I’ve never been to China, but I’ve been lots of other places, and a trap I know it’s easy to fall into is to assume that people you see on the street have everything you take for granted as an American *plus* the extra stuff you see. That’s not necessarily the case. So, for example, they might have a new car, designer clothes, and the latest cell phone, but you don’t see that they live with three generations of their family in a two room flat, or they only have electricity 22 hours a day, or they share a bathroom with the whole neighborhood, or they work 65 hours a week, or they have untreated tuberculosis, or whatever. You might not feel as poor as an American if you knew the whole story of their lives.
