图片文字部分的翻译部分参考自3Us

Fatal Attraction
致命诱惑

They lure insects into death traps, then gorge on their flesh. Is that any way for a plant to behave?
它们将昆虫诱入死亡陷阱后饮血啖肉。这像是植物的行为吗？

作者Carl Zimmer
摄像Helene Schmitz

Largest of its kind, the South African king sundew unfurls. Leaves of this florid species can reach two feet in length. Drosera regia 南非帝王毛毡苔伸展开的样子，这是毛毡苔类最大的一种。这种色彩艳丽的毛毡苔，其叶子能有两英尺长。

From National Geographic

Size doesn’t ensure success. If a gluey tentacle grabs too little of a big fly, the bug may suffer injury but still struggle to freedom. In the realm of carnivorous plants, says William McLaughlin, curator at the United States Botanic Garden, “some insects aren’t digested but are still victimized.” Drosera regia 大小不能决定捕食的成功率。如果粘稠的触须只粘到了大苍蝇的一小部分，那么这只苍蝇也许会受伤，但还是能够重获自由。美国植物园园长，William McLaughlin说，在肉食类植物的王国里，“有些昆虫虽免于殉命，但难逃受伤的厄运。”

From National Geographic

Thirsty bugs are drawn to what look like dewdrops on an Australian sundew, then find themselves entangled in sticky tentacles. Drosera stolonifera 饥渴的虫子会被形似露珠的澳大利亚毛毡苔粘液所吸引，然后发现自己被粘稠的触须粘住了。

From National Geographic

Carnivorous plants deceive, then kill. A tropical pitcher plant smells sweet to bugs, but its slippery surfaces tumble victims into its open maw. Nepenthes lowii 肉食性植物先伪装欺骗，再诱杀吞噬。一株热带猪笼草散发着虫子们的喜闻的芳香，但它滑不留手的表面会让虫子们跌进敞开着的无底洞里。

From National Geographic

A Venus flytrap snaps shut if its tiny hairs are brushed twice. Dionaea muscipula 如果Venus捕蝇草的纤细毛发被触碰两次，叶子就会立即合拢。

From National Geographic

Like figures in a shadow theater, silhouettes of prey show through a Philippine pitcher plant. The waxy surface in the red tube stops bugs from climbing free. Below, enzymes leach nutrients from trapped insects. Nepenthes alata 就像是皮影戏中的影子一样，被捕食者的轮廓也在菲律宾猪笼草内依稀可见。红色的管状叶子内，光滑的表面让虫子无法攀爬。最底下是困死的虫子，消化酶在吸收它们的营养。

From National Geographic

A hungry fly darts through the pines in North Carolina. Drawn by what seems like the scent of nectar from a flowerlike patch of scarlet on the ground, the fly lands on the fleshy pad of a ruddy leaf. It takes a sip of the sweet liquid oozing from the leaf, brushing a leg against one tiny hair on its surface, then another. Suddenly the fly’s world has walls around it. The two sides of the leaf are closing against each other, spines along its edges interlocking like the teeth of a jaw trap. As the fly struggles to escape, the trap squeezes shut. Now, instead of offering sweet nectar, the leaf unleashes enzymes that eat away at the fly’s innards, gradually turning them into goo. The fly has suffered the ultimate indignity for an animal: It has been killed by a plant.
北卡罗来纳州，一只饥饿的苍蝇在松柏林中穿梭。它被花蜜的芬芳所吸引，来到了一片绯红的花草地，然后降落在了一片肥厚的红叶上。叶子上渗出甘甜的汁液，它吸允了一口，同时一只脚也触碰到了叶子表面的一根毛发，然后又是那么一下。突然，苍蝇的整个世界变得高墙林立。两边的叶子突然合拢起来，叶边的尖刺交错咬合形成了一个牢笼。这只苍蝇挣扎着试图逃脱，但牢笼却越闭越紧。现在，美味的花蜜没有了，取而代之的是叶子分泌出的酶，将苍蝇慢慢地分解消化。作为动物，这只苍蝇可算是遭受了奇耻大辱：被一株植物杀死。

The swampy pine savanna within a 90-mile radius of Wilmington, North Carolina, is the one place on the planet where Venus flytraps are native. It is also home to a number of other species of carnivorous plants, less famous and more widespread but no less bizarre. You can find pitcher plants with leaves like champagne flutes, into which insects (and sometimes larger animals) lose themselves and die. Sundews envelop their victims in an embrace of sticky tentacles. In ponds and streams grow bladderworts, which slurp up their prey like underwater vacuum cleaners.
在北卡罗来纳州，威明顿市90英里范围内的沼泽松林生长着原生态的捕蝇草。这个地方也生长着很多其他肉食类植物，它们虽然更为常见且并不出名，但它们也同样的稀奇古怪。你可以在这里找到猪笼草，它们的叶子长得像高脚香槟杯，掉进里面的昆虫（有时是更大的动物）会丧命其中。毛毡苔将它们的猎物紧紧抱住，包裹在带有粘性的触手之中。池塘和小溪里长着狸藻，它们吸食猎物，就好像是水底的真空吸尘器。

Most carnivorous plants eat some insects for supper but need others to help them reproduce. Some carnivorous species, such as this budding sundew, can self-pollinate if no insect emissary can be enlisted. Drosera sp. 大部分肉食类植物吞噬一些昆虫做美餐，又需要另一些昆虫来帮助它们繁衍。有些肉食类植物，就像这株发芽的毛毡苔，在没有昆虫帮助的情况下，可以自花授粉。

From National Geographic

Sensing food, a roach peers into a two-foot-tall pitcher plant. Carnivorous species photosynthesize like other plants, but most live in bogs and other nutrient-poor habitats. Enriching their diets with nitrogen captured from animals helps them thrive. Sarracenia flava 一只蟑螂感觉到有食物在两英尺深的猪笼草里，于是爬进去窥探一番。肉食类植物和其他植物一样能进行光合作用，但是它们大多生长在沼泽或营养匮乏的地方，通过捕食动物来摄取更多的氮能帮助它们旺盛地生长。

From National Geographic

To avoid capturing and consuming prospective pollinators, pitcher plants keep their flowers far away from their traps via long stalks. Sarracenia hybrid 为了避免误食传粉的昆虫。猪笼草将花用过长茎长到远离陷阱的地方。

From National Geographic

Blooms hang upside down like Chinese lanterns, luring bees into an elaborate pollen chamber. Sarracenia flava 花朵向下生长就好像一个灯笼，将蜜蜂吸引到精心打造的花粉室。

