Too Much of a Good Thing

Kong Junying, a 50-year-old housewife, stood seething at the entrance of a supermarket in northeastern Beijing with a salted egg in hand. Kong, her husband and 18-year-old son live on just 2,000 renminbi ($260) a month, and over the first half of this year, she has seen the price of groceries take a bigger and bigger chunk of the couple's fixed income. What was a 300 renminbi ($40) monthly bill is now 500 renminbi ($66) and prices are still rising. Hence the salted egg, which Kong is buying instead of meat. "We are still able to afford food," she...