外國記者笑看中國社會亂象:蘋果是個好香蕉!

Reporting from Beijing — If you are a young man in Beijing and you can't afford a car or an apartment, the next best thing is an iPhone, or better yet an iPad.
來自北京記者的報道：如果你是一個年輕人，身在北京，買不起車，買不起房，那麼你最該買的就是一個iPhone——或買iPad更好。

The cult of Apple reigns supreme in China, to the extent that people like Alex Xing, who works in his family's medical supply business, call it "the era of Apple."
美國有個幽默的通俗講法，說某個人在某領域特別牛，就叫top banana，直譯是“頂級香蕉”或“最好的香蕉”。“蘋果教”在中國“君臨天下”，以至於亞歷克斯·邢（音；Alex Xing）將其稱爲“蘋果時代”——亞歷克斯·邢要真是個美國人，那他就該講：在中國，蘋果是個好香蕉。

"Only the old guys, like 20 years older than me, still use Nokias," said Xing, a 26-year-old hipster who wears self-consciously nerdy black eyeglasses, jeans and sneakers. He cradled his own prized telephone close to his heart as he spoke. "Even the girls I meet in the nightclubs have iPhones.'
亞歷克斯·邢目前從事醫療用品供應工作，是家族業務，他說：“只有那些老傢伙，比我大20歲的那種，纔會堅持用諾基亞。”邢先生​​26歲，很時髦，牛仔褲、運動鞋，戴着一副自以爲很有書卷氣的黑框眼鏡，一邊懷抱着自己那部龍心鳳肝似的珍貴手機，一邊說：“連我在夜店遇到的女孩兒們也都用iPhone。”

The extremes to which people will go to get their hands on the Apple brand are legendary. A 17-year-old high school student from rural China made headlines in June when he reportedly sold a kidney to buy an iPad 2. State news media reported in September that a 16-year-old girl in the southern city of Guangzhou was killed in a fight with her mother over whether she could get money for an Apple computer.
蘋果擁躉趨附者衆，人們就爲了那個商標，有時幹出的事簡直有點驚世駭俗。有個17歲的中國農村高中生，今年6月成爲新聞頭條，據報道，他爲了買iPad 2，賣掉自己一個腎（詳情請閱讀鳳凰網評論）。另據某國家級新聞媒體報道，今年9月廣州南方某城市一個16歲的女孩因想買一臺蘋果電腦而與母親發生爭執，爭執升級發生打鬥，女孩最後不幸死亡（詳情請閱讀鳳凰網資訊）。

Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple reported this week that sales in China rose to $13 billion from $3 billion for the fiscal year ended Sept. 24.
據位於加州庫珀蒂諾（Cupertino）的蘋果總部本週一份報告顯示，截至9月24日2011財年統計，蘋果在中國的營業收入從2010財年的30億美元增長到了130億美元。2

"I've never seen a country with as many people rising into the middle class that aspire to buy products that Apple makes," Chief Executive Tim Cook said Tuesday in a conference call with analysts. "China — the sky's the limit there."
“我從沒見過哪個國家能有那麼多人一下子棲身中產行列，熱切追捧任何‘蘋果製造’，”蘋果首席執行官蒂姆·庫克（Tim Cook）在週二與分析師的電話會議中說：“中國——一切皆有無限可能。”

The Oct. 5 death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs elicited a rare outpouring of grief among Chinese fans. An online tribute page on China's equivalent of Twitter had 93 million postings as of Wednesday — the most on any one subject since the Sina Weibo service started two years ago.
10月5日蘋果聯合創始人史蒂夫·喬布斯去世，引發中國萬千蘋果粉絲摧心剖肝、呼天搶地。僅星期三當天，新浪微博上面一個在線致敬喬布斯的頁面竟然收到9300萬條回覆，這是這個國產推特運營兩年來最火的一推了。

"How come China can produce a Mao Tse-tung but not a Steve Jobs?" grumbled one fan on the Sina tribute board.
一位上新浪致敬的果粉抱怨說：“爲什麼中國出了個毛澤東，可就是出不了個喬布斯？”