From National Geographic

A glassy cellar spider contends with the glistening tentacle tips of a South African king sundew. The more the arachnid struggles, the more likely it is to become mired in the thick mucilage globules at the ends of the tiny stalks. When the spider gives up, either from exhaustion or suffocation, it will be conveyed by the tentacle to the leaf’s center. There burning acids and enzymes will reduce its body to a nutrient soup easy for the plant to digest. Drosera regia (sundew); Pholcus phalangioides (spider) 一只光滑的地窖蜘蛛（cellar spider）正与南非帝王毛毡苔闪闪发亮的触须展开生死搏斗。这只长脚蜘蛛越是挣扎，在厚厚的粘夜里越陷得深。当蜘蛛放弃努力，不管是精疲力竭还是窒息而亡，触须都会将它运送到叶子中心。然后强酸和酶会将它的身体变为一道营养丰富的浓汤，这样更便于植物吸收。

From National Geographic

A wolf spider treads perilously on the rim of a South American pitcher plant, perhaps looking to prey on insects drawn to the plant’s strong nectar scent. William McLaughlin, curator of the U.S. Botanic Garden, notes that spiders like this one are opportunists, often building webs directly over the mouths of pitcher plants. “It’s a great strategy,” he says, “so long as they don’t fall in themselves.” Heliamphora nutans (pitcher plant); family Lycosidae (spider) 一只狼蛛在南非猪笼草边缘走着，这相当危险，他正在寻找被浓郁花香吸引过来的昆虫。William McLaughlin，美国植物园园长说，像这种蜘蛛，就是典型的机会主义者。他们把网直接结在猪笼草的血盆大口上。“这也是极好的方法，”他说，“只要别把自己也搭进去了。”

From National Geographic

Many of the world’s 675-plus carnivorous species set passive traps. A bun-size butterwort bristles with gluey hairs that ensnare insects until digestive juices do their work. Pinguicula ‘Hans’ 食肉类植物约有675多种，很多都会守株待兔。一株面包大小的捕虫瑾，长满了粘稠的茸毛，它们将昆虫犹如陷阱，直至分泌消化液才合拢。

From National Geographic

A pale green butterfly senses nectar and alights on a rare California pitcher plant. Also called a cobra lily for its bulbous head, forked tongue, and long tubular pitcher, it grows in mountainous parts of the West Coast and is an oddity among its kind. Although it traps prey in a manner similar to other pitcher plants, its leaves contain no digestive enzymes. Instead, it relies on symbiotic bacteria to turn captured insects into usable nutrients. Darlingtonia californica 一只淡绿色蝴蝶闻香而来，停落在一株罕见的加利福尼亚猪笼草上。该种猪笼草呈球茎，叶子分叉且呈长管状，所以又称眼镜蛇百合。它生长在西海岸多山地区，属于同种物种中的异类。虽然它捕捉猎物方式和其他猪笼草相似，但是它不会分泌消化酶，所以需要借助共生细菌，将被困昆虫转变为可供食用的营养物质。

From National Geographic

The thimble-size west Australian pitcher plant has a taste for insects that crawl. Its guide hairs and cloying scent encourage ants to clamber into its digestive depths. Cephalotus follicularis 套圈模样的澳大利亚猪笼草对爬行类昆虫的口味更情有独钟.它的毛发和甘甜的气息诱惑着蚂蚁爬到叶子的深处,那里生产着消化液.

From National Geographic

There is something wonderfully unsettling about a plant that feasts on animals. Perhaps it is the way it shatters all expectation. Carl Linnaeus, the great 18th-century Swedish naturalist who devised our system for ordering life, rebelled at the idea. For Venus flytraps to actually eat insects, he declared, would go “against the order of nature as willed by God.” The plants only catch insects by accident, he reasoned, and once a hapless bug stopped struggling, the plant would surely open its leaves and let it go free.
植物以动物为食这件事十分令人震惊。这可能是因为这种行为和我们预想的常态相悖。Carl Linnaeus，18世纪伟大的瑞典自然学家，发明了生物的分类方式，在这一点上却没有始终一贯。拿捕蝇草来说，它确实捕食昆虫，Carl Linnaeus却宣称这将“违背作为上帝意志体现的自然规律。”他解释说，植物只是在偶然的情况下捕捉到昆虫，而且一旦一只倒霉的虫子停止挣扎，植物就肯定会打开叶子放走它。

Carnivorous plants lure some insects for prey but attract others for the more benign task of propagation. Heliamphora minor, which grows in the highlands of southern Venezuela, is one of the smallest pitcher plants in the world. Flower color and position signal to insects the blossom’s degree of maturity. The white color of the upside-down flower here indicates its readiness to be pollinated, while its umbrella shape protects powdery pollen from washing off in heavy rains. The burgundy bloom to its left has presumably been pollinated. The green, horizontal blossom below is still too immature to benefit from insect visitors. Heliamphora minor 食肉植物吸引昆虫，有些是为了捕猎，有些则是为了繁衍后代。Heliamphora minor，生长在委内瑞拉南部高地上，是世界上最小猪笼草之一。花色和位置，向昆虫传递着花株成熟程度的信息。倒挂的白色花蕾表明已可以接受授粉，而伞形能够保护花粉免受暴雨侵袭。其左边酒红花蕾，可能象征着授粉完毕。和其平行的下方绿色花蕾表示尚未成熟，即便有昆虫来造访也无济于事。

From National Geographic

A water-filled North American hybrid tempts bees with the promise of nectar and a rim that looks like a prime landing pad. Carnivory is not the most efficient way for a plant to secure nutrients, but it is certainly among the most exotic. Sarracenia hybrid 一株装满液体的混种肉食植物用貌似花蜜的消化液吸引来蜜蜂，又用看似降落平台的花瓣来促其滑倒。食肉并不是植物获得营养最高效的方法，但肯定是最奇异的方法之一。

From National Geographic

Charles Darwin knew better, and the topsy-turvy ways of carnivorous plants enthralled him. In 1860, soon after he encountered his first carnivorous plant—the sundew Drosera—on an English heath, the author of Origin of Species wrote, “I care more about Drosera than the origin of all the species in the world.” He spent months running experiments on the plants. He dropped flies on their leaves and watched them slowly fold their sticky tentacles over their prey. He excited them with bits of raw meat and egg yolk. He marveled how the weight of just a human hair was enough to initiate a response. “It appears to me that hardly any more remarkable fact than this has been observed in the vegetable kingdom,” he wrote. Yet sundews ignored water drops, even those falling from a great height. To react to the false alarm of a rain shower, he reasoned, would obviously be a “great evil” to the plant. This was no accident. This was adaptation.
Charles Darwin对此了解得更为深刻，肉食性植物的种种匪夷所思的表现令他痴迷不已。他是在英国的某处荒野第一次遇见了肉食性植物——Drosera毛毡苔，没过多久，在1860年，这位《物种起源》的作者如是写到，“我对Drosera毛毡苔兴趣远胜于世上的物种起源之谜。”他花费数月时间在这些植物上做实验。他将苍蝇丢到Drosera毛毡苔的叶子上，然后观察它们粘稠的触须慢慢裹住它们的猎物。他还用少量生肉和蛋黄来刺激它们的食欲。实验发现即使只有一根头发的重量也足够Drosera毛毡苔做出反应，对此他啧啧称奇并写到“我来讲在对植物王国的观察中几乎没什么比更吸引人的了。”但是毛毡苔无视水滴的影响，即使那些水滴从高处落下，重重砸在毛毡苔上。他解释道，对雨水造成的误报做出反应，是植物的大忌。这并不是巧合。这是进化的必然结果。

