After the Spring Festival, people who had struggled to return to their hometowns for the holiday began heading back to work, and life gradually returned to normal.

However, those who had bought houses started to notice that prices had plummeted dramatically, never to recover to their previous levels.

Headlines were soon filled with stories of mortgage defaults, deep-discount sales, and real estate agencies closing up shop and disappearing.

In the central urban areas, the drop in housing prices was not significant, especially for large luxury homes, some of which even continued to rise in value. Still, a few properties saw substantial price reductions.

The disaster zone was outside the city center, where the general drop in housing prices after the New Year exceeded thirty percent, with some areas experiencing drops of over fifty or even sixty percent.

For instance, in Longcheng District's Oriental Prosperity, the average opening price for phase two was 15,000 yuan per square meter, with a peak price of 20,000 yuan per square meter. Later, during a promotion, the average price was slashed to the 9,000s.

There was a Miss Liu who spent over two million yuan to buy a 117-square-meter apartment, making a down payment of seven hundred thousand yuan. Her income was considered high, so she chose a 20-year mortgage with monthly payments of about 9,000 yuan.

But the apartment, previously valued at 2.3 million yuan, was now worth just over one million. Her total loan amount was over 1.6 million yuan. The bank called to inform her that she needed to make an additional payment of 900,000 yuan, as her property was no longer worth the 1.6 million she owed.

Based on the property's current valuation of a little over one million yuan, she would only qualify for a loan of 700,000 yuan. Since she had already borrowed more than 1.6 million, she had to cover the 900,000 yuan difference.

If she failed to pay, the bank would forcibly seize and auction her apartment. The proceeds from the auction would be used to pay off the mortgage, but she would still be liable for any remaining debt.

According to a report from the *Southern Metropolis Daily* on June 25, 2008, a bank in Shenzhen City revealed that a homeowner in the Baocheng Taihua Building had officially stopped making mortgage payments in January 2008. The owner had purchased a second-hand property in the building at the market's peak in 2007 for 8,000 yuan per square meter, the value of which later fell by more than thirty percent. This was the first case of mortgage default disclosed by the Shenzhen banking sector in 2008.

By the end of July, it was suddenly revealed that 68 homeowners in Shenzhen's Bishui Longting residential complex had announced a collective mortgage default. This was the first major collective default event to surface in Shenzhen in 2008.

However, it was the next incident that pushed the wave of defaults to its peak. In early July 2008, a blog post titled "Over a Hundred Billion in Mortgage Delinquencies, a Subprime Crisis Looms" began to circulate widely online. The blogger claimed that in the Shekou area, a single bank branch had over a thousand mortgages that were more than three months delinquent, totaling over 1.5 billion yuan in loans.

Based on the bank's total lending in 2007 and the proportion of loans in the Shekou area, the blogger estimated that the bad debts from personal housing loans alone for that bank had already reached 20 billion yuan.

From this, the blogger extrapolated: If one bank could accumulate 20 billion yuan in bad debt, then with so many banks in Shenzhen City, a conservative estimate of the total bad debt would surely exceed a hundred billion.

That was too much money for Yi Anguo to help, even if he wanted to.

Work life resumed around March after the holidays, and by then, a large number of homeowners were already preparing to default on their loans.

The reason was the drastic decline in housing prices that began in March. In February, for comparison, the average price of new homes in Shenzhen City had still been over 16,000 yuan per square meter.

But from March through May, the average price for new homes plunged to around 11,000 yuan per square meter.

This was just the city-wide average, which included many luxury homes and properties in the central urban areas that had barely seen a price drop.

Outside the city center, on May 15, the Zhonghai Kangcheng development advertised a rock-bottom price of 4,988 yuan per square meter.

The property values in many residential complexes had not just been halved; they had been slashed by two-thirds, a drop of over sixty percent. Some had fallen by as much as seventy percent.

Faced with this situation, even the banks felt helpless. They couldn't collect the money they were owed, nor could they sell the properties they had repossessed.

Even if they managed to sell a property at a low price, it still wouldn't be enough to cover the bank's losses from bad debt.

Yi Anguo couldn't bear to watch any longer. He felt it was understandable for banks to reclaim collateral. However, forcing the buyer to still bear the debt for any shortfall after the repossessed property was auctioned off seemed unjust.

