本帖最后由 垭口 于 2013-3-29 23:17 编辑
The country that is likely to grow faster than any other in the next decade, and how it is changing, for better or worse
这个可能是未来十年增长最快的国家正在发生改变，无论是好与坏
Jan 21st 2012 | OYU TOLGOI AND ULAANBAATAR | from the print edition
“GOIN’ to OT?” drawls Andy, a burly tattooed man with that worldly air common to those who have done time in the American army. The gate at Incheon airport in South Korea is packed with travellers, mainly Mongolian expatriates on their way home, waiting to board a flight to Ulaanbaatar. Andy’s is a fair guess as to the destination of one of the few other Western passengers. “OT”—Oyu Tolgoi, or “Turquoise Hill”—is in the middle of nowhere, a desolate spot in the Gobi desert, another hour-and-a-half’s flight south of Ulaanbaatar (inevitably, “UB”). But it is the site of the biggest foreign-investment project in Mongolia, a copper-and-gold mine that is springing up at a remarkable speed and is expected, by 2020, to account for one-third of Mongolia’s GDP.
“去奥陶吧——？”安迪拉着嗓子问道，他身材魁梧，刺着纹身，和所有曾在美国陆军服役的家伙一样显得与众不同。韩国仁川国际机场的登机口挤满了旅客，其中多数是归国蒙侨，在等待飞往乌兰巴托的航班。安迪猜得有理，乘客中的西方人就没几个。“奥陶”——奥尤陶勒盖，蒙语“绿松石山”——是戈壁滩中一处荒漠，在乌兰巴托(乌市)以南，距乌市还有一个半小时机程。但这里的铜金矿是蒙古国最大的外资项目，建设速度惊人，预计到2020年产值将占全国GDP的三分之一。
For Andy, who normally “does security” in places such as Afghanistan, Nigeria and Somalia, OT is a rest cure. Conditions are comfortable, the locals are a delight, and nobody tries to shoot him. And there are the transits through UB, a veritable Bangkok of the steppes—at least if your comparators are Kabul and Mogadishu. In the OT bus from UB airport into town, Andy is on tenterhooks waiting for the overnight hotel allocation. He is delighted with his billet—one where overnight guests are readily tolerated. The other news is less cheery: the airport bus will leave at four in the morning.
安迪常年在阿富汗、尼日利亚和索马里等地当保安，对他来说，奥陶算得上是疗养圣地了。这里条件安逸，当地人友好，没人试图向他开枪，还有飞往乌市的飞机。乌市堪称荒原中的曼谷——起码拿喀布尔和摩加迪沙来比较的话。在从机场开往市区的乌市-奥陶大巴里，安迪期待着他的住宿安排，心中忐忑。对于结果，他表示满意——这家旅店乐意接纳过夜客。不过另一个消息有些令人沮丧：机场大巴要在凌晨4点离开。
UB is a boom town on the frontier of global mining. Hotels are bursting; the Irish pubs, of which there are several, are heaving with foreign miners, investment bankers and young local women with very long legs and very short skirts. French bistros serve steaks the size of tabloid newspapers. Dozens of cranes punctuate the skyline. The streets, empty 20 years ago, are now clogged. It is hard to believe on the clear sunny mornings the city enjoys much of the year, but UB’s air is now as polluted as anywhere—second only to the Iranian city of Ahwaz, according to a recent study by the World Health Organisation. In the winter, when temperatures average from -10 to -30 centigrade, and often fall to -40 at night, UB burns a lot of coal.