Darwin expanded his studies from sundews to other species, eventually recording his observations and experiments in 1875 in a book, Insectivorous Plants. He marveled at the exquisite quickness and power of the Venus flytrap, a plant he called “one of the most wonderful in the world.” He showed that when a leaf snapped shut, it formed itself into “a temporary cup or stomach,” secreting enzymes that could dissolve the prey. He noted that a leaf took more than a week to reopen after closing and reasoned that the interlocking spines along the margin of the leaf allowed undersized insects to escape, saving the plant the expense of digesting an insufficient meal. Darwin likened the hair-trigger speed of the Venus trap’s movement—it snaps shut in about a tenth of a second—to the muscle contraction of animals. But plants don’t have muscles and nerves. So how could they react like animals?
Darwin的研究领域慢慢从毛毡苔扩展到其他物种，最终在1875年他将他的观察和实验所得成果记录在了《食虫植物》一书中。他对捕蝇草的速度之快、力量之大颇为惊叹，称其为“世上最神奇的东西之一。”他在书中展示了捕蝇草，当他们的叶子合拢后就形成了一个“临时的胃”，其中会分泌酶来消化猎物。他还记录到一片叶子要花一个多星期的时间才会重新打开，而叶子合拢时交错咬合的叶边尖刺会让小体型的昆虫逃脱，这是因为费力来消化一份无法饱腹的食物是得不偿失的。捕蝇草叶面上的毛发（相当于一个触发器）能在十分之一秒内让叶子闭合，其速度完全可以和动物肌肉收缩的速度相媲美。但植物可没有肌肉和神经。所以它们是如何做到像动物那般快速的反应呢？

A snail makes solemn progress up the rolled leaf of a yellow pitcher plant. Some scientists think the stalk’s squiggly vertical vein is a ladder intended to guide crawling food to the plant’s mouth. Others say it’s a structural reinforcement. Members of this skinny species can grow to three feet in height and tip over when overfilled with rainwater and the husks of prey. Sarracenia flava (pitcher plant); family Helicidae (snail) 一只蜗牛在黄猪笼草的叶子上缓慢而坚定地向上攀爬。一些科学家认为，这些弯弯曲曲的经络起着梯子的作用，将它们的美餐引入到嘴边。另一些科学家则认为这种构造起到了强化结构的作用。这种细长的植物能长到3英尺高，当叶子里灌满雨水或者塞满了昆虫外壳时会伏倒下来。

From National Geographic

Today biologists using 21st-century tools to study cells and DNA are beginning to understand how these plants hunt, eat, and digest—and how these bizarre adaptations arose in the first place. After years of study, Alexander Vol kov, a plant physiologist at Oakwood University in Alabama, believes he has figured out the Venus flytrap’s secret. “This,” Volkov declares, “is an electrical plant.”
当今生物学家利用21世纪的先进工具，在研究了细胞和DNA后开始逐渐了解了这些植物是如何进行捕食、消化以及它们这种古怪的特点最初是如何产生的。经过多年的研究，Oakwood大学的植物生理学家Alexander Vol kov相信他破解了捕蝇草的秘密。“这种植物，”他说，“是一株电子植物。”

When an insect brushes against a hair on the leaf of a Venus flytrap, the bending triggers a tiny electric charge. The charge builds up inside the tissue of the leaf but is not enough to stimulate the snap, which keeps the Venus flytrap from reacting to false alarms like raindrops. A moving insect, however, is likely to brush a second hair, adding enough charge to trigger the leaf to close.
当昆虫触碰了捕蝇草表面的毛发而使其发生扭曲，这种扭曲触发了少量的电荷。这些电荷在叶内组织中积累起来但还不足以造成叶子的闭合，这避免了捕蝇草对一些无谓的刺激作出反应，比如像雨水。而一只昆虫则很可能因为不停移动而触碰到另一根叶子表面的毛发，这样积累起来的电荷就足够使叶子闭合起来。

Volkov’s experiments reveal that the charge travels down fluid-filled tunnels in a leaf, which opens up pores in cell membranes. Water surges from the cells on the inside of the leaf to those on the outside, causing the leaf to rapidly flip in shape from convex to concave, like a soft contact lens. As the leaves flip, they snap together, trapping an insect inside.
Volkov的实验表明：电荷在充满液体的叶子内部自由移动，使细胞膜上的毛孔打开。水从细胞内部涌出到细胞外部，造成叶子的形状迅速转变，由饱满变得凹陷，就好像柔软的隐形眼镜镜片一样。当叶子转换形状时，它们就合拢起来，将昆虫困在其中。

The bladderwort has an equally sophisticated way of setting its underwater trap. It pumps water out of tiny bladders, lowering the pressure inside. When a water flea or some other small creature swims past, it bends trigger hairs on the bladder, causing a flap to open. The low pressure sucks water in, carrying the animal along with it. In one five-hundredth of a second, the door swings shut again. The cells in the bladder then begin to pump water out again, creating a new vacuum.
狸藻的水下陷阱有着同样复杂的构造。它将小囊中的水排出，降低了内部压强。当有水蚤或者其他类似的小东西游过时，会触碰到它的毛发，然后小囊的封口会打开。囊中因为压强低，水流会顺势进入，将小动物一并带入。在五百分之一秒后，封口又会迅速闭上。狸藻中的细胞随后继续开始排水，又再次形成真空状态。

Lurking half-submerged in bogs and sandbanks of the southeastern United States, the parrot pitcher plant has an appetite for arthropods, ants, and slugs. Prey are drawn to nectar inside the hood and by light shining through a latticework of “windows.” Needlelike, downward-pointing hairs line the interior, making retreat impossible—and directing prey to the plant’s acidic depths. Sarracenia psittacina 鹦鹉猪笼草生长在美国东南部的沼泽和沙洲，将半个身子潜伏起来，喜食节足动物、蚂蚁、蛞蝓。它们的猎物会被花蜜吸引到形似罩子的叶子里，阳光照射下的它们会在格子状的“窗子”里若隐若现。里面长满了头部向下的针状细毛，所以想退出去是不可能的，只能顺着细毛的方向走，终点是满布酸液的叶子内部。

