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Luxury goods
Million dollar mastiffs
Xi Jinping’s crackdown on corruption is hitting Chinese luxury-peddlers harder than foreign ones
Dec 12th 2015 | BEIJING | From the print edition
crackdown: action that is taken to deal more strictly with crime, a problem, protests etc
e.g. the government's crackdown on/against drugs
peddlers: someone who goes from place to place in order to sell something.
CHEN BINQI grows and sells abalone, a delicious kind of mollusc, in Dongshan, a seaside resort in the southern province of Fujian. He says that from 2010 to 2012 the price never dropped below 50 yuan ($7.7) for 500 grams on tomb-sweeping day, a public holiday and one of the busiest days for tourists. In 2013 it fell to 40 yuan, which meant most breeders were selling below cost. “Now it’s down to 30-something, which is unbearable.”
山东东山鲍鱼价格下滑。
abalone: a kind of shellfish
mollusc: a type of sea or land animal that has a soft body covered by a hard shell
tomb-sweeping day: 清明节
breeders: someone who breeds animals or plants as a job； 养殖者
In the neighbouring province of Guangdong, Lin Gongxi has been carving jade for 50 years in Jieyang, China’s jade capital. When business was good, he told Southern Metropolis Daily, he used to go to bed at 2am and get up at 6am. Now he often has no work for eight days out of ten. Half the shops at Jieyang’s jade-trading centre are empty. Rents have fallen by three-quarters.
广东揭阳玉石市场萎缩。
carve: to make an object or pattern by cutting a piece of wood or stone
In Beijing’s Panjiayuan market, Wang Lin sells copies of Ming and Qing dynasty carved furniture. Same story. Businesspeople used to order ten-piece suites of office furniture; he sold them as fast as his carpenters could make them, sometimes faster (there was a waiting list). Now, prices have halved and he “can shift maybe a couple of chairs out of ten”.
北京潘家园仿明清家具风光不再。
carpenters : someone whose job is making and repairing wooden objects
shift: If a shop or company shifts goods, they sell goods that are difficult to sell. (BRIT)
e.g. Some suppliers were selling at a loss to shift stock.
China is the world’s biggest market for luxury goods, accounting (by some measures) for half of all luxury spending. The slowdown in the growth of China’s economy and household incomes is usually seen as bad for rich-country purveyors of luxuries such as perfumes, golf clubs, art and the like. Which it is: LVMH, a producer of champagne and handbags, recently closed three shops in China, while Christie’s annual auction of Asian 20th-century and contemporary art in Hong Kong earned only HK$508m ($66m) in November, down from HK$935m in 2013.
作为世界最大的奢侈品消费国，中国经济的放缓影响国外奢侈品在华业绩。
purveyors: a business that supplies goods, services, or information =suppliers
auction: a public sale where goods are sold to the person who offers the highest price.
But the woes of Western vanitymongers are trifling compared with those of their Chinese counterparts. Prices of jade and Tibetan mastiffs, for example, have dropped by half or more. Hundreds of businesses have gone bust. This owes as much to politics as economics.
国内奢侈品行业更加受到冲击，不仅有经济的原因，还有政治的原因。
woes: formal the problems and troubles affecting someone
e.g. the country's economic woes
vanity: having too high an opinion of one's looks, abilities, etc; conceit
e.g. She had none of the vanity so often associated with beautiful women.
monger: 1. someone who sells a particular thing
e.g. a fishmonger
- person who makes something unpleasant widely known
e.g. a rumor/gossipmonger; a scandalmonger
trifling: unimportant or of little value
e.g. a trifling sum of money; matters of trifling importance
mastiffs: 藏獒
go bust: If a company goes bust, it loses so much money that it is forced to close down.
e.g. a Swiss company which went bust last May.
The economy went from boom to bust (=from increasing to decreasing) very quickly.
That doggy in the window
Take Tibetan mastiffs, a breed of enormous sheep-guarding dog (one is pictured above, on sale). These were the must-have status symbol for China’s new billionaires in the late 2000s. Three years ago ordinary Tibetan mastiffs could fetch around $20,000. Now they sell for a tenth of that. Earlier this year an animal-welfare group rescued 20 abandoned mastiffs from the back of a lorry, which was taking them to a slaughterhouse to be sold for leather and meat—for a mere $5 each.
藏獒变得越来越廉价。
fetch:to be sold for a particular amount of money, especially at a public sale - used especially in news reports =go for
e.g. The painting is expected to fetch at least $20 million.
leather: treated animal skin which is used for making shoes, clothes, bags, and furniture.
Tibetan mastiffs were a fad for plutocrats, usually bought as status-enhancing guard dogs. But demand for most other Chinese luxuries depends on a culture of gift-giving. Every transaction must be marked by a present: jade, tea, a meal. One billionaire, Hong Weihua, even paid for a delegation of officials from his hometown to visit America (quite legally).
