NewAmerica
Senior Member
Mandarin
Background:
By "Middle Class of China: Glamorous Outside, Glassy Inside", I mean that today's middle class in China has had a relatively generous income and stable job and family in the appearance, but such status is actually as crispy as glass, easy to be broken.
For example, a family in Shanghai, husband, 45, monthly income 20,000 yuan (about monthly 3,000 USD), wife, 43, monthly income 8,000 yuan, with a son reading in high school, looks sweet and perfect. Yet recently their aging parents (both mother side and father side, unable to get around on their own), made calls to them, requesting that they want to move from their country home to Shanghai to live with them. No doubt that the living cost would soar for the family as to the brink of economic collapse. Because the old parents are poor Chinese farmers with no pension (some areas of China the government would give them monthly 70-300 yuan - about 10 to 40 USD per month per person, nearly zero - but you would not starve to death, right?). (You may inquire why the parents have no other children to lean on - because the hubby and the wife are the products of China's "One Child" planned parenthood policy)
The question of this thread is whether "Glamorous Outside, Glassy Inside" is proper English.
Source: English scenario making practice by me.
By "Middle Class of China: Glamorous Outside, Glassy Inside", I mean that today's middle class in China has had a relatively generous income and stable job and family in the appearance, but such status is actually as crispy as glass, easy to be broken.
For example, a family in Shanghai, husband, 45, monthly income 20,000 yuan (about monthly 3,000 USD), wife, 43, monthly income 8,000 yuan, with a son reading in high school, looks sweet and perfect. Yet recently their aging parents (both mother side and father side, unable to get around on their own), made calls to them, requesting that they want to move from their country home to Shanghai to live with them. No doubt that the living cost would soar for the family as to the brink of economic collapse. Because the old parents are poor Chinese farmers with no pension (some areas of China the government would give them monthly 70-300 yuan - about 10 to 40 USD per month per person, nearly zero - but you would not starve to death, right?). (You may inquire why the parents have no other children to lean on - because the hubby and the wife are the products of China's "One Child" planned parenthood policy)
The question of this thread is whether "Glamorous Outside, Glassy Inside" is proper English.
Source: English scenario making practice by me.
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