Property

In western countries you can buy a piece of land with a house on it and it will be your property until you decide you want to sell it. It is not possible that someone takes possession of your home without paying for it. Even the government has to pay for your possession if they want the ownership of it.

In China it is not possible as a private person to buy a house or land for eternity. Ownership is limited. Most of the time you can only lease your home or land, this is called ground lease.
A national land register is not available in China. This makes it even more difficult to find out who has the ownership of a piece of land.
You don’t own your house and this makes it easier for the government to disown people. Compensations from the government are often very little, due to the lack of independent jurisdiction civilians have no way to go with their complaints.

Prices could be cut in half in the upcoming year

For ten years the real estate market was the driving force of China’s economical success. But according to the annual report Real Estate 2009, written by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Cass), the sales for 2008 broke down with 19.7 per cent.

Last year the vacancy of homes in China went up till 164 million m2, which is 21 per cent more then in 2007. The report predicts an increase of sales for later this year. This is due to the deduction that developers have to give to receive cash.
Researcher Cao Jianhai of Cass predicts a decline for the housing prices of 50 per cent for the upcoming year.
Local government purchased 40 per cent less land for housing in the first quarter of this year.

The government reduced the interest rate, banks are allowed to give more credit and the down payment is reduced for home buyers.

Real estate

The (growing) middle class and the top layer of the Chinese society buys nowadays, partially as an investment, a substantial amount of apartments and houses without the use of grants.
The private purchase of houses has risen enormously, mostly because of the attractive loans of the large national banks. Considering the strong increase of the urbanisation it is likely that the demand for residences will rise in the urban areas in China.
Between 2000 and 2007 the investments in real estate have risen with 20% per year. Since the end of 2007 the market segment is confronted with relapsing prices and transaction volumes. This trend is accumulated by the economic crisis.
It is expected that the situation will improve due to the action plan from the Chinese government.

Hong Kong in the 1930s

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Traffic in China

Skyscrapers in China

China is becoming a country full of skyscrapers. And the skyscrapers in China are nothing compared to the tall buildings in the Netherlands.

The Burj Dubai is the tallest completed building in the world now, with a height of 818 m.

Here is a list of the tallest buildings in China:

- 3th place in the world: Shanghai World Financial Center, Shanghai, 492 m

- 6th place: Nanjing Greenland Financial Center. Nanjing, 450 m

- 8th place: Guangzhou International Finance Center, Guangzhou, 438 m

- 9th place: Jin Mao Tower, Shanghai, 421 m

- 10th place: Two International Finance Centre, Hong Kong, 415 m

- 12th place: CITIC Plaza, Guangzhou, 391 m

- 13th place: Shun Hing Square, Shenzhen, 384 m

- 15th place: Central Plaza, Hong Kong, 374 m

The tallest structure in the Netherlands is the Gerbrandy Tower. It has a concrete tower with a heigt of 100 meters on which a guyed aerial mast is mounted. It's heigt is in total 366.8 meters long.

Robbie Williams makes good driving music

Robbie Williams' solo efforts are aiding an entirely different industry in China.

The album 'Rudebox' wasn't selling very well in the Netherlands, but over one million unsold copies of his last album are bought by the Chinese government. And not because they are fan of his music.

The cd's will be used to pave the roads in China. The albums will be recycled and the end product will be used as road surfacing and street lighting.

My own Chinese name

On http://www.mandarintools.com/ you can get your own Chinese name.

It is inspired on your name, and you can choose what essence of the name you would like.

And this is the result:

Surname (first character)
Feng

Given Name (middle character)
Wen
stable, firm, solid, steady

Given Name (last character):
nu
exert, strive, make effort

Chinese Keyboard

I always wondered how a Chinese keyboard would look like, and how it works.

Now I know :)

On a Dutch blog I found an explanation:(http://www.blablablog.nl/B1038127581/C115502288/E601033558/index.html)

Han, he studies Chinese, explaines how it works. But it is still quite complicated.

I translated the explanation from Han.

In China you have two ways to write Chinese characters: graphic by ‘drawing’ the character or phonetically by writing the pronunciation in western lettering.

Phonetic
In the phonetic way (Chinese call it ‘pinyin’) they type the Chinese character in western lettering. For instance, when you want to write ‘heaven’, you type ‘tian’ en then you get a list of characters which are pronounced as ‘tian’.

Sometimes you see this: ‘tian3’. The 3 behind ‘tian’ gives an indication of the pitch. This way you can narrow down the number of characters that will be given.
On every key of the Chinese keyboard are 4 signs and the two on top are used for the phonetic entry.

Graphic
In the graphic method the different parts of the characters are defined one by one and that will create the character. The two symbols on the bottom of the key are used for this method.