Chinese Scions’ Song: My Daddy’s Rich and My Lamborghini’s Good-Looking
By DAN LEVIN

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Andy Guo, an 18-year-old Chinese immigrant, loves driving his red Lamborghini Huracán. He does not love having to share the car with his twin brother, Anky.

“There’s a lot of conflict,” Mr. Guo said, as a crowd of admirers gazed at the vehicle and its vanity license plate, “CTGRY 5,” short for the most catastrophic type of hurricane.

The 360,000-Canadian-dollar car was a gift last year from their father, who travels back and forth between Vancouver and China’s northern Shanxi Province and made his fortune in coal, said Mr. Guo, an economics major at the University of British Columbia.

The car is more fashion than function. “I have a backpack, textbooks and laundry, but I can’t fit everything inside,” he lamented. And that is not the worst of it. “A cop once pulled me over just to look at the car,” he said.

China’s rapid economic rise has turned peasants into billionaires. Many wealthy Chinese are increasingly eager to stow their families, and their riches, in the West, where rule of law, clean air and good schools offer peace of mind, especially for those looking to escape scrutiny from the Communist Party and an anti-corruption campaign that has sent hundreds of the rich and powerful to jail.

With its relatively weak currency and welcoming immigration policies, Canada has become a top destination for China’s 1 percenters. According to government figures, from 2005 to 2012, at least 37,000 Chinese millionaires took advantage of a now-defunct immigrant investor program to become permanent residents of British Columbia, the province that includes Vancouver.

The metropolitan area of 2.3 million is home to increasing numbers of ethnic-Chinese residents, who made up more than 18 percent of the population in 2011, up from less than 7 percent in 1981, according to government figures.

Many residents say the flood of Chinese capital has caused an affordable housing crisis. Vancouver is the most expensive city in Canada to buy a home, according to a 2016 survey by the consulting firm Demographia. The average price of a detached house in greater Vancouver more than doubled from 2005 to 2015, to about 1.6 million Canadian dollars ($1.2 million), according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.

Residents angry about the rise of rich foreign real estate buyers and absentee owners, particularly from China, have begun protests on social media, including a #DontHave1Million Twitter campaign. The provincial government agreed this year to begin tracking foreign ownership of real estate in response to demands from local politicians.

The anger has had little effect on the gilded lives of Vancouver’s wealthy Chinese. Indeed, to the newcomers for whom money is no object, the next purchase after a house is usually a car, and then a few more.

A large number of luxury car dealerships here employ Chinese staff, a testament to the spending power of the city’s newest residents. In 2015, there were 2,500 cars worth more than $150,000 registered in metropolitan Vancouver, up from 1,300 in 2009, according to the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia.

Many of Vancouver’s young supercar owners are known as fuerdai, a Mandarin expression, akin to trust-fund kids, that means “rich second generation.” In China, where the superrich are widely criticized as being corrupt and materialistic, the term provokes a mix of scorn and envy.

The fuerdai have brought their passion for extravagance to Vancouver. White Lamborghinis are popular among young Chinese women; the men often turn in their leased supercars after a few months for a newer, cooler status symbol.

Hundreds of young Chinese immigrants, along with a handful of Canadian-born Chinese, have started supercar clubs whose members come together to drive, modify and photograph their flashy vehicles, providing alluring eye candy for their followers on social media.

The Vancouver Dynamic Auto Club has 440 members, 90 percent of whom are from China, said the group’s 27-year-old founder, David Dai. To join, a member must have a car that costs over 100,000 Canadian dollars, or about $77,000. “They don’t work,” Mr. Dai said of Vancouver’s fuerdai. “They just spend their parents’ money.”

Occasionally, the need for speed hits a roadblock. In 2011, the police impounded a squadron of 13 Lamborghinis, Maseratis and other luxury cars, worth $2 million, for racing on a metropolitan Vancouver highway at 125 miles per hour. The drivers were members of a Chinese supercar club, and none were older than 21, according to news reports at the time.

On a recent evening, an overwhelmingly Chinese crowd of young adults had gathered at an invitation-only Rolls-Royce event to see a new black-and-red Dawn convertible, base price $402,000. It is the only such car in North America.

Among the curious was Jin Qiao, 20, a baby-faced art student who moved to Vancouver from Beijing six years ago with his mother. During the week, Mr. Jin drives one of two Mercedes-Benz S.U.V.s, which he said were better suited for the rigors of daily life.

But his most prized possession is a $600,000 Lamborghini Aventador Roadster Galaxy, its exterior custom wrapped to resemble outer space. Mr. Jin, a lanky design major who favors Fendi clothing and gold sneakers, extolled the virtues of exotic cars and was quick to dismiss those who criticized supercar aficionados as ostentatious. “There are so many rich people in Vancouver, so what’s the point of showing off?” he said.

