GOSSIPPER

THE HOME TEAM
How the Chinese experienced the Olympics.
by Peter Hessler

The Chinese take big events in stride; this was how they survived Mao, and weathered disasters like the Sichuan earthquake.

The night before the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics, Wei Ziqi joined two of his neighbors on the local barricade. It consisted of a rope stretched taut across the road, and the attendants had been given wooden paddles that read “Stop!” in both Chinese and English. Two of the neighbors wore blue-and-white polo shirts with the “Beijing 2008” logo across the chest. Sancha, their village, is a ninety-minute drive from the capital, and marks a point where the Great Wall winds through the mountains of northern China. At the barricade there was also a piece of paper with a message in English: “Please help us to protect the Great Wall. This section of the Great Wall is not open to the public.”

According to the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, or BOCOG, there were more than 1.7 million citizen volunteers in the region. The most visible ones were stationed at Olympic events and at places like the airport and downtown intersections, which were usually staffed by high-school and college students who spoke some English. These urban volunteers had been outfitted by Adidas, an official Olympic sponsor; the company provided gray trousers, new running shoes, and bright-blue shirts made of a high-tech material called ClimaLite. But the ClimaLite and the corporate sponsorship disappeared in the countryside. That was one way to gauge distance—north of the capital, the urban development thinned out, and along the way the volunteers’ gear became more ragged. The ClimaLite was replaced by cheap cotton; the running shoes were no longer standard issue; the Adidas logo was nowhere to be seen. Many peasants wore only a red armband, because they were saving the new shirt for something more important than the Olympics.

And yet the rural volunteers were diligent. Sancha’s population is less than two hundred, but the village had enlisted thirty residents to staff the barrier around the clock. Earlier that afternoon, when Wei Ziqi drove me through the countryside to the village, we were stopped at two other checkpoints. We also passed a crumbling Ming-dynasty tower manned by a lonely sentinel wearing a green armband that read “Great Wall Grounds-keeper.” In Bohai township, six miles from the village, I registered with the police. For the Olympic period, the authorities had banned foreigners from spending a night in this part of the countryside, but they made an exception because I had rented a house in Sancha since 2001. “Just don’t hike up to the Great Wall,” the cop warned me. He said that the big tourist sites were open, but everything else was off limits. On his desk was a stack of police manuals entitled “The Terrorist Prevention Handbook.” While we chatted, I opened one to a random chapter: “What to Do if There’s a Terrorist Attack in a Karaoke Parlor.”

For China, 2008 had been the most traumatic year since 1989, when the Tiananmen Square massacre occurred. In March, there had been riots in Tibet, followed by a brutal crackdown by the authorities. Overseas, human-rights demonstrators disrupted the Olympic-torch relay, leading to an angry nationalist backlash in China. In May, a powerful earthquake in Sichuan province killed more than sixty thousand people. Recently, there had been a fatal attack on Chinese military police in Xinjiang, a region in the far west where much of the native Muslim population resents China’s rule. All these events had contributed to the stress of the Olympic year, but I didn’t understand the concern about the Great Wall. “They’re worried about foreigners, people who might want Tibet independence,” Wei Ziqi told me. “They don’t want them to go up to the Great Wall with a sign or something.”

It was fear of a photo op—that somebody would unfurl a political banner and take a picture atop China’s most distinctive structure. The government also worried that a foreigner might hike in a remote area and get injured, creating bad press. For this, the authorities had mobilized more than five thousand people in the region, but labor is plentiful in rural China. And these volunteers were getting paid—another difference from the city, where patriotic students were willing to donate their time to the Motherland’s Olympic effort. Peasants were too practical for that; in addition to the free shirt, each rural volunteer received five hundred yuan a month, about seventy-three dollars. In Sancha, where the average resident earned about a thousand dollars per year, it was good money.

For Wei Ziqi, though, the Olympics didn’t represent a windfall. He and his wife ran one of the few businesses in the village, a small restaurant and guesthouse, and they missed the Chinese city dwellers who usually drove out on weekends. Since July 20th, the government had restricted the use of private cars, in an attempt to improve the capital’s notorious air pollution. The system was regulated through license-plate numbers: cars with plates ending in even digits could be used only on even-numbered days, and the odds were limited to odd days. This effectively ended overnight trips—if anybody drove to the village and stayed past midnight, he was stuck there for another day.

