Found this quote in a comment in Engadget:
psmisc Posted Jan 20th 2010 1:39AM
@AbeI was in China a few years back, and I was surprised at how well people dressed. In fact, demand for name brand clothes were so high that they cost more in China than in North America, even though a lot of them were made there. It was a cliche for a secretary to spend many months of salary on a designer bag.
I always thought culturally the Chinese are the Italians of Asia. They are picky on clothes and food, like saving faces, and are loud in restaurants. Japanese are the Germans, punctual, precise, and kinky. Koreans are the Russians, melancholic, serious, and dramatic. Indians are the Greeks. Lively, passionate, and along with China, one of the remaining civilizations of the classical era.
Cultural observations are rather intriguing…