In Europe you have 1 Euro Shops, in the US, the 1 Dollar shops and in China the 1 Yuan shop
.
I wonder if they all sell the same stuff.
March 20, 2007
The One Yuan Shop
March 18, 2007
Spot the DVD Difference
No not the movies:), that would be too obvious.
.
It’s the plastic sleeve that has changed for some time now.
It used to be crappy thin plastic (the one on the right) and now it’s strong quality plastic (the one on the left).
And the price of DVD’s is still the same. Product improvement avant la lettre.
March 16, 2007
Shanghai Starbucks Sucks Decaf
All Starbucks outlets here in Shanghai were overcrowded between 10:00 and 12:00 this morning. Free coffee makes people stand in line. A smart marketing ploy by Starbucks that offered also free coffee yesterday in the rest of the world.
.
So why the “sucks decaf” title you may wonder.
Every now and then, hyper from too much caffeine in my blood, I order a decaf. Every time I order this I get first a blank stare after which I’m told, “We don’t have”.
Giving free coffee away is great, listing coffee for sale that is never available sucks.
March 12, 2007
A Great Sentence
Over at Shanghaiist an article about the 81 year old American writer Gore Vidal’s appearance/interview at the 2007 Shanghai International Literary Festival. Vidal it reads, is an outspoken, opinionated writer.
He was posed a question about the freedom of speech.
His answer can be summed up by one one of the phrases he used “they’ll work it out, as they intend to do, somehow.”
The Shanghaiist writer comments that:
We can be fairly certain that he is either being polite, afraid, or is just ignorant. Certainly, we don’t expect Vidal to export his brand of dissidence to China, and the fact that Vidal has freedoms that he may take for granted in no way discredits his other arguments.
However, it is always interesting to hear the tone of westerners — particularly liberal intellectuals — change when they find themselves in a context where they perceive that they have no legal protection.
One of the better sentences I read in a while.
March 1, 2007
Female China Expats Ranting
Thanks to China Black Hand I stepped into the wonderful world of single women in China that are disappointed in expat men.
There is already Chinabounder whose love for Chinese girls has caused some upheaval before and Fcuk! is the other side of the medal.
FCUK! introduces herself as follows:
China’s a rough place to live if you’re a girl. Sketchy, gross, clueless or just plain idiotic guys seem to cover the entire country like a bad case of the pox. A pox on the dating scene of the East!
This blog is to tell the good, bad, ugly, funny, horrifying aspects of dating in a rapidly developing country that says its adheres to traditional views of chastity but, in reality, oozes a hook-up culture. It’s a forum for the women of China to rant.
Both entertaining reads when in need of a empty headed break and it beats CCTV 9. Ok, that’s lame, everything beats CCTV 9.
February 28, 2007
Shanghai Stock Market Buy Signals, Lucky Names and Bad News
I had never heard the term before, my bad, but it appears people refer to the stock market in China as “dubo ji”, meaning slot machine.
The NY Times has a very insightful and entertaining article about what drives small investors to buy.
Millions of everyday investors rushed blindly into stocks, emptying out their savings account to “play the market,” as many of them say.
Perhaps the most remarkable sign of the recent irrational exuberance underpinning China’s stock markets was that during the last year, when a company announced bad news, its stock price shot through the roof.
Early this year, for instance, when a group of 17 Chinese companies was cited by regulators for misappropriating corporate funds, their stock prices all skyrocketed.
When the Tianjin Global Magnetic Card Company failed to report quarterly earnings last April, its stock doubled.
In this current run of market mania, even corruption appears to be a buy signal. That was the case for the Shanghai Bailian Group, which reported on Dec. 29 that its chairman was under investigation for fraud. The company’s shares have climbed 45 percent since then.
Two weeks ago, after the chairman of the Shanghai Hai Niao Enterprise Development Company was detained, his company’s shares rose 15 percent.
So how does an investor learn about companies to invest in.
Again from the NY Times
Just to find names of stocks to buy is a task for new investors. So if they see even a mention in the press, positive or negative, they start buying. If alert investors are lucky, they might get a tip. If state television mentions a company, it must be worth something, and if they don’t catch the full story, they at least have a name.
In any case, many investors here seem to believe that the secret to picking stocks is luck and confidence in the government, not the fundamentals of any particular company.
“I don’t know how to choose a stock,” says a 61-year-old retiree who gave her name as Miss Hou at a local brokerage house a few weeks ago. “But I trust those technology companies. Maybe the names of some companies sound lucky to me, so I choose to buy these stocks.”
Shanghai Market – The Stock One
A lot more visitors today searching for information about the plummeting Shanghai Stock Market. Unfortunately for them they all ended up on my old post about the now long gone Xiang Yang Market.
Are there parallels between the two of them? The Xiang Yang full of fake products and the Stock market full of cheap profit.
I’m not an investor so I know less about that but I do have the feeling that the stock markets were overheating as everyone and their granny seems to be buying stock.
It’s a bit like the real estate market in Shanghai where the average buyer hopes to make a quick buck. As it is, many will get disappointed if there is no short term gain. Live and learn, there is no such thing as easy money. Long term there will likely be profit.
For better insightful comments about the Shanghai Stock market and it’s latest state read more here or do a Google news search