碧桂园森林城市：中国房市崩盘与一座马来西亚空城 - 纽约时报双语版

It was an audacious real estate project undertaken a decade ago by a Chinese developer: a $100 billion city in Malaysia built on sand and shrubby mangroves and sold as a luxury “dream paradise” for China’s middle class.

这是十年前中国开发商实施的一个大胆的房地产项目：在马来西亚的沙地和低矮红树林上建造一座耗资1000亿美元的城市，作为中国中产阶级的豪华“梦幻天堂”出售。

Many of Forest City’s residents today are transient — the caretakers of the grounds who sweep the empty roads and pick up the garbage, trim the hedges and water the plants.

如今，在这个叫做森林城市的地方，许多居民都是临时过客——清扫空旷道路、捡垃圾、修剪树篱、给植物浇水的管理员。

“I see so many new faces,” said Thana Selvi, who works at KK Supermart, a brightly lit convenience store that stands out among the mostly boarded-up, empty spaces on the street level. She rents a room in an apartment above the shop, month to month, for $118.

“我看到了很多新面孔，”在KK超市工作的塔娜·塞尔维说。这是一家灯火通明的便利店，在街边大多用木板围起来的空旷空间中格外醒目。她在商店楼上租了间公寓，月租118美元。

At a distance, Forest City’s rows of high-rises tower over the Johor Strait between Singapore and Malaysia like a monument to China’s economic triumphs. Up close, the streets are quiet, most apartments are dark and large stone slabs demarcate the lush forest from the “land to be developed.”

在远处，森林城市的一排排高楼耸立在新加坡和马来西亚之间的柔佛海峡上，就像一座见证中国经济成就的纪念碑。近看，街道很安静，大多数公寓都黑着灯，巨大的石板将茂密的森林与“待开发土地”区分开来。

The giant Chinese property developer Country Garden dreamed up Forest City as a “green futuristic city” spanning 12 square miles and four man-made islands. There were supposed to be 700,000 apartments. Only one island, with 26,000 apartments in several dozen towers, was built.

中国大型房地产开发商碧桂园设想中的森林城市是一座“未来绿色城市”，占地约3000公顷，有四座人工岛。这里应该有70万套公寓。但只建成了一个岛，几十座高楼里有2.6万套公寓。

Since Country Garden defaulted on its debt last year, it has become an emblem of the excesses of China’s housing boom, a corporate deadbeat unable to pay its bills or build the apartments it promised. Hundreds of thousands of home buyers and projects like Forest City are in limbo. Creditors that are suing Country Garden in Hong Kong could eventually seize Forest City.

自去年债务违约以来，碧桂园已成为中国房地产过热的象征，一家无力支付账单或建造其所承诺公寓的赖账企业。数十万购房者和像森林城市这样的项目陷入了困境。正在香港起诉碧桂园的债权人最终可能会接管森林城市。

With few residents and an uncertain future, Forest City now serves as a blank canvas. It has been used as a setting for the reality shows “The Mole” on Netflix and “Battle Trip” on South Korean television. A cryptocurrency investor, Balaji Srinivasan, recently started using a space in Forest City for a temporary tech school.

森林城市居民寥寥，前途未卜，如今它就像一张空白的画布。Netflix的真人秀《谁是内鬼》(The Mole)和韩国电视台的《战斗旅行》(Battle Trip)都曾在这里取景。加密货币投资者巴拉吉·斯里尼瓦桑最近开始将森林城市的一个空间用作临时技术学校。

But Country Garden is holding on to its ambitions. “The blueprint for Forest City will not change,” Country Garden said in a statement to The New York Times. “Reasonable development and construction will be carried out according to demand.”

但碧桂园并未放弃这个宏伟计划。“森林城市的蓝图不会改变，”碧桂园在给《纽约时报》的声明中表示。“将根据需求进行合理开发建设。”

For years, Country Garden gorged on cheap money to sustain a build-and-they-will-come strategy that characterized China’s housing frenzy. When it tried to take that model overseas, chasing money that was leaving China, it ran into trouble.

