It's been a week since September 24, but every day in Xiangjiang there is more than one case of family destruction and death.

On the news program of the TV station, Zhang Junyi can see the news report with a heavy face on the news host's face every day: The number of suicides in Xiangjiang has been increasing day by day recently, especially in the securities industry, up to now, according to incomplete statistics, there have been more than single-digit securities elites jumping off the building.

The most popular TV show on TV now is to teach people how to save money, such as teaching housewives how to boil eggs from the waste heat of cooking.

Recently, there have been fewer customers than before the stock market crash, and the number of customers in the entire Xiangjiang commercial street has been significantly less than before the stock market crash, and the number of Xiangjiang businessmen who eat in high-end restaurants has also decreased.

Now Xiangjiang is simply mournful. Originally, after a period of digestion, Xiangjiang's economy had flattened out, the property market and stock market continued to hit new highs, and people lined up to go to restaurants for dinner. One of the properties developed by our company sells off-plan properties, and the buyers need to queue up the night before.

Since 1978, the real estate market in Hong Kong has begun to deviate from the normal development track and rise like a rocket. Taking Tsim Sha Tsui East as an example, land prices have risen six-seven-fold and property prices have also increased threefold in three years.

The rise in land prices and property prices has stimulated the influx of a large amount of hot money, and Nanyang funds have entered the market in a big way. At that time, Hong Kong's "selling off-the-plan properties" system was very popular, and as long as you paid a deposit of 5% to 10%, you could buy uncompleted properties and engage in speculation, but speculators ignored the government's various policies to restrict uncompleted properties, such as increasing taxes on the transfer of uncompleted properties, and speculation was unprecedentedly hot.

When the wind of speculation is the hottest, speculators simply speculate on the whole building, forming a boom of "speculating in buildings" and "speculating in hotels". At that time, there were frequent reports of the entire commercial building changing hands at high prices in Central, Wan Chai, Tsim Sha Tsui East and other prosperous business districts, among which the most talked-about was the Golden Gate Building in Admiralty, and the speculation of the two federal and international buildings in Central.

Between December 1978 and September 1980, the Golden Gate Building changed hands three times, and the price increased from $715 million to $1.68 billion, an increase of 135% in less than two years. Between August 1980 and January 1981, the two federal and international buildings changed hands twice, and the selling price rose from 1.089 billion yuan to 2.235 billion yuan, an increase of more than 1 time in just half a year.

The blazing wind of property speculation further pushed up land and property prices, and housing prices were far beyond the affordability of Xiangjiang citizens at that time. According to statistics, in 1975, the price of a small and medium-sized residential building in Heung Kong was about 230 yuan per square foot, and the price of a 400 square foot residential unit was about 92,000 yuan. At that time, the average monthly income of a family in Hong Kong was $1,300, and the purchase of a small residential unit was equivalent to 70.8 months' salary.

However, at the peak of the property market in 1981, the price per square foot of a small residential unit had risen to about $1,000, the price of a 400 square foot residential unit had increased to about $300,000, and the average monthly income of a citizen family was about $3,000, that is, the purchase price of a small residential unit was equivalent to 101.5 months' wages.

Property prices in Hong Kong are not based on the level of economic development and the ability of ordinary citizens to pay, and when consumers' wages are far from keeping up with the increase in property prices, it is inevitable that property prices will fall. In 1980, the vacancy rate of new residential buildings was as high as 41.3%, and a large number of areas were in the hands of speculators. The downward adjustment of the real estate market is only a matter of time.

Generally speaking, the sharp fluctuation of the stock market is closely related to the price of the local real estate market, but the shock of the stock market last year did not lead to the change of the real estate market as much as imagined for some reasons.

Even when the time came to 1982, there was such a small fluctuation in house prices.

However, as the question of the future of Xiangjiang became apparent, on September 24, the Iron Lady proposed to Deng Lao to exchange sovereignty for governing power, but it was rejected, and as a result, she fell on the steps in front of the Great Hall of the People in a historic way. Huaxia immediately announced that it would resume the exercise of sovereignty in Xiangjiang on July 1, 1997, and this series of news reached Xiangjiang, and the stock market and real estate, which had long been exhausted, fell in response, and the curtain of the real estate downturn that had begun for several years was completely opened.

It can be said that it has been the bleakest year in the past seven or eight years for the real estate industry in Hong Kong, with land prices, property prices, and rents falling sharply across the board.

The collapse of the real estate market is naturally the brunt of land prices. In just a week, Zhang Junyi was able to see that land prices in Xiangjiang generally fell by 10% to 30%, with the largest declines being for industrial land and high-end residential land. The selling price of industrial sites in Kowloon Bay has dropped by 93% from a peak of $360 psf in December 1980 to $125 psf in terms of floor area.