Asked what his parents did for a living, Mr. Jin said his father was a successful businessman back in China but declined to provide details. “I can’t say,” he stammered with evident discomfort.

Because of high import and luxury taxes in China, supercars are often 50 percent cheaper in Canada. And in Canada, Chinese immigrants said, people are far less likely to question how they obtained their wealth.

“In Vancouver, there are lots of kids of corrupt Chinese officials,” said Shi Yi, 27, the owner of Luxury Motor, a car dealership that caters to affluent Chinese. “Here, they can flaunt their money.”

Some Chinese immigrants think a supercar is a poor investment, because its value decreases over time. “Better to spend half a million dollars on two expensive watches or some diamonds,” said Diana Wang, 23, a University of British Columbia graduate student who said she owned more than 30 Chanel bags and a $200,000 diamond-encrusted Richard Mille watch.

Ms. Wang, a star on the online reality show “Ultra Rich Asian Girls of Vancouver,” normally drives her parents’ Ferrari or Mercedes-Maybach when she visits them in Shanghai. But in Canada, her parents gave her a strict car budget of 150,000 Canadian dollars ($115,000), so she drives the less-flashy Audi RS5.

“I could be in danger if people saw me in a supercar,” she said, her Breguet watch, worth more than a BMW, glinting in the sunlight as she drove the Audi through town.

Four years ago, to learn the value of money after her friends criticized her spending habits, Ms. Wang spent three days on the streets of Vancouver, playing homeless. She said she had left her mansion with no phone, identification or wallet, wearing Victoria’s Secret pajamas and $1,000 Chanel shoes.

While in voluntary poverty, she lined up for donated food and felt the sting of humiliation after she was kicked out of a Tim Horton’s fast-food restaurant for falling asleep at a table. The experiment, she said, gave her a new appreciation for her parents’ financial support.

“Before that experience, I never looked at a price tag,” she said. “Now I do.”

陸土豪移民炒房、炫富 激怒溫哥華人

紐約時報報導，因為有低匯率和友好的移民政策，加拿大成為中國收入金字塔頂端百分之一的移民首選地。政府統計，在二○○五年至二○一二年間，至少有三萬七千名中國富豪經由現已撤銷的一個投資移民專案，取得溫哥華所在的卑詩省永久居留權。

溫哥華這個人口二百卅萬的大都會區，愈來愈成為中國移民的聚居地，華裔在當地人口的比率已從一九八一年的百分之七，增加到二○一一年的百分之十八。

很多居民表示，大批中資湧入，推高當地房價。市場顧問公司今年的調查顯示，溫哥華已是加拿大房價最高的城市。自二○○五年至二○一五年，大溫哥華區獨棟住宅的均價漲了超過一倍，來到一百六十萬加幣（約四千萬台幣）。一些居民對這些中國人為主的大批海外炒房客感到憤怒，開始在推特等社群媒體上發動抗議，卑詩省政府今年決定追查房地產海外產權。

不過，這些憤怒情緒對當地中國富二代的生活沒什麼影響。他們買完房子通常會買一輛車，然後再多買幾輛。年輕華裔女性流行開白色藍寶堅尼；男性則往往租用超跑玩幾個月，然後換一輛更新更酷的身分象徵。

數以百計的年輕中國移民和一小撮在加拿大出生的華裔，創立多個超跑俱樂部。成員會聚在一起飆車，改裝和拍攝酷炫的跑車，在社群媒體上炫耀。

溫哥華賽車俱樂部創辦人，廿七歲的戴大衛表示，該俱樂部有四百四十名成員，九成來自中國。要加入俱樂部，座車價格從十萬加幣（約二百五十萬台幣）起跳。談到這群富二代，戴某說：「他們不工作，就是花父母的錢。」

飆風富二代偶爾也會碰壁。二○一一年，警方查扣十三輛跑車，包括藍寶堅尼、瑪莎拉蒂和其他名車，總價二百萬美元，原因是車主在溫哥華城區公路上二百公里以上時速飆車。據媒體當時報導，駕駛都來自同一個中國超跑俱樂部，年齡都低於廿一歲。

一些中國移民認為超跑不是好的投資手段，因為會折舊。「花五十萬美元買上兩支手表或一些鑽石更好。」廿三歲的黛安娜．王表示。她是卑詩大學的研究生，宣稱擁有卅多個香奈兒包和一支價值廿萬美元、鑲鑽的Richard Mille手表。

身為網路實境節目《公主我最大》中的明星，王女回上海探望父母時通常都開他們的法拉利或賓士頂級旗艦車款Maybach。但在加拿大時，父母嚴格限制買車預算不得超過十五萬加幣（約三百八十萬台幣），她只好委屈點，開沒那麼炫的奧迪RS5。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/world/americas/canada-vancouver-chinese-immigrant-wealth.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/world/20160412/c12vancouver/zh-hant/

2016-04-13．聯合報．A13．國際．編譯張佑生