It does not take much time for a visitor to see the construction boom. Highways, overpasses, malls, office buildings are coming up in great numbers. There is a six lane highway from Kunming to that matches the American Interstate system. There are plush malls selling high end fashion and many multi-storied condo blocks are coming up. Only time will tell if this is a speculative bubble, or just a natural part of 10% growth. At this stage, it is difficult to say if the freeways are being built because of the growth, or the growth is because of the freeways :)
Another interesting part of the Chinese economy is the low prices. An elaborate meal at the Empark Grand in a private dining room with three waiters for just for the six of us cost us only RNB700. A cab ride of about 45 minutes cost only RNB40. This low inflation again is part of the great Chinese growth miracle.
Our hotel (Empark Grand ) was located in a newly developed area of the city, and is part of a local Chinese group. The hotel was luxurious with wooden paneling, deep plush carpeting, fine tiling and excellent service, but lacked the polished design touches of the established brands. For example, the wardrobe was tiny, though the room was huge. The bathroom had a sunked bathtub and a huge tropical downpour of a shower, but the shaving light was too dim and the shower floor sloped away from the drain. The elevator buttons were configured funny, and hitting one button summoned only half the elevators in the set. I saw this as typical of a centralized planning approach where some boss in Beijing decreed a hotel be build with a huge budget, but no multinational expertise, and ended up producing a product with irritating design flaws.
Another interesting this about the hotel was the number of employees lining the hallways ready to help and open doors for us. Thankfully, tips were neither accepted nor expected, except the cab drivers. Actually, the cab driver did not take tips either, but the word play was fine, no? I guess this no tips culture again is part of the top-down nature of Chinese capitalism, where enterprise is not encouraged in the lowest rungs of the working class.
Another refreshing example of a lack of supply-demand economics was on a hilltop we reached after one hour of hiking. There was a woman there with a small inventory of water and juice bottles laid out on a bench. The bottle of water was only 2RNB (30 US cents). At that point, we would have easily paid ten times that for a bottle of water, but probably the capitalist bug of price gouging has not yet reached this remote part.
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