"When God wanted to listen to music, he took away Michael Jackson; when God wanted to use iPhone 5, he took away Steve Jobs," wrote another.
另一位則寫道：“上帝想聽歌了，帶走了邁克爾·傑克遜；上帝想用iPhone 5，於是帶走了喬布斯。”

Apple's first store in Beijing, a big glass cube in a modernist shopping mall, is believed to be the highest-grossing Apple store in the world. Security guards with earpieces now patrol the front door after a stampede ensued in May as people tried to get their hands on the iPad 2, which had just gone on sale.
蘋果在北京的第一家專賣店（指三里屯零售店，該店同時也是中國大陸首家），是建在某現代派購物中心裏的大玻璃立方體，普遍認爲這是全世界業績最好的一家蘋果專賣店。該店五月曾發生一次踩踏事故，當時人們爭先恐後搶購剛發售的iPad 2，事故之後該店門口就多了幾個戴着無線耳麥巡邏的保安。

Demand for the iPhone 4 was so keen that Apple stores required would-be buyers to show identification cards to prevent scalpers from buying up the phones and selling them at a premium. A new Apple store that opened in Shanghai in September drew 100,000 visitors the first weekend, some waiting in line for days to get in.
人們對iPhone 4的需求如此熱切，以至於蘋果專賣店要求顧客出示身份證明，防止黃牛伺機囤貨溢價銷售。而九月份上海又新開了一家蘋果專賣店，開業首周就吸引了10萬人，有人爲了進店甚至在店外排隊等候數天。

"The [sales] numbers reflect the Apple fever that you see on the ground in China. If you're at a coffee shop or the airport lounge … everybody is using their iPad or iPhone," said Josh Ong, China correspondent for AppleInsider.
據美國科技博客“蘋果內幕”（AppleInsider）駐中國記者翁喬希（音；Josh Ong）稱：“（銷售）數字反映了華夏大地上的蘋果熱。如果你走進一間咖啡廳，或是走進機場休息室……每個人都在用iPad或iPhone。”

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Apple has it in droves. The relatively slow pace of opening stores — only four so far in China — has led to knockoff Apple outlets, complete with stark white walls and the logo of an apple with a bite out of it. In the southwestern city of Kunming, Chinese authorities found and closed 22 such stores.
如果說“模仿”是最誠摯的“奉承”，那麼蘋果屁股後面的拍馬大隊已經蜂擁成羣了。蘋果在中國開店的步伐相對較慢，迄今爲止只有四家，這就導致了山寨蘋果店的出現：這些店統統把牆壁刷得個全白，也都打上那個咬了一口的蘋果標。僅在中國西南部城市昆明市，中國當局就發現並關閉了22家這樣的山寨店。

Although the stores were fake, most of the products were real, sold through unauthorized dealers or brought in illegally through the United States. A scarcity of supply in China and steep taxes on electronics make prices here higher than elsewhere. New products also arrive later in China. For example, the iPhone 4S was released Oct. 14 in the U.S. but is not expected officially for months in China. It was selling last weekend at a Beijing electronics market for as much as $2,000.
儘管這些店是山寨的，但他們賣的貨大部分都是真的，其渠道可能是未經授權的經銷商，也有直接從美國非法帶回來轉賣的。在中國，這些商品供應稀缺，加之高額的電子產品關稅，導致這裏的售價比其他地方要高很多。同時，蘋果新品登陸中國總要晚於其他國家、地區。例如iphone 4S，10月14日在美國開始發售，但據估最近幾個月內都不可能在中國正式上市；而這款手機上週出現在北京某電子市場，售價高達2000美元（約合人民幣1萬2700元）。

