[2022-12-18] 纽约时报 - “动态清零”三年：中国人的集体创伤和一个永不会道歉的政府
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Gripped with grief, anxiety and depression, many in China want a national reckoning over the hard-line “zero Covid” policy. Holding the government to account may be a quixotic quest.
在悲伤、焦虑和沮丧的情绪中，许多中国人希望对强硬的“动态清零”政策进行全国清算。 让政府承担责任可能是一个不切实际的追求。
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They posted photos of their positive Covid tests on social media. They described their symptoms as if it were something to be celebrated: fever, cough, fatigue, body ache, loss of taste and smell. They talked about how wonderful it was to no longer be afraid of being sent to quarantine camps for infections and to no longer have to worry about neighbors being locked down for weeks as a result.
他们在社交媒体上发核酸结果呈阳性的照片。他们描述自己的症状时好像那是值得庆祝的事情：发烧、咳嗽、疲劳、身体疼痛、丧失味觉和嗅觉。他们说，很高兴不用再担心被送去隔离，不用再担心牵连邻居被关在家里数周时间。
“Savor the moment when we are able to get sick,” an independent bookstore owner in Beijing posted on her WeChat timeline. “Let’s protect this most humble right.”
“珍惜能生病的时光，”北京一家独立书店的老板在她的微信的朋友圈里写道。“保护这最卑微的权利。”
Since the government abruptly dropped its stringent “zero Covid” restrictions last week in the face of rare nationwide protests, much of the Chinese public has embraced a new life. They have been eager to gain back some of their basic rights, even if it means the virus is now spreading quickly.
自从全国各地罕见地爆发了抗议活动、政府于上周突然放弃严厉的“动态清零”政策以来，许多中国老百姓已接受了新生活。他们一直渴望重新获得一些基本权利，尽管这意味着武汉肺炎病毒目前正在迅速传播。
But beneath the relief is a collective and profound trauma that will not be easy to heal. Gripped with grief, anxiety and depression, people want a national reckoning of what went wrong. Many are now on an almost quixotic quest in the belief that the government should acknowledge its harsh policies were a severe mistake and should apologize for the harm it has caused.
但在宽慰之下是一种集体的、难以治愈的深深创伤。被悲伤、焦虑和抑郁笼罩着的人民想对国家出了什么问题算一个总帐。一些人现在甚至近乎异想天开地认为，政府应该承认严厉的“动态清零”政策是个严重的错误，并应该为政策造成的伤害道歉。
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Li Gongming, an art historian and a former member of a political advisory group run by the Chinese Communist Party, posted an article on the social media platform WeChat, urging the government of the southern city of Guangzhou to help heal the emotional and social wounds from the pandemic.
艺术史学家、前政协委员李公明在微信上发文，敦促南方城市广州的当地政府帮助愈合疫情造成的情感和社会创伤。
“The first step should probably start with acknowledging the mistake, offering condolences to the deceased and apologizing to the public,” he wrote. “It should be followed by holding people accountable and by making the government pay for compensations.”
“第一步恐怕离不开承认错误、向逝者致哀、向国民道歉，”他写道。“然后是依法问责、国家赔偿。”
His article, published Monday, was quickly deleted.
他周一发的文章很快就被删除了。
Another WeChat article, under the pen name “Banchizi,” urged the public to hold officials accountable for the heavy cost paid under the “zero Covid” policy, which it called “a silly farce.”
另一篇网名“Banchizi”的人在微信上发文，呼吁公众要求官员对“动态清零”政策的沉重代价负责，文章把“动态清零”政策称为“无厘头闹剧”。
An apology might not suffice for some health officials who lied and misled the nation, the article said; they should be prosecuted.
文章说，对一些撒谎和误导国家的卫生官员来说，光道歉可能还不够，他们应该被起诉。
The author urged the country to tabulate the collateral deaths — those from suicides, from medical treatments that were delayed or denied, and from accidents related to the pandemic restrictions.
文章作者要求国家将清零政策的附带死亡——自杀、因延误治疗或被医院拒绝收治导致的死亡，以及与“动态清零”政策相关的事故死亡——统计出来。
China rarely releases the names and identities of the victims of tragedies thought to be connected to “zero Covid.” One such incident was when 27 people died in a bus accident on their way to a quarantine facility in southwestern province of Guizhou. Another was when 10 people perished in an apartment fire in the western city Urumqi, an event that triggered the mass street protests last month.
中国很少公布被视为“动态清零”次生灾害受害者的姓名。其中一起灾害发生在西南省份贵州，一辆将人们转运到集中隔离设施的大巴途中翻车，导致27人死亡。另一起发生在西部城市乌鲁木齐，一栋住宅楼的火灾导致了10人死亡，这场火灾引发了上个月全国各地的街头抗议活动。
Tabulating their names and how they died is the “least respect we can pay to the deceased,” said the article by Banchizi.
