Women in China’s lower-tier cities and towns are increasingly buying gold accessories for investment and prestige
Wang Yuan is a young woman from Xiaogan, a prefecture-level city in Hubei province, with a habit: buying gold.
Ever since she passed the exams to become a civil servant, with each bonus Wang collects from work she rewards herself with gold jewelry. In fact, she spent nearly 3,000 yuan on a birthday present to herself this year: a gold pendant in the shape of a lily of the valley flower.
Zairenjian Living is a nonfiction storytelling platform under Ifeng News.
Translated By
Ana Padilla Fornieles is a Spanish translator, writer and creative currently based in Beijing, where she is part of Spittoon International Arts Collective and a regular contributor to The Beijinger. You can find her prose and poetry featured in The Shanghai Literary Review, Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, Womanhood, Sledgehammer and more. Her comics and linocut prints have appeared in Shaving in the Dark, F*EMS and Celestite Poetry. Her literary translation work has been published or is forthcoming with a series of publishing houses and magazines, such as Penguin, De Gruyter, Spittoon Magazine and Books from Taiwan.
