中國震撼世界
Shock and ore
我到那兒時，只剩下一塊疤了，一塊赭色的土疤，有二十五個足球場那么大。十多臺挖土機(jī)，笨拙地刨著泥土，仿佛心不在焉地尋找丟失的東西。德國的鋼鐵廠之一，自二戰(zhàn)前一直矗立此地。如今，這里只剩下幾堆扭曲的廢鐵。我朝路邊一位身著工裝的男子走去，他正將一截巨大的金屬管道吊上卡車。等他把管道放好后，我跟他打招呼。他說，從挖管、搬運到吊裝，這種管子已運走了十四根，眼下只剩下三根，夠他再干一周。然后，活兒就都干完了。我問管子往哪運。他伸直腰，好像要沿著一條長長的弧線，把什么東西拋向遠(yuǎn)方；然后說道：“中國。
By the time I got there, there was only the scar. A scar of ochre earth 25 times the size of a football field. A dozen excavators pawed ponderously at the soil as if absently searching for something lost. The place where one of Germany’s largest steel mills had stood since before the second world war was now reduced to a few mounds of twisted metal scrap. I approached a man in worker’s overalls by the side of the road. He was hoisting a huge metal segment of a pipeline on to the back of a truck. After he had settled it in place, I called over to him. He said he had dislodged, lifted and loaded 14 segments like this already and now there were only three left, enough for another week’s work. Then it would all be over. I asked him where the pipeline was going. He straightened his back and made as if to throw something in a gentle arc far into the distance. "China," he said.
鋼廠的設(shè)備早就運走了。安裝在60米高廠房內(nèi)的頂吹氧轉(zhuǎn)爐，加工卷板長度超過一公里的熱軋鋼機(jī)，一部燒結(jié)機(jī)，一座鼓風(fēng)爐，還有許多其它部件，所有設(shè)備都用木條箱包裝，塞進(jìn)集裝箱，裝船啟運，然后在長江口附近被拆箱。在長江的平坦沖積平原上，又嚴(yán)格按照在德國的樣子，一個螺絲也不差地把設(shè)備重新組裝。運走的設(shè)備總重達(dá)25萬噸，外加40噸詳盡解釋重新組裝過程的文件。整項工程十分繁復(fù)，穿工裝的男子直搖頭：“設(shè)備弄過去后，但愿能用。”
The rest of the equipment had gone earlier: the oxygen converters that were housed in a shed 60m high, the hot rolling-mill for heavy steel plates that stretched out over one kilometre, a sinter plant, a blast furnace and a host of other parts. They had all been packed into wooden crates, inserted into containers, loaded on to ships and then unpacked again near the mouth of the Yangtze River. There, on the flat alluvium beds of that mighty river, they had been reconstructed exactly - to the last screw - as they had been in Germany. Altogether 250,000 tonnes of equipment had been shipped, along with 40 tonnes of documents that explained the intricacies of the reassembly process. The man in overalls shook his head at the convoluted nature of it all. "I just hope it works when they get it there," he said.
德國蒂森克虜伯(ThyssenKrupp)在多特蒙德的鋼廠，一度雇傭約一萬名員工。在赫爾德(Horde)和威斯特法倫區(qū)(Westfalenhutte)，數(shù)代人都靠鋼廠謀生。高聳的煙囪市內(nèi)各處都能看到，煙囪周圍密布著廠房。近200年來，工廠一直在煉鋼。德國在1870年、1914年和1939年擂響戰(zhàn)鼓時，正是魯爾河谷這一隅先為普魯士、后為德意志帝國供應(yīng)了野戰(zhàn)炮、坦克、炮彈和戰(zhàn)艦裝甲鋼板。此地的人們以實物為豪，證據(jù)在廠內(nèi)處處可見。工廠的一條通道邊，立著一座矮墩墩的19世紀(jì)鐵制鼓風(fēng)爐，人們把它當(dāng)作紀(jì)念碑，文字說明：鼓風(fēng)爐運自英格蘭。附近，有塊紀(jì)念當(dāng)?shù)匾晃还こ處煹呐曝摇?BR> The ThyssenKrupp steel mill in Dortmund once employed around 10,000 people. The communities of Horde and Westfalenhutte, where workshops clustered around chimneys that could be seen from all over the city, had depended on it for generations. People had made steel here for nearly 200 years, and when the drums of German conquest rolled in 1870, 1914 and 1939, it was this corner of the Ruhr Valley that supplied first Prussia and then the German empire with field guns, tanks, shells and battleship armour. A pride in practical things was evident everywhere. A stumpy-looking, 19th- century iron blast furnace, with a notice explaining that it had been brought over from England, stood as a monument by one of the gateways to the former plant. Nearby, a plaque memorialised a local engineer.
