中国扫货团 为日本港口城市注入活力

With his departure time looming and a guidefretting to get back to the ship, Liang Nan has been left in a corner of the Canal City shoppingmall, in Japan’s southern port of Fukuoka, hunched over a mobile phone.

随着离开的时间渐渐逼近，导游开始催促游客回到船上。梁楠(音)一直在福冈运河城购物中心的角落里看着手机。福冈位于日本南部，是一座港口城市。

He has three tasks to perform: guard a huge, growing mountain of shopping, check withnagging relatives back home that everything they asked for has been bought, and discoveronline just how badly his wife’s A shares are doing.

梁楠肩负三项任务：守护一座堆得跟座山似的商品——而且越堆越高;跟老家那群唠叨的亲戚一件一件核对他们要带的商品;以及上网看他老婆的A股到底跌了多少。

The rest of Mr Liang’s party — wife, toddler, mother and mother-in-law — are still roaringaround the Fukuoka branch of Laox in a state of retail fervour. The store, once knownthroughout Japan as an electronics specialist, has broadened its offerings here to please itsnewest customers: Chinese, arriving on cruise ships that bring in as many as 4,900 at a time,with estimated average spending of Y90,000 ($750) each and with just a few hours to shopbefore they set sail back to Tianjin or Shanghai.

梁楠的妻子、孩子、母亲和岳母还在Laox免税店福冈分店里兴致勃勃地逛着，他们正沉浸在购物狂热中。Laox是全日本知名电器商店，如今福冈分店增加了商品种类，以迎合新的消费者——中国人。他们乘游船而来，一次最多达4900人，人均消费约为9万日元(约合750美元)，而且购物仅几个小时后就要乘船返回天津或上海。

In 2014, 91 cruise ships travelled from China to Fukuoka. This year the port is expecting nearlythree times that number. Costa, Royal Caribbean and others are bolstering their Asian fleets tomake all this happen.

2014年，中国到福冈的邮轮抵港次数达到91次。今年这个数字预计将增长近两倍。“歌诗达(Costa)，“皇家加勒比(Royal Caribbean)及其他邮轮公司公司正在扩充亚洲地区船只数量，以满足这一增长。

The Chinese coming here used to be the rich, says Miwa Mochizuki, a spokeswoman for theCanal City mall. Now it is the middle class. Coming by sea makes sense for China’s quality-seeking shoppers, she adds, because the only limit on baggage is what you can cram into yourcabin. The great benefit of the cruise ships, says Fukuoka’s mayor, Takashima Soichiro, is thatthey can deliver the lucrative “shopping bomb exploding in his city.

运河城购物中心发言人望月美和(Miwa Mochizuki)表示，过去来这儿购物的中国人通常是有钱人，而今成了中产阶层。她说，对于追求品质的中国购物者而言，坐船更明智些，因为乘船对行李的唯一限制就是看你能往自己的船舱里塞多少东西。福冈市长高岛宗一郎(Takashima Soichiro)表示，这些邮轮的一大好处，就是可以运来大批“购物狂，为他的城市带来巨额利益。

“A third of these are for us, the rest is for family in Hebei, says Mr Liang, sorting through acollection of bags that contain six rice cookers, four floor-cleaning robots, two air purifiers, anblood-pressure monitor, a stack of metallic vacuum flasks, a dozen electric toothbrushes andtwo face massagers (for men).

梁楠一边整理一大堆购物袋一边说：“这里面有三分之一是我们家的，其他全是给河北亲戚带的。他们买了6个电饭煲，4个扫地机器人，2个空气净化器，1个血压计，一堆真空金属保温杯，十几把电动牙刷和两个男性脸部按摩器。

“I think she [my wife] has gone crazy, he says. “But I don’t mind. If her shares keep falling, wemay not come back to Japan for a while.

梁楠说：“我觉得她(他妻子)已经买疯了。但是我不介意。如果她的股票继续下跌，我们可能有段时间不会来日本了。

Electronics are still the main feature of Laox, say sales staff from China’s Fujian and Zhejiangprovinces, but customers leave with endless bags of nappies, nail-clippers, health supplements,diet shakes, tights, thermometers, wrinkle-reducing face packs and silicone rice spoons —goods whose quality are thought guaranteed simply because they are made in Japan.

