[2023-01-16]经济学人 - 中国奇怪的新年
![]() ![]() Though covid-19 is blowing through rural villages like a gale, many seem ready to move on
尽管武汉肺炎像大风一样席卷农村，但许多人似乎已准备好继续前行
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IN RURAL CHINA, the story of this month’s lunar new year will be told in two colours: festive red and the white that signifies mourning. For many country folk, the holiday—which this year falls on January 22nd—will mark a return to near-normality. China has dropped the pandemic controls that blighted each new year after a strange virus emerged in the city of Wuhan weeks before the Spring Festival in 2020 (to use the holiday’s other name).
在中国农村，这个月的农历新年的故事将用两种颜色来讲述：喜庆的红色和表示哀悼的白色。 对于许多乡下人来说，这个假期——今年是 1 月 22 日——将标志着接近正常的回归。中国已经取消了，在 2020 年春节（假期的另一个名称）前几周武汉市出现一种奇怪的病毒后每年新年都有的疫情控制措施。
A mood of pent-up celebration can be felt in Goulin, a scruffy township strung along a busy highway in the south of Henan, a poor central province. On a recent weekday, locals throng a street market selling red chunlian, the new-year banners that will soon hang above and to either side of front doors, bearing poetic couplets expressing wishes for good fortune and health. Other traders hawk red underclothes, worn for luck. There is food in abundance: supplies for the homecoming feasts and family reunions that mark this most important of holidays, and that were thwarted by travel curbs and lockdowns for three years. Adults and wide-eyed children examine boxes of tiny tangerines, haunches of mutton and severed pigs’ heads, basins of doomed, thrashing fish, and wooden barrows heaped with winter cabbages.
在河南这个贫穷的中部省份南部一条繁忙的高速公路旁，贫瘠的构林镇也可以感受到一种压抑已久的庆祝气氛。 最近的一个工作日，当地人挤满了卖红春联的街头市场，即将挂在前门上方和两侧的新年横幅，上面写着对联，表达对吉祥和健康的祝愿。 其他商人兜售红色内衣，穿上它是为了好运。 这里有丰富的食物：特别是在由于旅行限制和封锁长达三年而受阻之后，为纪念这个最重要的返乡节日和家庭团聚提供的食物。 大人和睁大眼睛的孩子们仔细检查着一箱箱小橘子、几块羊肉和猪头肉、一盆盆注定要死去的鱼和堆满冬季卷心菜的木手推车。
Yet more sombre scenes may be glimpsed at the same time, inside Goulin’s bare-bones hospital. Though central authorities have stopped issuing credible covid-19 statistics, signs are that the virus swept through Henan’s cities and villages at astonishing speed after controls were scrapped on December 7th, with infections peaking about two weeks later. Henan officials suggest that perhaps 89m of the province’s 100m people caught the virus.
然而，在构林的简陋医院内，可能同时瞥见更阴暗的场景。 尽管中央当局已停止发布可靠的武汉肺炎统计数据，但有迹象表明，在 12 月 7 日取消控制后，该病毒以惊人的速度席卷了河南的城市和村庄，大约两周后感染达到顶峰。 河南官员表示，该省 1 亿人口中可能有 8900 万人感染了该病毒。
In Goulin hospital a faded poster from 2016 announces that the emergency department employs five doctors to cover a population of 200,000 (for comparison, America has 15 emergency-room doctors per 100,000 people). A doctor says the situation has stabilised, though many severe cases remain. His patients have low expectations. For instance, only a few have even heard of Paxlovid. In China’s big cities, that potent antiviral treatment for covid has become an obsession, with boxes of the imported drug changing hands on the black market for staggering sums. Paxlovid is not available in Goulin. Instead, some patients receive a domestically made HIV treatment, Azvudine, given emergency approval in Chi na as a covid therapy, despite scant reliable evidence that it works. To eke out limited supplies, the pharmacy opposite Goulin hospital sells such basic anti-fever medicines as ibuprofen in packets of a few pills, rather than by the box.
在构林医院，一张褪色的 2016 年海报宣布，急诊科雇用了 5 名医生，覆盖 20 万人口（相比之下，美国每 10 万人有 15 名急诊室医生）。 一名医生表示，尽管仍有许多严重病例，但情况已经稳定下来。 他的病人期望值很低。 例如，只有少数人听说过 Paxlovid。 在中国的大城市，针对武汉肺炎的强效抗病毒治疗已成为一种痴迷，成箱的进口药物在黑市上以惊人的价格易手。 Paxlovid 在构林并不存在。 取而代之的是，一些患者接受了一种国产的 HIV 治疗药物阿兹夫定，尽管几乎没有可靠证据表明它有效，但该药物在中国被紧急批准作为一种治疗武汉肺炎的药物。 为了维持有限的供应，构林医院对面的药房出售布洛芬等基本退烧药，每包几粒，而不是整盒销售。
As of January 8th, China reported a total of 23 covid fatalities in 2023, an artificially low number that excludes deaths involving other conditions or complications. The true toll is very different. Wanlian—white banners bearing memorial couplets that adorn the front doors of households in mourning—will be hard to avoid in Goulin and surrounding villages this year. The crematorium in Dengzhou, the nearest county-level city, is still cremating over 100 people each day, and was handling up to 160 a day in recent weeks, says a funeral worker. The facility handled just 30-40 daily cremations before the pandemic, adds the worker, who reports that he is three times busier than usual, and blames covid.
