On-line video game maker Changyou.com will become the first new Chinese listing on a U.S. exchange in eight months if it prices its $120 million IPO in early April as planned and lists on Nasdaq.

Given the shut IPO market — there have been only two U.S. IPOs in the past seven months, including the $828 million IPO by kids food maker Mead Johnson Nutrition on the New York Stock Exchange in February — Changyou’s attempt to do an IPO looks daring.

The last two Chinese IPOs to list on a U.S. exchange– China Mass Media and China Distance Education Holdings Ltd, which both listed on NYSE’s Arca exchange, flopped last summer. In fact, after a record year in 2007 that saw 31 Chinese IPOs raise $6.8 billion in the U.S., they fell off a cliff in 2008.

But it helps Changyou that it’s a spin-off (just as Mead Johnson was a spin off of drug company Bristol Myers Squibb) of Chinese internet portal Sohu.com, which lists on the Nasdaq and whose shares, up 3.3 percent in the past year, are well known by investors. And according to its SEC filing, its revenues are growing very quickly. (One big red flag: 93.6 percent of its sales come from a single game, Tian Long Ba Bu.)

If this deals flies, it could spell the return of China to U.S. exchanges. “China is kind of a risky place, but I think there are a lot of Chinese companies ready to go public when the window re-opens, ” said Paul Bard, research director at IPOHome.com.

And even with domestic IPOs in China set to start again– the China Securities Regulatory Commission has all but stopped approving IPOs due to a prolonged market in the stock market, and will soon issue rules rules to get the market going again– the U.S. remains a big draw with its deep pockets of liquidity, Bard said.

(PHOTO: Electronic board showing stock information at a Shangai brokerage, March 9, 2009) Aly Song/REUTERS.