I never heard Wei Ziqi complain about the Olympics; nor did he show any animosity toward the hordes of “Free Tibet” protesters who were supposedly threatening the Great Wall. For a middle- or upper-class Beijing resident, the reaction would have been more emotional—such people were proud of hosting the Games, and many Chinese had been upset by the disruptions of the torch relay. But rural folks knew the limits of what they could control, and there was a distinct detachment from outside affairs, even those which affected the village. No adults in Sancha planned to attend any Olympic festivities. When I asked Wei Ziqi if he and his family would accompany me to some events, he said, “I don’t want to go.”
“Why not?”
“We’re not supposed to go into the city,” he said. “They don’t want a lot of people there right now.”
I assured him that spectators with tickets were welcome at the Games.
“It’s not necessary,” he said. “We can watch it on television.”

The night before the opening ceremonies, I joined him at the barricade with the other villagers. Wei Ziqi’s shift was 9 P.M. to 6 A.M. Only two cars passed through, both of them dropping off locals. Afterward, the vehicles turned around to hustle back to the city, because they had odd-numbered plates. It was like “Cinderella”—nobody lingered on the road after the clock struck midnight.

One barricade volunteer was a middle-aged man named Gao Yongfu. “President Bush just arrived,” he announced, fiddling with a small radio. “He’s in Beijing now. Putin is coming, too.” He continued, “An American company has the rights for Olympics television. They have the rights for the whole world! Even if China wants to broadcast the Games, it has to go through that American company.”

The third volunteer, a woman named Xue Jinlian, didn’t think that that sounded right. “They can’t control what China broadcasts,” she said.
“Yes, they can.”
“I don’t think so. Not in China’s own country!” Xue was silent for a while, and then said, “Chinese people are naturally smart. Their problem is they don’t have enough money. You look at America, and a lot of the top scientists are Chinese. There’s a lot of smart people here, but if there’s not enough money they leave.”

Village conversations had a way of veering off suddenly, like a hawk that catches some invisible air current, but inevitably they returned to settle on certain topics: food, weather, money. Gao brought us back to the weather—the air was heavy, but he said that the government wouldn’t let it rain the following night. “They can make it rain somewhere else instead,” he said. “I don’t know how it works, but it uses high technology.”

The villagers were still discussing the weather a little before midnight, when I walked back to my house and went to bed. Later, I heard that the first car of August 8th had come through the barricade at around 2 A.M. The license ended with the number two—a Beijing motorist determined to make the most of his twenty-four hours. That same day, the government would fire more than a thousand silver-iodide-laced rockets into the sky, insuring perfect dryness for the opening ceremonies. At 5 A.M., jet lag woke me up, and I wandered back down the road. Behind the barricade, Wei Ziqi dozed in the passenger seat of his car, and morning light shone on the Jundu Mountains, and nothing about the peaceful scene suggested that this day was different from any other.

  转自徕卡中文摄影杂志

“To See Life，To See the World”—— 这是《Life》杂志创始人Henry Luce在1936年11月19日创刊号上的第一句话，第一期《Life》，创下了当日销量42万5000份的记录，也是从这一天开始，摄影成为一种主流 新闻载体，进入人们的世界。

《Life》见证了摄影史上最辉煌的一段时光，即便在停刊后，也依然不减当年的风采——时代华纳集团与Getty Images宣布，将让《LIFE》在互联网上重新亮相：

“LIFE.com 将向人们免费开放《Life》杂志数以千万计的图片存档及尚未发布的作品，用户不仅可以自由定制、购买《LIFE》照片的画册，同时可以与朋友分享自己的 图片收藏，玩有趣的Life图片拼图，除此之外，Getty Images还将定期在Life.com上发布全球摄影师最新的摄影作品，其中包括每日新闻、娱乐、体育、名流、旅行、动物等分类。”

“在Life.com上，任何图片搜索与浏览都是免费的，人们可以自由沉浸于图片的世界，看到生活，看到世界”。

新版Life.com将在2009年初上线。

***老年时的标准照

***珍贵影集点击进入

陈石林制造了红色影像的神话。依靠暗房技艺，他加工制作出了***在不同年龄阶段的标准照，彼此承继，永不衰老，以至于***进入晚年时，画面怎么修，都“不像主席了”

罗雪挥

陈石林，中国摄影家学会高级工程师，曾任新华社摄影部技术组组长、翻修组组长，全国领袖照片工作组长。除了***的标准像，陈石林当时加工过所有国家领导人的照片，包括周恩来、刘少奇、朱德和林彪在内。

陈石林10来岁就被父亲送到南京照相馆学艺，后来又到香港和台湾谋生，学习加工照片。1950年7月，陈石林回到大陆，当时还很少有人会加工照片，并且能够修出光线的层次、密度和立体感，陈石林被作为人才留下了，进了中央新闻摄影局，后来又进了新华社摄影部，而且享受着和延安来的老革命一样的高级待遇，可以吃小灶，睡沙发床。

