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(A) Read the following sentences and make the necessary changes so as to be able to use these words at least once
Although - However -
In spite of - In spite of the fact that -
Since -
Due to - Due to the fact that
- The Chinese love shopping, they love brands, and they love international products. The average income is low.
- New shoppers are born everyday. China won’t run out of them.
- Largely empty megamalls are an increasingly common sight in cities around China. More are being built.
- Many megamalls have expensive stores. They are located near low-income populations.
- Many shopping centers in China are "ghost malls" with empty wings, bored shopkeepers and a lack of shoppers. Experts have attributed the problem to inexperience in management. Most mall managers are the same developers who built them.
- The New South China Mall features a roller coaster, a Venetian canal and a replica of the Arc de Triomphe. The mega project has only a few retail merchants and remains 99% vacant.
- The Golden Resources Mall was the world’s largest when it opened seven years ago in a Beijing suburb, and yet it has always drawn a small number of shoppers. It has performed better than the New South China Mall, in Dongguan, which succeeded Golden Resources as the world’s largest mall in 2005. Designed for 2,350 tenants, New South China Mall now has about a dozen.
- “There are empty malls all over China,” said Vernon Martin, the principal of American Property Research, a Los Angeles appraisal firm with clients in the U.S. and Asia. “We are dealing with a country whose median income is about 10 percent of the United States. But the developers give them malls full of upscale stores. It doesn’t seem rational.”
- Successful malls can be found. Some developers have done well through their careful planning and sound management. But many less-experienced companies have lost uncounted millions.
(B) Please read the following short article and then ask questions to get the answers below
In New Delhi. India, six malls opened in the last quarter of 2011. Five of them are nearly empty, with occupancy rates of only 7 to 10 percent, according to Jones Lang LaSalle Meghraj. Nationwide, some 17.3 million square feet of mall space opened in 2010, but only 9.3 million square feet of that is leased.
So bad is the leasing environment that the two-year-old Mallum Mall, in Mumbai, was demolished in June 2011 to make way for a residential and office project. The small center’s owners failed to find a single tenant.
“As of now there are close to 225 shopping centers across the country,” said Amanpreet Singh Banga, manager of retail agency for the Knight Frank India brokerage, in Delhi. “There are just a dozen or 15 which are actually surviving well.”
Industry observers say poor location is among the biggest reasons for the failed malls in China and India. A good example is New South China Mall, which is connected to neither train nor subway lines and is in a pedestrian-unfriendly neighborhood.
These are the answers- In the last quarter of 2011
- 7 to 10%
- in Mumbai
- a residential and office project
- not even one tenant
- about 225
- because it is not connected to train or subway lines
