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Q: How do Chinese not go bankrupt having to buy so many gifts for everyone?
It's built in the culture: Chinese have to buy gifts all the time...for literally everyone. Uncles, aunts, cousins, parents, bosses, friends (this is a big one), guanxi, etc. the list goes on and on.
Gift-giving is so important in the culture here, it just begs the question: how do people do it? Considering their wages, how do they manage to get by? Because on top of having to offer gifts to everyone all the time, there's this twisted, illogical need to have something that's at least as good as what others are giving, otherwise you lose face.
You are forgetting a few things :
1.- you hand out gifts in even numbers, never odd numbers. So, because of this, you do not offer or give ONE gift, but at least two !.
2.- the concept of family in China. In a household it will be normal to find grandparents, parents and married children sharing the same apartment. Like sardines in a can !. But they do not only share the place to live,k they share (or pool) together salaries and expenses too. So, you see one fellow making 1,000 Rmb per month, but you do not see his wife working, his parents working, his grandparents collecting retirement, etc. So, it is no longer 1,000 Rmb per month, could be as much as 6 or 7,000 Rmb per month.
3.- Gifts in China is not only done for face or guangxi. In a way, it is also a form of bribery, or an investment "in the future".
ALSO MOST HOUSES AND CARS ARE PAID FOR IN CASH THWY ARE NOT FINANCED
There are numbers of the online gift shopes, where you can get what you want. silberleuchter
They use credit cards?!!!!..............They borrow money for that?!!!!...................They get bankkrupt but they don't tell anyone?!!!!!..........serious you have too man options to pick from
Excellent question. I too have pondered this many times. Houses, cars, gifts...how do they do it????
Answer IMO: (They live simple, boring lives but they seem to accumulate lots of "stuff")
Chinese save and average of 38% of their income, like we Mericans use dto do in the 1950s! Credit cards was our Frankenstein.