The high-end residential land in the vicinity of Hong Kong South Bay Road has also dropped from the peak of $1,502 per square foot in September 1980 to the current level of $540 per square foot, a drop of 60%.

With the collapse of the real estate market, the first to bear the brunt are those real estate companies that have adopted aggressive investment strategies, including emerging real estate groups such as Hang Lung and Great Eagle, as well as the land of established real estate companies, some of which have even suffered from the catastrophe, such as Carnival Real Estate, Yida Investment, Jianing Real Estate and so on.

In the real estate crisis, the first to be hit was Hang Lung, one of the five real estate tigers. In 1981, three consortiums led by Hang Lung won the right to develop properties above nine subway stations along the Heung Kong MTR. Unfortunately, at that time, Heung Kong Real Estate was at its peak.

With the events of September 24, the Hong Kong real estate market took advantage of the sharp decline, and Hang Lung paid a heavy price for mistaking the real estate cycle. Among the nine MTR station superstructures that Hang Lung has acquired, the Cotton Tree Building at Murray Road in Central District is nearing completion, and plans are underway to commence the Heung Shan Building at Admiralty 2. The newly built Xiangshan Building covers an area of 69,000 square feet, with a total floor area of 1.043 million square feet, and according to the requirements of the Xiangjiang government, a land price of 1.82 billion yuan is required, and the deadline is to be completed within 28 days.

Due to the sharp drop in land prices, Hang Lung had no choice but to propose to the Hong Kong Government to reduce land prices to $1.4 billion, but this was not accepted.

At this critical juncture, a Japanese bank that had signed a contract to lend a maximum credit of RMB1.5 billion to Hang Lung temporarily withdrew its commitment. After Hang Lung failed to apply for an extension of land premium from the Government, it had to withdraw from the development of the Admiralty 2 superstructure, and the remaining MTR station superstructure works had to be postponed.

In this battle, the consortium led by Hang Lung not only "returned empty-handed as if entering Baoshan", but also lost 400 million yuan in deposits, and the blow suffered was not light.

However, according to the information obtained by Zhang Junyi, Hang Lung is not the only one that has been hit so hard, and in the real estate crisis, Eagle King has also been hit harder.

Great Eagle Group's rapid expansion during the peak of the real estate and stock market, the spin-off of Regal Hotels, and the acquisition of Paliburg, have already lurked in a serious crisis.

Regal Hotels' main business is to develop and operate two hotels at the airport and Tsim Sha Sha Tsui East, which cost $460 million in construction costs alone. After September 1982, both the real estate and stock markets of Xiangjiang fell sharply, and the Eagle family was in trouble.

If it cannot be saved in time, Zhang Junyi can predict that it will not be long before the losses of the three listed companies, Eagle Monarch, Regal Hotels and Paliburg, are expected to be as high as 2 billion yuan, and they will fall into a serious financial crisis.

If the head of the Great Eagle Group is himself now, Zhang Junyi will definitely sell off his shares in Regal Hotels and Paliburg in time with the determination of a strong man to tide over the difficulties.

As for the remaining one that has been hit hard in the real estate crisis, it is the old British-funded real estate company that Zhang Junyi is preparing to annex in the future.

In the 70s, new property developers took advantage of the low tide of the real estate market to absorb a large amount of cheap land, and then took advantage of the recovery and prosperity of the market to launch off-the-plan properties, making huge profits in buying low and selling high, dwarfing the rental income-based land.

It was only then that Hongkong Land realized the importance of real estate development and began to strengthen its real estate development business. In 1976, Hongkong Land used the Dairy Farm's Pok Fu Lam Ranch to develop a large-scale private housing estate, Fortune Gardens, and subsequently partnered with about 30 companies including Far East Consortium Co., Ltd., Jianing, Hang Lung and Cheung Kong to develop more than 70 real estate projects.

In 1980, Hongkong Land lost control of Wharf and underwent a major shift in its investment strategy, abandoning its usual steady, disciplined approach to aggressiveness, impatience and speculation.

In early 1981, Hongkong Land and Sino Land formed a consortium to purchase the Baibi Mountain section of Tai Tam Road in Hong Kong for $1.308 billion, planning to build villa-style luxury residences.

In August of the same year, Hongkong Land and Jianing formed a consortium to purchase the old wing of the Miramar Hotel in the central tourism area of Tsim Sha Tsui for 2.8 billion yuan, planning to develop it into a high-end commercial building in the style of Landmark Plaza. In February 1982, Hongkong Land won the "Land King" of the current Exchange Square by the waterfront of Hong Kong at a high price of 4.755 billion yuan.

