If time were a bird forever on the wing, it would witness the significant improvement in Chinese people's lifestyle, especially in big cities.

A palatial, Western-style villa, luxury cars, plasma-screen TVs, Italian marble floors, top-brand jewellery ... This is the extravagant lifestyle of some urban nouveaux riches in today's growing China. These, to them, are signs of fortune, wealth and power in society. And it is no surprise that many foreign companies view China's gigantic consumer market as a vast, fertile land for investment.

People exercise their free choice in the way they live, but we Chinese do cherish a traditional value of frugality.

I was shocked by an extravagant banquet last month in North China after the central government had condemned some people's extravagant use and exploitation of natural resources and had called for sustainable development in every sector.

The banquet was the Man Han Quan Xi, or Feast of Complete Manchu and Han Courses China's so-called No 1 feast. It was on display at an international food festival in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning Province.

About 30 senior chefs and many assistants spent three days on making 196 kinds of dishes. The supreme royal feast, which debuted about 300 years ago during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), used various Chinese ingredients and cooking techniques at a total cost of more than 200,000 yuan (US$24,690).

"What a waste!" said many of the 200-odd visitors to the festival. The money spent to make such a feast would have paid 30 local farmers for a year.

After the show all the dishes were dusted since they had become spoilt.

When talking about the value of commodities, economists consider that every resource can become rare, or else it would not enter the market, and that its value can rise or fall in accordance with the amount of supply. Perhaps our more senior college graduates still remember when teachers used to call air, sunshine, seawater and river water examples of non-commodities when they gave lectures on economics two decades ago.

However, the current extravagance in industrial development has caused serious problems to the environment. As natural resources wither, oxygen bars and bottles of mineral water and purified water can fetch good prices in the marketplace.

Some natural resources, traditionally considered inexhaustible, have become commodities in an increasing number of countries. This is not because of merchants' duplicity but because of mankind's extravagant consumption and damage.

And the consumption of resources is speeding, especially luxurious goods.

China's auto industry is undergoing a boom period. Apart from domestic production, the number of imported cars from the United States, Japan and South Korea has also increased. But this is not the end of the story; Chinese and foreign investors are pouring even more money into this sector.

Now China is paying the price: More cars mean a soaring demand for oil and serious air pollution. In Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong Province, taxi drivers lined up every day last month for petrol although the price had soared nationwide during the past few months.

Two-thirds of China's major cities suffer a shortage of clean water. The short supply, however, did not stop some local enterprises' extravagant use of this valuable resource. Last month, a brewery used 90 tons of beer to create a fountain in an open square in downtown Harbin, capital of Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.

Producing 90 tons of beer requires 18 tons of barley and rice, which equals a three-member family's grain ration for 32 years. The production also requires 1,800 tons of clean water, which equals the annual consumption of 54 urban families. When local residents angrily raised the question why the brewery did so, its senior managers boasted they wanted to create the country's first beer fountain to mark the opening of the Harbin Beer Festival.

Extravagance, however, is not reserved for festivals only. It prevails in our daily lives.

The environmental protection bureau of Shanghai revealed that more than 2,000 tons of food are left over from every day's dinner, being swilled into garbage tank. Nearly half of that figure is due to consumers' extravagant consumption. In Beijing, the figure is 1,600 tons a day on average, according to local official statistics.

Economizing emphasizes the need not only to save money, but also to stem worsening problems caused by limited natural resources and people's endless consumption. This is a serious problem because we must take into consideration the well-being of our future generations.

Every person has the obligation to prevent further ecosystem destruction and environmental deterioration on the planet and to ensure that our children and grandchildren still have fresh air to breathe, clean water to drink, and coal and oil supplies.

(China Daily September 5, 2005)