New rich 'ordinary people like everyone else'

Some visitors to the luxury show like Joanna Wu, Samantha Zhong and Nancy Lin (from left to right) want to get a taste of being wealthy. Yin Enbiao / for China Daily

Nancy Lin went to the Hainan Rendez-Vous show because she wanted to get a taste of being wealthy herself.

The 19-year-old is studying for a degree in golf course management at Sanya College.

"I have come here to experience luxury. I want to be successful and you have to set yourself a goal to achieve it," she says.

"One of the reasons I am studying golf is to make contact with wealthy people I might go into business with one day."

Li Bo, 24, who was at the exhibition with his girlfriend Zhang Cheng, 20, says many people have the wrong impression of China's new rich.

He works in the exclusive Kingdom Club in Haikou in Hainan, which is frequented by many wealthy business people.

"If you talk to many of them, they are very ordinary people just like everyone else. They are very polite. They really buy boats in Sanya just to relax and get away from the pressures."

Yu Tianchun, 61, and Hou Baoxia, 58, who have retired to Sanya from Harbin in Heilongjiang province in the colder northeast of China, say the wealth at the show was a dramatic contrast to the late 1970s.

"If you had come here 30 years ago, you would not have seen a single rich person. Now look at it," Yu says.

"I might envy all these people but I don't dislike them. I take the view they have worked hard and they deserve it."

The couple were there to soak in the atmosphere as was Joanna Wu, 23, who works in sales at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Sanya.

"I wanted to see yachts and other luxury products I had never seen before. I might buy a handbag. I like Chanel but one will cost me at least 10,000 yuan (1,060 euros)," she says.

Her friend Samantha Zhong, 24, who works in a wine selling business in Sanya, was inspired by what she had seen.

"I am hard working and good at sales and want to be my own boss. Of course, I would like to be rich myself. I would be able to buy a Chateau Mouton or a Le Fit," she laughed.

Zhang Jingyou, an accountant from Shenzhen, says seeing the yachts close up made him dream about being wealthy also.

"Maybe some day it will come true but I don't know which day."