Just after lunchtime, Chen Chenghuan pops into Great Century House, a property agency in Xiamen, Fujian province. The 44-year-old has just returned from driving his clients around at Xiamen port. In 2004, Chen, a native of Jinmen, in Taiwan province, opened his property agency in Xiamen. He is used to catering to clients from Jinmen, an island covering some 150 sq km near Xiamen.
The recent gloom over the real estate market in South China has made a dent in his business, too, but Chen, who has three agencies downtown, remains positive about Xiamen's housing market.
"Half of my clients are from Jinmen, where people expect to live and do business in Xiamen, a comfortable seaside city with a booming economy," Chen says.
He adds that household savings in Jinmen are the highest in Taiwan, making property in Xiamen affordable to most families, despite rising prices.
His client list includes factory owners who have bought luxury two-storey downtown apartments for investment and retired teachers snapping up riverside apartments for the weekend. Most of his clients are Jinmen merchants who often go in for stores priced at around 18,000 yuan ($2,500) per sq m to run their business.
Seven years ago, before the Xiamen-Jinmen direct shipping route opened, Chen's business was just a dream.
In 1992, 28-year-old Chen traveled to Guilin, a tourist wonderland in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. It was his first time on the Chinese mainland.
Guilin's Elephant Trunk Hill and a boat ride on Lijiang River were particularly appealing to the young man and his friends. The following visits to Beijing and Hangzhou opened his eyes to the huge market potential on the mainland.
At that time, Chen was running an office equipment business in Taipei. In 1994, he moved back to his hometown Jinmen and started his property business. His judgment and diligence brought him considerable wealth and a substantial client network in a county of 50,000 residents.
Chen knew the local market was small and that the one on the other side of the Straits was huge. But like many businessmen in Taiwan at that time, he had little knowledge of this growing market and of relevant government policies.
In 1996, Chen and his friends decided to go to Xiamen to investigate the real estate market. They found the biggest problem was the broken cross-Straits connection.
In the evening, looking through the window of his house in Jinmen, Chen could clearly see the lights of Xiamen's ring roads. But since there was no direct shipping route, he had to transfer three times via Kaohsiung, Philippines and Hong Kong, and then take a flight to Xiamen.
"We are only 1.8 km from Xiamen when the tide retreats. My father told me that he used to float on a board to Xiamen in his childhood, but it took me 14 hours to make an air detour," Chen says.
He used to leave Jinmen at 7 am to arrive in Xiamen at 9 pm, although the direct distance was less than 6 km.
When Chen arrived in Xiamen, he found the investment environment unsuitable. Traffic was chaotic and the demand for property was low. The rules regarding property trading were quite different. So, Chen suspended his investment plans.
In 2000, Chen came to Xiamen for the second time. He saw that the city had undergone a tremendous change. The prosperous economy had led to a booming housing market.
Chen opened an interior design and decoration company. He spent his spare time pursuing an MBA at Xiamen University. It was while studying for his management degree that he acquired a deeper understanding of the property laws and realized there were some policies benefiting people from Taiwan.
January 2, 2001, marked a historic day in cross-Straits relations: The direct shipping route between Xiamen and Jinmen was finally opened. Six ferries operated 12 times a day between the two places.
This direct shipping route opened up many opportunities for the people of Jinmen. It provided an outlet for Jinmen's investment demand, especially in the real estate market.
Chen saw his golden opportunity, as did other Jinmen businessmen. He and his partners established their property agency. He also informed all of his old clients about the booming market in Xiaman and explained the laws to allay their worries.
Many of them purchased properties in Xiamen through Chen and then introduced his agency to their friends.
According to Li Shuping, secretary of the Jinmen Fellowship in Xiamen, Jinmen residents owned more than 6,000 properties in Xiamen by the end of 2007.
Every morning, 60-year-old Zhuang Genchao walks to buy vegetables in an open market. The retired teacher then returns to his new home near Zhongshan Park in downtown Xiamen.
"Xiamen is a great place to live in. It has comfortable weather and convenient shopping and transportation," Zhuang says. In 2003, he bought an apartment in a high-rise tower in Wujiang Diamond Square.
Zhuang's family originally came from Hui'an county, in Quanzhou, a two-hour drive from Xiamen. He says elders such as himself in Jinmen have a strong attachment to their roots, which explains why many of them have a home in Xiamen.
Zhuang spends two weeks a month in Xiamen and often goes to Hui'an to visit his relatives there.
The Xiamen-Jinmen route has transported more than 2.44 million passengers since it started operations. More than 670,000 passengers made round trips on this route in 2007, statistics show.
There are still some restrictions on the Xiamen-Jinmen route from Taipei; however, cross-Straits communication is improving every day.
Chen Chenghuan goes home to Jinmen every weekend by a ferry that takes only 50 minutes. He likes taking a walk by the shore of Xiamen at sunset. "I can see the lights from Jinmen," he says.
Source: China Daily
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