列出他们的名字和死因是“给生命一个最低限度的尊严”，Banchizi的文章写道。
It, too, was deleted.
这篇文章也已被删除。
Social media users called out some of the top health experts who talked up the dangers of the omicron variant to support the government’s “zero Covid” policy, only to change their messages after the 180-degree policy change. People circulated screenshots of different headlines of the official People’s Daily in recent months, joking that the newspaper is always right on the day it is published, but it contradicts itself when it’s later bound together with other editions.
社交媒体用户点了几个国内著名卫生专家的名字，这些人曾为支持政府的“动态清零”政策夸大奥密克戎变异株的危险，但在政策出现180度大转弯后，他们又改变了说辞。网上疯传官媒《人民日报》近几个月来截然不同的大标题的截图，人们开玩笑说，该报当天看都正确，但合订本就自相矛盾了。
People I interviewed told me that they want the government to apologize because it would offer some comfort for what they have endured.
接受采访的人告诉我，他们希望政府道歉，因为这能为他们承受的一切提供一些安慰。
Zhang, a college senior in eastern Jiangsu Province who asked to be identified only by her surname, has had to take more than 100 Covid tests this year and was locked down for a total of four months, including much of the fall semester. She feels depressed, finds it hard to become motivated and cries easily when reading news about Covid.
一名要求我只写她姓张的江苏省大四学生说，她今年已被迫做了100多次核酸，前前后后被封控的时间加起来有四个月，包括秋季学期的大部分时间。她感到抑郁、消极，读到武汉肺炎病毒的新闻时动不动会哭。
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She believed the government’s misinformation about the pandemic in the West, so she supported locking down Shanghai in April, a position she now regrets. Now knowing better, she wants the party to apologize to “all the innocent people who died under ‘zero Covid,’ people who lost their income under lockdowns and all the people who were brainwashed by the propaganda machine,” she said.
她曾相信政府传播的关于西方疫情的错误信息，并因此支持今年4月的上海封城。她现在对当初的立场表示后悔。她说，现在知道的更多了，她想让中共为“对于那些在清零中无辜死去、因长期封控失去收入的人以及被政治机器洗脑的所有人，政府都应该认错并道歉”。
Like Ms. Zhang, most people I interviewed for this column only want to be identified by a single name for safety concerns.
本专栏采访的大多数人与张女士一样，出于安全考虑要求不使用全名。
In a normal society, for a policy mistake as severe as “zero Covid,” the public would demand more than an apology, said Yan, a project manager at an internet company in Beijing. “They would have wanted a new ruling party. But it’s a different matter in the Chinese context.”
北京一家互联网公司的项目经理言（音）说，在正常社会里，对像“动态清零”这样的严重政策错误，公众要求的不会只是道歉。“岂止是道歉，还要换一个党来执政了。但在我们这个语境下不是这么回事。”
Everybody I talked to believes that the government should apologize, but no one expects it will. The Communist Party can only be “great, glorious and correct,” they said, per its own description in many official speeches. And Xi Jinping, the country’s top leader, has silenced nearly all dissent and criticism of his leadership.
跟我聊过的所有人都认为政府应该道歉，但没有人指望政府会这样做。他们说，中共只能是“伟光正”，这是许多官方讲话对中共的描述。而且，中国最高领导人习近平已把对中共领导层的异见和批评几乎全部压制下去了。
“The call for apology is very brave, and I want it, too,” said Yan. “But it’s very unlikely to happen.”
“这种呼声非常勇敢，我也希望能看到道歉，”言说。 “但是小概率事件。”
The Communist Party has never apologized to the Chinese people for any of the atrocities they have suffered during its 73 years in power. Not after more than 20 million people starved to death during the disastrous Great Leap Forward, nor when the country was thrown into a decade of chaos and economic destruction by the Cultural Revolution. And not for the one-child policy that imposed many forced abortions and is now helping foment a demographic crisis with one of the fastest aging populations in the world.
在执政的73年里，中共从来没有为中国人民在其统治下遭受的任何残暴行为道过歉。没有为灾难性的大跃进导致逾2000万人饿死道过歉。没有为文化大革命使国家陷入长达十年的混乱和经济崩溃道过歉。也没有为独生子女政策道过歉，这项政策导致了许多强制堕胎，促使中国成为世界上人口老龄化最快并面临人口危机的国家之一。
The party even killed a literary genre called “scar literature,” which emerged after the Cultural Revolution in late 1970s and portrayed the sufferings that people endured during that political campaign. The party never wants anybody to focus too much on their scars because they would inevitably ask where the scars came from, said Xu Chenggang, a senior research scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economic and Institutions who was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution.
