Lighting a cigarette in a teahouse in Xi'an, in northern Shaanxi province, the 49-year-old pauses when asked how much money he has, before saying in a conspiratorial voice: "You can safely say I'm a multi-millionaire (in yuan)."

Research by the Hurun Report, a magazine that tracks China's wealthiest, revealed in April that 825,000 people had personal wealth of over 10 million yuan (1.5 million dollars), or 0.06 percent of the population.

And at a time when the financial crisis has left 25 million migrant workers out of a job in China, the vast majority of these millionaires said the meltdown had not had any impact on their lifestyle, the research said.

Sipping his tea contentedly, Chen, a rotund, jovial man sporting a striped shirt with red braces, agreed.

The real estate company owner talked animatedly of the Cirrus SR22 private plane he was having shipped over from the United States to satisfy a childhood dream.

"This plane is essentially the BMW of the air," he said smugly of the aircraft he paid five million yuan for, describing an elaborate parachute system that would bring him safely back to earth if there was a problem.

Chen says he is one of the first in this part of China to have bought a private plane -- a luxury purchase that is still very rare in the country even among the group of multi-millionaires.

It is all a far cry from a decade ago, he said, his rags to riches story mirroring China's own rapid economic growth over about the same period.

In the late 1990s, he had just delisted from the army, been given a demobilisation fee of 50,000 yuan and had decided to buy a second-hand truck to transport goods.

"I rented a driver and it went for more than a year, but it got into two road accidents, and it hit a person -- I realised it was just too dangerous, and not profitable," he said.

That is when Chen discovered real estate and decided to set up a company with some of his own funds and borrowed money.

A lawyer by training, he had spent most of his working life in the army but had gained some business experience in the late 1980s while in a tank division, where he oversaw a unit that produced and sold oxygen.

At the time, he said, the government allowed army personnel to do business on the side as a way to supplement their income.

"But then the government said we couldn't do this anymore -- the army had got messy, everyone was earning money, they weren't training," he said.

That experience helped his first foray into real estate, and soon he had built up Weinan Changlong Real Estate Development Company -- a firm of over 20 staff members with a turnover of several million yuan a year.

He now has "many houses," he says, without being drawn into the exact number, and proudly talks about his caravan -- a rarity in China and a purchase that drew a questioning look from his wife, who co-owns the company.

Laughing, Chen recalled her saying: "What are you going to get next, a plane?"

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