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【媒体出处】http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/16/world/asia/16nuke.html?_r=1&ref=asia&oref=slogin
【中文翻译】elpeggy原创翻译
【本文标题】Superstitions About Quake Meet the Web, Irritating the Chinese Authorities 迷信横行网络，当局不堪其扰
【全文内容】
Superstitions About Quake Meet the Web, Irritating the Chinese Authorities
By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: May 16, 2008
CHENGDU, China — Can earthquakes be predicted, their destructive impact forewarned?
Most scientists would say no. But if some insistent Chinese bloggers are to be believed, nature provided enough warning to have saved many of those who perished Monday.
In the days before the deadly earthquake shook much of mountainous Sichuan Province, their stories go, ponds inexplicably drained, cows flung themselves against their enclosures and swarms of toads invaded the streets of a town that was later decimated by the quake. “Why did the government ignore the signs?” asked a writer in one chat room. “Did they not care?”
Some bloggers have lobbed more pointed accusations, saying that alerts by a local seismology bureau were brushed off by provincial officials. The claim has been largely debunked, but that has not stopped the spread of rumors and tall tales, some of which are proving nettlesome to the ruling Communist Party as it grapples with China’s most calamitous disaster in a generation.
At a government news conference on Tuesday, carried live on state television, a reporter asked about the rumors. The broadcast quickly switched to stock film of rescue efforts. When it returned to the news conference, the questions had become benign.
Later that day, officials announced the arrest of four people for spreading quake-related rumors on the Web and said they would be punished, although the officials did not describe the punishment or nature of the rumors.
Lest any doubters remain, Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, ran an article on Wednesday featuring Zhang Xiaodong, a scientist at the China Earthquake Networks center, who said seismologists, contrary to popular belief, could not accurately predict natural disasters. “We haven’t passed the test of earthquake forecasting,” he said.
Here in China, the belief in omens and portents, often rooted in ancient cosmology, is widely held, even by the worldly and well educated. This is a culture, after all, that cherishes lucky numbers, eschews sounds that can be misconstrued as the word for death and places great value in feng shui, the practice of arranging furniture and buildings just so, to bring happiness and good health. Some of the traditions are newer than others: It is the rare taxi driver in China who does not keep an image of Chairman Mao dangling from the rear-view mirror as a talisman against danger.
Even the Communist Party, which ostensibly swept away the opiate of the masses with its 1949 revolution, decided to inflect the Beijing Olympics with as many lucky eights as possible: starting them on Aug. 8, or 8-08-2008, with a start time of 8:08 p.m.
While there is no way to know for sure, the current leadership may have one eye on Chinese history, which has long linked political power to the divine, a concept known as the mandate of heaven. Emperors served with the blessing of the heavens, according to such thinking, and those who turned corrupt or insensitive to the needs of the people were drummed out of power after a spate of natural catastrophes. Whether the calamities signaled the end of a government or helped embolden its usurpers is open to interpretation.
Most Chinese can provide an earful about the “curse of 1976,” the year of the deaths of Mao, Prime Minister Zhou Enlai and Gen. Zhu De, the head of the Red Army. It was also the year an earthquake struck the northeastern city of Tangshan, killing at least 240,000 people in one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern history.
Neil Schmid, a professor of Chinese religion at North Carolina State University who is a visiting scholar at Zhejiang University, said it was worth noting that the seismometer was invented by the Chinese in A.D. 132 as a way to detect tremors that might spell the end of a ruler’s reign. Successive dynasties employed a master of esoterica who would record and interpret floods, famines and other disasters.
“Reading and understanding these aberrations in the natural world has always been a central aspect of Chinese culture,” he said. “Cosmic order and state legitimacy were inextricably linked.”
For China, 2008, while thanks to its eight is ostensibly a lucky year, has already brought a spate of unfortunate events. It began with a huge winter storm that stalled the nation’s rail system, stranding millions before the Chinese New Year. Then came the rioting in Tibet. The crackdown that followed has prompted a torrent of protest and international ill will that has fouled what was meant to be a “harmonious” Olympics period. In recent weeks, the authorities in Beijing have been struggling with other calamities: an intestinal virus epidemic that started in central China and has killed 42 children, and a train collision that killed 72 passengers in eastern China.
Yiyan Wang, a professor of Chinese studies at the University of Sydney in Australia, said that even if the Communist Party leadership did not subscribe to superstitions, it was aware that many citizens did. The voyage of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to the disaster zone hours after the quake could be interpreted as sound public relations or, perhaps, an acknowledgment of age-old fears. “The government knows many Chinese will see the quake as a sign that things are out of balance,” she said.
It is the story of the invading toads that seems to have gained the most traction, at least on the Internet. It did indeed occur, in some form, in Mianzhu two days before the quake, and many residents reacted with terror, believing it to be a harbinger of bad things. In an interview on Sichuan television just before the quake, the director of Mianzhu’s forestry bureau tried to calm residents by saying the mass migration was a normal part of the toad breeding season. The interview, posted on the Internet, has been provoking a torrent of angry remarks. At least 3,000 people have died in Mianzhu, and officials say another 4,500 are missing.
“Those seismological scientists are wasting taxpayer money,” said one blogger, who suggested that all the bureau’s employees resign. “Raising some toads would be better than spending money on those seismological scientists.”
