Author: stlplace

Categories
China Stocks

Spam Messages from Home Inns HMIN

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Occasionally I received spam text messages from unknown people. People want to sell cars, apartments, etc. But yesterday I got a message from Home Inns (Rujia), it promotes the post “Golden week”(May 1 to 7) sales: it will give one night free during May 6 to 10 if I stay in their hotels for 3 nights. I can not stop laughing.

Separately, Home Inns is selling more shares (stocks), it will get $30 m from the proceeds to build more hotels. The competition among economy hotels in China are heating up.

Categories
China

Is China Imitating US too closely?

Reading Time: < 1 minute

That’s how I felt after spending a lot time in China in last 2 years. China is essentially the US in 1950 and 60s. The cars. The urbanization (people move from rural areas to cities). The chain restaurants, hotels, and hair salons. The malls. The new industrial zone such as ZhangJiang and MinHang. The credit cards. The new apartments and houses. The highways. The bullet train. The new banks (foreign and domestic).

Continue reading “Is China Imitating US too closely?”
Categories
China

MinHang ZiZhu IT Clusters and JiaoDa

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Here are some of the pictures I took at ZiZhu IT Clusters (ZiZhu info and digital harbor if directly translated from Chinese). These buildings look like the ones in the States. Both Microsoft and Intel have presence there.

IMG_4887 

Second picture is taken at JiaoDa MinHang Campus, which is near the IT cluster. Two of my family members attended JiaoDa. I visited the campus in year 1992.

IMG_4890

Note MinHang was the first development zone of Shanghai (earlier than world famous PuDong), the first Coca Cola bottling company in China was born there. Nowadays ZiZhu IT cluster is modeled after Silicon Valley. With the completion of Metro line 5 (from Xin Zhuang to MinHang), MinHang is much closer to the city. It’s interesting to think you can go from New York (downtown Shanghai) to Silicon Valley (MinHang) in one hour.

Categories
Fun

Got the Diplomat Luggage back

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I got the Diplomat luggage back. It took me quite a while to get to the elevator in “Si Chuang Da Sha”, because it’s 9 AM in the morning and obviously the building does not have enough elevators (lifts). This is something new to me but not to many Shanghainese: people lined up for the elevator. The good part is, I got my luggage case back, and it only cost me 20 Yuan (to install a wheel), which is the price of a big Mac. I will put on a picture later on. On serious part, I think the cheap labor in China help the low inflation in the US and other developed countries in a big way (cheaper goods).

IMG_4884 

Continue reading “Got the Diplomat Luggage back”
Categories
gadgets

A GPhone Google Cell Phone in the Making?

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I saw this article from Sina, it says a Google Cell Phone is under development. It will support 3G and EDGE, and will have Google search and Gmail services. It is set to debut in 2008. Here is a picture. I don’t see anything special about it. Do you?

Categories
Life

Tragedy in Virginia Tech

Reading Time: < 1 minute

By now we all know what happened in Virginia Tech, a big public university with good engineering reputation in Blacksburg, Virginia. Although many people are really angry at “how can this happened again, even after the Columbine”, I think right now the proper thing to do is: give our thoughts and prayers to the people lost their loved ones. After all, life is the most precious thing.

I never visited Virginia Tech, but I visited Richmond, the capital of Union, a few years back. I did like the hills and natural scenes there.    

Categories
Shanghai Composite

Current Status of Chinese Stock Market

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Normall I don’t comment on the general market trend (I took cue from the Oracle of Omaha because he does not predict this). But China domestic market is just too crazy in my mind. New record for the index everyday. New record for the new accounts being opened everyday. People talk about stocks everywhere. One day I heard a friend recommend a stock, the second day it jumped almost 10%. No, I hadn’t bought that particular stock because I felt I want to follow Buffett rule: buy the stuff I can understand.

Continue reading “Current Status of Chinese Stock Market”
Categories
China Stocks

Crunching Time for Tax

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I believe the dealine is April 17 in the US. If you have not done so, this is a good time to do so. I found the Turbo Tax Online discount link still works (15% off).

On a separate note, more than 1.6 million people in China filed personal income tax for last year. Only individual has annual income over 120,000 Yuan need to report. The average income of that group was 320,000 Yuan (80% are workers, “Da Gong Zhu” in Chinese), and the average tax is about 50,000 Yuan. Wang Jianshuo has a good formula to calculate tax in his blog.

Categories
Business China

Trains to Raise Speed

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I remember in the old days (15 years ago) it took 8 hours to travel from Shanghai to Ningbo. Now it took less than 4 hours. They are raising the speed again this year, according to the news. The D series train is expected to travel at 200 Km per hour, much faster than 40 Km per hour in my college years. This is just another sign China has been through in last 15 years, on the economy.

Continue reading “Trains to Raise Speed”
Categories
China Stocks

Shanghai Composite Index

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Hit new high today, it closed above 3500 today (3531 to be exact).

I heard from the news on April 9, there were 180,000 new stock trading accounts being opened. As you may know the new accounts and trading volume of 1st quarter already exceeded last year’s No. Feel the power of Chinese stock investors (or speculators)? Someone did a simple calculation, let’s assume on average day 100,000 people opened the acct, and average account has 50,000 Yuan, that’s about  5 billion Yuan new money every day. If we assume 20 trading days for a month, that’s 100 billion Yuan a month. That’s on the demand (demand for stocks) side.

Continue reading “Shanghai Composite Index”