多年来，碧桂园大量获取廉价资金，维持“造了就会有人来”的战略，这也是中国楼市狂潮的特点。当碧桂园试图将这种模式带到海外，追逐正在离开中国的资金时，它遇到了麻烦。

In 2014, almost as soon as trucks began to dump sand on sea grass to build land, the project was thrown off track. Construction was halted for months to assess Forest City’s environmental impact after officials in Singapore — a few miles away across the strait — raised concerns to Malaysia. Two years later, China, fearing the collapse of its currency because money was streaming out of the country, stopped citizens from buying property in Malaysia and other nations.

2014年，几乎就在卡车开始将沙子倾倒在海草上造陆之初，该项目出了岔子。海峡对岸几公里外的新加坡官员向马来西亚提出担忧后，森林城市的建设暂停了数月，以评估其环境影响。两年后，由于担心资金外流导致人民币崩溃，中国开始阻止公民在马来西亚和其他国家购买房产。

Local Malaysian authorities, who have a 40 percent financial stake in Forest City, have tried to revive interest in the project. They promised to turn it into a special financial zone and last month dropped all taxes on the so-called family offices of ultrawealthy investors.

拥有森林城市40%股份的马来西亚地方当局试图重振人们对这个项目的兴趣。他们承诺将把这里变成一个金融特区，并于上月取消了对超级富豪投资者所谓的家族办公室的所有税收。

Yet all around there were signs that Country Garden had miscalculated demand.

然而，种种迹象表明，碧桂园误判了需求。

On a trip to Forest City in early September, the office tower at the heart of the complex, where local officials now hope money managers will open offices, was locked with chains and watched over by guards. At night, the building was barely visible except for a broken green LED sign, blinking on occasion, perched on top. In the blocks of apartments nearby, entire floors were dark.

在9月初前往森林城市的旅途中，可以看到该建筑群中心办公大楼上着链锁，有保安把守，目前当地官员希望投资管理公司能在这座楼里开设办事处。到了晚上，除了楼顶偶尔闪烁的一个破损的绿色LED指示牌外，大楼几乎是看不见的。在附近的公寓楼里，整个楼层一团漆黑。

Stores in the mall, once earmarked for luxury retail and duty-free shopping, were chained up — some were filled with rotting wood and construction materials. The only patrons one evening were three women riding around on plastic motorized dinosaurs that lit up to “Last Friday Night” by Katy Perry.

商场里的商店曾经被指定为奢侈品零售店和免税店，如今也被锁住——一些商店里堆满腐烂的木材和建筑材料。一天晚上，唯一的顾客是三个女人，她们骑着闪闪发光、播着凯蒂·佩里《上周五之夜》(Last Friday Night)的塑料机动恐龙四处转悠。

“Country Garden was riding the wave rather than thinking about the opportunity to create a city,” said Michael Grove, a landscape architect at the design firm Sasaki who was brought in, together with consultants from McKinsey, to help make the developer’s plans more economically and environmentally viable in late 2014.

“碧桂园是在追逐潮流，而没有真正去考虑创造一座城市的机会，”2014年底，佐佐木设计公司的景观设计师迈克尔·格罗夫说。他与麦肯锡的顾问一起被请来，帮助开发商制定更具经济和环境可行性的计划。

“They were doing construction on the fly,” said Mr. Grove.

“他们施工很匆忙，”格罗夫说。

If any company could have pulled off Forest City, it would have been Country Garden. Once one of China’s most prolific developers, it boasted of its “fast development and sales.” For Forest City, it plastered advertisements in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other cities. It flew in interested Chinese buyers to see model apartments. Real estate agents played up the possibility of getting special visas and a pathway to Malaysian citizenship.

如果说有哪家公司能成功打造“森林城市”，那本该是碧桂园。它曾经是中国最有名的开发商之一，以“开发和销售速度快”为傲。为宣传森林城市，它在北京、上海、广州等城市张贴了广告。有兴趣的中国买家飞来参观样板房。房地产经纪人大肆宣传获得特殊签证和成为马来西亚公民的可能性。

In China, where there are few places to invest savings other than real estate, Forest City was cast as a hard-to-miss opportunity.

在中国，除了房地产，几乎没有什么地方可以投资储蓄，森林城市被视为一个不容错过的机会。

Su Mu was living in Shanghai in 2016 when Country Garden offered him a free trip to Forest City. He found the air clean and the scenery pleasant. He had invested in properties in China, so he bought a place in Forest City for around $151,000.

