VietNamNet Bridge – Bonsais of an entrepreneur named Khang were distrained because Khang could not pay his debts.

Khang - the owner of a large real estate company was known in the business circles for his passion for feng shui.

Khang is a typical example for “honors change manners.” After getting rich, he saw a lot of fortunetellers, who told him to buy certain kinds of bonsais to support his business.

Believing in fortunetellers, Khang spent a lot of time and efforts to search for feng shui items and bonsais as described by fortuneteller. The first bonsai Khang bought from an ornamental tree village in northern Vietnam is an ancient sanh tree, which was worth several tens of thousands USD.

After buying this tree, Khang began “falling in love” with bonsais. He bought tens of ancient bonsais to place in his garden and the yard of his company. These trees cost him hundreds of thousands USD.

In economic crisis, when the real estate market is frozen, Khang’s projects were also frozen. Many clients flocked to his company to ask for their capital back. Khang had to be absent from his company to avoid his clients. Some impatient clients took Khang’s bonsais.

Mr. Nguyen Minh Quang, a bonsai trader in Thai Binh province, also suffered from the frozen real estate market.

This man initially sold trees at tree markets in Hanoi, Hai Phong and Quang Ninh provinces. He then knew some building contractors and began providing trees to residential area projects in the north. He used to earn a billion dong from providing trees to these projects. When the estate market got a standstill, he had to return to tree markets. Quang said some building contractors still owe his tens of thousands of US dollars.

A few years ago, people in many villages in the districts of Hoai Duc, Dan Phuong, Quoc Oai in Hanoi flocked to northern provinces to hunt sanh gai trees to sell to Chinese traders.

"At that time a sanh gai tree which is as big as a toe, 40 - 50cm high, and looked like a stick was priced VND5 million ($250). The bigger the trees were, the higher prices were paid. An old sanh gai with diameter of 20cm was sold VND1.5 billion ($70,000), enough to build a three-story house," said Minh, a young man in Dan Phuong village.

“That time, my brother earned several hundreds of million dong of profit from trading sanh gai trees. It was so easy to earn money at that time,” said a man named Hop in Hoai Duc district. However, Hop and his brother are now in heavy debt because they borrowed tens of thousands of US dollars to buy sanh gai but Chinese traders stopped to buy this kind of tree.

After a few years, when the "storm" for sanh gai passed, tens of families have fallen into debts because they borrowed a billion dong to trade sanh gai.

Thai Binh