By Patrick Whiteley

My friend Wang Hui, like millions more of her 20-something Chinese peers, recently spent her monthly salary on a mobile phone. Wang works in a clothing market and makes 2,000 yuan ($263) a month. She thinks her new, bells-and-whistles Nokia is the talk of the town.

It is a sleek-looking phone but Wang tells me it can also take pictures, record videos, play music, has an alarm, a calendar, a personal planner, a world clock, a currency converter, has blue tooth capability and a battery life of three days.

It also has the amazing ability to make a telephone call.

Wang is very, very happy, and is probably feeling the same way many 20-somethings in the West feel after they book an overseas holiday, which costs them about one month's salary. Twenty years ago, when China introduced its first mobile telecommunications equipment, there were little more than 700 users. In 2001, cell phone users passed the 100-million mark and now China has more than 600 million mobile phones. This means that one in every five mobile phone users in the world is Chinese.

A mobile phone has become a serious status symbol, not only in China, but also all over our fast-consuming, materialistic world. However, in the Middle Kingdom, an expensive mobile phone can give you instant status, no matter who you are. I've seen farmers on the Yangtze River chatting on smarter-looking mobile phones than Shanghai stockbrokers.

My friend Wang will be eating a lot of cheap noodles over the next month, but she insists her cell phone purchase was important and feels she has moved up in the world. She gives "upwardly mobile" a new meaning and cradles her new Nokia like a young mother holds a baby.

Another reason why there are 600 million mobile phones out there is because of forgetful people like me. I have lost three mobile phones in the back of Beijing taxis and now I've changed my tune. To hell with the mobile phone fashionistas!

My latest Chinese-made phone cost under 400 yuan ($53) and it's a little marvel. It is light, and when I drop it, it keeps on. I also like the compact look, the feel, the action and the catchy Mando pop ring tone. But the best function for me is always the alarm. My little phone really is an eye opener. I've helped a lot of my friends from the West buy their first phone in China, and have noticed many of them opting for the low-cost China-made communication solution. Maybe the back-to-basics attitude is catching.

We have come a long way since the homing pigeon and can you remember when the first mobiles arrived in the mid 1980s? They were so big, you had to carry them in a bag. And they cost about $5,000, so nobody really had one.

One of my first reporting jobs was to cover a major political convention. Our newspaper had been tipped off about the pending resignation of our state's long-serving premier. When the premier announced his retirement I had to rush to a payphone and call the editor. A payphone? Now that's something we will be telling the grandkids.

(China Daily 09/20/2007 page20)