其他类的奢侈品有馈赠的功能。
fad: something that people like or do for a short time, or that is fashionable for a short time
e.g. Interest in organic food is not a fad, it's here to stay.
e.g. the latest / current fad ; a fad for physical fitness ; Rap music proved to be more than just a passing fad.
e.g. He does not believe environmental concern is a passing fad.
plutocrats: (often disapproving) a person who is powerful because of their wealth
delegation: a group of people who represent a company, organization etc
e.g. the head of the American delegation to the United Nations
e.g. a delegation of government officials
Since 2013 the anti-corruption campaign of Xi Jinping, China’s president, has made conspicuous consumption politically suspect and reined in the practice of lavishing gifts on officials. Tea used to be a favourite present, especially Pu’er, a fermented and aged variety from the south-western province of Yunnan. The price of top-of-the-line Golden tea from the Tae tea company, the world’s largest Pu’er maker, fell from 917 yuan per 357 grams in March 2014 to 512 yuan, before rallying a bit (see chart). The president of the Yunnan Tea Association told the Kunming Daily that, after a boom and bust, the tea business was entering “a new normal” (a term popularised by Mr Xi, who uses it to describe slower growth of the economy as a whole). This means lower prices and more modest sales.
反腐使得云南普洱茶的价格回归正常。
conspicuous: very easy to notice
suspect: adj. not likely to be completely honest
e.g. I've always thought he was a bit of a suspect character.
e.g. The company was involved in some highly suspect business dealings.
made conspicuous consumption politically suspect: (made + adj + n +adv +adj) 使得明目张胆的消费在政治上可疑
reined in: to start to control a situation more strictly
e.g. The government is reining in public expenditure.
e.g. His administration's economic policy would focus on reining in inflation.
fermented: if fruit, beer, wine etc ferments, or if it is fermented, the sugar in it changes to alcohol
e.g. fermented fruit juice
rallying: When someone or something rallies, they begin to recover or improve after having been weak. = recover
e.g. He rallied enough to thank his doctors.
e.g. The Tokyo stock market rallied later in the day.
The abalone business shows that it is Mr Xi’s rule against “extravagant eating and drinking”, rather than a lack of cash, that lies behind the luxury squeeze. Mr Chen, the seafood-dealer in Fujian, says abalone is not especially pricey, but because it is seen as a luxury “sales took a big hit”. Of the breeders he knows, 40% quit during 2013 and 2014.
反对“大吃大喝”导致鲍鱼行业受创。
lie behind: If you refer to what lies behind a situation or event, you are referring to the reason the situation exists or the event happened.
squeeze: difficulty or hardship caused by shortage of money or time, etc
e.g. She's just lost her job, so they're really feeling the squeeze.
hit: a conspicuous success
e.g. That song was his first hit and marked the beginning of his career
At the top end of the mastiff business, it is not so bleak. In 2011 a coal baron is said to have paid 10m yuan ($1.5m) for Big Splash, a Tibetan mastiff puppy. In 2014 a property developer paid 12m yuan for a dog, making it the world’s most expensive canine. Han Lianming, a mastiff breeder near Beijing, says the market for such finest-quality dogs still looks good. “Someone offered me 20m yuan for that one. It was crazy,” he says contentedly, pointing to a vast ball of russet fur and teeth that is lumbering around the courtyard (the deal did not come off). A select few millionaires appear immune to the anti-corruption campaign and unfazed by dog-breeders’ efforts during the boom years to boost supply by crossbreeding. This diminished the rarity-value of mastiffs, but it also produced some highly sought-after specimens.
对于顶级藏獒市场来说，情况并不算太糟。
baron: a businessman with a lot of power or influence
canine: dog
contented: happy and satisfied because your life is good
russet: a reddish brown colour
lumbering: to move in a slow, awkward way
immune to: not affected by something that happens or is done
e.g. The Labour Party is not immune to new ideas.
e.g. Football is not immune to economic recession.
unfazed: not confused or shocked by a difficult situation or by something bad that has happened
e.g.The Prime Minister appeared to be totally unfazed by the protesters.
sought-after: wanted by a lot of people but rare or difficult to get
much/highly sought-after
e.g. a much sought-after defense lawyer
e.g. By the mid-1920s, she had become one of Broadway's most sought-after actresses.
specimens: an example of sth, especially an animal or a plant
The jade market, however, has little good news to report. Yu Ming, the director of the jade committee of the China Traditional Culture Promotion Council, a state-run body, says that though sales at big auction houses are holding up, the retail business is plummeting. In big cities such as Beijing they have fallen by 10-20%. In second- and third-tier cities (such as provincial capitals), he says, sales are down by 40-50%. In 2013 there was a spike in the price of raw jade from neighbouring Myanmar, when political violence briefly disrupted supplies. Mr Yu says many thought the conflict would lead to higher prices in China. But to everyone’s surprise the retail price actually fell. “There just isn’t that big a market any more,” he laments.
但是对于玉石市场来说，行情一直在变差。
body: group of people working or acting as a unit
e.g. a legislative, an elected body; A government body is investigating the problem.
plummeting: to suddenly and quickly decrease in value or amount
= plunge
e.g. Profits plummeted from £49 million to £11 million.
e.g. House prices have plummeted down.
spike: If there is a spike in the price, volume, or amount of something, the price, volume, or amount of it suddenly increases.
e.g. Although you'd think business would have boomed during the war, there was only a small spike in interest.
laments: If you lament something, you express your sadness, regret, or disappointment about it.
e.g. The nation lamented the death of its great war leader.
e.g. He lamented that people had expected too much of him too soon.
From the print edition: China