From National Geographic

Many other species of carnivorous plants act like living flypaper, snagging animals on sticky tentacles. Pitcher plants use yet another strategy, growing long tube-shaped leaves into which insects fall. Some of the largest have pitchers up to a foot deep and can consume a whole frog or even a rat unlucky enough to fall into them. Sophisticated chemistry helps make the pitcher a death trap. Nepenthes rafflesiana, a pitcher plant that grows in jungles on Borneo, produces nectar that both lures insects and forms a slick surface on which they can’t get a grip. Insects that land on the rim of the pitcher hydroplane on the liquid and tumble in. The digestive fluid in which they fall has very different properties. Rather than being slippery, it’s gooey. If a fly tries to lift its leg up into the air to escape, the fluid holds on tenaciously, like a rubber band.
很多其他肉食性植物就像是活生生的捕蝇纸，用粘稠的触须将动物钩挂住。但猪笼草用的是另一套方法，它长出像长管一样的叶子让昆虫掉落其中。最大型的猪笼草，其叶子形成的“壶”有一英尺深，这足以消化掉在里面的青蛙或者哪只倒霉透顶的老鼠。复杂的化学特性使猪笼草成为了一个死亡陷阱。Nepenthes rafflesiana，一种长在Borneo丛林中的猪笼草会制造花蜜来诱惑昆虫，同时形成一个光滑的表面，昆虫在上面完全站不住脚。降落在猪笼草上的昆虫会在“花蜜”上失控打滑，跌落“壶”中。它们跌落在消化液里，这些消化液和“花蜜”的特性全然不同。不但一点不滑，反而相当有粘性。如果一只苍蝇试图蹬脚逃脱，这些液体会像橡皮筋一样将它牢牢箍住。

Many carnivorous plants have special glands that secrete enzymes powerful enough to penetrate the hard exoskeleton of insects so they can absorb nutrients from inside their prey. But the purple pitcher plant, which lives in bogs and infertile sandy soils in much of North America, enlists other organisms to digest its food. It is home to an intricate food web of mosquito larvae, midges, protozoans, and bacteria, many of which can survive only in this unique habitat. The animals shred the prey that fall into the pitcher, and the smaller organisms feed on the debris. Finally, the pitcher plant absorbs the nutrients released by the feeding frenzy. “Having the animals creates a processing chain that speeds up all the reactions,” says Nicholas Gotelli of the University of Vermont. “And then the plant dumps oxygen back into the pitcher for the insects. It’s a tight feedback loop.”
很多肉食性植物都有特殊的腺体以分泌酶，而这些酶相当强大，足以穿透昆虫坚硬的外壳，这样它们就能吸收猎物体内的营养了。但是紫猪笼草会利用其它微生物来帮助它消化食物，它们大多生活在北美沼泽地区和贫瘠沙地。这里有着复杂的食物链，蚊子幼虫，蠓，单细胞生物和细菌，它们很多只能在这个特殊的栖息地生存。动物将它们的猎物撕碎后会有残渣掉进猪笼草，于是微生物开始食用这些残渣。它们疯狂进食时产生的营养素最终被猪笼草所吸收。“通过动物的参与，这条生态链的转化速度大大加快，”Vermont大学的Nicholas Gotelli说。“然后植物将氧气返还给猪笼草中的昆虫，这是一个相当紧凑的循环。”（译者注：这个生物链循环的逻辑没怎么读懂，氧气返还给猪笼草中的昆虫也算是个循环吗？不给不是更好？）

Pitcher plants grow by the thousands in the bogs at the Harvard Forest in central Massachusetts. One late spring day Aaron Ellison took me on a tour, stopping from time to time to watch patiently as I pulled a sinking leg out of the muck. “You haven’t had a real bog experience till you’re up to your crotch in it,” said Ellison, a senior ecologist at the forest. Little orange flags fluttered across the bogs. Each one marked a pitcher plant impressed into the service of science. In the distance a student was feeding flies to the flagged plants. The researchers raise these insects on food spiked with unusual forms of carbon and nitrogen so they can later harvest the pitcher plants and measure how much of each element from the flies has been absorbed into the plants. Because pitcher plants grow slowly (they can live for decades), the experiments can take years to yield results.
在Massachusetts中部Harvard森林的沼泽中生长着数以千计的猪笼草类植物。春末的某天，Aron Ellison——这片森林中资深的生态学家，带我游览了一番，他不时停下脚步耐心观察地形，而我却频频陷入烂泥之中，举步维艰。“如果你没有过大半个身子陷入泥沼的经历，就谈不上对沼泽有什么真切地体会了，”Ellison说到。沼泽地里飘动着一面面桔黄色的小旗。每个都标记了一株供科学研究用的猪笼草。不远处的一个学生正在用苍蝇喂食这其中的一株。研究人员用添加了特别碳、氮成分的食物来喂养这些昆虫，这样他们就能从随后收集到的猪笼草里测出每种成分被植物吸收了多少。因为猪笼草生长缓慢（它们可以存活数十年），这项实验可能要花数年才能得出结果。

Ellison and Gotelli are trying to figure out what evolutionary forces pushed these plants toward a taste for meat. Carnivorous plants clearly benefit from eating animals; when the scientists feed pitcher plants extra bugs, the plants get bigger. But the benefits of eating flesh are not the ones you might expect. Carnivorous animals like ourselves use the carbon in protein and the fat in meat to build muscles and store energy. Carnivorous plants instead draw nitrogen, phosphorus, and other critical nutrients from their prey in order to build light-harvesting enzymes. Eating animals, in other words, lets carnivorous plants do what all plants do: grow by grabbing energy directly from the sun.
Ellison和Gotelli试图找出是怎样的进化力量使得这些植物对肉类有了兴趣。肉食类植物显然从进食动物中获得了好处；当科学家们对猪笼草喂食更多的昆虫时，这些植物长得更大了。不过食用肉类的好处可能和你所想的并不一样。肉食类动物，就好象我们人类自己，会使用蛋白质中的碳和肉中的脂肪来构建我们的肌肉并储存能量。肉食类植物则是吸收猎物体内氮、磷及其他重要营养来制造光合作用所需要的酶。捕食动物，换言之，是为了让肉食类植物能像其他任何植物一样：通过植物从太阳哪里吸取营养来成长。

