Ferrari on the streets of Shanghai

With traffic like this, why bother with a car like that?

Global financial crisis

After blogging for over a year and touching on the oft-mentioned theme of the Chinese stock market meltdown, I am now confronted with a meltdown of global proportions.

Ironically, the Chinese economy might be in a better position than many to withstand this global crisis. I think at this point, the Chinese economy will no doubt feel the effects of this crisis roiling in the US and Europe. The effects will be indirect - lower demand for Chinese imports and less overseas investments.

The banks in China was not plagued with the same problems with their counterparts in the west ironically because the economy here in China is not as mature. Credit is not used as much as America as a tool to finance investments and purchases. Therefore, the impact on China will be coming externally rather than internal. The key for China and its large eastern cities will be their own credit markets and the real estate market. After the stock market meltdown, China can ill-afford to have a real estate meltdown. The real estate market have shown signs of weakness, and are indeed very much over priced. If this part of the economy starts to deteriorate, things could become quite ugly as well

Of course, it still remains to be seen if things will get as bad here in China as elsewhere in the world. One thing is for sure, Chinese economy is not as leveraged as Americas, and that just might be enough to keep things from getting really ugly.

haircut for life!!

I have been sporting a military style buzz cut for the past 2 years. This new hairstyle started during my backpacking trip in 2005. This was done with pure practicality in mind as it minimized the amount of grooming time during our trip to the third world. The other reason was to see how I would look without much hair since we have a history of male pattern baldness on both my maternal and paternal sides. After the trip I decided to keep the look because I was never a hairstyle kind of guy anyway.

I have been cutting my own hair with a pair of electric hair clippers since my hairstyle has uniform length on all sides. Before people start to draw conclusions to my thriftiness, I must tell my side of the story.

Barbershops, like many service industries here in China like to promote the pre-paid membership pricing strategy. What this means is that when you go for a haircut that costs about 15 RMB (around $2.20) including hair wash you have to endure sales pitches from nearly every person who services you. When the haircut is over and you are ready to pay, then you would typically get a hard sales pitch where you would have to reject the offer about 5 times before they retreat.

The deal typically goes like this: you prepay 1000RMB value for a prepaid/membership card and enjoy a 20% discount for all services at the store as long as you keep a prepaid balance on the card. The absurdity of the whole thing is that a prepaid 1000RMB card gets you monthly haircuts for 5 years before the value on the card is depleted. Of course, the typical barbershop offers many other services that the card can be used for such as that hair washing, back massage, earwax removal, etc.

This give some insight to the mentality of the Chinese consumer where they can be enticed into "buying in bulk" to enjoy discounts. To me, when you buy in bulk, you also tend to consume in bulk.

The high pressure sales pitch and a new outlook on my hairstyle are the top reasons that I now typically cut my own hair. Its funny but its true.