stlplaceI’m not picking on the China Construction Bank, this is a problem existing in all the banks. I can think of two reasons:
1) People are “managing their money” nowadays, e.g., people are withdrawing money from bank and put into the stock market; people are doing the certificate of deposit…
I bought some Home Inns (HMIN) again yesterday. Not surprisingly the stock dropped after I bought it, as things usually happen that way. But my time frame is from couple months to couple years, so I am not worried. The recent weakness of the stock is expected due to the new offerings and lock up expiration. Also I heard some rumors in China (two key managers left the company to join competitors recently, according to 21st century business herald). At the same time, the competition is heating up among budget hotels, as shown in this article from Pacific Epoch.
I’m not talking about the credit card use (I’ve talked a bit in my previous posts).
It appears to me Chinese are using more and more plastic bags for packaging: from the morning “Bao Zi” to “Ma La Tang” (Chong Qing hot pot) on the street.
It’s show time. All the major car makers including domestic players such as Chery and Geely (remind me of Heelys), are putting up a big show in Shanghai new international expo center (is that the venue for 2010 World Expo, just be curious) this week.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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).
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?
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.