Laox有来自中国福建和浙江的销售人员，据他们介绍该店仍主要销售电器，但顾客们无止境地购买着尿布、指甲刀、保健品、减肥代餐奶昔、丝袜、温度计、除皱霜以及硅胶饭勺。中国消费者认为这些商品的质量是有保证的，因为它们是“日本制造。

On the floors below Laox, Chinese visitors blast through local clothes retailers and luxurygoods outlets where loudspeakers bellow last-minute offers in Mandarin before the coachesleave for the ship. In the pharmacy Matsumoto Kiyoshi, where competing Japanese brands ofrose-scented eyedrops are in hot demand, a Shanghai woman being tugged at the sleeve byher guide demands shop staff tell her which of three brands of Japanese condoms works best.

在Laox下面几层，中国游客大潮席卷着服装店、奢侈品店。扬声器里传来普通话的大声呼喊，通知游客们发往游船的旅游大巴马上出发。在松本清(Matsumoto Kiyoshi)药房，各个日本品牌的玫瑰味眼药水大受欢迎。一名导游拽着一个上海女人的衣袖，后者让店员告诉她三种日本避孕套品牌中哪一种最好用。

The impact of all this on Fukuoka — a city whose 1.5m population will this year be passed bythe total number of foreign visitors — has been transformational. Japan’s wider inboundtourism boom has provided Shinzo Abe’s economic growth story with a timely boost: Nomurajust raised its forecasts for total visitor numbers to 17.44m for 2015.

这一切给福冈带来了巨大的影响。这座城市有150万居民，今年外国游客总人数将会超过居民人数。日本整体的入境旅游热潮为安倍晋三(Shinzo Abe)的经济增长故事及时注入了一剂强心针，野村证券(Nomura)刚刚将2015年赴日游总人数预测上调到1744万人。

But in Fukuoka, whose tax revenues and population are the fastest-rising in Japan as a resultof the tourists, the effect is more noticeable. The city authorities are rushing to find emptyspots for coach parking before the city’s roads grind to a halt. The port last week opened anew cruise terminal that quadruples immigration processing capacity.

但是福冈受到的影响比一些城市明显，由于游客大量增加，这里的税收收入和人口是全日本增长最快的。福冈市政府正忙着为旅游大巴找到新的停车位，以免城市交通陷入停顿。上周福冈港口开放了一个新的邮轮码头，将入境处理能力提高了3倍。

Mr Takashima travelled last week to Tokyo to ask the government for a budget to extend thejetty by 100 metres to accommodate the largest cruise ships in the world. Fukuoka, he says,is the first city in Japan to undergo a change where Japanese feel like a minority.

高岛宗一郎上周前往东京要求政府拨预算将该码头延长100米，以容纳全世界最大的邮轮。他表示，在日本人民感到自己像少数民族的领域，福冈是日本第一座经历改变的城市。

The Chinese cruise passengers in Canal City appear unbothered by unfolding events in themainland markets — a holding of nerve that bullish analysts say will be true across China’sconsumer economy. There is little evidence, says Julian Evans-Pritchard, China Economist atCapital Economics, that stock prices make a meaningful difference to consumption in China.

运河城商场里的中国游客似乎并没受到近期中国内地市场波动的影响。乐观的分析师表示，这种冷静的态度可能真实地反映了中国整体消费经济领域的状况。凯投宏观(Capital Economics)的中国经济学家朱利安埃文斯-普里查德(Julian Evans-Pritchard)表示，没有证据表明，股价对中国的消费状况有切实的影响。

“Given that the stock market didn’t provide any noticeable boost to spending on the way up,there is no reason to expect it to be a drag on the way down, he wrote in a note to clientsyesterday.

他近日在一份给客户的报告中写到：“鉴于A股市场之前没有为消费提供任何明显的提振，因此没有理由认为现在股市会拖累消费下降。

But when Ms Liang finally emerges from Laox, the first question she asks her husband is aboutstocks. This was Monday — a session of relative calm amid the storm — and the problemsseemed far away from Canal City. She asks for another two minutes, and heads back into theshop to buy a final box of deluxe Japanese stomach medicine.

但是当梁太太终于从Laox里出来时，她向丈夫提出的第一个问题就是关于股票的。本周从周一走势来看，A股进入了风暴中相对较平静阶段，而且股市的问题看来离运河城很遥远。梁太太要求再给她两分钟，然后扭头返回商店去买最后一箱高档日本胃药。