Shanghai who lives in a 6000 RMB/month apartment and drives a 1-year-old VW. That's one working class. 15 years ago, though, as a child of subsistence farmers in rural China, though, she was happy to sweep the town streets with a bamboo-shoot broom for the princely sum of 10 RMB/hour.

There's a huge level of income disparity between rural and urban Chinese - even more than SF vs flyover USA.