Alas, they do a lousy job of it. Carnivorous plants turn out to be very inefficient at converting sunlight into tissue. That’s because they have to use a lot of energy to make the equipment they need to catch animals—the enzymes, the pumps, the sticky tentacles, and so on. A pitcher or a flytrap cannot carry out much photosynthesis because, unlike plants with ordinary leaves, they do not have flat solar panels that can grab lots of sunlight. Ellison and Gotelli suspect that only under special conditions do the benefits of carnivory outweigh the costs. The poor soil of bogs, for example, offers little nitrogen and phosphorus, so carnivorous plants enjoy an advantage there over plants that obtain these nutrients by more conventional means. Bogs are also flooded with sunshine, so even an inefficient carnivorous plant can carry out enough photosynthesis to survive. “They’re stuck, and they’re making the best of it,” says Ellison.
唉，可惜它们的这项活做得实在太糟糕了。事实证明，肉食类植物的光和转化能力异常低下。这是因为他们要使用相当多的能量来构造它们捕食动物所需的工具——酶，“水泵”，粘稠的触手等等。一株猪笼草或者捕蝇草没法携带大量磷，因为不像其他植物，它们没有扁平的叶子来获得大量的阳光。Ellison和Gotelli推测，只有在特定情况下，食肉带来的好处才不会显得徒劳无益。沼泽也经常会被阳光曝晒，所以即使是光合作用能力低下的肉食性植物也能得以生存。“它们难以动弹，而它们已经尽力而为了，”Ellison说。

Evolution has repeatedly made this trade-off. By comparing the DNA of carnivorous plants with other species, scientists have found that they evolved independently on at least six separate occasions. Some carnivorous plants that look nearly identical turn out to be distantly related. Both kinds of pitcher plants—the tropical genus Nepenthes and the North American Sarracenia—grow deep pitcher-shaped leaves and employ the same strategy for capturing prey. Yet they evolved from different ancestors.
生物进化不断地做着这样的制约权衡。通过比较肉食类植物和其他物种的DNA，科学家们发现它们是分六个不同时期进化出相异的特质。（译者注：后半句原文没怎么读懂。）有些肉食类植物看起来很雷同，其实是风马牛不相及，两种猪笼草类植物——热带的Nepenthes和北美的Sarracenia——都长有长壶状的叶子，使用相同的技巧来捕捉猎物。但是他们的祖先完全不同。

A cave cricket is caught in the sticky clutches of a king sundew. Drosera regia (sundew); family Gryllacrididae (cricket) 一只洞穴蟋蟀被帝王毛毡苔粘稠的触须抓住了。

From National Geographic

The trapped insect struggles to free itself. Drosera regia (sundew); family Gryllacrididae (cricket) 被困住的蟋蟀奋力挣扎。

From National Geographic

Possibly injured but certainly fortunate, the cricket plummets to freedom. “Whether a bug will get away or not is a mortal battle decided in moments,” says Barry Rice, a botanist at the University of California, Davis. Drosera regia (sundew); family Gryllacrididae (cricket)

From National Geographic

In several cases scientists can see how complex carnivorous plants evolved from simpler ones. Venus flytraps, for example, share an ancestor with Portuguese sundews, which only make passive flypaper glands on their stems. They share a more recent ancestor with Drosera sundews, which not only make flypaper glands but can also curl their leaves over their prey. Venus flytraps appear to have evolved an even more elaborate version of this kind of trap, complete with jawlike leaves.
在其他一些个例中，科学家们发现肉食性植物可以从极其简单的构造进化为纷繁复杂。举例来说，Venus捕蝇草和Portuguese毛毡苔是同宗同源，而后者只会在茎部被动地产生粘性腺体。Portuguese毛毡苔和Drosera毛毡苔关系更为接近，而Drosera毛毡苔不但会产生粘性腺体，而且还会卷曲叶子包裹住猎物。Venus捕蝇草似乎是这种类型的陷阱的升级进化版，额外拥有了齿状的叶子。

Unfortunately, the adaptations that enable carnivorous plants to thrive in marginal habitats also make them exquisitely sensitive to environmental changes. Agricultural runoff and pollution from power plants are adding extra nitrogen to many bogs in North America. Carnivorous plants are so finely tuned to low levels of nitrogen that this extra fertilizer is overloading their systems. “They eventually burn themselves out,” says Ellison.
不幸的是，肉食性植物演化出的适应性既使它们在毫不起眼的栖息地生长得欣欣向荣，也使它们对环境的变化异常敏感。在北美洲，农业排水和电厂污染使得沼泽中的氮含量激增。肉食性植物对低浓度的氮含量有极佳的偏好，这些多出来的营养物会使它们构造系统无法承受。“它们最终会发生自燃，”Ellison说。

Humans also threaten carnivorous plants in other ways. The black market trade in exotic carnivorous plants is so vigorous now that botanists are keeping the location of some rare species a secret. Venus flytraps are being poached from North Carolina by the thousands to be sold at roadside stands. The North Carolina Department of Agriculture has been dabbing wild Venus flytraps with harmless dye that’s normally invisible but glows in UV light so that inspectors who come across Venus flytraps for sale can quickly determine if the plants were raised in a greenhouse or poached from the wild. But even if the poaching of carnivorous plants can be halted (a very big if), they will continue to suffer from other assaults. Their habitat is disappearing, to be replaced by shopping centers and houses. Fires are being suppressed, allowing other plants to grow quickly and outcompete the Venus flytraps. Good news, perhaps, for flies. But a loss for all who delight in the sheer inventiveness of evolution.
而其他方面，人类也在威胁着肉食类植物的生存。黑市对这些奇异的植物情有独钟，需求旺盛，植物学家们对一些稀有物种的栖息地秘而不宣。北卡罗来纳州的Venus捕蝇草被成千上万地偷偷采摘，然后在路边叫卖。北卡罗来纳州农业部已经将野生的Venus捕蝇草上打上了无害的印记，这种印记一般看不出来，但是在紫外线下会微微发光，这样巡视员偶然碰到了贩卖Venus捕蝇草的人就可以迅速确定这株植物是人工培养的还是从野外偷摘的。但是即使偷摘的行为能够被制止（这还要打上个大大的问号），它们还是会受到伤害。它们的栖息地正在逐渐消失，取而代之的是购物中心和房屋。由于严禁烟火，其他植物可以生长的更快而在竞争中胜过Venus捕蝇草。（译者注：不是很能理解原文。也许是因为捕蝇草生长在沼泽中，所以如果起火不易受到牵连？）对苍蝇来说，这可能是个好消息。对乐于见到大自然在进化过程中极尽精妙创作之能的人来说就是一种损失了。

Most famous and fascinating of all carnivorous plants, the Venus flytrap uses electricity to capture unsuspecting prey. When one or more of its surface hairs are brushed twice—an energy-conserving system that distinguishes prey from other stimuli—an electrical charge signals cells on the outside of the leaf to expand, swiftly warping the shape of the plant’s thumbprint-size lobes from convex to concave and snapping them shut. The hairlike spikes on the end of the lobes, called cilia, then mesh together inexactly, letting small prey escape but trapping prizes large enough to be worth digesting. Dionaea muscipula 最神奇、最广为人知的肉食性植物——Venus捕蝇草，它们运用电子的原理来捕食毫无戒心的猎物。当它们叶表的一根或多根毛发被触碰两次，它们就会识别出猎物，而不会将其和其他刺激物相混淆，再通过能量积累机制，电流冲击的信号叶子外表面的细胞迅速膨胀，拇指大小的叶子形状会马上扭曲，由饱满变得凹陷，两边猛的闭合起来。叶子边缘，像头发一样的尖刺（准确的说是纤毛），略显凌乱地相互咬合起来，体型小的猎物可能逃脱，但会把大到值得一吃的猎物困住。

