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中国震撼世界
Shock and ore
我到那儿时，只剩下一块疤了，一块赭色的土疤，有二十五个足球场那么大。十多台挖土机，笨拙地刨着泥土，仿佛心不在焉地寻找丢失的东西。德国最大的钢铁厂之一，自二战前一直矗立此地。如今，这里只剩下几堆扭曲的废铁。我朝路边一位身着工装的男子走去，他正将一截巨大的金属管道吊上卡车。等他把管道放好后，我跟他打招呼。他说，从挖管、搬运到吊装，这种管子已运走了十四根，眼下只剩下三根，够他再干一周。然后，活儿就都干完了。我问管子往哪运。他伸直腰，好像要沿着一条长长的弧线，把什么东西抛向远方；然后说道：“中国。
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.
钢厂的设备早就运走了。安装在60米高厂房内的顶吹氧转炉，加工卷板长度超过一公里的热轧钢机，一部烧结机，一座鼓风炉，还有许多其它部件，所有设备都用木条箱包装，塞进集装箱，装船启运，然后在长江口附近被拆箱。在长江的平坦冲积平原上，又严格按照在德国的样子，一个螺丝也不差地把设备重新组装。运走的设备总重达25万吨，外加40吨详尽解释重新组装过程的文件。整项工程十分繁复，穿工装的男子直摇头：“设备弄过去后，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.
德国蒂森克虏伯(ThyssenKrupp)在多特蒙德的钢厂，一度雇佣约一万名员工。在赫尔德(Horde)和威斯特法伦区(Westfalenhutte)，数代人都靠钢厂谋生。高耸的烟囱市内各处都能看到，烟囱周围密布着厂房。近200年来，工厂一直在炼钢。德国在1870年、1914年和1939年擂响战鼓时，正是鲁尔河谷这一隅先为普鲁士、后为德意志帝国供应了野战炮、坦克、炮弹和战舰装甲钢板。此地的人们以实物为豪，证据在厂内处处可见。工厂的一条通道边，立着一座矮墩墩的19世纪铁制鼓风炉，人们把它当作纪念碑，文字说明：鼓风炉运自英格兰。附近，有块纪念当地一位工程师的牌匾。
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，一个温暖明媚的下午，赫尔德区看上去安宁、平静，显然已不再是鲁尔地区跳动的心脏了。阿尔佛来德•特拉宾(Alfred Trappen)街上，一家冰淇淋店外，几个人坐在阳光下，用长长的调羹挖食着圣代冰淇淋。街道不远处，有一家齐曼纺织品(Zeeman Textiel)折扣店，店门外，妇女们在网格篮里翻找，仔细打量着0.99欧元一件的T恤衫。折扣店附近，三家日光浴室、一家纹身馆一字排开。纹身馆的广告说，能把“爱”、“富”、“康”三个汉字纹在顾客身上。不过，日光浴室和纹身馆都关门了。
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.
钢铁厂没了，生活发生了什么变化呢？我来就是要了解此事。不过，我不会讲德语，倒成了个障碍。想拜访当地官员，他们又不愿谈。与街上的人搭讪，这些人觉得我的问题意思不大。我去了路德教会，按传单上的名字一一给五位牧师打电话，约他们喝杯咖啡聊聊。马丁·蓬塞(Martin Pense)神父很忙，克劳斯·沃尔特曼(Klaus Wortmann)神父出城了，伯尔恩·怀斯巴赫-拉迈(Bern Weissbach-Lamay)神父没接电话，安格拉·迪克(Angela Dicke)嬷嬷很乐意帮忙，不过今天放假，很抱歉。轻声细语的斯温·弗罗里希(Sven Frohlich)神父倒愿意电话上聊几分钟。
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.
弗罗里希神父说，钢厂消亡是竞争力丧失所致，厄运来得慢，却不可避免。90年代初，生产效率高的韩国钢铁厂就开始在全球削价抢生意，赫尔德区的钢铁工人却强烈要求实行每周35小时工作制。接着，东西德统一，迫使政府提高税收，拖了整体经济活动的后腿，给赫尔德区造成了沉重打击。到90年代中期，赫尔德钢铁厂最终何去何从，成了辩论话题。一开始，管理层做出惯有的反应：讨论与某家竞争对手合并，实现经营增效，成本缩减，提高竞争力。到2000年时，全球钢铁价格陷入低谷，一切有关拯救的言谈都烟消云散，似乎无能为力了。
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.
弗罗里希神父说，数千钢铁工人失去工作，路德教会的教团也迁走了，社区并不贫穷，却陷入了一种麻木状态。教会采取措施，竭力吸引年轻人参加各种社区活动（这一点从教会的通讯中就可以看出)，年轻人似乎感觉不到宗教的吸引力。“我们迷失了自我，”弗罗里希神父说。“这可是人身上最重要的东西，却被拿走的。找回这种东西可能需要10年以上。”
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》“ |
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发表于 2007-7-10 17:24
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