Apple's devices are mostly manufactured in China at huge electronics suppliers along the southeastern coast. Foxconn, a Taiwanese firm that assembles iPads and iPhones, has at least 250,000 people working on Apple products on the mainland, according to the group Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, a Hong Kong-based nongovernmental organization that has been sharply critical of conditions for Apple workers. Their take-home pay is $150 a month — meaning it would take four months' wages to buy the cheapest model iPad.
蘋果的產品大多是中國製造，由東南沿海巨大的電子產品供應商代工，例如富士康。據香港非政府組織“大學師生監察無良企業行動”（SACOM）介紹，這家組裝iPad與iPhone的臺灣公司至少有25萬員工在大陸從事蘋果產品相關生產工作。該民間監察組織嚴厲批評了蘋果公司給員工提供的工作條件，據悉這些員工每月領到手的工資是150美元（約合人民幣950元），這意味着他們4個月不吃不喝才能買得起一款最便宜的iPad。

In a report released last month titled "iSlave behind the iPhone," the group said the extraordinary demand for Apple products was putting great pressure on workers, who often are on their feet for 10-hour shifts, live in military-style barracks and are penalized if they don't work overtime. Turnover is high, at least 19 workers have committed or tried to commit suicide, and three workers died in a May 20 explosion in a workshop operated by Foxconn in Sichuan province, the group said.
該監察組織上個月發佈了一份題爲《我是蘋果手機背後的奴隸》（iSlave behind the iPhone）的報告，報告指出工廠對蘋果產品的超常品質需求給工人施加了巨大壓力，他們經常一輪就是10個小時一班，一直站着幹活兒，住的也是軍營一般的宿舍，而且如果不加班還要受罰。據該組織稱，富士康工廠人員流動率很高，而且至少已有19名工人自殺或自殺未遂，另外還有3名工人在5月20日富士康四川某車間爆炸意外中不幸身亡。

Environmental groups have also criticized Apple for failing to monitor Chinese suppliers whose plants discharge hazardous wastewater and gases into residential areas. One of the suppliers, Catcher Technology, announced this week that it had partly closed a factory that made high-end metal casings for the MacBook Air because of a "strange odor" that drew complaints from nearby residents.
對蘋果的批評還來自環保組織，他們指責蘋果對中國供應商工廠監管不力，導致其將有害廢水、廢氣排放入住宅區。供應商之一，麥田科技本週宣佈已部分關閉旗下某工廠，據悉該工廠爲蘋果超薄筆記本MacBook Air製造相當高端的金屬外殼，但此前因工廠“異味”不斷引致附近居民投訴。

Although the accusations have had some coverage in the United States, there's been hardly any in China.
美國方面對諸如此類的指控小有報道，但在中國，這些消息則很少見。

"Steve Jobs has brought many jobs to China. Apple's models are good. Their look and touch is good. That's what's important," said Zhang Haiou, 34, who, dressed in a T-shirt with a photograph of Jobs, was selling cases for iPhones outside the Beijing store last week.
上週，記者採訪了34歲的張海鷗（音），張身穿印有喬布斯照片的T恤衫，在三里屯蘋果店外兜售iPhone手機套，張告訴記者：“史蒂夫·喬布斯給中國帶來了大量的工作機會。蘋果的機子好、外觀好、手感好，這些因素至關重要。”

If there is any complaint about Apple, it's that it embarrasses Chinese firms that have not been able to muster the same level of innovation.
中國人對蘋果如有任何抱怨，那就是這一家公司使得中國萬千公司顏面盡失，因爲這些公司加一塊兒也達不到“蘋果級”的創新水平。

The Communist Party's Shanghai newspaper, Jiefang Daily, weighed in recently, editorializing: "We must get rid of the eagerness for quick success and instant benefits; acquire the spirit of preciseness, stability and greater perfection; and present good products with a sense of responsibility toward customers if we are to come up with our own Apple."
上海黨媒《解放日報》近日發表一篇社論，向廣大中國企業施壓：“當下，我們需要……加強全社會的品質意識，拋棄急功近利的做派，只有嚴謹踏實、精益求精，以對消費者負責的態度做好產品，我們纔有可能拿出真正的好‘蘋果’”。（原題《我們不要“爛蘋果”》）