纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英为何这些中国人冒险走线赴美
December 4, 2023 9 min 1883 words
随手搬运西方主流媒体的所谓的民主自由的报道，让帝国主义的丑恶嘴脸无处遁形。
Gao Zhibin and his daughter left Beijing on Feb. 24 for a better life, a safer one. Over the next 35 days, by airplane, train, boat, bus and foot, they traveled through nine countries. By the time they touched American soil in late March, Mr. Gao had lost 30 pounds.
今年2月24日，高志斌（音）和女儿离开了北京，去寻找更好、更安全的生活。在接下来的35天里，他们坐飞机、火车、轮船、公交车，加上步行，途经九个国家，于3月下旬抵达美国本土。那时，高先生的体重已比出发时轻了近15公斤。
The most harrowing part of their journey was trekking through the brutal jungle in Panama known as the Darién Gap. On the first day, said Mr. Gao, 39, he had sunstroke. The second day, his feet swelled. Dehydrated and weakened, he threw away his tent, a moisture-resistant sleeping pad and his change of clothes.
行程中最恐怖的部分是徒步穿越巴拿马名为“达连峡谷”的险恶丛林。39岁的高先生说，上路的第一天他就中暑了。第二天，他的脚肿了。由于脱水和没有力气，他只得扔掉帐篷、防潮睡垫和换洗衣服。
Then his 13-year-old daughter got sick. She lay on the ground, vomiting, with her face pale, her forehead feverish, her hands on her stomach. Mr. Gao said he thought she might have drunk dirty water. Dragging themselves through the muddy, treacherous rainforests of the Darién Gap, they took a break every 10 minutes. They didn’t get to their destination, a camp site in Panama, until 9 p.m.
后来，他13岁的女儿生了病。她躺在地上，不断地呕吐，脸色苍白，还发着烧，她用双手捂着肚子。高先生说，他认为女儿可能喝了不干净的水。他们缓慢而费力地在泥泞、险恶的达连峡谷雨林里行进，每走10分钟就休息一下。直到晚上9点才到达了目的地——巴拿马的一个露营地。
Mr. Gao said he felt he had no choice but to leave China.
高先生说，他觉得除了离开中国别无选择。
“I think we will only be safe by coming to the U.S.,” he said, adding that he believed that Xi Jinping, China’s leader, could lead the country to famine and possibly war. “It’s a rare opportunity to protect me and my family,” he said.
“我认为只有来到美国我们才安全，”他说。他还表示认为中国领导人习近平会把国家带入饥荒，甚至有可能带入战争。“这是保护我和家人的一个难得的机会，”他说。
A growing number of Chinese have entered the United States this year through the Darién Gap, exceeded only by Venezuelans, Ecuadoreans and Haitians, according to Panamanian immigration authorities.
It is a dangerous route once used mostly by Cubans and Haitians, and to a lesser extent people from Nepal, India, Cameroon and Congo. The Chinese are fleeing the world’s second-largest economy.
这是一条危险的路线，以前主要是古巴人和海地人使用，此外还有少数尼泊尔人、印度人、喀麦隆人和刚果人。中国人正在逃离世界第二大经济体。
Educated and affluent Chinese are migrating through legal channels, such as education and work visas, to escape bleak economic prospects and political oppression — motivations shared by the Darién Gap émigrés.
受过教育和富裕的中国人正在通过学生签和工作签等合法渠道移民，以逃避黯淡的经济前景和政治压制，走达连峡谷路线移民的人也是出于同样的动机。
Most of them followed a playbook circulating on social media: Cross the border through the Darién Gap, surrender to U.S. border control officers, get detained in immigration jails, and apply for asylum citing a credible fear if returned to China. Many will be released within days. When their asylum applications are accepted, they can work and make a new life in the United States.
走这条路线的人大都使用社交媒体上流传的指南：徒步穿越达连峡谷，再越过几个国家的边界后进入美国，入境后向美国边境官员自首，被送进关押非法移民的监狱后，用如果返回中国会遭受迫害的可信理由申请庇护。许多人会在几天内获释。他们的庇护申请被接受后，就能在美国工作，开始新的生活。
Their flight is a referendum on the rule of Mr. Xi, now in his third five-year term. Boasting that “the East is rising while the West is declining,” he said in 2021 that China’s governance model had proved superior to Western democratic systems and that the center of gravity of the world economy was shifting “from West to East.”
