towers had been sold. If so, nobody was bothering to maintain the grounds around the apartment buildings where knee-high grass and weeds grew between 30-story towers. Speculators move in Meanwhile, real estate sales appeared to be moving more briskly at the Zheng Dong Business Center, where visitors were greeted by football tables, plush velvet couches, a piano, wine and hors d'oeuvres arranged around giant illuminated models of an office park. Upon arrival, a sales team escorted CNN into a cinema with 180 degree, IMAX-like screen that played an elaborate computer-illustrated film advertising five-star hotels, gyms, shopping malls, offices and restaurants that would one day populate the new development. It would be another five or six years before this virtual city center would be completed, said a saleswoman named Song Lei. Asked whether or not she expected there to be enough customers to fill the giant office park, Song said, Altogether, probably not. There are some people buying office buildings for investment and there are others who are using it themselves, she explained. Some of China's soaring real estate market appears to be driven by wealthy Chinese who prefer parking their money in property rather than in banks where interest rates remain the same as inflation. In less than one year, property prices in Zhengzhou jumped 14 %, while the benchmark interest rate remains