Across the Universe

Not the movie. 航宇天地 is what it's called.

My cousin, Yurong, is building this village. It has residential units (free-standing homes, townhouses, and apartments), three shopping malls (one for furnitures, one for interior decorating, and one for regular fashion-type stuff including a movie theatre), and a hotel. 

They had built the residential free-standing houses back in 2004/2005. 4 phases. The furniture shopping mall is built and open. Not all stores have been taken in there yet. Most of the furniture is local, and some of it is being sold by my cousin's company. Yurong, though, would like to include "higher class" furniture stores in there - 2nd tier, he calls it - he has no illusion that Huang Shi (the city in which this is being built) is that much of a cosmopolitan city as to attract stores like West Elm, but seems to be hoping to change the entire culture of the area by getting people to buy nicer things (what I found also really interesting is that their architectural mockups include a lot of white customers, in order to give off an air of internationalism and cosmopolitanism, in order to attract investors). It's not like the people there don't have the money to. However, many customers who buy houses there have the mentality of, well, I've already spent a bunch of money buying this house, I don't want to spend more buying furniture. This mentality is what they want to change - you just bought a really nice house. Buy some really nice furniture to go with it too!

The challenge is not with selling the houses - it's getting investors to rent stores in the malls. They're only working on the furniture mall right now, as the interior decorating one and the general one are still under construction. They're also dealing with the challenges of getting foot traffic (and car traffic, since none of these areas are actually that walkable) to the area, and want to make that are THE go-to place for furniture and home design.

All of this is still in progress. At this stage, only time will tell how successful this endeavor will be.