A trip to China - Shan Tou, Jie Yang, Chao Zhou, Feng Shun

Recently I just went to China with my relatives to pay a visit to the relatives in China. In Singapore and Malaysia, most of the Chinese whose ancestors are from Guang Dong, Fu Jian or Hai Nan Province. We went back to Guang Dong Province to visit the grave of ancestors and the attractions there.

During the trip, the tour guide had shared with us the history and latest progress on the cities near Shan Tou. The population there is about 5M in each city. Jie Yang, Chao Zhou and Shan Tou is now consolidated as one metropolis called "Chao Shan" as the locals there share the same dialect and culture. The newly built up Jie Yang Airport can welly feed the visitors there. Anyway, our main focus was to stay at Feng Shun town, which is where my grandparents came from.

According to my parents who went back 6 years ago,  Feng Shun town is now developing very fast, and there are still a lot of property development in 2 tier / 3 tier cities in China. As the population in China is very big (about 1.3 Billion), there are hundred of cities just like Feng Shun town. I believe that the living standard there has improved a lot, and we can see a lot of private transports along the road there.

The property price there has surged a lot too as well. According to my relatives, the per square meter price is about 6-7K RMB in Feng Shun Town, while it could go as high as 70K RMB in Shen Zhen, a 1-tier city near to Hong Kong.

My tour guide had mentioned that the medical system in China still remains weaker, as not many villagers afford to go to the hospital if they do not subscribe for any medical insurance. This is because they have to put the deposit before admitted to hospital. So I am grateful that Malaysia government still provides a cheap medical services to Malaysian, unlike other countries in South East Asia.

I think I will be going back again to witness again the development of China, a fast growing emerging market. As China is going to transform its economic model from Export Oriented to Domestic Oriented, there will be an increase of middle class there, and we do see a lot of investment opportunities there.