尴尬:"猪投江效应"

China captured the world’s attention last week, for all the wrong reasons. The world’s most populous country and potential future superpower inaugurated a new president and premier. But ask the average global television viewer what happened in China last week and they will tell you that the rivers were full of pigs.

上周，中国吸引了全世界的目光，但原因却令人尴尬。这个全世界人口最多的国家和潜在的未来超级大国，刚刚任命了新的国家主席和国务院总理。不过，如果你问全世界普通电视观众“中国上周发生了什么事情”，他们会告诉你那里的江面漂满了死猪。

Maybe the average television viewer has it right: 10,000 pigs clogging the water supply of the Chinese equivalent of New York City makes better TV than Xi Jinping’s inaugural address not just because most viewers are shallow and mindless, but because these pigs are pretty important, politically.

或许，这些普通电视观众这样回答是有道理的。上海在中国的地位相当于纽约在美国，这样一个城市的水源河上漂着一万头死猪，确实比习近平发表就职演说更吸引观众眼球——这不仅是因为大多数观众肤浅而没有头脑，还因为这些死猪从政治角度而言其实非常重要。

Their lifeless bodies – plucked dripping from Shanghai’s Huangpu River or rotting in piles along its banks – capture the simple indignity of life in modern China: poisoned water, tainted food and government officials who cannot be trusted to tell the truth about any of it. In this case, the Shanghai government insists the water supply is unaffected and the pigs aren’t sick (apart from one who had the bad form to test positive for a porcine virus). They may even be telling the truth – but those who believe them in Shanghai are about as thin on the ground as those who can spell Li Keqiang in the Bronx.

人们从上海黄浦江江面上和江岸边拉走死猪。这些开始腐烂的死猪，折射出现代中国生活中一种显而易见的耻辱：受污染的水，变质的食品，以及无法指望会就任何此类问题讲真话的政府官员。在“死猪”事件中，上海市政府坚称，供水水质没有受到影响，死猪也不是病猪（除了检验样品中有一头死猪“状况不佳”，检出猪圆环病毒病原阳性）。他们说的没准真是实情。但在上海，相信这些话的人，差不多就跟纽约布朗克斯(Bronx)能写出“李克强”汉语拼音拼写的人一样少。

So while it’s all well and good to talk about the “Chinese dream” – as President Xi did so eloquently last week – Chinese cyberspace has its own cynical view of the current state of national nirvana: “In Beijing, you open the windows and get free cigarettes; in Shanghai you open the taps and get free pork soup”; that joke went viral during last week’s Beijing conclave. For it is not just the west that is obsessed by Beijing’s air pollution and Shanghai’s pig flotilla. Ordinary Chinese think a country with 5,000 years of history and well over $3tn in the bank ought to be able to do a bit better at delivering the things that matter in life: happy pigs and water without too many of them floating in it.

所以说，你当然可以大谈特谈“中国梦”（如习主席上周所做的那样），但中国网民对中国人现阶段的“幸福生活”却有着自己的看法，他们嘲讽地写道：“在北京，打开窗户就能抽免费烟；在上海，打开水龙头就能喝免费肉汤。”这个段子在上周的“两会”期间疯狂传播，因为对北京的空气污染和上海的“死猪舰队”感到困惑的绝不仅仅是西方。中国老百姓认为，一个有五千年历史、外汇储备超过3万亿美元的国家，理应有能力在关乎民生的事情上做得更好一点：比如，让民众吃到放心猪肉，喝到没有泡过无数死猪的水。

Ironically, however, the backstory may be more positive than negative. One reason for the unusually large fleet of porcine corpses this year was because Zhejiang province, where the pigs died, has recently tried to stop farmers selling diseased pigs to illegal traders who make them into dumplings. Without room to bury casualties on their notoriously cramped smallholdings – and without anyone unscrupulous to sell them to – the bereaved farmers had little option but to dump them in a river that provides drinking water to a city of 23m people. Maybe someone should have thought of that beforehand – but I still prefer a sick pig in my river to one in my dumpling bowl.