中共甚至扼杀了被称为“伤痕文学”的文学类型。伤痕文学出现在文革后的20世纪70年代末，写的是人们在那场政治运动中遭受的苦难。斯坦福大学中国经济与制度中心高级研究学者许成钢说，中共从来不希望有人过度关注他们的伤痕，因为他们会不可避免地想知道伤痕是从哪里来的。许成钢曾在文革期间遭受迫害。
Hu Xijin, a top party propagandist, senses dangers in all the demands for an apology. In a long article on the social media platform Weibo, where he has nearly 25 million followers, he wrote that the people who called the “zero Covid” policy a “man-made disaster” are too “radical.”
中共高级吹鼓手胡锡进意识到了要求道歉的所有危险。他在自己拥有近2500万粉丝的社交媒体平台微博上发的一篇长文中写道，将“动态清零”政策称为“人祸”的人“偏激”了。
The post triggered an outcry of anger and disappointment. Many college students noted that they felt like prisoners on their campuses. A commenter from Shanghai said their child was locked down in a 600-square-foot apartment for three months. “Isn’t this something that we should reflect on? Shouldn’t we try to stop this from happening again and keep the power on check?” the commenter asked.
胡锡进的文章引发了大片愤怒和失望的声音。许多大学生指出，他们感觉自己在校园里是囚徒。一个来自上海的评论留言说，他们的孩子被关在一个55平米的公寓里三个月。“不应该反思吗？不应该杜绝这种乱象，把权力关进笼子里？”评论者问道。
The party has stepped in to control the narrative. In a front-page commentary on Thursday, the People’s Daily, the party’s official newspaper, talked up how the country is coming back to life. Then it spent more than 10,000 words praising how the party and Mr. Xi guided the country through the pandemic.
中共已加强了对叙事的控制。中共喉舌《人民日报》周四在头版发表的评论中，大谈特谈国家正在如何恢复生机，然后用了一万多字赞扬中共和习近平如何带领国家度过了武汉肺炎疫情。
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“Practice has fully proved that the Communist Party of China,” it said, “is the most reliable backbone of the Chinese people when storms strike.”
“实践充分证明，中国共产党，”文章写道，“是风雨来袭时中国人民最可靠的主心骨。”
It is a clear signal that the government will stick to its victorious messaging. It wants the public to accept its narrative, forget about what happened to them and move on.
这是一个明确的信号，表明政府将坚持宣传自己获得胜利的信息。它想让公众接受这种叙事，忘掉发生在他们身上的事情，接受现实。
Some have anticipated such moves and are determined to fight back against the collective amnesia that the nation has suffered for too long. It’s their own way to cope with the trauma.
一些人对这种做法已有预料，并决心要抵制这个国家长期遭受的集体失忆症。用他们自己的方式应对创伤。
Yu, a programmer in his mid-30s, chokes up whenever he talks about the lockdown in Shanghai in the spring of this year. “I felt like I was knocked down by the government and hammered for three months,” he said. “Then it told me that it did it for the sake of my well-being.”
30多岁的程序员余（音）每当谈起今年春天的上海封城时都会哽咽。“我感觉被按在地上拿铁锤锤了三个月，”他说。“然后它还说是为了你好。”
He is still having two recurring nightmares. In one, he would be in a war zone full of barbed wires and filled with poisonous air. In the other, he would hear a monotonous voice repeatedly blasting from a loudspeaker, “Come down to get tested for Covid.” Then would come his test results: negative, positive, negative, positive.
他仍有两个反复出现的噩梦。在一个噩梦里，他身处布满铁丝网和有毒空气的战区。在另一个噩梦里，他会听到大喇叭里的一个单调声音不断大喊，“下来做核酸。”然后是的检测结果：阴性、阳性、阴性、阳性。
He believes that it’s important to write down what happened. He spent the summer on an electronic book, compiling government announcements and credible online information about what happened to the 25 million Shanghai residents between March and July. He believes that it would be obvious to anybody how much the government lied and how brutally it treated the people.
他认为把发生了事情记录下来很重要。他花了整个夏天写了一本电子书，搜集了政府的公告和可靠的在线信息，讲述了2500万上海居民今年3月到7月的遭遇。他相信所有的人都明白政府撒了多少谎，对待人民的做法有多么残酷。
“It was like an absurd nightmare,” he wrote in the introduction. “I can’t help but ask why tragedies like this keep happening to the Chinese people.”
“仿佛做了一个荒诞的噩梦，”他在序中写道。“不由感叹类似的悲剧为何在中国老百姓身上一再重演。”标红字体均为楼主更改，与原文作者无关。
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