During this period, Hongkong Land also launched a "dawn raid", spending 3.5 billion yuan to purchase a 34.9% stake in Heung Kong Telephone and HK Electric Group. At this time, Hongkong Land's decision-makers' judgment on the political and economic situation in Xiangjiang had seriously detached themselves from objective reality and paid a high price for it.

With the outbreak of the stock market crash, the market of Xiangjiang Real Estate collapsed, and Hongkong Land only lost more than 3 billion yuan in the three major investment projects of the Central District Exchange Square, the old wing of the Miramar Hotel and the Baibishan Development Plan.

Among the old real estate companies, the hardest hit is Carnival Real Estate. The reasons for the decline of Carnival Property can be traced back to the serious mistakes in its investment strategy after its IPO in 1972. In March 1973, when the Hong Kong stock market fell sharply after hitting a record peak, and the economy of Hong Kong turned into a recession, Carnival Real Estate turned its focus overseas to develop the "Capital City" of Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia.

Unfortunately, after the outbreak of the oil crisis in 1973, the world economic recession, Malaysia's rubber and rice exports fell sharply, the sales of Subang City were unsatisfactory, and the development plan was slow, resulting in the profit of Carnival Real Estate falling year after year.

In the late 70s, when the economy of Hong Kong was booming and the real estate and construction industry was extremely prosperous, the carnival made a comeback in an attempt to make a big difference, but after many years of absence from Hong Kong, the financial situation of the carnival was no longer the same. At that time, there were many Heung Kong real estate groups, and the development plan was often 1 billion yuan, and the carnival had no chance to participate, so it could only operate a smaller site.

In 1981, Carnival Real Estate misjudged the situation and continued to expand aggressively due to the return of early investments. As of now, the property has fallen sharply, and the development plan of Carnival has suffered serious losses.

What is even more shocking than the collapse of the carnival is the collapse of the once famous Jianing and Yida groups.

That's right, this Jianing is the Jianing company that Zhang Junyi used to make a small profit in the stock market a few years ago.

Jianing Group was founded by Chen Songqing and rose to prominence in the late 70s. At the end of 1979, Jianing acquired the controlling equity of Meihan Enterprise, a listed company, at a high price, and renamed it Jianing Real Estate as the group's listed flagship.

In January 1980, Jianing announced that it had partnered with Chung Ching-man of the Chung family to purchase the Golden Gate Building in Admiralty from Hongkong Land for $998 million, which Hongkong Land had purchased from Jardine Matheson for $715 million a year earlier.

In September 1981, Jianing announced that it would resell the Golden Gate Building to Lin Xiufeng's brothers' Baining Shun Group at a price of 1.68 billion yuan, making a profit of hundreds of millions of yuan in less than one year. At this time, Jianing Real Estate became a shining star in the Xiangjiang stock market, with a market value of 3.921 billion yuan at the end of 1981, becoming the fifth largest real estate company in the Xiangjiang stock market after Hongkong Land, Cheung Kong, New World and Xindi.

By the peak of this year's mid-year, Jianing had become a large-scale conglomerate in Heung Kong with 100 subsidiaries covering real estate, construction, trading, shipping, tourism and insurance.

At that time, Chen Songqing's reputation in Xiangjiang had even changed Zhang Junyi's status (under the condition that Zhang Junyi did not expose his hole cards too much).

However, after experiencing a "snowball" development, Jianing has not been able to consolidate its achievements in a timely manner, perhaps it has too many fraudulent elements involved in commercial transactions to consolidate.

Facts have proved that if you eat too much and your digestive system is not good, it can really support people, no, it was only a week after the stock market crash happened, and Uncle Jianing began to fall into trouble due to the changes in the external economic environment. Jianing's main partner, Yida Investment, was liquidated, and the company's chairman, Zhong Zhengwen, absconded to Hong Kong, leaving behind 2.1 billion yuan in debt and 1.6 billion yuan in other loan guarantees.

If Zhang Junyi is not mistaken, at the beginning of next year, that is, in January 1983, the three listed companies of Jianing Group will suspend trading in an attempt to restructure their debts. In September of the same year, the Xiangjiang police searched Malaysia's U-Ming Finance Company and found that Jianing's debts to U-Ming Finance were huge and inconsistent with Jianing's accounts, so they launched a large-scale search of Jianing.

Subsequently, Chen Songqing was arrested, Jianing's restructuring plan was shattered, and the once-prominent Jianing Kingdom officially collapsed, leaving a lingering aftermath for the collapse of the estate.