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Industrial clusters
Bleak times in bra town
One-product towns fuelled China’s export boom. Many are now in trouble
Apr 16th 2016 | GURAO | From the print edition
A PYRAMID of bras stands beside each worker at the Honji Underwear factory in Gurao, a town in the southern province of Guangdong. The workshop resounds with the clack-clack of sewing machines as employees repeat their single, assigned task before passing the garment on to the next person on the production line. Most of the 22,000 thickly padded bras made here each day are destined for shops in China. In this “Town of Underwear”, as the local government likes to call it, there are thousands of similar factories. Gurao produces 350m bras and 430m vests and pairs of knickers a year for sale at home and abroad. Undies account for 80% of its industrial output.
开篇生动的生产场景描写，引出对于内衣城的介绍。
resound: 回响；
are destined for: 命中注定的；
例句: She seemed destined for a successful career.
account for: 占据；
Across Gurao, billboards show big-breasted—usually foreign—women sporting the lingerie that underwires the town’s prosperity (see picture). But many people in Gurao and other underwear-factory clusters around Shantou, a coastal city, worry about the future. Costs are rising, but customers are unwilling to pay more, says June Liu of Pengsheng Underwear, which makes lingerie and swimwear. Last year several factory-owners fled from Gurao, leaving debts and unpaid wages. Some also shut up shop in Chendian, another underwear town nearby.
描述如今内衣城面临的困境。
sport: wear or display in an ostentatious or proud manner. She was sporting a new hat.
例句: Many of them sport stylized renderings of leaping fish, lumbering elephants, soaring birds, prancing female nudes and prowling or preening panthers. (Seattle Times Dec 19, 2016)
underwire: provide support for 短语:underwires the town’s prosperity非常形象地说明了内衣产业对于当地经济繁荣的支柱作用。
During the past three decades of rapid economic growth, one-industry towns like Gurao and Chendian sprang up along China’s eastern seaboard, often in what were once paddyfields. With investment from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and a huge influx of migrant labour from China’s interior, they fuelled the country’s export boom. There are now more than 500 such towns, making products such as buttons, ties, plastic shoes, car tyres, toys, Christmas decorations and toilets (see map).
介绍中国其他的各种“城”:纽扣城、领带城、轮胎城等。
spring up: to suddenly appear or start to exist
例句: New shopping malls were springing up rapidly on what was once farmland.
a influx of: the arrival of large numbers of people or large amounts of money, goods etc, especially suddenly
fuel the boom: 刺激繁荣
Knickerbocker glories
Gurao is one of several underwear hubs that have made China the world’s largest lingerie producer. The country made 2.9 billion bras in 2014, 60% of the world’s total, according to Frost & Sullivan, a consultancy. In several industries, the clustering of similar firms in the same place creates a critical mass of good suppliers and workers with relevant skills. Niche towns in China produce 63% of the world’s shoes, 70% of its spectacles and 90% of its energy-saving lamps.
这些小城对中国出口商品的贡献。
hub: a center of activity or interest or commerce or transportation; a focal point around which events revolve. If all of an airline's flights go through Atlanta, you'd say the southern city is their hub.
例句: “Music is very universal. Your phone is an entertainment hub, and entertainment includes only three things: movies, games and music.” (Wall Street Journal Dec 16, 2016)
cluster: 集中；come together as in a cluster or flock. When you and your friends huddle awkwardly around the snack table at a party, whispering and trying to muster enough nerve to hit the dance floor, you’ve formed a cluster.
例句: But for Anderson, who lives on the the poorer north side of Milwaukee where the city’s black population is clustered, voting was anything but easy. (Los Angeles Times Dec 17, 2016)
All this growth has had an environmental cost. In 2010 Greenpeace, an NGO, reported that fabric-dyeing plants in Gurao had severely polluted the water, making it unfit to drink. But the bra-makers of Gurao are far more worried about foreign competition than foreign eco-warriors.
