The Sun’s Financial Diary

As our stay in Lanzhou comes to an end, I’d like to share with you what Lanzhou looks like if you have never been here before.

Lanzhou is the capital city of Gansu province, located in the northwest of China. The city is surrounded by several mountains such as Wuquan Mountain (where the above picture was [...]

Have you ever tried hot pot before?
Hot pot is very popular in China and you can find it in many restaurants in China all season long, not just when the weather is cold. I know there are a few Chinese restaurants in New Jersey serve hot pot in the winter, but the taste is just [...]

Greeting from China!
I spent most of the day yesterday on the planes. First I asked a friend to drop me off at a local New Jersey Transit train station near where we live so I can take the train to Newark International Airport. Actually, it was the first time I took a [...]

Yes, I am on vacation, for a month!
By the time this post hits the blog, I will be sitting in a Continental Airlines plane in Newark Airport waiting for taking off. My destination is Beijing, 6,000 miles away. It has been a long time since I was on vacation last time, more than two years, [...]

Think U.S. stock market is miserable? You will feel much better if you look at what happened in Shanghai and Hong Kong since last October. Since reaching the all-time high in October 2007, Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index has lost nearly 70% of its value in less one year.

But over night, the China government finally [...]

Looking at the following chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) in August, you can pretty much have an idea of how the stock market was doing last month: Not much! Indeed, though the Dow gained some 165 points for the month, it was as volatile as it has been lately, up 100 points [...]

So the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games is over!

The past two weeks were pretty exciting, with all the sport events happening 6000 miles away. Right after the opening ceremony on 08/08/08, checking all the actions and scores and, of course, the medal count, became my daily routine. Too bad that most of the time I had [...]

July was a volatile month for U.S. stock markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average started the month with some big losses, even closing below 11,000 for the first time in two year on July 15th. But since then, the index has reclaimed some of the losses after a pair of strong rallies, fueled by declining [...]

Comparing to what happened to Chinese stocks listed on U. S. stock exchanges, the drop in major U. S. equity indexes is minor, though the Dow Jones Industrial Average did lose more than 10% in just one month (10.19%). During the same time period, the NASDAQ dropped 9.12% and the S&P declined 8.57% as jitters [...]

After rebounding sharply in April, major U.S. stock indices ended May mixed. The Dow lost 181.81 points, or 1.42%, the NASDAQ rose 109.86 points, or 4.55%, and the broader S&P 500 added 14.79 points, about 1.07%.
Chinese stocks listed on U.S. exchanges also had a mixed month. Among the 82 stocks that make up the Chinese [...]