Catshanghai

Credit goes to Wang Jian Shuo’s blog for showing the cost of living in Shanghai from a local’s point of view. He also tries to reflect the cost of living for foreigners, but any exercise like this is always going to be difficult to nail down with any degree of accuracy given the huge variation in incomes and living costs. I have used his data to build a basic online spreadsheet that you can use to model your living expenses in Shanghai. I used Zoho to make the spreadsheet. It is a web application for making office files and it has more functionality than Google Documents. I had to make a couple changes to data that I do not agree with. For example, it costs me 31 RMB to buy a Mocha from Starbucks. £1 is worth 15 RMB and $1 is worth 7.75 RMB. The different sheets show this currency conversion. If you do see an online spreadsheet document, please feel free to copy, save, clone or adapt this model as you see fit, although it is always polite to give credit where it is due. If you don’t see anything, blame the Internet. It’s still slower than downtown traffic in Huai Hai Lu during rush hour.