2004年6月，一個溫暖明媚的下午，赫爾德區(qū)看上去安寧、平靜，顯然已不再是魯爾地區(qū)跳動的心臟了。阿爾佛來德•特拉賓(Alfred Trappen)街上，一家冰淇淋店外，幾個人坐在陽光下，用長長的調(diào)羹挖食著圣代冰淇淋。街道不遠(yuǎn)處，有一家齊曼紡織品(Zeeman Textiel)折扣店，店門外，婦女們在網(wǎng)格籃里翻找，仔細(xì)打量著0.99歐元一件的T恤衫。折扣店附近，三家日光浴室、一家紋身館一字排開。紋身館的廣告說，能把“愛”、“富”、“康”三個漢字紋在顧客身上。不過，日光浴室和紋身館都關(guān)門了。
But on a warm, bright afternoon in June 2004, Horde was clearly no longer the pounding heart of the Ruhr. The place looked laid-back, becalmed. A few people sat in the sun outside an ice-cream shop on Alfred Trappen Street, digging to the bottom of their sundaes with long spoons. Up the road, women fished into a wire basket outside Zeeman Textiel, a discount store, inspecting T-shirts for 99 (euro) cents. There were three solariums in the vicinity and a tattoo parlour advertising its ability to emblazon the characters Ai, Fu and Kang, the Chinese characters for love, wealth and health, on to the bodies of its customers. But both the solariums and the tattooist were shut.
鋼鐵廠沒了，生活發(fā)生了什么變化呢？我來就是要了解此事。不過，我不會講德語，倒成了個障礙。想拜訪當(dāng)?shù)毓賳T，他們又不愿談。與街上的人搭訕，這些人覺得我的問題意思不大。我去了路德教會，按傳單上的名字一一給五位牧師打電話，約他們喝杯咖啡聊聊。馬丁·蓬塞(Martin Pense)神父很忙，克勞斯·沃爾特曼(Klaus Wortmann)神父出城了，伯爾恩·懷斯巴赫-拉邁(Bern Weissbach-Lamay)神父沒接電話，安格拉·迪克(Angela Dicke)嬤嬤很樂意幫忙，不過今天放假，很抱歉。輕聲細(xì)語的斯溫·弗羅里希(Sven Frohlich)神父倒愿意電話上聊幾分鐘。
I had come to try to understand how life was changing now that the steel plant was gone. But my inability to speak German was a handicap. I tried calling on local officials but they were unwilling to talk. People on the street, when approached, seemed to find my questions unwarranted. So I went to the Lutheran Church and phoned each of the five pastors listed in a leaflet to invite them for a coffee. Pfarrer Martin Pense was busy, Pfarrer Klaus Wortmann was out of town, Pfarrer Bern Weissbach-Lamay did not answer, and Pfarrerin Angela Dicke would have been happy to help but it was a holiday, so sorry. Pfarrer Sven Frohlich, a softly spoken man, was ready to give me a few minutes on the phone.