    恰好赶上要为***制作标准照，陈石林的技术派上了用场。

30年经济最大调整在即

出口疲软、企业和地方政府出现偿债危机以及生产成本上升，是中国目前的三大挑战

    中国经济将要面临1998年以来最大的调整。疲软的需求虽有财政刺激加以缓解，也可能要很久才能复原。在供给方面，成本上升需要用市场手段来解决。大多数调整应该依赖价格机制。许多企业将会破产。但是，更多有效率的企业会替代他们。最终，经济会变得更有效率。

　　当一些企业濒于破产，地方政府的一个反应就是如何拯救它们。不幸的是，这种态度是错误的。许多企业因为忽视主营业务、转向房地产和其他金融交易来获利，现在出现了问题。由于成本上升让制造业盈利变得更加困难，许多企业转向房地产和股票市场，因为这样挣钱很快。随着泡沫破灭，它们出现资不抵债。很难估计这个问题的严重程度有多深。但是，当我去全国各个地方，与当地企业交谈，我发现这个问题很普遍。受资产持续贬值影响，未来12个月，银行间的不良贷款会大幅增加。问题十分严重。

　　解决方法是什么呢？问题是昨天造成的，我们现在改变不了问题存在的事实。然而，政府也不能拯救所有破产企业。否则，我们就倒退回计划经济和贫穷时代。

　　相反的，地方政府应该看住那些陷入困境的企业主，防止他们携带资产潜逃。这一幕在十年前发生过。相信许多人这次也会这么做。他们出逃会让中国损失很大。在逃跑前，他们会从破产公司向境外私人银行转移大笔现金，这将让中国银行出现更大的窟窿。所以，地方政府花钱营救他们是很愚蠢的举动。这些钱很可能被偷走。为保护中国金融安全，最有用的政策应该是防止负债累累的企业主离开中国。

　　中国正面临成本上升或者竞争力下降的挑战。经济增长复苏，需要提高效率。当然，提高效率应该在公司层面上，由价格机制引导。

　　但是，政策低效率也是一个重要问题。特别是，中国金融系统是中国经济的沉重负担。提高金融行业的效率，对经济增长来讲，有显著的刺激作用。中国应该以提高存款利率作为开端，将存贷差降低到正常的两个百分点。当然，中央银行也应该降低存款准备金率，来使银行系统正常化。同时，“热钱”流出给降低存款准备金率提供了好环境。

　　中国股票市场是一个败笔。上海A股指数在两年里从1000点跃升到6000点，然后又在一年内掉到2400点。中国应该彻底改进它的市场，防止未来出现目前的危机。重中之重，政府应该放松在市场中的微观干预。当法律出台后，市场就应该自我运行。这是促进市场健康发展的惟一途径。

　　即将到来的挑战有些令人望而生畏。但是，中国仍然有很多牌可以出。强大的财政和贸易顺差，是“硬着陆”的缓冲垫。仍有很多机会可以改善贸易条件。还有很多领域，例如金融体系，有提高效率的空间。只要政府采取合理政策，经济在两年内就会重焕活力。■

中国昨天为中国改革30年前重要的标志性人物华国锋举行了高规格的葬礼。现任九位常委，悉数到场为他们的前辈送行。***和朱镕基、李瑞环等退休高官，也前往道别。

87岁的华国锋，在北京奥运会开幕后第12天悄然离去。28年前，在他任上，中国曾因苏联对阿富汗的入侵，与西方阵营一道抵制了莫斯科奥运 会。今天，苏联早已消失，驻在阿富汗的，是美国及盟国的军队，而中国则已不再似30年前的黑白分明，小心地在格鲁吉亚事件中，与东西方维持着谨慎的平衡。

上世纪70年代末，华国锋的头像，曾与***的画像并列，在中国各地的政府、学校、家庭以及各类活动中出现。今天，在官方举办的遗体告别会上，似乎没有选到一张更清晰的近照——年迈的他面向左前方，微露笑意，穿着中国政坛今天早已少见的中山装。

中国的现任领导者，在华国锋当政时代，或正在基层的单位中，默默无闻，还未等到擢升机会；或刚进入重新招生的高校读书；或离开学校不久，正从杂务做起——那时，他们距离中国的最高权力中心，还有遥远得难以想象的距离。

无论从哪个方面看，华国锋都应是标志性的人物。他是中国1949年后第二任最高领导者，也是***指认的第三个接班人，他指挥的抓捕激进左派的行 动，不止让4个当时中国权力核心圈的热门人物突然下狱，也让中国最终舍弃革命式的原教旨主义，走向市场和开放消除了障碍。不过，这位按当时中国政治气候具 备合法接班地位的领导人，在1978年其后几年的关键转型时刻中，黯然离任。那个时代的中国人，经常可在电视上，看到前党中央主席的凝重表情，他的身份已 然换成了党的副主席，到后来则只是中央委员。