@tillshadeisgone @Stoori I wonder what is his job? Some software engineers in CA also make lot of money and also (used to?) have long lunch breaks and play games, but that's absolutely not the day to day life in USA.
There are many different reports about salaries in China, with more or less similar data. For example this one, published at newspaper owned by the Chinese government (which has no reason to make numbers appear lower than they actually are): https://www.chinadailyhk.com/hk/article/595051
> Shenzhen has the third-highest average monthly salary among Chinese mainland cities, at 12,400 yuan. The median salary in Shenzhen is 10,000 yuan.
> Shanghai continues to lead, with an average salary of 13,544 yuan and a median of 11,000 yuan. Beijing ranks second, with an average of 13,119 yuan and a median of 10,500 yuan.
That's $1850 average / $1500 median in Shanghai, $1800 / $1450 in Beijing, $1700 / $1350 in Shenzhen, which are the three richest cities in China (and there is also a huge gap between incomes in urban and rural China afaik). Even by the standards of these three richest cities of urban China, $3000 is _a lot_. (And, incidentally, these days even $3000 won't give you any chance to own your own home in one of these richest cities, with apartment prices on the order of $10k/sq.m.)
(For comparison, median salary in Chengdu seems to be around 6500 yuan, or under $900/month.)
This person is nowhere near typical! One could have as well watched an youtube video from a high-ranking engineer at Google, describing how well they live and how they own a huge mansion and how they only spend a third of their income and how their lunch break is great and how they have a game room in the office, and then draw conclusions about day to day life in USA from that :)
And regarding utilities... depending on the apartment size, $120 would not be unheard of in western EU as well (let alone eastern countries); but it makes total sense that with lower salaries, it would be cheaper in China. For example, our building with ~400 apartments in Berlin has a 24-hour "concierge" service, so utility bills include 40 euro/month for it as a separate line, for every apartment. Which makes total sense because you need to pay salaries and taxes to multiple people, including larger pay for work at night or on the weekend. This is just one most obvious example, but a half of our utility bills is basically paying people to do a thing, so it's basically tied to salaries. That the bills in China are lower doesn't mean that we're getting screwed in Berlin, just that workers (who get paid off these bills) are paid more in Germany.
And long paid parental leave and free schools are more or less the norm in most of the world, USA is a notable exception here.
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