Every immigrant I interviewed this year who passed through the Darién Gap — a journey known as zouxian, or walking the line, in Chinese — came from a lower middle-class background. They said that they feared falling into poverty if the Chinese economy worsened, and that they could no longer see a future for themselves or their children in their home country.
我今年采访的每个穿越达连峡谷（中文叫“走线”）的移民都来自中下阶层。他们说，他们担心如果中国经济进一步恶化，他们会陷入贫困，他们在自己的国家看不到自己或孩子的未来。
In Mr. Xi’s China, anyone could become a target of the state. You could get in trouble for being a Christian, Muslim, Uyghur, Tibetan or Mongolian. Or a worker who petitions for back pay, a homeowner who protests the delayed completion of an unfinished apartment, a student who uses a virtual private network for access to Instagram access or a Communist Party cadre who is found with a copy of a banned book.
在习近平的中国，任何人都可能成为国家打击的对象。如果你是基督徒、穆斯林、维吾尔族、藏族或蒙古族，你会有麻烦。如果你是抗议老板拖欠工资的工人，或抗议开发商迟迟无法交房的房主，或“翻墙”上Instagram的学生，或被发现读禁书的中共干部，你都会有麻烦。
More than 24,000 Chinese migrants were temporarily detained on the southern border of the United States in the 2023 fiscal year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Over the previous decade, fewer than 15,000 Chinese migrants were caught crossing the southern border illegally.
据美国海关和边境保护局的数据，2023财年非法穿越美国南部边境被临时拘留的中国移民已超过2.4万。而过去十年非法穿越南部边境被拘留的中国移民只有不到1.5万。
The surge of desperate Chinese braving the Darién Gap is a reversal of a longtime pattern.
因绝望走上达连峡谷移民路线的中国人数量猛增，是一个长期模式的逆转。
In the 1980s and 1990s, millions of Chinese migrated to developed countries, including the United States, for higher living standards and freer societies. As China’s economy took off in the early 2000s and the government relented on some control of its society, a vast majority of Chinese students returned to their country after graduation. Salaries in China were rising rapidly, and job opportunities were abundant.
20世纪80年代和90年代，曾有数百万中国人为更高的生活水平和更自由的社会而移民到发达国家，包括美国。随着本世纪初中国经济开始蓬勃发展，政府放松了对社会的一些控制，大批中国留学生毕业后选择了回国。那时候，中国的工资水平在快速增长，还有很多就业机会。
Until September 2018, Mr. Gao was a Chinese success story. He grew up in a village in the eastern province of Shandong and moved to Beijing in 2003 to work on an assembly line at an electronics factory. He made about $100 a month. With street smarts, Mr. Gao made money helping factories and construction sites hire workers.
直到2018年9月前，高先生曾一直是一个中国式的成功故事。他在山东省的一个村子长大，2003年去了北京，在一家电子设备厂的装配线上当起了农民工，每月大约挣700块钱。高先生凭借街头智慧，靠帮助工厂和建筑工地雇人赚了钱。
In 2007, he leased a plot of land on the outskirts of Beijing and constructed a building divided into 100 or so tiny rooms. He made about $30,000 a year renting them to migrant workers. He married, had two children and moved his parents to Beijing, too.
2007年，他在北京郊区租了一块地，盖了一栋有100多个小房间的楼，出租给外来的打工者，一年有约20万元的收入。他结了婚，生了两个孩子，还把父母也接到了北京。
In 2018, the local government wanted the land back for development. Mr. Gao refused. The authorities cut water and electricity and pumped toilet sewage into the yard, forcing the tenants to leave. He won a lawsuit he brought against the government but received no compensation. When he petitioned to the higher authorities, he and his family were harassed, threatened and beaten. He and his wife divorced, in the hope that the authorities would leave her alone.
2018年，当地政府要将土地收回用于开发。高先生拒绝了。当局对楼断水断电，并将厕所污水抽进院子，迫使住户离开。他赢得了针对政府的行政诉讼，但没拿到任何赔偿。他去上访，结果他和家人遭到骚扰、威胁和殴打。为了让当局放过妻子，他与她离婚。
For the next few years, Mr. Gao did odd jobs, spending most of his time on his petition and studying law. Life became very tough during the pandemic. Mr. Gao and his ex-wife, still living together, had twin sons in January. He had four children and no job, no future. He was at his wits’ end.
