Beijing bank clerk Chang Liu, 26, and her fiance, Shan Gao, 28, are counting the cost of young love -- skyrocketing housing prices and the cost of their once-in-a-lifetime wedding ceremony rings.
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"We are tightening our belts after paying a 600,000-yuan down payment on a 70-square-meter home with the help of our parents, and the wedding ceremony will cost at least 30,000 yuan," says Liu.
So why did they splash out on a week-long holiday in Hong Kong and Macao just a few months before their big day?
Doing the sums, they reckon they saved 4,000 yuan (608 U.S. dollars) by buying their wedding bands in Hong Kong, where the absence of sales tax and a strengthening yuan, the Chinese currency, are drawing a rising tide of young mainland lovebirds.
"At any jewelry store in the Causeway Bay shopping center, you can see swarms of young Chinese tourists like us," says Liu.
"We used the money we saved having a week-long holiday, taking in the sights of Hong Kong and Macao," says Liu.
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The value of the yuan, or renminbi, has risen steadily against the Hong Kong dollar, which is pegged to the U.S. dollar, from about 1 to 0.93 in 1997 to the current 1 to 1.18.
Two unique wedding rings from Chow Sang Sang, a Hong Kong-based jewelry franchise, cost just 9,700 Hong Kong dollars, or 8,245 yuan, compared with 10,500 yuan in Beijing.
After a discount of 10 percent -- rarely found in mainland stores, but offered almost year round in Hong Kong -- they saved another 825 yuan.
On a tungsten carbide ring from Chow Tai Fook, another Hong Kong jewellry brand popular with mainland visitors, Liu says they saved another 7,00 yuan.
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