乌兰巴托是全球采矿业的前沿新贵。在这里，酒店如雨后春笋般涌现，几家爱尔兰酒吧坐满了外国矿主和投资银行家，当地年轻漂亮的女人们身着超短裙，露出修长的大腿，姿态撩人。法国小酒馆里有小报大小的牛排，数十座起重机勾勒出清晰的天际线。20年前还空荡荡的街道现在塞车严重。乌市一年里的大部分早晨天空都清澈明亮，在这样的清晨还真是难以相信：世卫组织的一份最新研究报告显示，乌市空气亦受到污染——受污染程度仅次于伊朗的阿瓦士，排名第二。这里冬天的平均气温在-10℃——-30℃之间，夜间经常降至-40℃。为了取暖，乌市烧掉了大量的煤炭。
Another sign of a boom is the effort to keep the city functioning through these crippling winters. When a Singaporean firm was building a joint-venture brewery to make Tiger beer, it was so anxious to finish in time for the summer-drinking high season that it hired patio heaters the size of jet engines for the construction site. Without such aids, building stops in the Mongolian winter. It is too cold to pour concrete.
乌兰巴托繁荣的另一种表现是，它正努力使自己在令人窒息的冬季保持运转。一家新加坡公司正合资兴建一家生产“虎牌”酒的啤酒厂，为保证及时完工以赶上入夏后的啤酒销售旺季，他们为施工现场租来了喷气发动机大小的户外取暖器。蒙古国的冬季，没有这些措施的话建设将被迫停工，天气冷到无法浇注混凝土。
A glitzy mall on the corner of the main Sukhbaatar Square houses the sort of establishments you come across in the better class of airport: chic boutiques, pricey restaurants, expensive-watch shops and, of course, an outlet of Louis Vuitton, which sells posh luggage. The shops usually look empty, which is reassuring for those nostalgic for the UB of the recent past—small, drab and poor, and offering its visitors, as one unhappily put it, a choice of “mutton, mutton and mutton”, but at least refreshingly different from other capitals.
在市中心苏赫巴托广场的一角坐落着一处五光十色的商场，这里的设施如同你在一流机场看到一样：流行女装，高档饭店，名贵手表，当然也少不了一家专卖高档皮包的路易威登专卖店。但是空荡荡的商店会使怀旧的人们想起几年前的乌兰巴托——空间狭小，了无生气，穷困潦倒，像一个无精打采的小贩一样向游客一遍遍地叫卖“羊肉串喽，羊肉串喽”。但与其他国家首都相比，这至少也算是令人耳目一新的特色罢。
Central Tower, as it is known, is a new ornament to downtown Ulaanbaatar. It is built next door to the lot where once stood the former headquarters of the former Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, the MPRP (it has since dropped the “R” word), which for seven decades until 1990 ruled Mongolia as a one-party state and rock-solid Soviet satellite. The building was burned down in rioting in 2008 after a disputed election. The use to which the site has now been put is as good a symbol as any of the new aspirations of Mongolia’s ruling class.
人们所称的中央塔是乌兰巴托的新地标，它紧挨着前蒙古人民革命党总部大楼旧址。蒙古人民革命党简称蒙古人革党，它在1990年之前的70年间是蒙古国的唯一执政党，这一时期的蒙古国是苏联最忠实的卫星国。蒙古人革党总部大楼在2008年争议大选引发的骚乱中被付之一炬，其后它去掉了中间的“革”字，改名为蒙古人民党。新地标是蒙古统治阶级新意识形态的最佳象征。
Dreams under your feet
脚下的梦
To pay for these dreams, Mongolia is being dug up and sold to China. Already, more than 80% of its exports are minerals, a proportion expected to rise in a few years to 95%. Mongolia makes mining geologists salivate over its known riches and unexplored potential—for copper, coal, gold, silver, uranium, molybdenum, and on and on. Some 3,000 mining licences have been issued.
为了圆梦，蒙古国现在正四处采矿卖给中国。矿产占出口的比例已达80%，预计几年后将达95%。蒙古国富含铜、煤、金、银、铀、钼等众多矿产，丰富的矿藏吸引着众多矿物学家。目前已发放了约3000个采矿许可证。
It is not just that Mongolia is a treasure-chest of geological wealth. It is slap-bang next to the world’s biggest and fastest-growing market for most minerals. Put together Mongolian supply and Chinese demand, and Mongolia will be rich beyond the wildest dreams of a population many of whom, a generation ago, saw themselves as nomadic herders. With just under 3m people, Mongolia has a chance of becoming a Qatar or a Brunei: a country that has only a small population but almost all of it, in global terms, loaded. Brian Fisher, an Australian economist who has conducted a study of the economic impact of OT, says Mongolia “sounds like Australia in 1930”.