From National Geographic

p.s2: 无责任翻译，文章译后也只审过一遍。有异议者请参见原文，用自己的智商理解，勿盲信。

p.s3: 这是3月份那期里的文章，因为一直被有些事搁着，所以始终没能动笔。得到的教训是：时间宝贵，做什么都拖拉不得。

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Post tags: NG, photo, 翻译

1. 翻译本文不代表本人同意其观点，请带着批判的眼光看文章。
2. 不对文字翻译的准确性负责。纯粹练手，限于水平和理解，必然存在大量错误。英文原文都有，请自行理解，硬说被误导的人我也没办法。
3. 图床在picasa，不能翻墙的同学可以选择跳过本文或纯文字欣赏。
4. 有任何问题请直接联系作者Matthew Teague，文章不是我写的。本人长期定居毛里求斯，请勿跨国追捕。

article source：nationalgeographic
picture source：nationalgeographic

Facts can be so misleading, where rumors, true or false, are often revealing.
——《Inglourious Basterds》

Of course, I don’t totally believe the story  below, and it was written by a foreigner with his own point of view, which could be very subjective; but neither can I trust the government’s reports, because they covered up many details. As I think, if it is a rumor, we should stand out to expose the lie; if not, we certainly have the right to know the truth. So even rumors provide a perspective. The more we hear about them, the better we could know how to distinguish them.

I am merely an apprentice for translation, and I bring this article to you. Now it’s your turn to read and think it. Remember,

Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.
——Doris Lessing

Last but not least I’d like to dedicate this work to yeeyan for it has once helped me a lot.

Voila!

The Other Tibet
另一个西藏

The Uygurs, Muslim people of China’s resource-rich far west, are becoming strangers in their own land as Han Chinese pour in. Like the Tibetans, who face similar pressures, some Uygurs see a chance for a better life, but others protest the disintegration of their culture, even at the risk of death.
维吾尔人是中国遥远西方富饶之地的穆斯林教徒，他们因为汉人的涌入而逐渐在世代居住的土地上沦为异类。和藏民一样，他们面临着相似的压力，有些维吾尔人将其视为改善生活的机遇，但另一些则对因此引发的文化蜕变发出了异议，甚至不惜以死相争。

作者：Matthew Teague
摄影：Carolyn Drake

A long journey ahead, Uygur villagers settle in for a night ride from Darya Boyi to market. 前路漫漫，维吾尔村民要在车里过上一夜才能从Darya Boyi到集市。

From National Geographic

Alone in a crowd, A Uygur woman (at right) shops at a Chinese market in Karamay, an oil-industry city dominated by Han. Although they make up nearly half of Xinjiang’s population, Uygurs hold few top jobs. 一个维吾尔妇女在克拉玛依的中国市场里购物，她在人群众显得很与众不同。克拉玛依是一个汉组占主导地位的石油城市，尽管这里居住着新疆50％左右的维吾尔居民，但维吾尔人却很少能找到好工作。

From National Geographic

Divided City A window frame splits the view of Urumqi’s Noghay Mosque from Chinese-style development. In July, riots erupted here in Xinjiang’s capital, pitting Uygurs against Han Chinese. 两极的城市 窗框将景色一分为二，左边的乌鲁木齐Noghay清真寺和右边中国式的城市化发展迥然不同。七月，这里爆发了骚乱，维吾尔人和汉人互有冲突。

From National Geographic

Documented on a bystander’s cell phone, a Uygur man lies in a street in Urumqi, shot by security forces after charging them with what appeared to be a sword. 这是一个旁观者用手机记录下来的画面，一个维吾尔人倒在了乌鲁木齐的大街上，他因为举刀袭向中国部队而被枪杀。

From National Geographic

The first several seconds of the incident in Urumqi seemed almost lighthearted, considering the previous week. And they revealed nothing about what would follow. A cool front had swept over the city on this particular day in July, drawing people from their homes. Some shops stayed closed because their windows had been shattered, but food vendors pushed their carts out onto the street. A week earlier an ethnic clash had broken out here, killing almost 200 people in one of China’s most deadly protests since the Tiananmen Square massacre two decades ago. So the Chinese government had sent tens of thousands of security forces into the city, the capital of the Xinjiang Uygur Auton omous Region, to restore order between the Han and the Uygurs. The Han dominate Chinese society, but the Uygurs (pronounced WEE-gurs), a Turkic-speaking Central Asian people, claim this western borderland as their ancestral home.
考虑到先前一周的平稳状况，7月12日乌鲁木齐再次出事前一切都还波澜不惊。没人知道接下来会发生什么。当天一群面色严峻的边防官兵地毯式清查了这座城市，人们被赶回了家。有些店铺因为玻璃窗被砸碎而一直是关门打烊，但小贩们仍然推着他们的小车出现在大街上。一个星期前，一场民族间的冲突在这里爆发，近200人在这场冲突中丧生，这是继二十年前天安门事件后中国最大规模的流血抗议活动之一。所以中国政府调配了10,000名士兵进驻乌鲁木齐——新疆维族自治区首府，以期重建汉族和维族间的秩序。汉族在中国社会站主导地位，而维吾尔人——一群说着土耳其语的中亚民族却一直声称这片西方的边疆是他们祖先的家园。

Han security forces stood in ranks along every street in the city’s Uygur quarter. They bristled with riot gear and automatic weapons. The only sound came from loudspeakers mounted on trucks that trawled the market streets, broadcasting the good news of ethnic harmony. If Urumqi had an edge of unrest on this Monday, it was sheathed in silence.
汉族安全武装列队在维族聚居区的每条街道上。他们穿着防暴制服，配备自动武器，站得笔直。在市场街道周围徘徊着很多装载着喇叭卡车，喇叭里所传出的广播新闻是我们能听到的唯一声音，播放的是关于各民族和谐共处的正面新闻。如果说这个周一乌鲁木齐局势还处在动荡不安的边缘，那么现在一切已归于平静。

Most Uygurs are Muslims, and about noon I stood on the street in front of a central mosque wondering how many people might be inside. As if in answer, a mass of humanity came pouring out, hundreds of people tumbling and plunging into the street.
多数维吾尔人都是穆斯林教徒，大约在中午时分我站在街上，正对一座中心城区的清真寺，突然好奇地在想里面会有多少人。他们接下来的举动好像在回应我的问题一般，一大群人从里面冲了出来，成百上千的人们跌跌撞撞地涌向了街头。