Ma Yi contributed research from Beijing.
（成都消息）地震是可预报的吗？破坏性影响可以得到预警吗？
大多数科学家会说：不能。但是如果某些中国人博客中坚持的说法是可信的话，大自然已经提供了足够的预警，很多在周一遇难的人们本可以得救的。
按他们的说法，在这场毁灭性的地震撼动四川大山的几天前，池塘莫名其妙地干涸，牛群在围栏里暴躁不安，蛤蟆涌上城镇大街——随后这些城镇就被摧毁了。“为什么政府忽视了这些信号？”一个聊天室里有人问，“难道他们没有注意到？”
一些博客抛出了更尖锐的指责，说地方地震局的警报被省级部门撇在一边。这种观点已经受到广泛的反驳，但仍未能阻止谣言和荒唐的无稽之谈不断扩散，其中有些已经惹恼了执政党，而它正在与中国当代最严重灾难抗争。
周二国家电视台直播的政府新闻发布会中，一名记者问到关于谣言的问题，广播被迅速切换到救援工作的录像中，等画面回到新闻发布会现场时，提问已经变得温和。
当天晚些时候，官方宣布有四人因在网上散布地震相关流言而被捕，并说这些人将会受到惩罚，但没有公布惩罚措施和谣言的细节。
为避免有其它怀疑者，中国官方媒体新华社发表了一篇署名Zhang Xiaodong的文章，这位中国地震网中心的科学家说，与流行观点相反，地震是一种不能被准确预测的自然灾害。“我们还无法预测地震。”他说。
当前在中国，这种源于古老宇宙观的对预示和征兆的信仰，即使在世俗人士（非宗教人士——译者注）和受过高等教育的人群中，也是广泛存在的。这是一种文化，毕竟，那些代表幸运的数字，回避与死亡有关的词汇，以及按照风水安排家具和建筑的习惯之类，能够给人们带来快乐和健康。有些习俗是新形成的：很少有出租车司机不在后视镜挂毛主席像用来辟邪的。
即使是通过1949年革命在大众中公开禁绝鸦片的中国共产党，也决定在北京奥运会中使用尽可能多的“幸运8”：开幕日定于2008年8月8日，开幕时间定于早上八点零八分。
无法肯定，当今领导层是否一只眼盯着中国历史，这段历史始终将政治权力与君权神授的观念相关联。根据这个思想，皇帝秉承天意，那些变得腐败或对人民的需要麻木迟钝的人，将在天灾之后被剥夺权力。至于灾难预示着政权的终结还是鼓舞了其篡位者，则有不同解释。
大多数中国人都能举出老生常谈的“1976年之灾”，那一年，毛泽东、总理周恩来和红军领袖朱德将军去世。也正是在那一年，一场地震袭击了东北部城市唐山，至少二十四万人遇难，成为现代史上最大的一场自然灾害。
北加州大学中国宗教学教授Neil Schmid，现为浙江大学访问学者，他说中国人在公元132年发明的，能够侦测那或许预示统治终结的震波的地动仪，是一个很有价值的设计。世袭王朝雇用通灵的大师用来记录和解释洪水、饥荒以及其它灾害（的意义）。
“解读自然世界的反常现象，一直都是中国文化的一个重要方面。”他说，“宇宙秩序与国家的合法性之间有着难以解释的联系。”
2008年的中国，尽管托幸运8的福表面上是个幸运年，但已经遭遇了洪水般涌来的不幸事件。先是巨大的冰风暴摧毁了国家铁路系统，上百万人在春节前陷入困境；然后是西藏的暴乱，随后的镇压（或可译为制裁，如制裁罪犯，我们通常译为“镇压”的crackdown，其贬义其实比“镇压”要小一些。——译者注）招致了抗议浪潮和国际范围的敌意，导致了本意要办得和谐的奥运受到玷污。而最近几周，北京当局又在抗争其它灾难：中部地区肠道病毒流行，42名儿童死亡；东部地区火车相撞导致72名乘客遇难。
澳大利亚悉尼大学汉语教授Yiyan Wang说，尽管共产党领导人不赞成迷信，但显然很多公众相信。总理温家宝在震后几小时内即飞赴震区，可以解释为合理的与公众的联系，但也许可能应该归于一种古老的敬畏。“政府知道会有很多国人视地震为失衡的信号。”她说。
关于拥挤的蛤蟆的故事似乎获得了很大推动力，至少在网络上。这的的确确以某种形式发生了，地震前两天，在绵竹，很多居民恐惧万分，相信这是即将发生不幸事件的征兆。震前在四川电视台的一次采访中，绵竹林业局局长试图安抚居民说：大规模迁徙是蟾蜍繁殖季节的正常行为。这段采访被贴在网上，激起了洪水般的愤怒评论。在绵竹现已有至少3000人被掩埋，官方表示另有4500人失踪。
“那些地震学家在浪费纳税人的钱。”有人在博客中说，并建议地震局所有职员辞职，“花钱养这些地震学家还不如养些蛤蟆。”（Ma Yi，北京报道）
[ 本帖最后由 小菜狐狸 于 2008-5-17 01:14 编辑 ] |
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狗仔卡
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