蒙古国不仅是一个地质宝藏，它也正好挨着世界上规模最大、成长最快的能源需求市场。考虑到蒙古的供给和中国的需求，这些上一代大多还只懂得放牧的人们可能做梦都不会想到，他们的富裕程度将远超其想象。蒙古国人口不足300万，它很可能成为下一个卡塔尔或文莱：人口很少，但所有国民却极其富裕。澳大利亚经济学家布莱恩•费舍尔研究了奥陶矿对蒙古国经济的影响，他说，“蒙古国几乎是1930的澳大利亚的翻版”。
In the third quarter of 2011 Mongolia’s economy grew by 21% compared with the same period in 2010. Even sober economists think the country is going to have to get used to this sort of thing. The IMF expects growth to average 14% a year between 2012 and 2016. In 2013, the year production is due to begin in earnest at OT, it is forecast to reach 22.9%. Others think it will be at least twice that.
2011年第三季度蒙古经济同比增长率达21%，甚至最为慎重的经济学家也认为这对于蒙古国来说将习以为常。国际货币基金组织预测2012-2016年平均增长率为14%。2013年，期盼已久的奥陶矿场将投入生产，预计经济增长率将达到22.9%。而有人认为实际经济增长率至少是这一数字的两倍。
Indeed, OT is the force driving many of these short-term projections towards the sky. Its construction is a big factor in this year’s boom. From 2013 its sales will start adding an average of about five percentage points a year to the national growth rate up to 2020, when its impact on the economy will peak. By November last year over $3 billion had already been spent on OT, a figure that will rise to $6 billion by 2013 and $10 billion by 2020. For Mongolia, a $6 billion economy, this is enormous.
确实，奥陶矿场有能力将这些短期预测推向极致，它的建设是今年蒙古国经济持续繁荣的最大因素。自2013开始年它将每年为全国经济增长率贡献5个百分点，直到2020年。之后它对经济的影响力将会减弱。至去年11月在奥陶矿场上的投入已超30亿美元，至2013年将达60亿美元，2020年将达100亿美元，这对于经济总量只有60亿美元的蒙古国来说，无疑是天文数字。
So is the scale of the logistical challenge of building one of the world’s biggest copper mines in the middle of the desert. All supplies have to be brought in by road, from China to the south. Some 18,000 workers, including about 10,000 Mongolians and 6,000 Chinese, have to be housed and fed. Water had to be found, and is to be piped from an underground aquifer over 50km (32 miles) away. Electricity is to be provided first from China, then by a purpose-built power plant. And local people have to be compensated, coaxed and cajoled into believing that the mine is in their interests, not just those of the foreigners who are running it.
作为世界上最大的铜矿开采场之一，这一项目工程浩大，要在沙漠中建造谈何容易。所有供给都只能通过公路从中国运来，包括一万名蒙古国工人和和6千名中国工人在内的约一万八千名工人需要食宿供应。水作为必需品，将会从50公里(32英里)外的一处地下蓄水层通过管道运来。电力最初需靠中国提供，然后由专门建造的发电站供给。当地居民需要补偿，必需通过苦心孤诣地劝说让他们相信，采矿不仅是为了外国矿主的利益，也有利于他们。
The project is a joint venture between the Mongolian government (34%) and Ivanhoe Mines of Canada (66%), which is in turn 49% owned by Rio Tinto, the mining giant that is managing OT and has put up most of the money. Already the Turquoise Hill, where the colour of the soil first betrayed the presence of copper to prospectors decades ago, has vanished. A huge pit is opening up for the first phase of the mine. Two shafts have been sunk for the second, underground, phase. On top of one, a tower is soaring. It will be the tallest structure in the Gobi, and perhaps in Mongolia. The workers are housed in long prefabricated buildings or, for the luckier ones, traditional gers, circular felt tents (equipped with untraditional en suite facilities, TV and Ethernet cables).
