Friday, January 28, 2011

Livin' it up in the PRC

Chinese real estate is much more expensive than American real estate, even with the exchange rate. And mind you, almost all residences in China are apartments. Houses are called "mansions" over there. The price of land has doubled in two years. The market doesn't seem to be heading toward a housing bubble like the one America had, since most Chinese homebuyers pay upfront. Their marginal propensity to save is around 25-30%, which is much higher than Americans', which is somewhere around 5- 10%. In other words, if you save almost a third of your income, then you probably won't have high mortgage payments down the road. More and more Chinese people are investing in the stock market nowadays since the interest rate is much lower than the inflation.

Another interesting change I noticed during my travels was that most shops require customers to bring their own bags to encourage environmental conservation, like in Europe (Whether this is a governmental regulation or a private effort, I'm not sure). Granted, I was a bit miffed at first to have to shell out a few RMB's for a paper bag at the cash register, but then I was glad that the stores are doing this--with such a big population in China, saving one bag a person a day means saving 1.3 billion bags per day! It's also about time that I reform my wasteful ways. I felt that as a customer, I had the right to demand bags from stores, but now that I think about it, I also have the choice to use re-usable bags of my own and help the environment. Making that choice feels...kind of good.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

China Reflected: The American Tourist

You would think that after almost eight years of separation, the first thing I felt upon landing in China would be elation, or some sort of excitement that might drive me to kneel on the ground and kiss the earth of my motherland, with tears streaming down my face. At least that's how it happens in the movies. None of the above occurred. Instead, I felt like a tourist. "Hey, look, there are so many people!" was the first thought that popped into my head. The burst of affection for my birthplace would have to come along slowly.

As a tourist, of course I had to do some touristy things. The picture on the right is from the historic district of Fuzhou. It's the garden of a governmental official's house. The official, Lin Zexu, was hailed as a hero during the late Qing Dynasty's Opium War against Britain for flooding the Chinese market with opium.











I also couldn't resist taking this picture of cartoon Qing Dynasty dudes! They are just too cute!

Below left is a sculpture from a very rare (aka super expensive) stone. The sculpture on the right is carved from ivory.