Shanghai - the truth
It is a truth universally acknowledged by all Beijing taxi drivers that men from Shanghai are not proper men. If quizzed further, Beijing taxi drivers will reveal that Shanghai man’s feminine characteristics include carrying their girlfriend’s bags when shopping, doing housework, having too many sibilants in their speech, and not knowing how to handle themselves in a knife fight.
Now a survey of attitudes conducted by the Shanghai Academy of Social Science has provided empirical evidnece which appears to contradict the Beijing taxi drivers’ claims - or at least suggest that things in Shanghai might be changing. When the survey was conducted in 2003, 41.5% of Shanghai men said it was unacceptable to help their wife by washing underwear, 41.5% said it was acceptable, but they had not personally done it. In 2008, just 10% of Shanghainese men thought it was unacceptable and 70% thought it was OK but insisted they had never done it themselves.
So far, the evidence seems to support the taxi drivers case. But wait, there is further evidence to consider. In 2003, just 11.3% of Shanghainese men would admit publicly to washing underwear for their wives, that stands in contrast to 16.5% of non-Shanghainese respondents. In 2008, 20% of Shanghainese men would admit publicly to washing their wife’s underwear, but non-Shanghainese men had kept their lead, with 27.8% happy for anyone to know that they washed their wife’s underwear. So it appears that Shangainese men are willing in principle to wash their wives underwear, but it is non Shanghainese men who are actually to get their hands dirty.
The survey also points to an increasing level of politeness in social settings in Shanghai - good news for planners of the 2010 expo. In 2003, 10.7% of Shanghainese reported that if someone was blocking their exit from public transport they would ‘push’ them out of the way. In 2008, no respondents would admit to pushing their fellow citizens, and the percentage who said they would ‘encourage’ the fellow passenger to move had risen.
The final fact that all Chinese people hold to be true about Shanghainese people is that they are arrogant, believing that Shanghai is the center of the universe and anyone who is not from Shanghai is from a village or worse. This too appears to be changing. In 2003, 84.3% of Shanghainese people thought Shanghai was China’s best city, in 2008 that number was down to 35.4%. Non Shanghainese apparently, agree. In 2003, 28.5% of non-Shanghainese thought that the Shanghainese were the best China had to offer, in 2008 that number was down to 2.3% (perhaps because of Shanghainese men’s unwillingness to admit to washing their wife’s underwear).