High Noon in Hainan
By Chip Tsao | published Mar 25, 2010
Pato Leung, a former pop music manager, now a famous health consultant and a respectable member of the Jockey Club, advised me two years ago to buy a flat in Sanya, sometimes popularly known as the “Pattaya of China.” A three-bedroom flat with an area of 2,000 square feet and a balcony overlooking the surging waves of the South China Sea cost about HK$1.5 million. “You’d love it,” he said, “it’s just like Cannes without the film festival, the red carpet and the Hollywood star parties. But believe me, there’ll be casinos and nudist beaches there in five years time. It’s good value to buy that illusion of vanity.”
I went to Sanya for a look myself. There were half-naked middle-aged Chinese hawkers selling barbecued squid and roasted chicken wings and spitting upon the beach. Young girls were wandering along the road by the sea in the evening but it was not quite like Pattaya, because they were all adults. With very few gweilos, it didn’t even look as voluptuously busy as Luard Road in Wan Chai on a Saturday night. Spotting a few Chinese flags flying atop of some three-star state-owned hotels, I decided not to take the risk.
And how wrong I was. Leung bought four flats all together in cash. He sold three of them two weeks ago, reaping a net profit of HK$14 million. He called me triumphantly to tell me the good news, with a promise of a dinner treat at Steak House, Intercontinental Hotel as soon as he got back from completing the paperwork on Hainan Island. I accepted the offer bitterly, with a deep remorse that I missed the boat because I didn’t have enough confidence in the Motherland.
China created an economic miracle by sustaining a GDP growth of 8.7 percent last year in the midst of a global recession. Experts estimate that 6.6 of that 8.7 percent figure was generated from properties or other related businesses, such as infrastructure building, building materials and furniture. Some experts in the West prefer to call it—not without a sense of jealousy—a bubble, but the figures are real and solid. Some might remind the government that the country is playing with fire while relying on skyrocketing property prices, thus adopting the Hong Kong economic model, but there are many brave and happy people like Leung everywhere in Beijing and Shanghai, and a few losers like me in Hong Kong.
It was particularly harrowing to think of the fact that it would take me an unstoppable 30 years of writing this weekly column to earn the same amount of money Leung did in just two years, and knowledge of English language is not even required. I slapped myself in the face as hard as a Catholic monk flogging his own back. Find faith in our Motherland in time or plunge yourself into the abyss of regret later. I humbly offer myself as a lesson to be learned.
Pato Leung, a former pop music manager, now a famous health consultant and a respectable member of the Jockey Club, advised me two years ago to buy a flat in Sanya, sometimes popularly known as the “Pattaya of China.” A three-bedroom flat with an area of 2,000 square feet and a balcony overlooking the surging waves of the South China Sea cost about HK$1.5 million. “You’d love it,” he said, “it’s just like Cannes without the film festival, the red carpet and the Hollywood star parties. But believe me, there’ll be casinos and nudist beaches there in five years time. It’s good value to buy that illusion of vanity.”
I went to Sanya for a look myself. There were half-naked middle-aged Chinese hawkers selling barbecued squid and roasted chicken wings and spitting upon the beach. Young girls were wandering along the road by the sea in the evening but it was not quite like Pattaya, because they were all adults. With very few gweilos, it didn’t even look as voluptuously busy as Luard Road in Wan Chai on a Saturday night. Spotting a few Chinese flags flying atop of some three-star state-owned hotels, I decided not to take the risk.
And how wrong I was. Leung bought four flats all together in cash. He sold three of them two weeks ago, reaping a net profit of HK$14 million. He called me triumphantly to tell me the good news, with a promise of a dinner treat at Steak House, Intercontinental Hotel as soon as he got back from completing the paperwork on Hainan Island. I accepted the offer bitterly, with a deep remorse that I missed the boat because I didn’t have enough confidence in the Motherland.
China created an economic miracle by sustaining a GDP growth of 8.7 percent last year in the midst of a global recession. Experts estimate that 6.6 of that 8.7 percent figure was generated from properties or other related businesses, such as infrastructure building, building materials and furniture. Some experts in the West prefer to call it—not without a sense of jealousy—a bubble, but the figures are real and solid. Some might remind the government that the country is playing with fire while relying on skyrocketing property prices, thus adopting the Hong Kong economic model, but there are many brave and happy people like Leung everywhere in Beijing and Shanghai, and a few losers like me in Hong Kong.
It was particularly harrowing to think of the fact that it would take me an unstoppable 30 years of writing this weekly column to earn the same amount of money Leung did in just two years, and knowledge of English language is not even required. I slapped myself in the face as hard as a Catholic monk flogging his own back. Find faith in our Motherland in time or plunge yourself into the abyss of regret later. I humbly offer myself as a lesson to be learned.
Labels: Politically Incorrect, 陶傑
posted by Gemini Saga at 12:00 AM
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