If you are expecting widespread anger and despair symptomatic of those caught in fast, messy social change, here is a surprise. Ask around and most Chinese people are likely to say they're happy with their lives.

A recent popular TV show, Are You Happy?, produced by the national broadcast network, interviewed more than 3,500 people, from garbage collectors to laborers to Mo Yan, the Chinese winner of Nobel Prize in Literature. The producers claimed more than 90 percent of the respondents said they were "happy", although only a very small percentage of the interviews were telecast.

The straw poll results might sound too good to be true. But the official survey conducted in 2010 across 24 Chinese cities had concluded that 75 percent of Chinese urban residents felt either "very happy" or "fairly happy", with the elderly people happier than the young, women happier than men and public servants happier than the rest.