No holiday for China’s gold retailers
As the Year of the Dragon began, with fireworks and food aplenty, Emily Liu was selling gold instead.
“It has been very busy,” sighed the promotions employee at Caibai Department Store in west Beijing, where all of its several hundred employees worked through the biggest holiday of the year to handle the long lineups of Chinese New Year customers. “Every year it’s like this. Spring Festival time is a peak time to buy gold.”
But it appears the coming of the powerful Dragon -- the only mythical creature in the Chinese zodiac -- has encouraged Chinese customers to buy even more gold than usual, with sales at Caibai up 57.6 per cent over the week-long holiday. A report from the Beijing Municipal Commission of Commerce showed a 49.7 per cent increase in sales over last year’s festival period, with sales at Caibai and another leading gold retailer, Guohua, reaching 600 million yuan (just over $95-million).
Amid a volatile stock market, fears of bad bank debt, and a deflating property market in which government now restricts purchases, gold has become both a status symbol and a safe investment vehicle, despite prices that have fallen since peaking around $1,900 an ounce in September.
“I buy gold because it appreciates quickly,” said Li Nan, 27, who joined the crowds still lining up at Caibai last week to trade in an old gold necklace and earrings for new ones, the older ones having doubled their original value. Her two-year-old daughter received a tiny gold bracelet for Chinese New Year this year; she herself sported a tiny gold dragon on a black ribbon around her neck.
Bars of gold emblazoned with dragon themes are the biggest sellers, Ms. Liu said, though jewellery also has been selling well. The World Gold Council anticipates Chinese consumers bought about 750 tonnes of gold jewellery in 2011, and says the country is poised to surpass India as the world’s largest consumer of gold in the next few years.
Still, some of the customers lined up at Caibai shrugged at the idea of a shining golden New Year’s gift as an investment.
“In turbulent times we buy gold. In peaceful times, we don’t,” said Fan Yinghui, 33, a government employee shopping for a small dragon-emblazoned bar for his father’s birthday. “The country is stable now.”
“It is rooted in Chinese culture,” added his wife, Li Ying, a 31-year-old teacher. “We like to buy gold, and it has always been this way.”
Original source
“It has been very busy,” sighed the promotions employee at Caibai Department Store in west Beijing, where all of its several hundred employees worked through the biggest holiday of the year to handle the long lineups of Chinese New Year customers. “Every year it’s like this. Spring Festival time is a peak time to buy gold.”
But it appears the coming of the powerful Dragon -- the only mythical creature in the Chinese zodiac -- has encouraged Chinese customers to buy even more gold than usual, with sales at Caibai up 57.6 per cent over the week-long holiday. A report from the Beijing Municipal Commission of Commerce showed a 49.7 per cent increase in sales over last year’s festival period, with sales at Caibai and another leading gold retailer, Guohua, reaching 600 million yuan (just over $95-million).
Amid a volatile stock market, fears of bad bank debt, and a deflating property market in which government now restricts purchases, gold has become both a status symbol and a safe investment vehicle, despite prices that have fallen since peaking around $1,900 an ounce in September.
“I buy gold because it appreciates quickly,” said Li Nan, 27, who joined the crowds still lining up at Caibai last week to trade in an old gold necklace and earrings for new ones, the older ones having doubled their original value. Her two-year-old daughter received a tiny gold bracelet for Chinese New Year this year; she herself sported a tiny gold dragon on a black ribbon around her neck.
Bars of gold emblazoned with dragon themes are the biggest sellers, Ms. Liu said, though jewellery also has been selling well. The World Gold Council anticipates Chinese consumers bought about 750 tonnes of gold jewellery in 2011, and says the country is poised to surpass India as the world’s largest consumer of gold in the next few years.
Still, some of the customers lined up at Caibai shrugged at the idea of a shining golden New Year’s gift as an investment.
“In turbulent times we buy gold. In peaceful times, we don’t,” said Fan Yinghui, 33, a government employee shopping for a small dragon-emblazoned bar for his father’s birthday. “The country is stable now.”
“It is rooted in Chinese culture,” added his wife, Li Ying, a 31-year-old teacher. “We like to buy gold, and it has always been this way.”
Original source
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