Colour–magnitude diagram of the Galactic bulge objects together with the reddening corrected mean magnitudes and colours of field Carbon Miras from Whitelock et al. (2006, Table 6) shifted to an absolute scale M_K according to the distances given by the same authors. Overplotted are the mean colours and magnitudes of the series of dynamical models. Marked are, in addition, the magnitude of the RGB tip estimated by using the empirical relations of Valenti et al. (2004; Eq. (9)) under the assumption of [Fe/H] ≈ 0 for the Galactic bulge (Zoccali et al. 2003), as well as the magnitude of the beginning of the TP-AGB for a solar-like star as given by Marigo et al. (2008). The labels in the upper part mark approximate mass-loss rates Ṁ [M_⊙  yr^-1] for the C-type Miras of Whitelock et al. (2006) as related to a given (J – K)₀ colour in Fig. 7.