Hong Kong, 20 January 1998, Great Cold.

Feng Yiping, who was standing on the 22nd floor of a high-end residential building in Wan Chai, finally overlooked the Golden Bauhinia Square not far away, and on the night of June 30 last year, Feng Yiping was also here, using high-powered binoculars to watch at 0:00 on July 1, where the mighty PLA soldiers raised the five-star red flag.

With the raising of the five-star red flag, on the other side, Charles, who may be the second worst in history since Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty, and who may not be able to ascend the throne in his lifetime, left gloomily accompanied by the last governor of Hong Kong, that is, Patten who would jump out from time to time and bark a few disgusting people in the future.

Carrying a backpack and pushing the suitcase, Feng Yiping once again glanced at the "thousand-foot mansion" that he had rented for nearly a year, and then locked the door and went downstairs.

He also really wants to buy a set, so that his sister, who is still a little nostalgic for not becoming a Shanghainese, can directly become a Hong Konger, but now the housing prices in Hong Kong, although they are already falling, there are still too many bubbles.

From 94 to last year, in less than four years, Hong Kong's housing prices have risen by nearly seventy percent as a whole, and many years later, a large number of mainland residents have bought homes in Hong Kong, and they will bring the rooms back to the current level.

All kinds of people on the road are still in a hurry, but there is a vague sense of the aftermath on their faces, and it is also that the past year has been uncomfortable for these countries in the Asian region.

Ten years, like a reincarnation of fate, before this, Southeast Asian countries have been growing rapidly for ten consecutive years, some countries and regions, was crowned the Asian Four Little Tigers (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong) Asian Four Little Tigers (Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia) reputation.

In Thailand alone, a peasant woman or even a street vendor you meet outside of Bangkok might be part of a stock army. At that time, they themselves felt that money was too easy to come by, so they were keen on beach houses, European luxury goods, and Japanese electrical appliances.

Also like the wealthy American class. Sending their children to private schools, traveling to Europe every year in style, and even small business owners are preparing to buy Mercedes-Benz.

However, everything that was so prosperous began at the beginning of '97. It has already fallen into turmoil.

The day after Hong Kong's return to the motherland, the situation finally became clear, and the Thai government, after several resistances, had to announce that it had abandoned the 13-year-old exchange rate system of pegging the Thai baht to the US dollar, and was forced to announce the implementation of a floating exchange rate system.

Subsequently, the governments and central banks of the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and other countries, after a few symbolic and weak resistances, gave up their actions to defend their national currencies one after another. All the rage.

In November, the crisis spread to South Korea, and then the Japanese financial industry, which has a large amount of investment in South Korea, was drawn into it, leading to the bankruptcy of a series of Japanese banks and securities companies, and the Southeast Asian financial crisis officially turned into the Asian financial crisis.

In this game of robbery and money grabbing for international travel funds, Feng Yiping is like an inconspicuous little shrimp, following them in all kinds of shorting, from Thai baht to Philippine peso, Malaysian ringgit, Singapore dollar, and Indonesian rupiah. South Korean won, in the middle of October, also shorted U.S. stocks and Hong Kong stocks, and last month, concentrated all the funds. With ten times leverage, he finally shorted the won once, which was also the most profit he made in a single transaction.

Although at the beginning, as the governments revolted, he also lost some, but the end result was considerable. As his profits increased, from not being eligible to apply for financing leverage at the beginning, to 5 times and 10 times the leverage, the dollar assets in his UBS account also increased, and now it has reached eight figures, although it still starts with 1, but he is already very satisfied.

In the past, he was just an ordinary low-end customer of UBS, and these days, senior staff of UBS have contacted him to sell him various financial products, but he was unmoved, just bought some Apple shares, although Jobs has returned last year, but Apple's stock price is still hovering at the trough.

Some people earn, of course some people lose.

In Thailand, people who felt that it was too easy to make money a few days ago have now lost their jobs, then their cars, their new houses have not been painted, they have to sell them, their children have been transferred to public schools, and romantic and luxurious European tours have been cancelled.

Many students at private universities have not been able to adapt to this change, and in order to maintain their dignity, they now have to rent even better clothes and shoes.

Although the scenery is still so beautiful and moving, and the high-rise buildings are still so rows and there, there is a bottomless gap between the once rich and the current downfall.

In Indonesia, even the children of President Suharto, who later became known for corruption and topped the World Bank's list of the richest corrupt people, had to sell their companies to avoid losing money.

In Malaysia, the top 10 richest people have lost tens of billions of dollars in the stock market alone.

Of course, Feng Yiping, who has made a little money, does not feel a little guilty, and Soros also said, "In terms of financial operations, there is no morality or no morality, this is just an operation." ”

In addition, as he said, even without this hype, it will still come.

Also, these Southeast Asian countries, immersed in the atmosphere of high growth, have seriously overvalued their local currencies, but they have not taken control measures like China, their foreign exchange reserves are insufficient, the stock and foreign exchange markets are not regulated, and their currencies are freely convertible.

Even if our country was still unwilling to relax its foreign exchange reserves when it was the largest in the world, there must be considerations in this regard, after all, no matter how much foreign exchange reserves a country has, it still can't be more than the amount of floating capital that can be concentrated in the international market.

In addition, there is also the example of the Soviet Union, which can be said to have been dragged down by the United States and other Western countries by economic means, and it is normal for the financial sector to be more tightly controlled.

On the bus to the airport, I listened to the two people in the front row say with palpitations, "It's finally over!" Fortunately, although there is some meat cut in the stock market, not to mention the ones I bought before, the property I invested in last year is not bad. ”

Feng Yiping looked at them with some pity in the back, and wanted to say to them, dear, what you think is so beautiful, it's just an end, and it's far from over.

Yes, starting from the second half of this year, this storm will usher in a new wave, just say Hong Kong, the total market value of the stock market this year will evaporate more than 2 trillion Hong Kong dollars, and then, the property market will also fall sharply.

Alas, I don't know if the one in front will become a member of the army of jumping buildings.

When he entered the airport, he couldn't help but look back at the two of them, the middle-aged man who was wearing a windbreaker and trying to dress up well, looking at a child looking at him with pity, even as if he was looking at a dead person, almost said a word to the mainland, but he was a little hesitant, he was not sure whether Feng Yiping was a mainlander.

There is no way, these Hong Kong people, even if their pants have been lost, still have a sense of superiority in front of mainland compatriots.

But Feng Yiping was not in vain in Hong Kong this year, in his spare time, in addition to going to a few university libraries to read books and recharge, he also fully appreciated all aspects of Hong Kong - of course, in addition to those eighteen forbidden places, dressing up, and also leaning towards the wealthy class, Cantonese and English, are also more slippery, besides, there are tens of millions of dollars in the bank to lay the foundation, and the confidence is naturally enough, and it is normal for him to not be able to distinguish.

After a few hours of flying, in the afternoon, the flight finally arrived in the provincial capital, took the luggage out of the airport passage, and saw his parents and sister, waving to him at the exit. (To be continued.) )