生产对于环境的危害。
China’s consumer goods **grabbed a huge share of global markets ** thanks to their low prices. That advantage is fading. Since 2001 wages have risen by 12% a year. Thailand and Vietnam, where labour is cheaper and taxes lower, now make lingerie for global brands such as Victoria’s Secret and La Senza. China’s biggest underwear firm, Regina Miracle, will open two factories in Vietnam this year, its first outside China. It plans another two there by 2018. Cambodia and Myanmar are joining the fray. Wacoal, a Japanese underwear-maker, opened factories in both countries in 2013 and another in Myanmar last year.
中国制造的优势渐渐被其他东南亚国家取代。
join the fray: join the fight or argument. After listening to the argument, Mary decided to jump into the fray.
例句: ECO cars are set to dominate motor shows for the next few years and Hyundai is the latest to join the fray with a solar-powered concept at next month's Korean event.
Gurao still has advantages, such as excellent supply chains. Several factories there make components for undergarments: dyed textiles, lace and the tough foam used to upholster push-up bras. Every form of elastic waistband used for boxer shorts is produced locally. The town also appears to enjoy loose regulation of trademarks. Some of the waistbands use misspellings such as “Calven Klain” and “Oalvin Klein” in an attempt to cash in on famous brand names.
中国现在任然具有的优势:供应链，以及对商标宽松的管制。
cash in on: to make a profit from a situation in a way that other people think is wrong or unfair; 乘机利用
例句: The HBO ensemble comedy, follows a group of young, nerdy software developers trying to cash in on the tech gold rush. Los Angeles Times(Jul 10, 2014)
elastic: 弹性的；
Officials in Gurao insist that the town can overcome its difficulties by upgrading its technology and using machines instead of people. But attracting the capital and skill to transform Gurao may be more difficult than the daring step taken by a local entrepreneur in 1982 when he opened its first bra factory, at a time when private enterprise was still frowned on in China.
产业升级面临吸引资本和技术的困境。
daring: 大胆的；
frown on: to disapprove of someone or something, especially someone's behaviour
Even China’s largest underwear manufacturers have always found it hard to get long-term commitments from buyers. That has made them reluctant to spend on research or technology. Some factories in Gurao are upgrading, for example by making seamless laser-cut underwear and using new, more comfortable, materials to underwire bras. But most remain low-tech and labour-intensive.
国外的买家订单不稳定也是导致很多厂家不愿改进技术的原因。
Because they are dominated by private enterprises, towns such as Gurao may be nimbler at adapting to changing market conditions than China’s steel and coal cities, where 1.8m layoffs are planned in the next few years. In 2013 migrant workers made up nearly half of Gurao’s 161,000 people. Many are low-skilled, moving from one job to another, sewing the same part of the bra as they did in the previous factory. Most did not complete high school and are ill-equipped to retrain for jobs in service industries, which the Chinese government hopes will replace manufacturing ones. But luckily most of them have houses and farmland to go back to in their villages if they lose their jobs.
转型大潮中工人面临的失业困境。
nimble: mentally quick. That spryness can be both physical and mental, so even if your granny isn't very nimble on her feet, she can probably still whip you in chess.
例句: To be nimble and alert, clear-eyed and skeptical, active rather than reactive. (The New Yorker Dec 2, 2016)
ill-equipped: poorly supplied with physical equipment. If you faint at the sight of blood, you're probably ill-equipped to be a surgeon.
例句: He said barriers to a recount in Pennsylvania are pervasive and the state court system is ill-equipped to address the problem. (Seattle Times Dec 4, 2016)
Some of the one-product boomtowns could fade away, leaving little behind but the concrete shells of empty factories and polluted soil. Gurao and other such places have generated extraordinary wealth in once dirt-poor parts of the country. But to thrive in the future, they will need to look beyond the bare necessities.
形象地描述这些城镇不可避免的衰落，指明未来的出路——眼光需要超越生产生活必需品。
From the print edition: China