China's new rich relish wretched excess

I wish I came up with that column title myself, but alas, it was one of the creative editors at the Times Colonist. This week's column takes a look at the explosive growth of China's luxury goods industry:

Aside from fashion shows, high-end cosmetics and fancy Fujitsu tablet laptops, the fair also showcased a private Sikorsky helicopter valued at US$200,000.

"This is much more reasonable than buying the Ferrari," the sales agent told me.

Sikorsky is one of the companies that has launched a joint venture with a Shanghai firm to market its private helicopters. They've sold more than a dozen so far and see potential for rapid growth.

Beside the helicopter sat the red Ferrari with beautiful Chinese models sprawling all over the hood.

If you wanted to be a bit more environmentally friendly, the fair sold the most quintessential of Chinese goods, the bicycle. This bicycle was made by BMW and sold for almost US$10,000.

The whole article can be found here.

In an unrelated note, readers may have noticed that our comments feature has been turned off. This is because of a massive volume of spam which hit our servers in the past few days. We will be changing hosting providers and blogging software soon, and comments should be back open then.