American household monthly budget in Chinese and Taiwan currencies

I've been doing some calculations in preparation for going to China.  I leave next week, and I am preparing some lectures that I will eventually share on this blog, I think.

I know some people in China might be interested in the sort of lifestyle we have in the United States, how much things cost and that sort of thing.  Here is our monthly household budget in RMB (Chinese currency) and NTD (Taiwan's currency):

My monthly salary	RMB 28,481	NT$ 131,579
Tax on our house (property tax)	RMB 1,912	NT$ 8,833
Illinois State Taxes on sales and income	RMB 1,653	NT$ 7,639
Federal Income Tax	RMB 2,289	NT$ 10,573
Medicare Tax	RMB 278	NT$ 1,287
House Payment for Mortgage	RMB 4,462	NT$ 20,614
House Insurance	RMB 646	NT$ 2,982
Electricity and water and sewer services	RMB 1,684	NT$ 7,778
Health insurances for family	RMB 1,335	NT$ 6,170
Car Payment or Savings to buy a car	RMB 2,532	NT$ 11,696
Gas for the car	RMB 759	NT$ 3,509
Save for car maintenance and repairs	RMB 570	NT$ 2,632
Car Insurance	RMB 1,829	NT$ 8,450
Retirement Pension Contribution	RMB 2,025	NT$ 9,357
Internet Service	RMB 297	NT$ 1,374
Phone Service	RMB 139	NT$ 643
Donations to charities, schools, and causes	RMB 392	NT$ 1,813
Education fund for sons (college savings)	RMB 1,424	NT$ 6,579
Savings for travel or paying off costs of travel	RMB 1,582	NT$ 7,310
Food	RMB 1,785	NT$ 8,246
All other expenses	RMB 886	NT$ 4,094

My wife earns money as well, and she helps pay for food and all the other expenses, so our household income and spending are actually about 115% more than what I have listed here, but I keep track of my own income and spending, and I haven't added in my wife's income or spending here.  If we add her spending, I think our monthly food expenses are probably close to 4,000 Ren Min Bi or 18,600 New Taiwan Dollars. 

  Our transportation costs (owning a car, driving it, maintaining it, insuring it) are about 20% of our expenditure, and our housing expenses (mortgage, home-owners insurance, utilities, saving money for home repairs, etc.) is close to 25% of our spending. I think Americans enjoy some of the lowest food costs relative to their incomes.  If our total household income is about 32,700 RMB per month (when you include my wife's income) and our spending on food is about 4,000 RMB (when you include my wife's spending), we're only putting about 12.2% of our income toward food. I believe in many societies households spend about 30% or more of their income on food.