Great mall of China built on utopian vision
At the Xiuya restaurant, a crocodile paddles across a plexiglass tank, blinking at the incoming lunch crowd. Several more of his kind are piled on a ledge behind him, their jaws taped shut.
“They're from Thailand,” explains a cheerful hostess. “We had 13 of them originally but now there are six.” The rest ended up on diners' plates.
Welcome to the food court at the world's largest shopping centre. The New Yansha Mall, which opened late last month, is part of the 550,000 square-metre Golden Resources complex in western Beijing.
Its scale is testimony to China's nascent consumer culture and its property developers' passion for re-inventing the great American-style shopping mall.
“China has a big population. Our shopping malls have to be bigger than those in the UK,” says Fu Yuehong, New Yansha's general manager.
New Yansha is modelled on the great shopping palaces of the west, including the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, and the Arndale Centre in Manchester, England, one of Europe's largest malls. Chinese executives hired Atlanta-based Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart & Associates for the interior design. Shop tenants were recruited from Germany, Japan, South Korea, France and the US, among other countries.
In its first stage of development, the mall boasts 550 stores, seven cinemas, an ice-skating rink, a car showroom and space for 100 restaurants. An amusement park is under construction. Almost everything a consumer could crave from treadmills and fur coats to Jaguar cars can be found at New Yansha.
“It's a pretty tangible manifestation of a desire to be a retail utopia,” says David Hand, managing director at Jones Lang LaSalle in Beijing, who visited the mall before its official opening.
For many customers yesterday, New Yansha was indeed a kind of utopia. The mall “is awesome”, enthused Telly Wang, a 36-year-old trading company employee who took the day off to bring her parents to shop. “You can buy anything in there.”
Mall managers say more than half a million people have visited since the October 24 opening, most of them from Beijing. But it expects to attract more visitors from other parts of China and from overseas, particularly as the 2008 Beijing Olympics approaches.
“We hope this shopping mall can be a symbol of China's level of development,” says Ms Fu.
Many developers and local government officials in China share this sentiment. Lax lending practices and China's system of promoting officials, in which achievement is measured by economic growth, have helped spark a frenzy of shopping centre developments across the country.
Another complex under construction in southern Guangdong province claims to be China's first “super mega mall”. This rush to build malls many of which are believed to be unprofitable has been so rapid that Beijing in June announced measures to rein in speculation in the sector.
Indeed, despite its international ambitions, New Yansha illustrates how China's shopping mall craze is forcing developers to cut corners. Two weeks after opening, there are still holes in the asphalt outside the mall, a potential hazard for shoppers. Yogen Fru, the Canadian frozen yoghurt stand, has no frozen yoghurt.
And most customers seem to be leaving empty-handed. “It's clean, the atmosphere is good,” says Wang Jinping, a Beijing housewife. “But I'm not buying anything today.”
中国大型购物中心的乌托邦
在秀亚餐厅（Xiuya Restaurant，音译），一条鳄鱼在普列克斯玻璃缸内游来游去，打量着前来餐厅午餐的人群。另有几条鳄鱼堆放在后面的台子上，颚部被胶带封住。
“这些鳄鱼来自泰国。”一位兴高采烈的女服务员解释道，“最初我们有13条，现在只剩6条了。”其余几条都成了盘中餐。
欢迎光临世界最大购物中心的美食广场。新燕莎购物中心(New Yansha Mall)于上月下旬开张，是北京西部地区占地55万平方米的金源建筑群的一部分。
其规模见证了中国日渐成型的消费文化，并显示了房地产开发商立志重新改造这一美国式购物中心的热忱。
新燕莎总经理傅跃红(Fu Yuehong)表示：“中国人口众多，因此购物中心规模要超过英国。”
新燕莎是按西方大型购物大厦的模式建造的，包括明尼苏达州布鲁明顿市的美国商城(Mall of America)以及欧洲最大商城之一、英格兰曼彻斯特市的阿恩戴尔中心(Arndale Centre)。中国高层聘请了位于亚特兰大市的Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, Stewart Associates公司负责室内设计。商城吸引了来自德国、日本、韩国、法国和美国等国的租户入驻。
在一期开发中，该中心以拥有550家商店、7家电影院、一个滑冰场、一个汽车展示屋和100家餐厅。一座娱乐公园也在兴建中。从健步器到皮毛大衣到捷豹轿车,消费者所渴求的一切物品，在新燕莎几乎应有尽有。
北京仲量联行物业管理公司(Jones Lang LaSalle)董事总经理翰德伟(David Hand)于正式开张前光临过商城，他表示：“有明确迹象表明，该商城希望成为零售乌托邦。”
对昔日的许多消费者而言，新燕莎的确堪称乌托邦。商城“太棒了，”36岁的贸易公司雇员Telly Wang激动地说，“人们在此可买到任何东西。”她是特地请了一天假带父母来此购物的。
商城经理透露，自从10月24日开张以来，商城已接待了50多万人，其中大多数来自北京。不过商城预计将吸引更多中国其它地区和海外来客，特别是随着2008年北京奥运会的来临。
傅跃红表示：“我们希望购物中心能成为中国开发水平的标志。”
中国许多开发商和当地政府官员都有这种想法。中国以经济发展来衡量官员业绩，这种官员提拔体制和宽松的借贷方式使得全国各地掀起了兴建购物中心的狂潮。
在广东省南部，另一个建筑群正在兴建中，据称这是中国首家“超大型购物中心。”据信，许多购物中心都是无利可赢，这股兴建热潮如此迅猛，以至于北京方面已于6月宣布采取措施控制该行业的投机行为。
的确，撇开其国际野心不谈，新燕莎也同时显示：中国购物中心热使得开发商不得不偷工减料。开张两周后，商场外的沥青路面上仍有洞坑，这对购物者来说是一个潜在危险。加拿大冰冻酸奶店Yogen Fruz根本没有冰冻酸奶卖。
大多数顾客似乎都是空手而归。“很干净，氛围不错。”北京家庭主妇王金平（Wang Jinping，音译）说：“但我今天不准备买东西。”
