The Cost of Freedom : In booming coastal cities like Shanghai, pricey new apartments are being snapped up by young, single Chinese women looking to have a little room of their own.(Illustration)

You Yang was hanging out with friends in Shanghai last fall when she saw the television advertisement that would change her life. "Come, live in freedom," a voice beckoned, as images of neatly groomed young men and women with radiant smiles flashed across the screen. You, a 24-year-old secretary working for a multinational firm, scribbled down the Shanghai address. At the appointed time, she raced down to the site and, with hundreds of other young women, signed her life away. She wasn't joining the People's Liberation Army, a millennial cult or the Mary Kay cosmetics club. She was doing something far more revolutionary: buying a home.

You Yang's apartment is in a massive new complex by the Huangpu River called Qingnianhui ( "Young Man Lifestyle"). It is small. It won't be ready for another year. And the mortgage is already draining more than half of her $500 monthly salary. But the place is all hers. "I really wanted to have freedom," she says. "The most important thing is to live an independent life."

For a country that hardly recognized private property a generation ago, China's housing boom is remarkable enough. But even more stunning is that the rush is being fueled, in part, by an unexpected class of people: young, single women. Looking for independence along with a good investment, young female professionals are increasingly buying homes of their own before they get married--and turning 4,000 years of Chinese paternalism on its head. At Young Man Lifestyle, for example, young women snapped up 60 percent of the 913 apartments last fall; only 10 percent were bought by single men. (Investors and married couples bought the rest.) The same story repeats itself across urban China. While hard statistics are unavailable, real-estate experts say young single women are becoming one of the leading categories of home buyers in coastal China, particularly in Shanghai, where women are notoriously more independent. This is not only forcing developers to cater more to women; for the emerging middle class, the trend is transforming relations between the sexes.

The home-buying frenzy is understandable. Interest rates in China are low, hovering between 3 percent and 4 percent, and government incentives more than generous. Many communist "work units" chip in to help employees buy their first home. And under a program that expires in May 2003, all home buyers are eligible for a full reimbursement of their personal-income tax. The market is sizzling. Wu Jie, a 32-year-old producer for CNBC in Shanghai, bought a two-bedroom place in a sleek new high-rise last year for $120,000. Now she can't fight off agents wanting her to sell. "They told me my apartment has already appreciated nearly 50 percent," says Wu, sipping a cappuccino in a local Starbucks. "I said, 'Thanks for the good news, but please stop calling me!' "

But if the deals are great for anybody with a little cash, why are more single women than men jumping into the market? "Most men still wait until they're married to buy a house," explains Han Jiahui, a 28-year-old telecom worker. "But women are going ahead on our own. Why should we wait?" Han could hardly wait to escape her childhood home, a damp one-room apartment that shared a kitchen and bathroom with four other families. Last year she bought a $45,000 two-bedroom apartment for herself and her father, a laid-off engineer. Buying a place not only fulfilled a lifelong dream, but helped Han assert herself. "It's important for a woman to be financially independent," she says. "Otherwise, what would happen if your husband dumped you? You would have nothing."

In China's coastal cities, young women are increasingly developing professional careers and marrying later. Owning property serves as a way of ensuring they are not beholden to men. "A house gives you the freedom to choose your life," says a 29-year-old journalist from Hunan who bought a two-story villa in 1998. "If you don't have a house, you have nothing-- so ...