雾霾下的国度：北京生存之道

by Evan Osnos

When you live in Beijing for a while， you gain a finely tuned understanding of air. After seven years here， I feel a bit like those 1）apocryphal Eskimos， with their thirty words for snow.

In Beijing， we talk about air purifiers the way that teen-age boys talk about cars. More than once， Ive gone into a friends apartment and put an admiring hand on a top-of-theline， 2）IQAir HealthPro， and said， “Niiiice.”（The cost？ About nine hundred bucks per room.） At our house we have a lesser brand， and the following will sound like a joke， but Im sorry to say its not： the filters for these machines are so expensive that we get ours under the table， through a connection that my wife has involving a stern Russian woman from Vladivostok. How she gets them， I dont ask and she doesnt tell.

For Christmas last year， our families gave us air purifiers.

在北京住上一段时间后，你就会对空气有更细致的感受。在北京住了七年后，我感觉自己有点像那些坊间杜撰的爱斯基摩人，传说能用30个词精准地描述不同的雪。

在北京，我们谈论空气净化器，其方式就像青年男孩子们经常谈论汽车一样。我曾不止一次去一位朋友家里，无比羡慕地抚摸着他家的顶尖产品——全能高效空气净化器啧啧惊叹道：“真是太太太好了！”（多少钱？每间房大约花费九百美金。）而我家的那个牌子可没这么响，来源听起来就像个笑话，但我不得不说这并非笑话。由于这些空气净化器的过滤器太贵，我们的这个是偷偷交易得来的，还是我妻子通过一个凶巴巴的俄国海参崴女人搞定的。至于那个女人是如何搞到手的，我没问，她也没说。

就在去年圣诞节时，我们家用上了空气净化器。

By now， the world has looked on with sympathy（and a 3）soup？on of “4）airenfreude”） at pictures of the misery here in Beijing these days. Thanks to an extra-cold winter， which has caused people to burn more coal； an ever-increasing number of cars； and a windless few days， Beijing entered a tunnel of record-breaking air pollution this weekend—and its still going on. The most dangerous kind of pollution， the 5）ultrafine 6）airborne particles， 7）spiked to 993 micrograms per cubic meter on Saturday. How high is that？ The World Health Organization advises cities not to exceed 25. （As I type this， were down to 285， which the U.S. Embassy describes as“8）hazardous.”）

For me， the clearest technical measure of the severity came from an environmental-law expert who reported that the closest the United States has ever come to measurements like this was in the midst of forest fires—and Beijings level this weekend was far higher than that.

如今，全世界对照片上这些日子饱受苦难的北京人投以同情（并且带点幸“霾”乐祸）的目光。由于今年冬天遭遇严寒，人们不得不燃烧更多煤炭来取暖，再加上日益增长的私家车数量和连续数日的无风天气，本周末北京空气污染的严重程度可谓史无前例——且还在继续加重。其中最危险的一种污染，即超微颗粒物在周六飙升到每立方米993微克。这个浓度究竟有多高呢？世界卫生组织建议的超微颗粒物每立方米最好不要超过25微克。（在我撰写本文之际，北京的每立方米超微颗粒物已降至285微克，但是美国大使馆还是称这已达到“危险”水平。……