Bystanders watched, puzzled, but the emerging crowd offered only odd and inscrutable clues: Many hadn’t had time to pull on their shoes and ran in just their socks. They cried out with alarm or possibly in celebration, and their faces glowed with either fear or joy. If they were fleeing from danger, there was no sign of it, and the group split and flew north and south. In the flicker of a moment they had disappeared.
路人们用迷惑不解的眼光看着他们，而这群突兀出现的民众却只给人留下了些不可捉摸的印象：很多人甚至连鞋子都没穿，套了双袜子就跑了出来。他们大声叫喊以示警告或者也可能是在庆祝，他们脸上的神情有的恐惧有的欢快。如果说他们是在避难，那好像也没什么迹象表明有这样做的必要，这支队伍分成两拨，分别向北向南散去。一眨眼功夫他们就消失不见了。

Now three men stepped from the mosque, holding what looked like wooden sticks. One wore a blue shirt, one a black shirt, and one a white shirt. They shouted and smiled, which gave their faces a buoyant quality. Their tiny rally seemed brash: Did they not see the Chinese police on every corner or hear the amplified news about manifest happiness?
接着有三个男人步出了清真寺，拿着疑似木棍之类的东西。一个穿蓝色T恤，一个穿黑色T恤还有一个穿白色T恤。他们一边喊一边笑，看上去很兴奋。他们这小小的三人组似乎显得很挑衅：他们没看见中国警察到处都是吗，没听到广播里放着令人欢欣鼓舞正面新闻吗？

They turned southward. All three walked with peculiar long strides and waved their sticks overhead, like three baton-twirling drum majors whose marching band had run ahead of them. They passed rows of market stalls where people shouted to them to stop whatever they were doing. Shop owners slammed shut their stall doors. After two blocks the men stopped and turned back north; just before they reached me, they crossed the street. They still held up what were, more likely, rusted swords.
他们转身向南走去。三个人都迈着异乎寻常的大步并将他们的棍棒举过头顶，高高地晃着，就好像是三个挥舞鼓棒的鼓手在指挥着跑在他们前面的乐队。他们穿过市 集，很多人对着他们大声吼叫，试图阻止他们，无论他们想做什么。店主们将他们的商铺怦的关上。走过两个街区以后，这三个男人停了下来又转身向北折回；他们 穿过一条马路，马上就要和我相遇。他们还紧握着手里那东西，看起来更像是一把把锈刀。

Once across the street, they burst into a run, heading toward a group of armed Chinese. The man in blue sprinted ahead; he seemed to catch the government forces off guard, because they turned and ran. The details of the next moment—the angle of the running man, his shirt billowing behind him, the strange coolness of the air—were etched by a sound: a gunshot. But the three Uygurs did not stop in the face of destruction. They tilted toward it.
一穿过马路，他们就突然跑了起来，冲向了一群中国武装人员。穿蓝衣服的人在前；但他似乎并没有引起政府部队的主义，因为他们转身跑开了。让我们来看看接下 来发生了什么：那个怒气冲冲的男人跑得衣服都飘了起来，突然枪声响起，随后空气中凝固着一股奇怪的死寂。但是这三个维吾尔人并没有因为面对死神威胁而停步 不前。他们视死如归。

The Tibetan struggle for independence from China has long captivated the West. Fewer people are familiar with an arguably more critical struggle in a neighboring hinterland: that of the Uygurs. Their anonymity is ironic because the West has played an unwitting role in their current crisis—and because the Uygurs, whose culture is fading toward obscurity, once occupied the center of the known world.
西藏争取独立，摆脱中国控制的种种举动深深吸引着西方社会的目光。而与其临近的内陆地区所发生的斗争——维民的斗争——更为激烈，但却不为人熟悉。因为西方社会的对他们的危机集体失声，也因为维族曾经叱咤一时的文化现在已濒临消亡，所以维吾尔人如今寡人问津的窘境显得极具讽刺意味。

Xinjiang sits in the middle of Asia, encircled by some of Earth’s highest mountains, as though a drawstring had cinched the top of the world like a coin purse. Passes through those snowy mountains funneled ancient traders and travelers along paths that became the renowned Silk Road. “They say it is the highest place in the world,” Marco Polo wrote of climbing the Pamir mountains from the Afghanistan side. When he emerged from the pass, he found the Uygur homeland and marveled: “From this country, many merchants go forth about the world.”
新疆位于亚洲中部，被世界上最高的一些山峦围绕，就像是一根细线把世界制高地围系成一个小钱包一样。穿越过那些雪山，商人和旅者在著名的丝绸之路上汇集到 了一起。“他们说这里是世界最高之处，”当马可波罗从阿富汗境内一侧爬上帕尔马山峰时如是写道。当他出现在丝绸之路上时，他发现了维吾尔族人的家园并啧啧称奇道：“很多商人从这个国家走出去开始了解世界。”

The territory became the fulcrum on which Asia and Europe balanced. Turkic raiders and later Genghis Khan, Buddhists and then Muslims, traders and tribesmen, missionaries and monks—all passed through this hemispheric crossroads, and each group left something of itself. I saw a Uygur woman wearing a Muslim head cover and holding her baby, whose head she had shaved into phantasmagoric designs, a pre-Islamic shamanistic practice to frighten away baby-stealing evil spirits. Xin jiang’s history is also written in the faces of its people: dark faces with oval eyes. Also fair faces with narrow, jet eyes. And sometimes blue eyes with blond hair.
这片土地成了亚洲和欧洲的制衡点。突厥入侵者和后来的成吉思汗，佛陀和穆斯林教徒，商人和部落游民，传教士和僧侣——都在经过这东西半球的十字路口时留下 了自己的足迹。我看到一个维族妇女怀抱着孩子，穿戴的是穆斯林头饰，但这个头饰被剪裁得十分诡异，是伊斯兰教前身萨满祭祀的打扮，用来吓跑那些偷拐儿童的 恶灵。新疆的历史也同样写在了他子民的脸上：黝黑的脸上椭圆形的眼睛。也有扁平的脸上细细的乌黑的眼睛。有时又是蓝眼金发。

Raising her voice, a Han teacher calls out the correct answer in Chinese at a Uygur high school. Despite an official bilingual policy, the Uygur language is disappearing from classrooms. Some Uygur parents want their children to learn Chinese as a way to get ahead, but many decry the stifling of language and identity. 在一所维吾尔族高中，一个汉族老师在用中文大声地朗读答案。尽管有正规的双语教学政策，维吾尔语还是渐渐消失了。有些维族家长希望自己的孩子学普通话，这样能在将来的竞争中取得一定优势，但也有很多人斥责说这是对语言和本族身份的扼杀。