弗羅里希神父說，鋼廠消亡是競爭力喪失所致，厄運來得慢，卻不可避免。90年代初，生產(chǎn)效率高的韓國鋼鐵廠就開始在全球削價搶生意，赫爾德區(qū)的鋼鐵工人卻強(qiáng)烈要求實行每周35小時工作制。接著，東西德統(tǒng)一，迫使政府提高稅收，拖了整體經(jīng)濟(jì)活動的后腿，給赫爾德區(qū)造成了沉重打擊。到90年代中期，赫爾德鋼鐵廠最終何去何從，成了辯論話題。一開始，管理層做出慣有的反應(yīng)：討論與某家競爭對手合并，實現(xiàn)經(jīng)營增效，成本縮減，提高競爭力。到2000年時，全球鋼鐵價格陷入低谷，一切有關(guān)拯救的言談都煙消云散，似乎無能為力了。
The death of the steel mill, he said, had been the slow but inevitable result of a loss in competitiveness. In the early 1990s, when efficient South Korean steel plants were undercutting the world, Horde steelworkers were agitating to work a 35-hour week. Then the reunification of West and East Germany took its toll by forcing the government to raise taxes and by acting as a drag on general economic activity. By the mid- 1990s, the ultimate fate of the Horde plant had become an issue of debate. To start with, the management reacted as managements generally do: it discussed merging with a competitor to derive operational synergies, cost reductions and improved competitiveness. But by 2000, when global steel prices were in a slump, all talk of rescue faded away. There seemed to be little that could be done.
弗羅里希神父說，數(shù)千鋼鐵工人失去工作，路德教會的教團(tuán)也遷走了，社區(qū)并不貧窮，卻陷入了一種麻木狀態(tài)。教會采取措施，竭力吸引年輕人參加各種社區(qū)活動（這一點從教會的通訊中就可以看出)，年輕人似乎感覺不到宗教的吸引力?！拔覀兠允Я俗晕?，”弗羅里希神父說?！斑@可是人身上最重要的東西，卻被拿走的。找回這種東西可能需要10年以上?！?BR> Pfarrer Frohlich said that the Lutheran church’s congregation had moved away as thousands of steelworkers lost their jobs, and the community, though not poor, had sunk into a kind of numbness. Young people did not seem to feel the pull of religion in spite of the strenuous efforts, evident in the church newsletter, to lure them into all sorts of community activities. "Our identity is lost," said Frohlich. "And that is the most important thing that can be taken away from somebody. It could take more than a decade to recover it."
Shock and ore
我到那兒時，只剩下一塊疤了，一塊赭色的土疤，有二十五個足球場那么大。十多臺挖土機(jī)，笨拙地刨著泥土，仿佛心不在焉地尋找丟失的東西。德國的鋼鐵廠之一，自二戰(zhàn)前一直矗立此地。如今，這里只剩下幾堆扭曲的廢鐵。我朝路邊一位身著工裝的男子走去，他正將一截巨大的金屬管道吊上卡車。等他把管道放好后，我跟他打招呼。他說，從挖管、搬運到吊裝，這種管子已運走了十四根，眼下只剩下三根，夠他再干一周。然后，活兒就都干完了。我問管子往哪運。他伸直腰，好像要沿著一條長長的弧線，把什么東西拋向遠(yuǎn)方；然后說道：“中國。
By the time I got there, there was only the scar. A scar of ochre earth 25 times the size of a football field. A dozen excavators pawed ponderously at the soil as if absently searching for something lost. The place where one of Germany’s largest steel mills had stood since before the second world war was now reduced to a few mounds of twisted metal scrap. I approached a man in worker’s overalls by the side of the road. He was hoisting a huge metal segment of a pipeline on to the back of a truck. After he had settled it in place, I called over to him. He said he had dislodged, lifted and loaded 14 segments like this already and now there were only three left, enough for another week’s work. Then it would all be over. I asked him where the pipeline was going. He straightened his back and made as if to throw something in a gentle arc far into the distance. "China," he said.
