Because so many Chinese went from nothing to everything in just a few years, their newfound riches have left them a little giddy. Conspicuous consumption? There's no other kind. To be suddenly wealthy in China is to be engaged in a full-blown, keeping-up-with-the-Chans spending contest. In June, a Bentley sold for 8.8 million yuan ($1.06 million) at a Beijing auction—apparently because eight is a lucky number, not because the car was worth that amount. Mainland tycoon Hui Wingmau bought a mansion in Hong Kong last year that was once the most expensive house in the world. In the gambling paradise of Las Vegas, Chinese jet-setters have displaced Japanese industrialists as the most prevalent—and most welcome—group of high rollers. Chinese entrepreneurs don't tend to do the Jeff Bezos thing—dressing down in wrinkled khakis. "In China, if you're rich, you have to look the part," says Wang Deyuan, who owns one of the top ad agencies in southern China. "You have to show you have money, otherwise no one believes that you're rich."

This show-me approach is not a purely modern phenomenon. Lavish displays of wealth have long been an integral part of Chinese society. No banquet is considered a success unless a full table of food is left over—if plates are empty, the host hasn't ordered enough to sate his guests. Wang knows that judicious strutting can lubricate business dealings. He and his wife, Wang Yanyi, who owns a bustling real estate company, live the high life in Shenzhen, that boomiest of Chinese boomtowns. On weekdays, they work hard and keep the flash in check. Indeed, 35-year-old Wang knows that many of his clients drive Mercedes, so he makes do with an Audi lest he embarrass them by appearing in a ritzier car than theirs.

But on weekends, the Wangs let the money flow, aware that cash buys respect and murmurs of envy from less fortunate friends. One recent Friday, they splashed out for a Cantonese banquet at a members-only eatery followed by aged Scotch and cigars at their favorite nightclub. An evening like this can easily cost them $1,000, but the outlay merely cements their reputation as coruscating icons of Shenzhen's glitterati. To look good for their nights out, they swoop into Hong Kong for intensive shopping trips. The Hugo Boss and Max Mara stores know them so well they call when a new shipment of clothes arrives. Wang Yanyi's image is further buffed by spa sessions, body detox therapy and cellulite-removal massage.

	"Now I feel like the world recognizes that we Chinese matter." — Wang Shi

The Wangs are part of an alluring demographic, and its rapid emergence has enticed some of the world's most exclusive brands to China. Giorgio Armani, for example, will open four outlets in Beijing and Shanghai by the end of this year, and purveyors of luxury goods like Mercedes-Benz and Tiffany have similar expansion plans.

But Chinese consumerism often comes sans connoisseurship. A chef at the Door, a velvet-draped Shanghai eatery, remembers one customer ordering the most expensive Chateau Margaux on the wine list, then mixing it with a liberal splash of Sprite. "He just gulped it down, without even tasting the wine," recalls the chef. Taste matters little when the object is ostentation. At Shanghai's posh Plaza 66 mall, a clerk at a European fashion house recounts how a middle-aged man demanded to buy the five most expensive things in the store: "After paying for them, he tried to put on a suede coat and a pair of crocodile-leather loafers he'd just bought. I had to tell him they were for women, not men."

For others, a better way to blow money fast is to go overseas. A decade ago, most Chinese never ventured abroad as tourists because the state issued passports only to a select few. Getting permission for anything other than studying at Harvard or inking a joint-venture deal was nearly impossible. Today, though, Chinese are the fastest-growing bloc of travelers in the world. By 2020, 100 million Chinese are expected to go globe trotting. Mainlanders have already become Thailand's most numerous tourists and they'll soon be tops in Australia too. "It used to be the Japanese consumer that we were targeting," says Siriporn, a jeweler in Bangkok, who has started stocking extra jade and ivory for mainland customers. "But now we are told we have to pay attention to the Chinese, because they have so much money."

Wang Shi likes the attention he receives abroad. The head of China Vanke, a property development company in Shenzhen, was delighted last month when he saw Munich Airport now has signs in Chinese to help visitors like him through customs. At a five-star hotel in Tokyo, room service offered him a Chinese breakfast complete with rice gruel and soybean milk. "Five years ago, no one overseas cared about pleasing the Chinese," he says. "Now I feel like the world realizes we matter."

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