The risk shouldn't be borne solely by the homebuyers; the banks should also take some responsibility. After all, they were the ones who approved the property's value when the mortgage was issued. Banks today are just like the pawnshops of the past. Even back then, if you pawned something and couldn't afford to redeem it, you would just forfeit the item. It made no sense that you would owe the pawnshop more money!

But he also knew that he was powerless to change all this. Still, he wanted to do his part to help those in weaker positions.

On March 1, 2008, Huaxing Company's integrated circuit board chip production line officially began mass production.

The first product off the line was its independently developed smart chip, designed for its own line of smartphones.

On May 10, 2008, Huaxing held an official product launch for its first-generation smartphone. At the event, it showcased the Huaxing smartphone's various features, design, operating system interface, and technical specifications.

The smartphone was sold in both brick-and-mortar mobile phone stores and online for the first time. The online channels included the official Huaxing website and the An Jing Online Supermarket, which would sell it simultaneously.

The price was standardized across all online and offline channels at 3,999 yuan.

At the press conference, it was announced that the first Huaxing smartphone would go on sale online at midnight on May 20, available on both the Huaxing official website and the An Jing Online Supermarket.

Furthermore, online pre-orders were available effective immediately.

The first-generation Apple phone had launched in 2007, priced at 4,999 yuan in the country, and sold 1.39 million units.

However, its price in the United States and various European countries was only 499 US dollars, equivalent to about 3,400 yuan—a clear case of double standards.

On July 11, 2008, the Apple 3G was set to be released in the country. Its US price dropped to 399 dollars, roughly 2,700 yuan, but its price in China remained a steep 4,648 yuan, making the double standard even more obvious.

Despite this, domestic sales of Apple phones in 2008 exceeded 11 million units.

From the very beginning, Huaxing aimed for the high-end market to compete with Apple, using its own proprietary chips and operating system.

The reason for rushing to launch on May 20 was to gain a head start before the new Apple phone hit the market.

Yi Anguo wished so desperately that his rebirth could make some disasters simply disappear.

However, on May 12, 2008, another major event occurred: a powerful 8.0-magnitude earthquake struck the western Sichuan region.

Although Yi Anguo was a reborn individual, he could not prevent this from happening. He couldn't even warn the people in the disaster area ahead of time.

No one would have believed him. In fact, he would likely be arrested for spreading rumors and inciting social panic, ending up with a taste of prison food.

Nevertheless, Yi Anguo had made some preparations. As early as before the New Year, he had instructed the An Jing Online Supermarket to establish a logistics center in Chengdu City, in western Sichuan, and to build significantly more warehouses there than in any other location.

At the time, the general manager of the logistics department had asked why they needed so many warehouses. Why stockpile such a large quantity of goods, including items not even sold on the website, such as large disaster-relief tents?

Several warehouses were filled with supplies like drinking water, instant noodles, winter clothing, and cotton quilts.

Yi Anguo did not answer his question but just gravely instructed him to follow orders.

After the earthquake struck, Yi Anguo directed the logistics staff at the Chengdu branch to immediately open the warehouses and transport all necessary disaster-relief supplies to the affected areas, free of charge, as a donation to the people.

It was only then that the staff at the Chengdu logistics center seemed to realize something.

What they couldn't fathom, however, was why the chairman had prepared for this so far in advance. Could it be that he had actually predicted the earthquake?

On May 14, during CCTV's earthquake relief gala, Huaxing Technology Group announced a donation of 10 million yuan to the earthquake-stricken region of western Sichuan. An Jing Commercial Trade Company (An Jing Convenience Store) announced a donation of 3 million yuan, and Anguo Property Company pledged 1 million yuan.

Guohui Fresh Supermarket pledged 2 million yuan, Huafeng Group announced a donation of 10 million yuan, and Chuan Yu Restaurant pledged 300,000 yuan.

Additionally, Hong Kong Hualong Investment announced a donation of 5 million HK dollars, and Anguo Rosewood Furniture announced a donation of 1 million yuan.

Finally, An Jing Online Supermarket announced a cash donation of five million yuan, plus an additional ten million yuan worth of earthquake relief supplies.

Yi Anguo also made a personal donation of one million yuan, and later, he anonymously contributed one hundred million US dollars.

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