鋼廠的設(shè)備早就運走了。安裝在60米高廠房內(nèi)的頂吹氧轉(zhuǎn)爐，加工卷板長度超過一公里的熱軋鋼機(jī)，一部燒結(jié)機(jī)，一座鼓風(fēng)爐，還有許多其它部件，所有設(shè)備都用木條箱包裝，塞進(jìn)集裝箱，裝船啟運，然后在長江口附近被拆箱。在長江的平坦沖積平原上，又嚴(yán)格按照在德國的樣子，一個螺絲也不差地把設(shè)備重新組裝。運走的設(shè)備總重達(dá)25萬噸，外加40噸詳盡解釋重新組裝過程的文件。整項工程十分繁復(fù)，穿工裝的男子直搖頭：“設(shè)備弄過去后，但愿能用。”
The rest of the equipment had gone earlier: the oxygen converters that were housed in a shed 60m high, the hot rolling-mill for heavy steel plates that stretched out over one kilometre, a sinter plant, a blast furnace and a host of other parts. They had all been packed into wooden crates, inserted into containers, loaded on to ships and then unpacked again near the mouth of the Yangtze River. There, on the flat alluvium beds of that mighty river, they had been reconstructed exactly - to the last screw - as they had been in Germany. Altogether 250,000 tonnes of equipment had been shipped, along with 40 tonnes of documents that explained the intricacies of the reassembly process. The man in overalls shook his head at the convoluted nature of it all. "I just hope it works when they get it there," he said.
德國蒂森克虜伯(ThyssenKrupp)在多特蒙德的鋼廠，一度雇傭約一萬名員工。在赫爾德(Horde)和威斯特法倫區(qū)(Westfalenhutte)，數(shù)代人都靠鋼廠謀生。高聳的煙囪市內(nèi)各處都能看到，煙囪周圍密布著廠房。近200年來，工廠一直在煉鋼。德國在1870年、1914年和1939年擂響戰(zhàn)鼓時，正是魯爾河谷這一隅先為普魯士、后為德意志帝國供應(yīng)了野戰(zhàn)炮、坦克、炮彈和戰(zhàn)艦裝甲鋼板。此地的人們以實物為豪，證據(jù)在廠內(nèi)處處可見。工廠的一條通道邊，立著一座矮墩墩的19世紀(jì)鐵制鼓風(fēng)爐，人們把它當(dāng)作紀(jì)念碑，文字說明：鼓風(fēng)爐運自英格蘭。附近，有塊紀(jì)念當(dāng)?shù)匾晃还こ處煹呐曝摇?BR> The ThyssenKrupp steel mill in Dortmund once employed around 10,000 people. The communities of Horde and Westfalenhutte, where workshops clustered around chimneys that could be seen from all over the city, had depended on it for generations. People had made steel here for nearly 200 years, and when the drums of German conquest rolled in 1870, 1914 and 1939, it was this corner of the Ruhr Valley that supplied first Prussia and then the German empire with field guns, tanks, shells and battleship armour. A pride in practical things was evident everywhere. A stumpy-looking, 19th- century iron blast furnace, with a notice explaining that it had been brought over from England, stood as a monument by one of the gateways to the former plant. Nearby, a plaque memorialised a local engineer.
2004年6月，一個溫暖明媚的下午，赫爾德區(qū)看上去安寧、平靜，顯然已不再是魯爾地區(qū)跳動的心臟了。阿爾佛來德•特拉賓(Alfred Trappen)街上，一家冰淇淋店外，幾個人坐在陽光下，用長長的調(diào)羹挖食著圣代冰淇淋。街道不遠(yuǎn)處，有一家齊曼紡織品(Zeeman Textiel)折扣店，店門外，婦女們在網(wǎng)格籃里翻找，仔細(xì)打量著0.99歐元一件的T恤衫。折扣店附近，三家日光浴室、一家紋身館一字排開。紋身館的廣告說，能把“愛”、“富”、“康”三個漢字紋在顧客身上。不過，日光浴室和紋身館都關(guān)門了。
But on a warm, bright afternoon in June 2004, Horde was clearly no longer the pounding heart of the Ruhr. The place looked laid-back, becalmed. A few people sat in the sun outside an ice-cream shop on Alfred Trappen Street, digging to the bottom of their sundaes with long spoons. Up the road, women fished into a wire basket outside Zeeman Textiel, a discount store, inspecting T-shirts for 99 (euro) cents. There were three solariums in the vicinity and a tattoo parlour advertising its ability to emblazon the characters Ai, Fu and Kang, the Chinese characters for love, wealth and health, on to the bodies of its customers. But both the solariums and the tattooist were shut.
