Giddy from rising stocks in China.

Keep your eye on China’s stock markets. Stocks are soaring, and many urban Chinese can hardly contain themselves at the prospect of sudden fortunes.

The markets have climbed more than 50 percent so far this year, and have tripled since the beginning of 2006. Here’s a story I wrote last week on the matter.

The latest indication of the stock bubble came today. State media reported that households had pulled more than the equivalent of $21 billion U.S. dollars from banks in April. Bank deposits usually go up each month from Chinese savings, so this is a sign that something is afoot.

Where’s the money going? Not a lot of choices in China. It’s going into the market.

And it’s not the big money guys – the institutional investors. According to this morning’s Beijing News, of the 250 billion yuan ($32.5 billion USD) that went into the market in April, only a third were institutional funds. The rest were from individuals.

Item: Another in a series of articles on Tibet I've written came out over the weekend. This one is about global warming and its impact on the retreating Himalayan glaciers, which hold more water than anywhere on Earth except the polar regions and Alaska.