Reading Time: 2 minutes To a large extent, the Chinese economy growth in recent years is attributed to the growth in the real estate market. Ten years ago, when I left Shanghai for graduate study in US, I remember most people still live in the apartment assigned by their “Danwei”.

Reading Time: 2 minutes There are lots of discussions about living cost in Shanghai, such as this one from Wang Jianshuo. I am not going to do a comprehensive study here, but I want to share my findings after spending one week in Shanghai. I rent a one bedroom apartment near Zhongshan park, it cost me CNY 2,300. Because I stay for short term,

Reading Time: < 1 minute Chinese like the number NINE. This is the office building I work these days, the Chinese name is Long Zhi Meng (dream of dragon). The office building is attached to the shopping mall, which has food, coffee, fitness, department stores and Carrefour, the super market. So essentially once you are in the building, you can spend

Reading Time: < 1 minute I mean the stock for the short term, not the hotel. They reported the Q4 2006 and full year results today. Here is the result. It’s good number, but again the current stock price is way ahead of curve. Going forward they are “going to beep up franchise hotels in Beijing and China”, translated in

Reading Time: < 1 minute As an old saying goes (I hope mine could worth 100 words). I took this one at Beijing Airport. Did you notice the “retiring room”?

Reading Time: < 1 minute Listened to Heelys first conference call over the Internet because I got waked up by the luggage delivery people at 5 AM. Now I got both luggages from the United Airline. I am happy despite they deliver it on strange time such as 12 AM or 5 AM. I do appreciate the delivery team’s hard work though. Back

Reading Time: < 1 minute Heard about this Kai’en English from a colleague, they offer spoken English, Youth English, Business English, test preparation, etc. Why English training is so hot? According to the S1 prospectus of Xinhua Finance Media, page 108 (under Radio section), “the average wages of Chinese employees with advanced and intermediate levels of English are 72.5% and 24.3%

Reading Time: < 1 minute (Update 07Mar07) I saw an updated F1 prospectus at SEC web site. So I would assume the IPO is still on? Just heard from a friend in the States, this is not offical, but the rumor is the IPO is called off. I assume the reason is the recent sell off of Chinese stocks inside and

Reading Time: < 1 minute These days you need some faith to hold those relatively new Chinese IPOs. I only have Mindray (MR) at this time, but I have traded HMIN and EDU before. All three stocks dropped a lot from it highs in a week. I just want to summerize my observation after spending 2 days in Shanghai, this is in no

Reading Time: 2 minutes I have taken United Arlines (UA) flights from St. Louis to Shanghai couple times. This one is probablly most adventurous. The main problem was caused by the weather in Chicago. I thought this newly created ORD to PVG routes by UA and AA would benifit people in the Midwest: save one stop, for instance, if we take Northwest, we will have to stop