Word: golden
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Beijing's golden resources mall ought to be a shopper's paradise. Built on the city's outskirts in 2004, the Art Deco-style center boasts a staggering 6 million sq. ft. (560,000 sq m) of retail space, making it the world's second largest mall, 30% bigger than Minnesota's famed Mall of America, once the largest. Golden Resources accommodates more than 1,000 shops, dozens of restaurants, 230 escalators and an ice-skating rink. On its five floors, you can buy everything from fur coats to exercise equipment to pet supplies...
...There's something missing, though: shoppers. On a recent Monday afternoon, despite blazing temperatures outside, the only crowd to be found in the air-conditioned expanse of Golden Resources is a gaggle of shopgirls on their breaks. The few customers loitering around appear to be just window-shopping. Nearly half of the mall's original restaurants shut down in the first year after opening. The parking garage's 10,000 spaces host a handful of cars. Xiao Chen, a shoe salesman, states the obvious: business stinks. "Monthly sales here are not as much as a weekly sales in other stores...
...Golden Resources' barren parquets are less the exception than the rule in China these days. Rampant overdevelopment of retail space and too-optimistic expectations about the spending power of the country's growing middle class have produced a plethora of gui gouwu zhongxin (ghost malls) in the nation's metropolises-megacenters like Golden Resources that are struggling to attract shops and consumers. Although retail sales throughout China have been growing at 12% a year and in 2006 totaled $800 billion, during China's recent construction boom far more retail space has been added than the market can absorb. More than...
...Franziska is the Charlie who won a golden ticket to the Chocolate Factory, Adrià is Willy Wonka. For all his influence and renown, the chef still clearly delights in his work, and his enthusiasm for the joy that food can bring is contagious. "This is the most beautiful thing I've done," he says about hosting the Documenta visitors. "You have to see their faces to understand it. It's not just something conceptual - they live in their flesh. It's a magical experience." Although Adrià is quick to point out that other media, such as photography, encountered...
...majority on the current Supreme Court. In its big ruling on school desegregation last month, Parents Involved v. Seattle, the Justices forbade school districts to use race to assign students to schools--even for the purpose of desegregation. Chief Justice John Roberts quoted many of the Court's golden oldies on this point, like this from a 2000 case: "It demeans the dignity and worth of a person to be judged by ancestry instead of by his or her own merit and essential qualities...