绿皮火车 | 经济学人中国

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英文部分选自经济学人20230121期中国版块

翻译略有删节，请各位自行理解哈

Riding the slow train in China

在中国乘坐绿皮火车

Talking to migrant workers heading home for lunar new year

春运火车上的外地务工人员

From January 7th to February 15th the transport ministry predicts that 2.1bn journeys will be made by Chinese heading home for the Spring Festival, or lunar new year. Some will be urban professionals, gliding between cities on high-speed trains. Many will ride slower lü pi huoche or “green-skin trains”, squeezed into crowded carriages or sitting on corridor floors as they trundle across China on journeys that may last 40 hours or more. Many millions of them have not seen home towns or villages—and in many cases their own children and the ageing parents who care for them—for two years, because of pandemic travel curbs.

中国交通运输部预计，1月7号到2月15号春节期间，全国将发送旅客21亿人次。其中一些是城市精英，他们会乘坐高铁在各个城市间穿梭。许多人选择乘坐慢速的绿皮火车，他们挤在蔽塞的车厢里，或者坐在过道的地板上，可能得在铁路上哐当40多个小时。由于疫情原因，千千万万人两年没回过老家的乡镇或村庄，两年没见过自己的孩子和照顾孩子的年迈父母。

On January 16th alone China’s rail network carried 8.3m travellers. Chaguan was one of them, buying a standing-room ticket for the first day of a two-day train journey from Guangzhou, in the south, to Urumqi in the far western region of Xinjiang. Chatting in Guangzhou station before dawn, or during long hours rolling through southern China, older passengers remembered the chaos of Spring Festival migration 30 years ago. Back then passengers would climb through windows into trains so full that people would sleep on luggage racks or stand in lavatories. Even 20 years ago new-year trains were cluttered with boxes of fruit, cooking oil, clothes and bedding that workers felt obliged to carry home.

仅在1月16日一天，中国铁路运送旅客830万人次。“茶馆”栏目的记者买了一张从广州到乌鲁木齐的站票，成为了客流中的一份子，16日是两天旅途中的第一天。 在黎明前夕广州始发站的闲聊里，或在一路向北穿越华南地区的漫长旅途中，年长的乘客都会回想起30年前春运的乱象。彼时，人们会从窗户爬上火车，车上挤得水泄不通，人们只能睡在行李架上或者站在厕所里。即使是20年前，春运列车上也塞满了一箱箱的水果、食用油、衣服和被子等，都是打工人觉得必须要带回家的东西。

Today the crush is less intense. Many employers allow more flexible departure and return dates, as China’s labour force shrinks and workers become harder to find and keep. Goods ordered online can be delivered to villages year-round, so there is less demand for physical new-year gifts (red packets of cash for children remain obligatory). More migrants drive home in shared private cars. The train networks have grown hugely. Stations are busy but not overwhelmed. Passengers queue to board trains, with priority lines for children and the frail. On the Guangzhou-Urumqi run, there are no signs of graft. Seatless passengers queue at the on-board conductors’ office, identity cards in hand, to be allocated places that open up between certain stops, as passengers get off. A primly cheerful holiday atmosphere prevails, like an orderlyschool trip. Passengers joke that food vendors should give away free holiday meals. A young woman attendant, trim in a brass-buttoned jacket, tells a colleague struggling down a packed aisle that he is to blame for being fat.

如今，春运人潮已不那么拥挤了。中国劳动力减少，招到并留住工人变得越来越难，于是许多雇主允许员工有更加灵活的离岗和返岗安排。网购的商品一年到头都可以送到农村，人们就不必带回那么多新年礼物（不过给孩子发现金红包仍是惯例）。越来越多外出务工者拼“顺风车”返乡。铁路网现如今四通八达，车站络绎不绝，但未人满为患。乘客们排队上车，儿童和体弱者可以优先乘车。在广州至乌鲁木齐这段旅途中，没有受贿迹象。每当某些站点间有乘客下车，座位空出，无座乘客拿着身份证，就可以在车上售票员的办公室排队等待分配座位。车厢中弥漫着一种拘谨而又欢快的节日气氛，好似学校组织的旅行那样井井有条。乘客们开玩笑说，餐车应该发放免费的节日餐。一位身材苗条、身穿铜扣夹克的年轻女乘务员对一位在拥挤的过道中艰难前行的同事说：都怪你太胖了。

Yet amidst all this efficient service, old divisions of class, wealth, ethnicity and gender can be heard, too. For green trains are rolling cross-sections of life in China, a still cruelly unequal place. Some discrimination is blithely unconscious. 