这一工程是由蒙古国政府和加拿大艾芬豪矿业公司联合开发的风投项目，双方分别控股34%和66%，而持有艾芬豪49%股份的矿业巨头力拓公司是奥陶矿目前的经营者和主要投资方。几十年前，探矿者根据绿松石山的土壤颜色发现了铜矿，现在绿松石山已经不复存在了。第一阶段已经挖开一个巨大的矿坑，第二阶段的两架机井已经深入地下，在其中一个机井上方，一座铁塔高耸入云，它将会是戈壁滩甚至全国的最高建筑。工人们住在长排的活动板房中，运气好的话可以住进传统的蒙古包，圆形的毡包帐篷中，电视、宽带网络等现代化家电构件一应俱全。
All this is justified commercially by the expectation that this mine will produce 450,000 tonnes of copper a year, making it one of the world’s five biggest mines, as well as being a big gold producer. And it will have a life of at least 50 years. The more they look, the more potential geologists find in the area. It will be what Rio calls a “first-quartile” mine in terms of costs—ie, among the cheapest. And its proximity to China means that the cost of transport should not be prohibitive. The price of copper is especially vulnerable to swings in market sentiment. But global supply is constrained, and barring global economic Armageddon, demand is not going to collapse.
奥陶矿场未来的铜矿年产量将达45万吨，商业价值巨大。它是世界上的五大矿区之一，同时也是一个大金矿。它的开发寿命至少在50年以上，矿物学家越研究收获越大。力拓公司说得不错，奥陶矿处于成本平面上的“第一象限”——也就是说，成本最低。它紧靠中国，这意味着它的运输成本很低。虽说铜价对市场波动敏感，但全球供应短缺，除非遇到全球性的经济危机，否则需求不会萎缩。
Yurts revisited
OT, however, matters not just in itself, but as a test of Mongolia’s ability to work with foreign investors to pull off such mammoth undertakings. Next in line is Tavan Tolgoi (Five Hills), the world’s biggest untapped coal deposit, also in South Gobi province. Notional shares in this project have already been distributed (electronically) to every Mongolian born before March 31st 2011. With a general election due in 2012, this adds political urgency to an ambitious scheme to raise billions of dollars for the mine through an initial public offering of shares in Ulaanbaatar and London. This will double the market capitalisation of the sleepy UB stock exchange.
然而，奥陶矿场的意义不仅在于其本身，它同时也是蒙古国是否有能力联合外资共铸伟业的试金石。和奥陶矿山一脉相承的塔本陶勒盖(蒙语“五指山”)是世界上最大的未开采煤矿，同时地处南戈壁省。它的国家持股部分已自动分给了2011年3月31日前出生的所有国民。2012年大选临近，政治活动频繁，为了给大手笔的政治博弈造势，有关人士准备通过在乌兰巴托和伦敦联合上市为塔陶矿山募集数十亿美元资金。这将使沉寂已久的乌兰巴托证券交易所的资本总量翻上一番。
Mongolian coal production is expected to increase from about 16m tonnes a year now to 40m by 2020 and 240m by 2040. Again China provides a ready market, but the mining boom has exacerbated Mongolian fears of a Chinese takeover by commercial stealth. So feasibility studies are under way on the costly options of building railways to take coal to Russia, and thence out to Korea and Japan via Vladivostok, or to Dandong on the Chinese-North Korea border and thence by sea to South Korea.
