Reading Time: < 1 minute Like Baidu, if you look at 601998 (its ticker symbol) at Sina Finance. For english readers, read Bloomberg news here. BTW, 1998 is a good number in Chinese. Citic Bank (中信银行) IPO was priced at 5.80 Yuan, and people expected it to open between 7 and 8, based on PE and PB (price book) ratio of other Chinese banks. But it went up as high as 12 this

Reading Time: < 1 minute I read a paper lately and found people in big cities like Shanghai spend a fortune in wedding (about same amount as people in developed countries). Here are some examples: limos and wedding dresses. I took these pictures last month.  

Reading Time: < 1 minute (Update Apr 26 morning) Shortly after this report, Wan Jia Wan Hao (Xin Yu Star) stock (600576) gained 5%, the maximum percentage it can go as this is a “ST” stock. What can I say about this crazy market?  Dong Fang Securities, a Chinese brokerage firm, did a report about the new trend of Chinese consumers.

Reading Time: < 1 minute I’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…

Reading Time: < 1 minute 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.

Reading Time: < 1 minute 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.

Reading Time: < 1 minute 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.

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

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

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.   Second picture is taken at JiaoDa MinHang Campus, which is near the IT cluster. Two of my family