- Wishing you were here, or maybe in Boston.
Your zen koan of the day is this: if beef brisket costs more in Hangzhou than in Boston, whose central bank is full of bull?
I bring this pool of reflection your way after reading this food-for-thought piece (no pun intended) from The Wall Street’s China Real Time Report blog (h/t, Zero Hedge.)
The post relates the results of a study by Wang Pei, a blogger with the Beijing-based business news magazine Caixin, who teamed up with a friend in Boston to informally try and determine which city, Hangzhou or Boston, had a higher cost of living.
Wang Pei teamed up with a friend in Boston and set out on the streets with identical grocery lists, including 19 food items and two types of gasoline. The mission, to answer the question: “How expensive is China?”
While not exactly a scientific study, Wang admits, the exercise reveals that a surprising 10 of the food items, including green beans and bananas, were more expensive in China. In Hangzhou, a scenic coastal city near Shanghai, the price of beef brisket per 1.1 pound, or 500 grams, and the cost of a dozen eggs were both double the prices found in Boston. A liter of milk, meanwhile, was nearly triple.
Hangzhou’s premium gasoline was also 23% more expensive, and the overall price of the entire basket of goods purchased there was 8% higher.
