In the bus：tling night market of Xidan, one of the busiest shopping centres in Beijing, a young woman was heard commenting on a dress marked at 319 yuan.“It would cost three months of my salary, but it's really beautiful,” she said. “It's very difficult for people like me who are living on fixed¹ salaries to find som.ething satisfactory. What we like is extremely expensive, and what we can afford we dislike.”A young woman shop assistant said she was attracted to a beautiful skirt one day, but gave up buying it because one of her colleagues had one just like it.“I want to be different,” she said.
　　Nike, Adidas and other world-famous sportswear and shoes have become fashionable among young men who are eager to be with the incrowd. A pair of shoes can set them back 160 yuan, more than a month's salary.“Young peop（e nowadays spend money like they had a hole in their pocket,” said an elderly shop assistant. “They buy whatever they like regardless of the price.”I'm not against dressing² well, but you have to survive.“
　　On the fourth floor of the Wangfujing Department Store, a young man chose a 398-yuan dress for his girlfriend.“Since I run a beauty salon³, I have no problem affording a coat like this,” the man said casually⁴. “Nowadays people like to start new things to distinguish themselves,” a sociologist⁵ commented. “It is a psychological breakthrough. People try to preserve their own value and their personality.”
　　3. Hong Devoted⁶ to Fashion Career Fashion designer Hong Xia is a woman. with a mission in life：she hopes to turn Guangzhou into a fashion centre rivalling Paris, Milan, Tokyo, New York and Hong Kong. Hong, now a designer at Guangzhou University, staged a solo fashion show in 1986, held fashion lectures and night-schools and published articles on fashion. She then went on to teach at Guangzhou University in 1988 and is now writing a book describing the Guangzhou fashion world.
　　Her career in fashion started when she was enrolled⁷ in the Central Academy of Arts and Designs in Beijing in 1981. Before that, she had been a mechanical worker for eight years after graduating from middle school in 1973 in Guangzhou.“Fashion design had just started its rise in popularity at the time I was studying in Beijing,” she said. “It was fascinating because it was new.”She was attracted to the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone two years later when she graduated and went to an area where large-scale construction was underway and the pace of everyday life was quickening.
　　One year later, after gaining experience in all aspects of clothes eduction⁸, she received her first designing assignment： for a batch⁹ of summer clothes.“I don't know how to describe my feelings for my first independent designs,” she said. “t1 lot of questions came to mind which I never thought of at school： What should I design？ What materials should I use？ What colours should I choose？ What styles will be popular？ All this forced me to begin a market survey.”It came as a bit of a surprise when she saw her summer fashions welumed by customers. For the first time, she blended the needs of the narket with her own designs.
　　In Shenzhen, Hong benefited from watching Hong Kong TV and reading the latest fashion magazines from all over the world to keep pace uith international trends. Her big chance came when she joined the nahonal “Adult Spring-Autumn Fashion Designs Competition” sponsored by China Fashions Magazine and Central Television in 1985. Hong was one of the five major winners thanks to her unconventional women's fashion designs.
　　But the private fashion market in Guangzhou is to date only a duplication and sales centre of new overseas fashions, according to Hong Xia. “It is active in buying and selling the latest styles form Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan but weak in designing its own styles, ？she said. The potential for the sale of fashion goods throughout China has stimulated¹⁰ the development of the city's fashion market. Hundreds of stores selling world-brand clothes have sprung up.
　　Customers to these stores, she said, are mainly people from art circles,management personnel and young women working in hotels and offices. Prices range from 100 to 4, 000 yuan. People involved in the fashion business in Shanghai, Beijing, Dalian and Qingdao are also frequent customers.“Although at present you seldom see styles designed by the city, s own designers, Guangzhou is gradually becoming a Hong Kong-style fashion market with Ihe appearance of these fashion stores,” she said. An obvious disadvantage for Guangzhou to develop into a fashion centre is the lack of its own fashion designers, and people in the city do not have the dress sense to appreciate fashion designs.