2016年，碧桂园为生活在上海的穆苏（音）提供了一次免费的森林城市之旅。他发现那里空气清新，景色宜人。在中国投资了房产的他花了大约15.1万美元在森林城市买了一处房产。

“The prices here were not expensive compared to those in China,” said Mr. Mu, who recently decided to move to Forest City full time. “I am now 40 and want to change to a new environment and have a new start.” There aren’t a lot of people in his building, he acknowledged. “It was not very good at first, it felt far away and remote.”

“与中国的房价相比，这里并不贵，”穆苏说，他最近决定彻底搬到森林城市。“我现在40岁了，想换一个新的环境，重新开始。”他承认，他所在的大楼里人不多。“一开始不是很好，觉得很远，很偏僻。”

As the sun set along Forest City’s white sand beach, several families from nearby communities brought their children to play in the modest Forest City water park.

当太阳在森林城市的白色沙滩落下时，附近社区的几个家庭带着孩子在森林城市不起眼的水上公园玩耍。

One Chinese couple took photographs on a long sculpture called “Stairway to Heaven” that stretched into the sky. They said they bought an apartment in 2016 and traveled from a coastal city in Zhejiang to Forest City once a year for vacation.

一对中国夫妇在向天空延伸的长雕塑“天国阶梯”上拍照。他们说，2016年，他们在森林城市买了一套公寓，每年从浙江一个沿海城市来这里度假一次。

Most of the owners in Forest City seem to rent their apartments out and live in China. Across China, so many developers went bust that vast numbers of home buyers were left stranded without the apartments they had paid for. Some people who own units in Forest City, speaking in a private group on Chinese social media, recently expressed relief that their apartments had been built.

森林城市的大多数业主似乎都把公寓租出去，自己住在中国。在中国各地，很多开发商倒闭了，大量购房者无法拿到他们购买的房子。一些在森林城市拥有住房的人最近在中国社交媒体上的一个私密小组中表示，他们的公寓已经建成，这让他们松了一口气。

Country Garden said 80 percent of its apartments were sold to buyers from more than 20 countries. The developer declined to say how many people were living at Forest City today.

碧桂园表示，其80%的公寓卖给了来自20多个国家的买家。它拒绝透露如今有多少人住在森林城市。

But on a trip last month, Forest City looked abandoned. Most of the people there were Chinese tourists, restaurant and store owners and a team of landscapers, cleaners and security guards from Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh who worked tirelessly to keep things running. Early in the morning, before the hot sun, some of the workers rested on the balconies of Forest City apartments, their cleaning rags and sarongs hanging to dry.

但在上个月的一次旅行中，可以看到森林城市感觉像是被遗弃了。那里的大多数人都是中国游客、餐馆和商店老板，还有一队来自印度尼西亚、尼泊尔、巴基斯坦和孟加拉国的园艺师、清洁工和保安，他们不知疲倦地工作，维持一切正常运转。一大早，在烈日下，一些工人在森林城市公寓的阳台上休息，晾着抹布和纱笼。

On the street level, two Chinese businessmen, using a translation app on their phones, tried to enlist laborers from Bangladesh to do some work.

在街上，两名中国商人用手机上的翻译应用程序试图招募来自孟加拉国的劳工做一些工作。

Nearby, a group of Nepalese security guards stood in a perfect line to greet their Forest City manager.

在附近，一群尼泊尔保安站成一排，迎接他们的森林城市经理。

Outside the city, along a highway built by Country Garden leading to the causeway connecting it to Singapore, landscapers in green shirts and the occasional sun hat hunched over hedges or blew leaves off the street.

在城外，碧桂园修建的一条通往新加坡的高速公路边，穿着绿色衬衫、偶尔戴着太阳帽的园林工人们俯身修剪树篱，或清扫街上的树叶。

Zixu Wang对本文有报道贡献。

艾莎(Alexandra Stevenson)是《纽约时报》上海分社社长，报道中国经济和社会新闻。点击查看更多关于她的信息。

翻译：纽约时报中文网

点击查看本文英文版。

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