截至 1 月 8 日，中国报告 2023 年共有 23 人死于武汉肺炎，这是一个人为偏低的数字，不包括涉及其他疾病或并发症的死亡。 真正的收费是非常不同的。 挽联——挂在家家户户门前的对联白条幅——今年在构林及周边村庄将到处可见。 一位殡葬工作人员说，距离最近的县级市邓州市的火葬场每天仍在火化 100 多人，最近几周每天处理多达 160 人。 该设施在疫情之前每天只处理 30-40 次火葬，这名工人补充说，他报告说他比平时忙三倍，并将其归咎于武汉肺炎。
Chaguan was not in southern Henan by chance. When the pandemic began three years ago, he headed to Goulin and nearby villages, because they lie on the border with Hubei, the province that surrounds Wuhan. Hubei was locked down on January 23rd 2020. Your columnist visited Weiji, the last Henan village on the road to Hubei, four days later. He found its muddy streets brightened by red lanterns and new-year banners, but largely emptied by fear. With covid’s dangers still unknown, nervous police tested incomers’ temperatures at a checkpoint and turned any cars from Hubei away. Neighbouring hamlets sealed themselves behind barriers of freshly dug earth. In Weiji some 200 migrant workers, back from Wuhan for new year 2020, had to quarantine at home while village doctors checked them for fever twice daily. Back then locals described obeying orders as a comfort.
茶馆(经济学人中国专栏的作者笔名)在豫南并非偶然。 三年前疫情开始时，他去了构林和附近的村庄，因为它们位于湖北省的边界，即武汉所在的省份。 2020年1月23日，湖北“封城”。4天后，我们的专栏作家走访了通往湖北路上的最后一个河南村庄魏集。 他发现红灯笼和新年横幅照亮了泥泞的街道，但大部分街道都因人们的恐惧而空无一人。 由于彼时武汉肺炎的危险仍然未知，紧张的警察在检查站测试了入境者的体温，并将所有来自湖北的车辆拒之门外。 邻近的小村庄将自己封闭在新挖土的屏障后面。 在魏集，2020 年新年从武汉回来的约 200 名农民工不得不在家隔离，而村医每天两次检查他们是否发烧。 当时当地人形容服从命令是一种安慰。
Three years later Weiji residents talk of moving on. They have just endured a brutal few weeks that, village doctors estimate, saw over 90% of locals catch covid after a first case was found on December 4th. At moments 100 locals crammed each day into Weiji’s clinic for saline drips and intravenous infusions of amino acids and antibiotics, supplemented by ibuprofen tablets and Chinese herbal treatments (drugs that may comfort but cannot cure covid). Reportedly, one villager died. Four more were sent to Goulin hospital. Locals seem focused on resuming normal life. A woman in her 80s sits on her doorstep washing mahjong tiles. She recalls when mahjong playing was banned during the strictest lockdown in 2020, on pain of fines. A migrant worker, home for the holidays, compares covid to “a wind that has blown through”. Asked if they fear returnees bringing the virus, locals scoff: “we’ve all had it.”
三年后，魏集居民谈到搬家。 他们刚刚经历了残酷的几周，据村医估计，在 12 月 4 日发现第一例病例后，超过 90% 的当地人感染了武汉肺炎。 每天有 100 名当地人涌入魏集的诊所接受生理盐水滴注和静脉输注氨基酸和抗生素，辅之以布洛芬药片和中草药疗法（可以缓解但不能治愈武汉肺炎的药物）。 据报道，一名村民死亡。 还有四人被送往构林医院。 当地人似乎专注于恢复正常生活。 一位 80 多岁的妇女坐在她家门口的台阶上洗麻将牌。 她回忆说，在 2020 年最严格的封锁期间，打麻将被禁止，否则将被罚款。 一位回家过年的农民工将武汉肺炎比作“吹过的风”。 当被问及他们是否担心回国人员携带病毒时，当地人嗤之以鼻：“我们都感染过。”
The cruel gulf between China’s cities and villages
中国城乡之间残酷的鸿沟
Asked whether clinics were prepared for the sudden policy change, a rural doctor instead describes how onerous controls became late last year. An end to zero-covid, followed by a surge in cases, was unavoidable, says the doctor, holder of a vocational degree. “Everything has to have a beginning and an end,” she says.
当被问及诊所是否为突然的政策变化做好准备时，一位乡村医生反而描述了去年年底繁重的控制措施是如何发生的。 这位拥有职业学位的医生说，动态清零的结束以及随之而来的病例激增是不可避免的。 “一切都必须有开始和结束，”她说。
Evidence of official bungling is there to see. In nearby Tongbai county a two-storey quarantine centre for 1,000 people sits empty, brand-new air-conditioning units bolted to its windows. It was still being built as zero-covid ended in December, neighbours report. Amid such waste, Tongbai’s largest hospital has no spare beds when Chaguan visits, and no Paxlovid. As often before, rural Chinese are mourning avoidable losses. China may see a second wave in coming months. But in Henan villages resignation, and the human need for hope, are more commonly encountered than indignation. At new year, red is more popular than white. ■
官方拙劣的证据是显而易见的。 在附近的桐柏县，一座可容纳 1000 人的两层方舱空无一人，全新的空调用螺栓固定在窗户上。 邻居报告说，它仍在建造中，因为动态清零于 12 月结束。 在这样的浪费中，桐柏最大的医院查官来访时没有多余的床位，也没有Paxlovid。 一如既往，中国农村正在为本可避免的损失而悲痛。 中国可能会在未来几个月看到第二波。 但在河南农村，听天由命和人性对希望的需求，比愤慨更常见。 在新年，红色比白色更受欢迎。 ■标红字体均为楼主更改，与原文作者无关。
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