蒙古国的煤炭年产量有望从目前的1600万吨左右提高到2020年的4000万吨，2040年将达2.4亿吨。中国也是煤炭消费大国，但随着采矿业的兴盛，蒙古国民对中国的恐惧也与日俱增，他们担心中国通过商业掠夺控制这个国家。目前蒙古国正在研究其他方案的可行性，尝试以昂贵的成本建造通往俄国的铁路，将煤炭经海参崴海运至韩日，或者经中朝边境的丹东海运至韩国。
A touch of Dutch on the steppes
草原上的小荷兰
Not everyone in Mongolia looks at the growth projections and goes giddy with delight. Many worry about the economic, environmental, social and strategic costs of becoming “Minegolia”. Economists fret about a “resource curse”, or “Dutch disease”. If even the Netherlands can be vulnerable to this—whereby wealth floods in as natural resources are exploited, pushes up the exchange rate, inflation, or both, and renders other industries uncompetitive—how is poor Mongolia to cope? And the Netherlands never had a year like the one Mongolia can expect in 2013, when the economy will grow by a quarter and the current-account balance will lurch from a deficit of 14% of GDP into surplus.
不是所有蒙古国民都对预期的经济增长充满着乐观的期待。很多人担心一旦采矿业成为单一产业，会给国家的经济、环境、社会和战略发展造成不可预测的影响。经济学家开始担忧“资源诅咒”现象，或称“荷兰病”——矿产资源的开发带来了财富的激增，推动了汇率和通胀的螺旋式上升，降低了其他行业的竞争力。即便荷兰有抵御这一切的能力，发达程度较低的蒙古国又该如何应对？况且荷兰从未面临蒙古国2013年预期的情况：经济增长达25%，经常性账户从占GDP14%的赤字状态一下子转为盈余。
Furthermore, Mongolia, a 20-year-old democracy, is prone to populist policymaking. Even as the economy is booming, political parties are tempted to promise handouts. After pledges made at the previous election, every Mongolian, rich or poor, gets 21,000 togrogs ($16) on the 15th of every month. The big parties have declared a no-handout pact ahead of the next election, and the government has set up a “fiscal-stability fund” to smooth the commodity cycle. But the temptation to dip into the till will mount as voting nears.
另外，民主化进程发展了20年的蒙古是一个信奉民粹主义的国度。在经济起步阶段，为拉拢人气，各政党便竞相做出普惠承诺。上次大选后政府兑现承诺，每一个国民无论贵贱，每月15号都可领取2.1万图格里克(16美元)。本次大选前，各大党派宣布不讨论普惠政策，政府建立了“财政稳定基金”，来保持商品流通的稳定。但日益临近的选举日激发了做出普惠承诺的冲动。
For economists, the resource curse is a risk Mongolia has little option but to take. As Mr Fisher, the Australian economist, puts it, its comparative advantage is in commodities and mining services. There is no point in trying to compete in manufacturing with “the biggest factory on the planet” next door in China.
经济学家认为，蒙古国面对资源诅咒将别无他选，只能冒险一搏。正如澳大利亚的费舍尔先生所言，它的比较优势是采矿业和采矿服务业，试图和邻近号称“世界工厂”的中国比拼制造业是毫无意义的。
Mongolia is still a desperately poor country. It has just graduated, in development-bank speak, to “lower-middle-income” status, with a GDP of around $2,000 per head. The population of UB has expanded by 70% in the past few years, to about 1.2m now. Some poor people still spend the winter nights beneath the streets (open manholes are a pedestrian hazard), huddling near the pipes for warmth. The city is sprawling outward through valleys in all directions along dirt roads lined with clapboard fences, behind which former herders live in gers.
蒙古国仍是一个极度贫困的国家。它的人均GDP约2000美元，按世界银行的标准刚刚步入“中下等收入国家”之列。近年来乌兰巴托的人口膨胀了70%，达到120万。冬夜里一些穷人仍在下水道中依偎着暖气管道过夜(掀开盖子的井口是行人的噩梦)。城市沿着脏兮兮的马路向四周的山谷扩张，路的两旁围着栅栏，栅栏里面是前牧民搭建的蒙古包。
One such herder, given the name Igor by Russians he knew in his youth, describes a common life path. A few years ago, herding in Central province, he lost many of his sheep to a dzud, one of the periodic climatic disasters that hit Mongolia—a summer drought that results in too little pasture and too little hay for the winter, followed by heavy winter snow and colder-than-usual temperatures. Igor sold the rest of his livestock to pay for his children’s schooling, bought a pickup truck and moved to UB, where he makes a living hiring it out. He finds UB going from bad to worse, as more people come to town and scramble to earn money. All there is to look forward to is the summer pilgrimage home, to drink airag (fermented mare’s milk) with his friends in a ger.
