The dash for cash

Granted, there is no ideal society anywhere, any time. A high-growth period like China's comes with the natural corollary of a growing wealth gap. It's unavoidable.

However I often comfort myself as I travel around the country because even in the remotest places I notice discernible progress.

Even the poorest have improved their lives in the past two or three decades.

The river of prosperity is buoying and elevating all vessels, big and small.

Yet, one cannot deny that the poor are feeling poorer than before. It's the result of comparison. They see their neighbors building bigger houses. They watch on TV lifestyles of urban dwellers.

No demographic has a more acute sense of such misery than college students from lower social classes.

They are thrust into an environment where wealth is no longer images of luxury on the screen, but what their dorm mates use and buy - in close proximity to their own humble and meager living.

Envy rears its ugly head, and then shame. That does not take into account the ridicule and sneer they have to endure from snobbish peers.

China has a culture that emphasizes family background. One is often introduced as someone's son, grandson, or in some extreme cases the umpteenth descendent, or distant relative of many degrees apart, of a person of fame or stature.

To explain personal achievement, we usually dig into the family roots and study their "proper upbringing".

Rarely do we highlight those who overcome all kinds of odds and excel at something totally strange to their parents.

Even now there are people who prefer Chen Kaige to Zhang Yimou mainly because the former grew up in a filmmaker's family while the latter was toiling in a factory.

But Zhang's daughter, if she shows a willingness to dip into the film industry, would surely be given more chances because people will assume she has naturally inherited some of her father's talent.