|
Front Page of the Day
Beijing: China's happiest town?Posted by Eric Mu, July 20, 2009 5:09 PM
 The Beijing News July 20, 2009 A program aimed at measuring the happiness level of residents of six cities was launched on July 6. Poll machines that allowed people to choose buttons representing either a "happy" or "unhappy" mental state were set up at bus stops in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Kunming, Chengdu and Xi'an. The Beijing News announced the results today: Beijing was crowned China's happiest city with 56.06% of respondents claiming to be "happy." Beijing's ten machines received a total of 820,000 votes over two weeks' time, with 460,000 "happy" votes. The cover image of today's paper shows a China map marked with purple bands of diminishing intensity, information about the solar eclipse coming up on Wednesday, July 22. Beijing is in the lightest band, representing a fairly unimpressive partial eclipse. A total eclipse will be visible to people in the the deepest purple bands, which includes Shanghai and Hangzhou, but there is a high likelihood that it will rain in many of the major cities in the area on Wednesday. The paper's top headline announces that the victims who died in the July 5 Urumqi riot will receive no less than 400,000 yuan in compensation. The latest statistics say that a total of 197 have died in the riot. 200,000 of the compensation will be footed by the government, while the rest will come from the charity donations. The decision was announced by the Autonomous Region chairman Nur Bekri at a media conference on July 18th. Links and Sources
|
Partner Links
Jobs in China
Recent Comments
dikaios on
The case of the missing Obama front page
affordabe on
Blogspot unblocked, but Blogger is blocked
Adam J. Sc on
Snow in Beijing
Peter Kauf on
Bound feet in China
lost in tr on
Shanzhai National Day parade
Media Partners
Visit these sites for the latest China news
China Media Timeline
Major media events over the last three decades
Danwei Model Workers
 Recommended blogs and new media
Books on China
 Xujun Eberlein's Apologies Forthcoming: Hong Kong's Blacksmith Books has published a short story collection by Xujun Eberlein.
Princess Der Ling: Two Years in the Forbidden City: Two years in the Forbidden City is largely a reminiscence of the minutiae of life for one of history's most powerful women, by one of her court attendants, a Manchu noble's daughter by the name of Der Ling.
Carl Crow's The Long Road Back to China: In 1939 Carl Crow - an American journalist, advertising executive and author who had lived in Shanghai for 25 years until forced out by the Japanese - travelled up the Burma Road from Rangoon to Chongqing on assignment for Liberty magazine － 'the most interesting assignment I have ever been given'.
Front Page of the Day
A different newspaper every weekday
From the Vault
Classic Danwei posts
+ The 'national' in National Day (2006.10): Xiao Feng writes about China's national flavor, national curse, national bird, national car, and so forth, Dongfang Yu writes on the true meaning of China's National Day in the age of angry youth. + Don't ask so laowai don't have to tell (2008.07): An essay was written by Geremie Barmé, scholar, filmmaker and author of the new book The Forbidden City. + Religion and government in an uneasy mix (2008.03): Phoenix Weekly (凤凰周刊) article from October, 2007, on government influence on religious practice in Tibet.
Danwei Archives
Danwei Feeds
Via Feedsky
 (on the mainland)or Feedburner  (blocked in China) Main feed: Main posts (FB has top links) Top Links: Links from the top bar Danwei Jobs: Want ads Danwei Digest: Updated daily, 19:30 |
 |
Chinese media, advertising, and urban life. |
|
tweet
facebook
bookmark
HaoHao
digg
Comments on Beijing: China's happiest town?
I think it's dangerous to extrapolate a correlation to the entire population. Safest to say that Beijing has the happiest bus riders willing to press buttons attached to bus-stop surveys. Not as impressive, but, hey, it still counts for something.
One would expect Beijingers to be "happier" than Shanghai-nese, although that's really not saying much. I am a bit surprised, however, that the happiness index, in whatever silly, pseudo-scientific way it is measured, would be lower in Chengdu and Kunming, where people have long enjoyed a reputation of being content and reluctant to move anywhere else.
Apart from the intrinsic, perhaps deliberately designed bias in the criteria, I am wondering if recent history of the various cities play into it: after all, Chengdu is still in the shadow of the devastating earthquake last year, Kunming got repeated bus bombings that created a widespread paranoia, while Beijing got the Olympics euphoria.
So the survey didn't really say much about the cities themselves.