其中一位名叫伊格尔的牧民，他的人生道路堪称是普通人的典型代表。伊格尔这个名字是他儿时相识的俄国人给他取的。几年前他在中央省放牧，暴风雪夺去了他的大部分羔羊。蒙古高原的暴风雪是周期性的气候灾难，干旱的夏季使牧地减少，冬天里干草奇缺，接踵而来的是大雪和严寒。为了孩子的教育，伊格尔卖掉了他剩余的牲畜，买了一辆皮卡举家搬迁至乌兰巴托，在这里他靠出租皮卡过活。他发现随着越来越多的人们争相进城赚钱，乌市正变得越来越糟。所有的期待就是夏季朝圣回家，在蒙古包里和朋友们一起喝发酵的马奶酒。
It is not just the weather that drives herders into town. Some are mining refugees, fleeing environmental devastation. Besides the licence-holders Mongolia has tens of thousands of illegal gold prospectors, known as “ninja” miners because the green plastic bowls they carry on their backs to sift for specks of the metal make them look like mutant turtles. Their use of mercury and cyanide has poisoned rivers.
驱使牧民进城的不止是恶劣的天气，一些人是逃离环境灾难的采矿受害者。在蒙古国，除了持照上岗者之外还有数万非法淘金者，人们称呼他们为采矿“忍者”，他们背着用于筛滤金属颗粒的绿色塑料盆，看起来活似忍者神龟。他们使用的汞和氰化物严重污染了河流。
Mongolia’s most flamboyant environmental campaigner is a former herder called Tsetsegee Munkhbayar. He made his name helping clean up the Onggi river, and then for his extreme forms of protest, involving shooting at mining equipment or vehicles. In April 2011 he led a group of supporters into Sukhbaatar Square on horseback to demand talks with the government. Mr Munkhbayar, a grim-faced man looking out of place behind a desk in his UB office in knee-length boots and traditional jacket, believes that if Mongolians exploit the mines, “we will never develop.” He suggests an alternative future of herding, dairy-farming and tourism. As he talks he is interrupted by a loud blare of traditional Mongolian music. It is the ringtone on his mobile.
蒙古国最著名的环保人士赛赛哥•穆克巴耶尔之前是一位牧民，他最为人们熟知的是为清洁奥奇河所做出的帮助和努力，以及后来极端的抗议方式，包括向采矿设备和运输工具开枪。2011年4月，他带领一群支持者骑马进入苏赫巴托广场，要求与政府对话。穆克巴耶尔先生不苟言笑，他坐在乌兰巴托的办公室里的桌子后，穿着齐膝高的靴子和蒙古传统外套，看起来不合时宜，与环境格格不入。他说，如果蒙古国开矿，“我们将永远得不到发展。”他提出了一个将畜牧业、奶业和旅游业相结合的替代方案。正说着，他被一阵响亮的蒙古传统音乐打断了，这是他的手机铃声。
And not a drop to drink
远矿解不了近渴
One UB resident, visiting the OT site as an interpreter for a foreign journalist, cannot stop herself from weeping at what is being done to the area and to her country. For the outsider, the bleak brown desolation of the Gobi is not a landscape that evokes sympathy. And it needs an awful lot of Gobi to sustain a flock of goats and camels, so, vast though the OT project is, the number of herders directly affected is small. But the translator sees ruin: “You can’t drink copper; you can’t drink gold.”
