Mainland China income tax compared with California's

For some reasons many people I've talked to think that China's income tax burden is heavy. It's true that the top marginal rate of 45% looks horrible for Hongkongers. But, HK is like, tax free, compared to most places.

From my experiences and calculations, China's income tax is lighter than California's for many people. There are several reasons.

1. The 2nd highest marginal rate at 40% kicks in at CNY80K per month, which is around USD146K per year. In California, you'll reach a marginal rate of 33% + 9.55% x (1-.33) + 1.45%, which is roughly 40.8% , at around 171K USD of taxable income. So the USD tax might looks like slightly lower here.
   But if we consider the 35% bracket pint at CNY60K/month ~ USD109K, the US marginal rate is at 28% + 9.55% X(1-.28) + 1.45% = 36.3%.
   Thus for the part of income below USD100K the effective rate would be lower in China. The top 45% will begin to have large effect on the overall effective rate at income over USD200K though.
   
2. If you don't hold mainland China passport, there's a scheme to reduce the income subject to tax by up to 35%.
3. Bonus and options are treated separately from regular income. Imagine that you split into 3 separate tax payers, and each only paying tax for the income bin of salary, bonus, or options.
   

Not all people will benefit from 2. & 3, but it'd probably apply to many who move to mainland China but still work for a foreign company.

There are speculations that China's will cut income tax this year. Hopefully the brackets will widen and the rates will drop.

Sydney

Visited Sydney earlier this month for a business trip. It's not very likely that I'll go there again any time soon. My guess is that few years later the only thing I'll remember from this trip is that 8kg king crab costing >AUD1000 we shared.
Sydney is such an expensive place. And the food is not that good given their resources. The weather is great, but so is California's. I personally don't see any reason to prefer there over the bay area

挪威的森林，1Q84

（以下肯定有劇情透露）

第一次看挪威的森林時候还是渡邊他們年輕時候的年紀，這麼多年後看電影的時候就差不多是他在飛機上回憶的年歲了。這本書我至看過兩次，不過也真的不記得第二次什麼時候看的。

電影真的就只有一點懷舊作用而已。其實看過原著的觀眾都不會對故事情節有太多要求，只要畫面氣氛對了就行。可是，直子這個最最重要的角色竟然找個師奶來演！看著她說那個十九二十歲的台詞時候就只覺得她在說謊騙人而已。

1Q84其實非常適合改編電影，也聽說已經在拍了，希望會比森林的好。故事其中一個敗筆是那兩個月亮的設定。你可以要兩個月亮，可以有不同顏色，可是兩顆月亮不可以那麼靠近，因為有所謂引力這種東西。如果他們其實不是很靠近－比如說小月亮其實遠很多，那麼他們也就不可以以同樣的速度圍著地球轉。如果我是物理老師就會帶同學一起去看這改編電影，然後讓他們寫下片子裡違反基本物理原則之處。

當然，故事有些元素我最喜歡是關於邪教的禍害。其實說起來‘先驅’的人也沒多壞，算蠻仁慈的，特別是如果可以假設那些女巫都是'daughter'。反而更壞的是‘證人會’。這個會讓我想起以前在香港氾濫過的耶和華見證人。另，如果可以順便提一下主流宗教那麼故事就更完美了。比如，也許耶穌就是早期的聽聲音人呢？他老媽也是處女產子。

Ender's Game (spolier)

Just a quick review before I forgot the details. I haven't read sci-fi fiction for some time already. Most of my sci-fi consumption in the last few years are anime, manga, and occasionally, movies.

I'd say that Ender's Game is a reasonably interesting story, but it's not too 'realistic'. In particular, the children don't act like children at all. It's okay to change their role settings to teenagers or even young adults, and most of the stories will still work. In contrast, the children and teenagers in japanese animes really act according to their age, most of the time, at least when they're not in 'battles'. So I'd still think that even Code Geass is more complex and deeper than this supposedly serious sci-fi Ender's Game. One major reason is that the author is so limited by the 'western' morality constraints. I guess he thinks that getting children to fight real war is already such a 'taboo'... so he's so restrained in most of the plots. In particular, most of the casualties are so distant, but one could argue that this is intentional.

Another major fault with the story is that no reason is given why the 3 siblings of a single family will become the most powerful and intelligent folks in the entire world. There is also much Americanism that I got to dislike more and more over the years.