但具有讽刺意味的是，死猪事件背后故事的积极因素可能大过消极因素。今年“死猪舰队”格外庞大的原因之一在于，死猪的来源地浙江省最近采取了措施阻止农户向不法商贩出售病死猪。这些不法商贩收购病死猪，是为了将死猪肉做成饺子馅。因为没地方埋（浙江农户的农地出了名的狭小），也没有丧尽天良的商贩来收购，这些“痛失爱猪”的农户别无选择，只能将死猪倒进为上海市2300万居民提供饮水的黄浦江。这样处理或许有欠考虑，但我宁愿看到病死猪漂在江面上，也不愿看到它们出现在我装饺子的碗里。

And of course the pig armada may have other unintended consequences, like boosting the nascent “green” pork industry. Mr Xi wants citizens to spend more on domestic consumption. What better way to achieve that than by scaring ordinary consumers into the arms of organic farmers who promise pork that was, at the very least, alive just before it was butchered.

当然，“死猪舰队”还可能产生其他出人意料的结果，比如提振新兴的“绿色”猪肉产业。习近平希望民众扩大国内消费。还有什么比这更好的方法，能把普通消费者吓得纷纷投入有机农户的怀抱？有机农户承诺，至少他们的猪在屠宰之前是活的。

Anyone who can afford it will now be looking for a safer pork source. And they could well end up at the Aohua wet market in Shanghai, where recent university graduate Sun Xia has decided to make her career behind a butcher’s block rather than a desktop. Ms Sun’s family is none too pleased to find her trading a white collar for a butcher’s apron. “They often complain to me, how can you end up as a butcher when you are a university graduate?” she says, adding that her father says she can sell pork “but let’s not talk about it”.

任何有经济能力的人，现在都会开始寻找更安全的猪肉源。他们很可能最终会来到上海澳华菜市场。在这里，新近毕业的大学生孙夏已决定把自己的事业建立在切猪肉的砧板、而不是写字台上。她放弃了白领工作、选择系起围裙作个卖猪肉的，家里人都不太赞成。孙夏说：“他们常向我抱怨，说你是个大学毕业生，怎么能最后去卖猪肉呢？”她还说，父亲告诉她，卖猪肉可以，但别跟别人提这个。

But Ms Sun is not just any old butcher: she works for the brand Yihao Tuzhu, literally “No 1 Local Pig”, a vertically integrated sty-to-table pork brand that prides itself on raising “happy pigs” – and charges 30-40 per cent more for it. “Our pigs have longer tails, as you can see, because they can run around a lot instead of being raised in captivity,” says Hao Chengbing, Shanghai regional manager, who waves a pig tail in my face to illustrate his point. Ms Sun thinks her career prospects are better at No 1 Local Pig, where half the butchers are graduates, than in her parents’ reverie of white-collar bliss.

不过，孙夏可不是普通的肉贩，她是为“壹号土猪”这个品牌工作的。这个品牌对猪肉实行从猪圈到餐桌的纵向一体化质量监控，标榜自己的猪是在无公害的环境中“快乐生长”。因此，这个品牌的猪肉价格也比一般品牌高出30%至40%。壹号土猪上海区经理郝承兵一边向我挥舞一根猪尾巴，一边说道：“你看，我们的猪的尾巴比一般猪要长，因为它们很多时候都在外面跑来跑去，而不是关在圈里养大的。”孙夏觉得，比起像父母期望的那样当白领，她在壹号土猪的职业前景要更加光明。壹号土猪的一半肉贩都是大学毕业生。

Like the American dream before it, the Chinese dream is about creating a world where every child earns more than their parents – however they choose to earn it. But that dream can only come true in a world of pigless rivers and smokeless skylines. Mr Xi might want to deliver those first – and leave porcine bliss as a goal for later generations.

如以前的美国梦一样，中国梦的要旨也在于，每个孩子都能比父母挣得多——无论他们选择以何种方式来挣。但只有在一个江里不漂死猪、天空中没有雾霾的世界里，这样的梦想才能实现。习近平或许可以考虑先创造一个这样的世界，而将有机猪肉贩们的梦想留给未来几代人去实现。