接下来的几年里，高先生靠打零工谋生，把大部分时间花在上访和学习法律上。疫情期间，生活变得非常艰难。高先生仍和前妻住在一起，今年1月，两人生下一对双胞胎儿子。现在他有四个孩子，但没有工作，也没有未来。他已智穷计尽。
In February, Mr. Gao came across social media posts about Chinese reaching the United States through the Darién Gap. He and his daughter applied for passports, and within weeks they flew to Istanbul and then to Quito, the capital of Ecuador, where most Chinese were starting their journey to the United States.
今年2月，高先生在社交媒体上看到了有关中国人走达连峡谷线进入美国的帖子。他和女儿申请了护照，几周后他们飞到伊斯坦布尔，然后飞往厄瓜多尔首都基多，大多数中国人从那里开始他们去美国的行程。
Another migrant I spoke with who crossed the Darién Gap, Mr. Zhong, who wanted to use only his family name for fear of retribution, has a background similar to Mr. Gao’s.
我采访过的另一名穿越达连峡谷的移民是钟先生。由于担心遭报复，他只给出了自己的姓氏，他的背景与高先生的相似。
Born in a Christian family, he made his way from a village in Sichuan Province, in southwestern China, to a middle-class city life. He was trained as a cook at age 16 and worked at restaurants all over China. During the pandemic, he struggled financially. To pay his mortgage and car loan, about $800 a month, he worked on an assembly line in 2020.
他出生在一个基督教家庭，从四川省的一个村庄走入城市，过上了中产阶级生活。他16岁时接受了厨师培训，后来在中国各地的餐馆工作。他在疫情期间遇到了经济困难。2020年，为了支付每月约6000元的房贷和车贷，他在一家工厂的装配线上找了份工作。
The trouble for Mr. Zhong, now in his early 30s, started last December when police officers stopped his car for a routine alcohol test and saw a copy of a Bible on the passenger seat. They told Mr. Zhong that he believed in an evil religion and tossed the Bible on the ground and stomped on it. The officers then took his phone and installed an app on it that turned out to have software that would track his movements.
钟先生今年30岁出头，他的麻烦始于去年12月。警察在拦住他的车进行例行酒精检测时在乘客座位上看到一本《圣经》。他们对钟先生说，这是一种邪教，并把《圣经》扔在地上用脚踩。然后，警察拿走了他的手机，在上面安装了一个应用程序，他后来发现，该应用程序对他的行迹进行了跟踪。
On Christmas Day, four police officers broke into a home where Mr. Zhong and three fellow Christians were holding a prayer service. They were taken to the police station, beaten and interrogated.
去年圣诞节那天，钟先生和三名基督徒同伴正在家中祈祷时，四名警察闯了进来。他们被带到警察局，遭到了殴打和审问。
Like Mr. Gao, Mr. Zhong came across social media posts about the Darién Gap. He borrowed about $10,000 and left home on Feb. 22.
和高先生一样，钟先生也是在社交媒体上看到了有关达连峡谷线的帖子。他借了大约7万元人民币，于今年2月22日离家出走。
He said he had cried three times. The first was at the end of his first day on the Darién Gap: He lay in his tent full of regret, thinking the trip was too hard. The second time he cried was during a three-day motorbike ride with a fellow Chinese migrant through Mexico in the pouring rain. He cried again when he was detained at an immigration center in Texas. He applied for asylum and didn’t know how long he would be there. It could be three years or five years, he thought. He was released after seven days and flew to New York.
他说，一路上他哭过三次。第一次是在达连峡谷度过了他的第一天后：他躺在帐篷里，非常后悔，觉得这条线太难走了。第二次是在他和一名中国移民同伴骑着摩托车，冒着倾盆大雨穿越墨西哥的三天期间。第三次是他被关进得克萨斯州的一个非法移民中心时。他申请了庇护，但不知道他会在那里关多久。他以为可能是三年，也可能是五年。七天后，他就被释放了，得以飞往纽约。
When he arrived in Flushing, a neighborhood in Queens and a hub for Chinese immigrants, he was disappointed: The neighborhood was shabby and expensive. “I thought walking the line was tough,” he said in early April. “Starting a life here is even more difficult.”