鋼鐵廠沒了，生活發(fā)生了什么變化呢？我來就是要了解此事。不過，我不會講德語，倒成了個障礙。想拜訪當(dāng)?shù)毓賳T，他們又不愿談。與街上的人搭訕，這些人覺得我的問題意思不大。我去了路德教會，按傳單上的名字一一給五位牧師打電話，約他們喝杯咖啡聊聊。馬丁·蓬塞(Martin Pense)神父很忙，克勞斯·沃爾特曼(Klaus Wortmann)神父出城了，伯爾恩·懷斯巴赫-拉邁(Bern Weissbach-Lamay)神父沒接電話，安格拉·迪克(Angela Dicke)嬤嬤很樂意幫忙，不過今天放假，很抱歉。輕聲細(xì)語的斯溫·弗羅里希(Sven Frohlich)神父倒愿意電話上聊幾分鐘。
I had come to try to understand how life was changing now that the steel plant was gone. But my inability to speak German was a handicap. I tried calling on local officials but they were unwilling to talk. People on the street, when approached, seemed to find my questions unwarranted. So I went to the Lutheran Church and phoned each of the five pastors listed in a leaflet to invite them for a coffee. Pfarrer Martin Pense was busy, Pfarrer Klaus Wortmann was out of town, Pfarrer Bern Weissbach-Lamay did not answer, and Pfarrerin Angela Dicke would have been happy to help but it was a holiday, so sorry. Pfarrer Sven Frohlich, a softly spoken man, was ready to give me a few minutes on the phone.
弗羅里希神父說，鋼廠消亡是競爭力喪失所致，厄運來得慢，卻不可避免。90年代初，生產(chǎn)效率高的韓國鋼鐵廠就開始在全球削價搶生意，赫爾德區(qū)的鋼鐵工人卻強(qiáng)烈要求實行每周35小時工作制。接著，東西德統(tǒng)一，迫使政府提高稅收，拖了整體經(jīng)濟(jì)活動的后腿，給赫爾德區(qū)造成了沉重打擊。到90年代中期，赫爾德鋼鐵廠最終何去何從，成了辯論話題。一開始，管理層做出慣有的反應(yīng)：討論與某家競爭對手合并，實現(xiàn)經(jīng)營增效，成本縮減，提高競爭力。到2000年時，全球鋼鐵價格陷入低谷，一切有關(guān)拯救的言談都煙消云散，似乎無能為力了。
The death of the steel mill, he said, had been the slow but inevitable result of a loss in competitiveness. In the early 1990s, when efficient South Korean steel plants were undercutting the world, Horde steelworkers were agitating to work a 35-hour week. Then the reunification of West and East Germany took its toll by forcing the government to raise taxes and by acting as a drag on general economic activity. By the mid- 1990s, the ultimate fate of the Horde plant had become an issue of debate. To start with, the management reacted as managements generally do: it discussed merging with a competitor to derive operational synergies, cost reductions and improved competitiveness. But by 2000, when global steel prices were in a slump, all talk of rescue faded away. There seemed to be little that could be done.
弗羅里希神父說，數(shù)千鋼鐵工人失去工作，路德教會的教團(tuán)也遷走了，社區(qū)并不貧窮，卻陷入了一種麻木狀態(tài)。教會采取措施，竭力吸引年輕人參加各種社區(qū)活動（這一點從教會的通訊中就可以看出)，年輕人似乎感覺不到宗教的吸引力?！拔覀兠允Я俗晕?，”弗羅里希神父說?！斑@可是人身上最重要的東西，卻被拿走的。找回這種東西可能需要10年以上?！?BR> Pfarrer Frohlich said that the Lutheran church’s congregation had moved away as thousands of steelworkers lost their jobs, and the community, though not poor, had sunk into a kind of numbness. Young people did not seem to feel the pull of religion in spite of the strenuous efforts, evident in the church newsletter, to lure them into all sorts of community activities. "Our identity is lost," said Frohlich. "And that is the most important thing that can be taken away from somebody. It could take more than a decade to recover it."