Cash registers ring up the changes as city goes shopping

THE people of Beijing have discovered a new pastime, a varied, exciting hobby with almost infinite potential. It is shopping. Window shopping, shopping around, shopping sprees, bargain shopping, gift shopping - you name it, they do it.

Watching thousands of people crush through the doors of a new department store it is easy to believe the market of a billion people is opening up before your eyes.

Ten years ago, it was Shanghai which was the shopping paradise of China. Now Beijing has overtaken it by leaps and bounds. It is a change which has taken place at astonishing speed.

Wages in Beijing are generally lower than in the boom towns of the south, but in the past year they have increased substantially. People still on what was the average take-home pay of 200 yuan (about HK$268) a month feel they are at the bottom of the pile compared with friends and relatives who are taking back 500 or more yuan a month. A large part of that income is disposable.

The fact that people in Beijing had money to spare became clear for the first time early last year, when the luxury shops in the Palace Hotel, selling La Perla underwear and Ermenegildo Zegna menswear, found most of their customers were Chinese entrepreneurs, not foreign tourists.

This may be the honeymoon period for shopping. Rents will rise, people are being urged to spend savings on buying houses and the threat of inflation looms if the economy overheats. But for now it seems that the sky is the limit.