For my seven past summers in Beijing, and actually all my more than 30 past summers, I either didn’t lived in an air-conditioned home, or when I live in one, I seldom used air-conditioners. I don’t like big electricity bills or the air blown from long-serving air-conditioners that smells of old dust particles.

But, this summer is different. My family now live in a home we can call our own. My wife and I bought it last year literally right before we could no longer afford it. For your information, the price of our apartment in southern suburban Beijing has sky-rocketed by around 85% since we bought it last June.

So, on paper, we are a millionaire family. But, in reality, we have to live with a mortgage that is a drain on our income. This will be the case for another 14 years if we cannot pay it off earlier. According to Rich Dad, our home is a liability because it does not generate cash and only takes it away from us.

We will have another drain soon this autumn though another very sweet one: My wife is expecting our first baby this November. To make our home a better place to live in this summer, we will buy at least one air-conditioner this Dragon Boat Day holiday. We will need it to live through the coming hot summer days, as well as late autumn and early spring days, when it can be very cold at home before and after centrally provided heating is available.

By at “least one”, I mean we may buy two, each for the living room that we hope can cool and warm three indoor spaces (the living room, the south bedroom, and my home office) and for the north bedroom. This depends on our money-related moods and sales skills of the shop’s staff.

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Update: We bought two Grees.

* You can meet your Mr. or Ms. Right, but you cannot find them.

* If what you need is just money, you are lucky enough to have anything else in the right place.

* The future will hold promise for you only if you have good health. Good health is everything. You should not be pessimistic about anything else.

* TBC

Housing boom – by definition, there is no “real estate” industry in China, because “real estate” is owned by the collective and the State and is not something tradable, or should we call it “housing”? – has reached a point where most of consumers cannot afford its products. The governments at different levels, local, provincial, and national, on behalf of the State and the People rent the land to developers who build houses on it and sell them to the People. The governments also impose heavy taxes and fees – and bribes – on developers, who, together with speculators, shift all these “costs” and also markups to end users. Seemingly, the housing craze has nothing to do with higher prices of raw material imports because housing-prices going-all-the-way-up and-never-going-down-again is what characterizes the harmonious housing market in China.

Starting late last year, food prices also embarked on a growth path, beginning with pork. Almost everything edible seems to cost more. This is another acutely tangible inflation in living memory. We all have to live with it.