一个乌兰巴托居民作为一名外国记者的翻译，访问了奥陶矿山。看到这里的所作所为，她忍不住满流满面。对外国人来说，无边的灰色戈壁滩显得苍凉而孤寂，了无生气，唤不起人们的丝毫同情。粗放式的经营需要大片牧地才能维持放养一群山羊和骆驼，所以虽然奥陶矿场占地面积很大，但受到直接影响的牧民不多。但是翻译认为这是一种灾难：“铜金矿毕竟不能拿来吃喝。”
In fact, the aquifer tapped for OT is too deep to affect surface water, too saline to pass human-consumption standards and so big it will be no more than one-third depleted after 50 years of the project. The big danger environmentalists see from its use is that even a future natural drought may be blamed on OT. It will be hard for the project to deny water to distressed local herders. That might lead to overgrazing.
事实上，给奥陶矿场供水的地下蓄水层位置很深，不会对地表水造成影响，咸度太高，不能直接饮用，储量丰富，项目开发50年后也才消耗不到三分之一。环保人士认为，奥陶矿场有可能引起自然干旱，甚至是在多年以后，这是使用地下水的最大危害。矿场很难拒绝给困难的当地农牧民供水，而这很可能会引起过度放牧。
The way it was
Such a massive undertaking is bound to distort the local economy and disrupt the environment. Compared with the ninjas, the multinationals and the development banks that will help raise the largest-ever project financing for mining can at least claim to be part of the solution. They are conducting impact assessments and bio diversity studies. The project is also providing jobs, and creating more employment for locals through subcontracts.
如此浩大的工程不可避免地会改变当地经济结构，影响自然环境。众多跨国公司和开发银行将为有史以来最大规模的采矿项目融资提供帮助，与非法采矿者相比，他们至少可以解决点实际问题。他们正在研究和评估采矿工程对生物多样性造成的影响，矿场也会为当地人提供工作岗位，通过项目承包创造出更多的就业机会。
But it will struggle to be popular. Oyun Sanjasuuren, an independent member of parliament, says mining is bound to be political because it is “the main thing in the country”. And the face of Mongolian mining over the past 15 years has been “mostly ugly”. Miss Oyun says she entered parliament as a centrist, but now finds herself on the right as the main parties have shifted steadily to the left. OT has not been helped by tactless remarks made in the past by Robert Friedland, Ivanhoe’s boss, about “the cash machine we intend to build”, and how nice it was to have so few people around and “no NGOs”.
但是奥陶采矿项目会努力获取支持。奥云•桑加苏伦是一名国会犭虫立议员，她说采矿业必将成为政治焦点，因为它是“这个国家的大事”。蒙古国采矿业在过去15年间的形象总得来说一直“不佳”。奥云说她过去作为一名中间派别而进入国会，但发现自己现在已属右翼，因为主要政党都已逐渐转向左翼。艾芬豪公司董事长罗伯特•弗里德兰过去曾说，“我们打算制造一台造钱机器”，这里荒无人烟，“没有非政府组织”，真是太好了。这些不当言论让奥陶矿场项目饱受诟病。
The wealth generated by the miners is an obvious target. And the militant Mr Munkhbayar has many fans even among young urban Mongolians who moan that development is arriving too slowly. Like him, they wish it could come from some other industry. Every herder, says one environmentalist, hopes that at least one person in his family will carry on the life. But that may be changing. Twenty years ago it was hard to meet anyone in UB who identified with the city. Even if they were born there, they saw “home” as the “aimag”, or province, from which their parents came. Now a new generation of city-dwellers feels less attached to the countryside and to nomadic herding traditions. Their numbers are swollen by young people returning from an overseas education to chase the new opportunities the mining boom is throwing up.
