Developed economies are characterised by restlessness. As John Updike mused, “most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went”. No wonder, then, that investors have been transfixed by the growing wanderlust of Chinese consumers. Ctrip, easily the country’s largest online travel agent, has beaten other US-listed China stocks by 250 percentage points over the past five years. 7 Days, a budget hotel chain, has outperformed by 70 percentage points since listing on Nasdaq in November 2009.

Neither stock is for widows and orphans. Ctrip has given up market share to the likes of Qunar (“where are you going?”) and the Expedia-controlled sites Kuxun and Elong in recent years, while 7 Days cannot keep expanding like it has, from 38,000 loyalty-scheme members five years ago to 19m now. But both are early movers, well positioned to ride the secular leisure boom. In a recent Credit Suisse survey of Chinese consumers, half of respondents said they planned to go on holiday within the next 12 months (two-fifths said they had done so within the past year), and almost all of them within China. Neither stock should be threatened, either, by the rise of high-speed rail. On the contrary, 7 Days has the largest exposure of any budget hotel chain to the second and third-tier cities that should see the strongest passenger growth as the 30,000km network is developed, notes Morgan Stanley.