　　Realizing this, Hong decided¹¹ to teach.“I thought I should do my best to let more people know something about fashion designing by holding fashion shows, lectures and nightschools,” Hong said.“That was a turning point in my career,” she said. “It paved my way towards success.”Hong Xia now has 25 students in her class in Guangzhou University for a two-year course. She teaches them not only the fashion theories but tells them about her own experiences as a designer and as a privare businessperson. Hong has already seen the achievements of her teaching. In a national Youth Fashion Designs Competition nine of her students were chosen as excellent winners and one of her students received the first award.
　　As a fashion designer and a business woman,'Hong Xia has sold her works to fashion businesses in the United States, Japan, Australia and Hong Kong.“Now I am looking forward to setting up a private fashion company to design fashions for foreign people staying in Guangzhou,” she said.“I'm working hard on it.”
　　4.Jewellery Shining Once Again in China Strolling through nearly every city, you can find jewellery shops and women wearing necklaces, earrings¹², rings and bracelets¹³.“Things have changed dramatically,” said a middle-aged¹⁴ woman who had just bought a diamond ring at a jewellery exhibition held by a small arts and crafts store in Beijing's Chaoyang District.
　　“I'm the kind of woman who loves dressing up more than anything else, ” she said. “But to my great regret, during the 'cultural revolution,' when I was a young woman,    I couldn't make myself beautiful. by wearing fashionable clothes and beautiful jewellery. Now I am happy to have a chance to wear jewellery again now that it is becoming popular in China.”People, both young and old, women and men, have begun showing new interest in jewellery, especially since 1982, when the government reopened its domesitc gold market after it was shut down for 21 years. But different people think of jewellery in different ways.
　　Recompense Fu Cong, 60, a retired¹⁵ man in Hohhot, capital of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous¹⁶ Region, spent 700 yuan he had saved up for a couple of years to buy his wife a gold wedding ring for her 58th birthday.“I consider it a recompense,” he said. “When we were married 30 years ago, I had neither the money nor the idea to buy her a wedding ring since in the 1950s, a gift like this would have been considered wasteful¹⁷ and bourgeois¹⁸.”Overjoyed at wearing the precious gift her husband gave her, his wife said that she has taken the ring as a good sustenance¹⁹ and hopes that their marriage will last forever.
　　“Wearing rings, earrings, necklaces and other ornamental²⁰ jewels was very popular when I was a child,” she said. “My ears were pierced a few days after I was born as were most little girls' at that time, and I began wearing a pair of earrings when I was a child.”She said that she never had a necklace or a ring because wearing jewellery was no longer done when she grew up, and people were criticized for wearing jewels. Wang Weilan, another woman in Hohhot, has another view toward jewellery. A few months ago, she spent several thousand yuan on a gold ring and a pair of earrings.
　　“I would rather rely on gold and jewels than on paper currency for protection against price increases,” she said. “Although I've put some of my money in a bank, I'm still afraid of devaluation.”
　　Wealth For many elderly people, jewellery is no longer an ornament²¹ to enhance beauty but a symbol of wealth or a memento²². So they pay less attention to the external design and care much more about intrinsic value.
　　But most who wear jewellery thess days do so for beauty's sake.“Even a few years ago, I considered jewellery a luxury. Ipreferred durable²³ consumer goods, like colour televisions, refrigerators and highgrade furniture. Now that I have these things I think of jewellery as a necessity, ” said He Ming, a 24-year-old Beijing woman.
　　Cheap, imitation gold and ivory rings and necklaces were very popular a couple of years ago and had a special appeal to young women with low incomes. They liked gilt²⁴ necklaces and earrings, because they look like the real thing but were much cheaper. But with expanding jewellery markets, the introduction of foreign products and rising living standards, many people, especially young women, have become more selective and are no longer satisfied with traditional designs of rings, earrings, necklaces and bracelets. And they're paying great attention to value as well.

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