矿工创造的财富是争论的焦点。激进的穆克巴耶尔先生甚至在年轻人中也有很多簇拥，他们抱怨发展来得太慢。他们像穆克巴耶尔先生一样，希望发展能来自于其他行业。一名环保人士说，甚至是牧民也希望至少有一个家人可以子承父业。但情况正悄然发生着改变。20年前很少有人对乌兰巴托这座城市有认同感，即使出生在这里，他们也认为自己的家是父母来自的“盟”(省)。现在新一代的城市居民对草原和游牧生活的归属感不是很强。他们的数量在激增，其中很多是希望在繁荣的采矿业中寻找新机会的海归人员。
One such, a young man called Damdin, is finding life difficult. After 15 years in Fairfax, Virginia, he has forgotten most of his Mongolian. He left Mongolia with his mother, who was fleeing his alcoholic father. At school in America the other Asian students were scared of him, despite his short stature; Mongolians, he says, have the reputation of being psychos. Now back in UB, living in a ger with his father who spends his time playing games on Facebook, his ambition is to open UB’s first skateboard shop.
其中一个名叫达姆丁的年轻小伙子，发现生活并不容易。在弗吉尼亚州的费尔法克斯生活了15年以后，他几乎将蒙语忘光。母亲为逃避他酗酒的父亲，带着他离开了祖国。在美国学校里，尽管他个子不高，但其他亚洲学生都很怵他，他说大家都以为蒙古人是疯子。现在达姆丁回到了乌兰巴托，和父亲一起住在蒙古包里，他的父亲喜欢在脸书上玩游戏。达姆丁的愿望是在乌兰巴托开第一家滑板店。
When The Economist encountered him, outside a derelict Buddhist temple in a ger district in the middle of the afternoon, and later at the nearby police station, he had just been punched and robbed of his phone by friends of the friend he had lent it to (“It was 4G, man!”). He was drunk, despite saying he is always teased as a wuss for sticking to beer when real men drink vodka. He was cradling a little street-puppy he had rescued from his muggers, knowing his grandmother would not let him take it home. He presented as forlorn a picture as could be imagined of the pain and dislocation of being caught between two worlds. But he said he had no intention of going back to Virginia.
《经济学人》在一个帐篷区的一座破庙外遇到了他，再次见到他时已是在附近的派出所。他刚被爆揍了一顿，手机被以前借用过的朋友的朋友们抢走了(“哥，那可是4G的呀！”)。他说，人们都嘲笑他没用，因为纯爷们喝的是伏特加，可他只能喝啤酒。但他却喝得东倒西歪。他抱着一只从劫犯手里救出的小狗，他知道奶奶不会同意带它回家。他的脸上呈现出一幅无助与凄凉的画面，在这幅画里似乎能看到被两个世界同时抛弃的那种痛苦与错位。但他说他无意回弗吉尼亚。
from the print edition | Briefing
文中出现的蒙语人名、地名音译：
1. Ulaanbaatar 乌兰巴托，原名库伦，1924年改现称，意为“红色英雄”。始建于清前期，原为四大活佛之一哲布尊丹巴的驻地，时称乌尔格，意为“宫殿”，游牧时代随部落迁移，18世纪末固定在目前位置，改称库伦，意为“大寺院”。2011年蒙古国迎回宗教领袖哲布尊丹巴九世，活佛得以重返“大寺院”。
2. Oyu Tolgoi 奥尤陶勒盖，意为“绿松石山”。英文简写OT，翻译作“奥陶”，遵从古代蒙语汉译习惯，中间不加·
3. Tavan Tolgoi 塔本陶勒盖，意为“五指山”
4. Sukhbaatar 苏赫巴托，蒙古国国父，他和乔巴山是蒙古国1921年脱离北洋政府犭虫立的关键人物，和乔巴山关系不是很好，传说是被乔巴山和俄国人毒死的。曾败于北洋名将徐树铮
5. Igor 伊格尔，俄化的蒙语人名。伊格尔是古罗斯国大公，俄罗斯民族英雄，有史诗《伊格尔远征记》
6. Tsetsegee Munkhbayar 赛赛哥·穆克巴耶尔，2007年环保金人奖得主
7. Oyun Sanjasuuren 奥云·桑加苏伦
8. Damdin 达姆丁，不似传统的蒙语人名，有点伊斯兰化的味道 原文地址
http://www.ecocn.org/thread-62778-1-2.html |
发表于 2013-3-29 23:08:35
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发表于 2013-3-30 17:24:33