不过，在享受高效服务的同时，人们也会听到区分阶层、财富、种族和性别的陈词滥调。中国的贫富差距依然较大，绿皮火车的旅途，融合了生活的方方面面。有些区别对待的言行是轻率无意之举。

Decades of economic growth created winners and losers. Both are found on the train. Mr Zhuang, a lorry driver for Jingdong, an e-commerce and logistics giant, is travelling with his wife to the north-western province of Shaanxi to see their university-lecturer son, about to start a phd overseas. Mr Zhuang calls his family’s own experience of China’s national rise “life-changing”.

经过几十年的经济发展，有人功成名就，有人满盘皆输。这两类人火车上都有。庄先生是京东的一名卡车司机，在大学当讲师的儿子很快要赴海外攻读博士学位，他与妻子这趟旅途要前往陕西看望他。庄先生称，乘着中国经济发展的东风，他们家的经历可谓“脱胎换骨”。

Nearby, Mr Xing, a grey-haired man from the central province of Henan, dozes. He is a security guard in Guangzhou, after growing too old for building work. Overall, China’s rural-to-urban migrants are ageing. In 2021 the average age of migrant workers in China hit 41.7 years, up from 34 in 2008. Increasingly, youngsters shun factory jobs far from home. Many old workers without adequate pensions toil past the legal retirement age. Mr Xing shares a prefabricated dormitory room in Guangzhou with his son and son-in-law. The son, a burly 40-year-old supervisor on a production line, had not planned new-year travel, but his children, 10 and 16, “kept calling and saying we haven’t been home for a year.” The eldest attended primary school in Guangzhou, but like many migrant children lacked the residency papers to attend a city high-school, so returned to Henan. The younger Mr Xing hopes to catch up with his daughter over the holiday, maybe taking her to an amusement park. But she wants to be a teacher and has a lot of schoolwork. Pondering so many years away from his children, he sighs: “I don’t know how to describe that feeling.”

旁边的座位上，来自河南、头发灰白的老邢打起盹来。他年纪大了，干不了建筑工地的活，就在广州做起了保安。总的来说，中国农民工在老龄化。2021年，中国农民工的平均年龄从2008年的34岁上升到41.7岁。年轻人越来越不愿到离家远的工厂工作。许多没有挣够养老钱的老农民工，过了法定退休年纪，也要继续辛苦工作。在广州，老邢和儿子、女婿挤在一间由预制板搭建的宿舍房里。小邢四十岁，身材魁梧，是生产线上的监工，原本不打算过年回家，但是两个分别10岁和16岁的孩子不停地打电话，念叨着说他们已经一年没有回老家了。老大在广州上的小学，但是像许多农民工子女一样，没有户口上不了城里的中学，所以已经回河南上学去了。小邢想趁着春节假期去看望女儿，说不定能带她去游乐园逛逛，但是她立志要当老师，埋头在功课中。想到离开孩子们这么多年，小邢叹息道：“这种感觉没法说...”

Collective progress, individual angst

社会进步，个体焦虑

Mrs Li, a street sweeper in Guangzhou, sits on a bucket by a train door. A widow aged 56, she is six years past the retirement age for female blue-collar workers, but falls foul of China’s stingy, fiddly welfare rules. Years of factory jobs did not generate a big-city pension. Her bare-bones health insurance can only be accessed in her rural home. She makes 4,000 yuan ($590) after a month of 12-hour days, with no days off. When covid quarantines halted work, she should by law have been paid, but her employer, a subcontractor, refused. Without money, “you’re nobody,” she says. Her son, a factory worker, lacks funds to buy the home and car needed to marry. With so much pressure, young people “don’t want kids, they don’t want marriages,” she sighs. Her parents and in-laws have just had covid, so she hopes her arrival will not endanger them. She longs to visit because, at their age, “every new year counts.” Other passengers echo her talk of life’s harsh pressures. Gleaming infrastructure is impressive. Building a fair, happy society is harder.

李婆婆是广州的一名环卫工人，坐在火车门旁的一只桶上。她是个寡妇，今年56岁，超过女工人法定退休年龄6年，但是现行的福利制度覆盖面窄、程序繁琐，她很难享受到退休福利。尽管在厂里工作多年，她却不能领取大城市的退休金，只能在自己的家乡享受基本医疗保险。李婆婆一个月挣4000元，一天工作12小时，全年无休。后来因为新冠疫情隔离政策，她没班可上，本来按规定可以继续领工资，但是她的雇主（分包商）拒绝支付。“没有钱，你什么也不是。”李婆婆说。她的儿子在工厂打工，没钱买房买车，结不了婚。她感叹道：“压力太大，年轻人不想结婚生孩子，”李婆婆的父母和姻亲刚感染上新冠肺炎，她希望自己这趟回家不会累及他们。她渴望去看看亲友们，因为到了他们的年纪，“每一个新年都要珍惜。”李婆婆关于生活压力的言谈，在其他旅客中引起共鸣。

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