Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou each possesses a distinctiveness that arguably no other metropolis in China can match. Beijing is the country's capital as well as the cultural and political centre.
As much as it can boast its multifaced culture, Shanghai is, first of all, the country's biggest commercial centre. A pioneer in the country's reform and opening in the past 23 years, Guangzhou has become a trend-setter in several aspects in pushing for prosperity in South China.
The Beijing Datasea Marketing Research Company recently conducted a series of surveys among the residents of the three cities.
The results suggest that they vary greatly in several aspects such as the general opinion about the cities in which they live.
A total of 1,232 people aged between 14 and 65 were interviewed from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and were asked to select suitable words at of 13 adjectives to describe the three cities.
Integrating people's answers, the company that conducted the survey established certain images for the three cities.
City's image
Beijing is a typical city in North China with ardent residents.
As an ancient capital of China with a long tradition, Beijing has a dense cultural and political atmosphere.
Compared with Beijing, Shanghai has quite a different face. The two most picked descriptions of the rising "Oriental Pearl" are "modern" and "international." Shanghai also gained descriptions of "beautiful" and "comfortable."
For Guangzhou, the word mentioned most frequently is "open," since the city is the capital of South China's Guangdong Province, where China's reform and opening up to the outside world kicked off.
When asked if they loved their cities, most residents were positive, but the proportion varied.
As much as 85 percent of Shanghai residents said Shanghai was their favourite city, while only 50 percent of Guangzhou residents chose Guangzhou. The figure for Beijing is 79 percent.
While Beijingers voted Shanghai as their second favourite city, Shanghainese selected Beijing as their second favourite city.
In contrast, a total of 32 percent of Guangzhou residents said they liked Shanghai the best, while the remaining 18 per cent chose Beijing.
In total, 47 percent of interviewees in the three cities liked Shanghai the best. Beijing follows with 32 percent of the votes. Guangzhou obtained 21 percent of the votes.
Clothing
For years up until China's reforms and opening, Shanghai led the nation as far as lifestyles were concerned. Since the early 1980s, Guangzhou has been competing vigorously with Shanghai to grab attention from the younger Chinese seeking more fashion and fast changes.
But this year, Tangzhuang, a new design of traditional Chinese style clothing, got into the spotlight especially in Beijing and Shanghai.
After wearing Western style clothes for decades, an increasing number of modern Chinese are now finding the traditional design more appealing.
On the streets, people in various types of Tangzhuang are everywhere.
Many TV anchors can also be seen wearing them. Dealing with Tangzhuang, the Beijing Well Clothing Company increased its sales income by 30 percent in the two months ahead of the Spring Festival compared with the same period of last year.
In Guangzhou, however, fewer people wear Tangzhuang. The traditional Chinese clothing is not in fashion for the southern metropolis.
As the survey indicates, Guangzhou residents have a completely different understanding of fashion from those in Beijing and Shanghai.
While more than half of the interviewees in Shanghai and Beijing said they dress up to please others, as much as 55 percent of Guangzhou interviewees said they dress up to make themselves more pretty and confident.
For Beijing and Shanghai residents, the standard image of an elegant gentleman is "changing shirts frequently" and "never paying too much attention to the price while purchasing favourite clothes." But for Guangzhou, the standard is "wearing clothes that have a brand name."
Marriage
Marriage is a milestone in one's life. So the surveyors chose marriage as a subject to find out the similarities and differences in the views of residents in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
As perhaps expected, the survey found differences among the three cities' residents regarding marriage and weddings.
A total of 45 percent of interviewees are single. As many as 83 percent of the single interviewees in Beijing and 77 percent of those in Shanghai said they were satisfied with the current single status.
But over half of the single interviewees in Guangzhou said they were unsatisfied.
A total of 46 percent of Shanghainese did not pay much attention to which day their wedding fell on, while 70 percent of Beijingers said they would choose carefully when their wedding would be held.
The figure is the highest for Guangzhou people, with 80 percent of respondents saying an auspicious date is crucial for a wedding.
Young people in the three cities have similar criteria for their future partners, never the less there is a slight difference. For Beijingers and Shanghainese, the most important qualities are character, educational background and taste. Guangzhou people were not as fussy.
Good-looks is the most important for local Guangzhou residents in search of their lifelong companions.
(China Daily February 28, 2002)