他来到纽约皇后区的中国移民聚居地法拉盛后，感到很失望：这个社区既破又贵。“我以为走线已经很难，”他今年4月初说。“在这里开始新生活更困难。”
Mr. Zhong soon moved to a town of 30,000 people in Alabama. He had grown up near Chengdu, a city of 20 million. Now he felt truly alone. He works at a Chinese restaurant 11 hours a day, he said, and is unwilling to take a day off. He has learned to cook General Tso’s chicken and other Chinese American dishes. The pay is much better than in China, and he can send more money home. Every Sunday, he joins an online religious service, hosted by a church in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, another community with a large population of Chinese immigrants.
没过多久，钟先生就搬到了阿拉巴马州一个只有3万人口的小镇。他是在有2000万人口的城市成都附近长大的，现在他感受到了真正的孤独感。他说，他在一家中餐馆每天工作11个小时，一天也不愿意休息。他学会了做左宗棠鸡和其他美式中国菜。这里的工资比国内好很多，他能把更多的钱寄给国内的家人。每个周日，他都参加布鲁克林日落公园的一个教会主持的在线礼拜，布鲁克林日落公园是另一个有大量中国移民的社区。
He told me a joke over the phone: “Why did you go to the United States?” someone asks a Chinese immigrant. “Aren’t you satisfied with your pay, your benefits and your life?” The immigrant responds: “Yes, I’m satisfied. But in the U.S., I will be allowed to say that I’m not satisfied.”
他在电话里给我讲了一个笑话：有人问中国移民“你为什么来美国。你对你的工资、福利和生活不满意吗？”移民回答道：“我很满意。但在美国，我可以说我不满意。”
“I can live like a real human being in the U.S.,” he said.
“我在美国能像一个真正的人那样生活，”他说。
Mr. Gao and his daughter are settling down in San Francisco. Life for them is also not easy. We first met in April at a community service center that had helped them find a shelter, the gymnasium of a high school in the city’s Mission District.
高先生和他的女儿正在旧金山定居下来。他们的生活也不容易。我们今年4月第一次见面是在一个社区服务中心，该中心帮助他们在旧金山使命区一所高中的体育馆里找到了收留所。
They could stay there from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., sleeping on gymnasium mats and carrying all their belongings during the day. Mr. Gao’s daughter started school within two weeks after arriving in the city. He hoped that she would be able to visit her mother in China one day.
他们能在每天晚上7点到第二天早上7点待在那里，在体育馆地板上铺的垫子上睡觉。白天要带着他们所有物品离开。高先生的女儿来到旧金山后不到两周开始上学。他希望女儿有朝一日能回国去看母亲。
They moved to a studio apartment in a housing shelter. Then Mr. Gao got his work permit, bought a car and started delivering packages for an e-commerce company. He makes $2 per package. The more he delivers, the more he makes.
他们现在已搬进收留所的一个单间公寓。高先生后来获得了工作许可，他买了辆车，开始为一家电子商务公司送货。每送一个包裹挣两美元。送得越多，挣得越多。
He said repeatedly how grateful he was for the kindness he had encountered since leaving China. He and his daughter were robbed, extorted and shot at. But strangers gave them bottled water and food. After traveling on an open train car for three days, he and his daughter met a Mexican couple who insisted they take a shower at their home.
他多次表示，自己非常感谢离开中国后遇到的善意。他和女儿曾被被抢、受过勒索，还有人朝着他们的方向开过枪。但也有陌生人送给他们瓶装水和食物。在敞篷火车上坐了三天三夜后，他们遇到一对墨西哥夫妇，他们坚持要他和女儿在他们家洗个澡。
On one Wednesday in November, Mr. Gao said, he woke at 4 a.m., delivered more than 100 packages and didn’t get home until after 9 p.m.
高先生说，今年11月的一个周三，他凌晨4点就起了床，送了100多个包裹，直到晚上9点多才回家。
He took the next day off. When the motorcade of Mr. Xi, who was in San Francisco for a meeting with President Biden, drove by, Mr. Gao joined other protesters on the sidewalk, chanting in Chinese, “Xi Jinping, step down!”
第二天他请了假。那天，习近平在旧金山与拜登总统举行了会晤，当习近平的车队驶过时，高先生与其他抗议者一起站路边，用中文高呼，“习近平，下台！”