From National Geographic

Geography itself protects the mosaic of Uygur culture in Hotan, in far southwestern Xinjiang. A range of snowcapped mountains rises at the town’s back, and before it lies the Taklimakan, a desert larger than Poland, which people sometimes call the Sea of Death. Hotan’s inhabitants are mostly farmers, and many of them come together each Sunday outside the town for a bazaar where children eat sweetened ice shaved from chunks that float down the Karakax (Black Jade) River, women browse tents full of silk, and men gather to have their beards trimmed while they tell jokes.
和田，位于新疆遥远的西南地区，因为其地理位置的原因，海纳百川维吾尔文化被保存得十分完好。在这座城的背后是山峦重叠，连绵不断的雪山，在这座城的前方是塔克拉玛干无尽的大沙漠，面积超过整个波兰，人们有时又把这片沙漠称为死海。和田的居民大部分是农民，很多人会周日在城外聚集，孩子们从喀拉喀什河（意思是：黑玉）漂流而下的冰块上削下甜甜的冰块品尝，妇女们在满是丝绸织就的一个个帐篷之间随处走动，男人们则在聚一起讲笑话的时候修剪胡须。

It’s an old scene, although there is an occasional sign of technology: Knifemakers sit in long rows on ancient bicycles they’ve reconfigured to spin grindstones, looking like an invading horde of spark-spitting cyclists. A young Uygur man named Otkur (the names of Uygurs in Xinjiang have been changed for their protection) shared his bowl of sheep’s lung with me, and afterward we approached an astonishing device: a two-story-high swing set with a seat big enough for two people to stand on. Otkur smiled. “For playing,” he said. Two women climbed onto the ends of the seat and swung so high they disappeared into tree branches.
这可是一副过往生活的场面，尽管其中偶然会出现一个科学技术的代表标志：制刀工匠们在经过改造老旧自行车上坐成一排，转动磨刀石，他们这样看上去就像是一 群喷着火花，汹涌袭来的“车手”部落。一个名叫Otkur（为了保护他们，文中的维族姓名都做了改变）维族年轻人和我分享了他碗中的羊肺，然后我们一起来 到一个器械前，令人惊讶不已的是：这是一个两层楼高的秋千，装有足以两人站立的座椅。Otkur笑了。“随便玩玩的，”他说。两个妇女爬上了椅子玩荡秋 千，她们荡得太高了，消失在了树干之中。

In town I met Dawud, a music master who teaches a small group of students. In his school a large mural showed a mashrap, a traditional all-male gathering—now closely regulated by the Chinese—where Uygurs convene to play music, recite poetry, and socialize. Dawud fashioned a fingerpick from a piece of wire and some twine, flicked his fingers across the five strings of a tambur, and launched into a series of complex songs with roots that reach back at least five centuries.
在城里我遇到了Dawud，一个音乐教师，教授着一小群学生。在他的学校里一块大墙壁上画着一场mashrap，一种传统的男性集会，集会会有音乐表演， 诗词朗诵和一些社交活动，现在这一形式已被中国严格监控。Dawud很时髦地带着一个金属丝和细线做成的弦拨，他用手指轻弹不拉琴，很快一首首精妙的歌曲 响起，这些歌曲至少可以追溯到5个世纪前。

Those patchwork elements of Uygur life underscore something crucial about the Uygurs as a whole: Centuries of living at a great Eurasian way station have made them a complicated people who defy careless classification. But in time the world forgot this, with disastrous results.
这些维吾尔人生活的点点滴滴从整体上凸显了这个民族的关键特点：他们数世纪来过着亚欧传统混杂的生活方式，这使得他们形成了复杂的个性，并对过于简单的族群分类方式表示轻蔑。但是这个世界却忘记了他们的这一特点，也因此带来了灾难性的结果。

As the Silk Road began to fray and trade took to the seas, both East and West lost interest in the Uygurs and their mountain fastness. For generations China saw little promise in this remote land—Xinjiang means “new frontier”—because the Chinese prized agriculture, and the wild west offered only dust and stones. People there ate mutton, not pork. In 1932 a British officer traveling in Xinjiang wrote with dark foresight, “Perhaps an awakening China, wondering where to settle its surplus millions of people, may have the good sense to call in the science of the West and to develop [Xinjiang].” But through the early 20th century, the Chinese government did not extend its influence to the distant region, and the Uygurs twice declared their own independent country. The second attempt at self-determination, in 1944, lasted five years, until the rise of Mao and the Chinese Communist Party, which sent in military forces and later established a nuclear testing ground, Lop Nur, in Xinjiang to eliminate any confusion.
当交易越来越多地转向海上，丝绸之路也式渐衰微，东方和西方都对维吾尔族和他们的山中城堡失去了兴趣。新疆在几代中国人眼里都是边陲蛮荒之地，这是因为 中国人更看重农业，而这西部荒野除了尘土和乱石什么都没有。人们在这里只吃羊肉而不吃猪肉。1932年英国官员在考察完新疆后卓有远见地写到：“正在苏醒 过来的中国也许正在考虑在哪里安置数以百万计的富裕人口，他应该能敏锐的感觉到从西方社会引入科学技术，大力开发新疆，将是解决这个问题的好办法。”但是中国 在20世纪早期并没有扩大自己在这遥远西部的影响力，而维吾尔族人却两次宣布独立。在1944年，他们又一次尝试独立，持续了五年，直到毛氏政权和中国共产党的崛起。军队被派驻了进来，随后又建立起了罗布泊核弹试验基地，藉此树立威信。

Realizing that, if nothing else, its big, empty territory provided a buffer against foreign influence, Mao’s China instituted a program called the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps—combining farm, military garrison, and prison—in which settlers from other Chinese provinces would work the soil and watch the borders. The first arrivals, in 1954, included more than 100,000 demobilized soldiers. Some were coerced, but the flow gathered momentum as the government extended a railroad west to Urumqi in 1962 and used promises of food and clothing to entice residents from overcrowded cities like Shanghai.
毛泽东时期的中国政权觉得这里除了广袤无边的荒地外一无所有，但这里可以有效的防止外国势力的影响和渗入，于是他们计划建立起新疆生产建设兵团：将农田、 卫戍部队和监狱归并到一起，让来自中国各地的人们在其中居住，同时开垦荒地和驻守边防。1954年第一批人来到这里，其中还有100,000名残疾军人。 政府在1962年将铁路通到了乌鲁木齐并承诺提供食品和衣物以吸引像上海这样人口密集的城市的居民前往，很多人也正因为这样的原因来到了新疆，但其中也有一部分人是被强行带来的。

Surveillance cameras at a new Uygur housing project in Kashgar reinforce Chinese control. 在喀什，新型的维吾尔族居住区里装上了监控用的摄像头，这加强了中国政府的管制力度。

From National Geographic

Meanwhile the Chinese were discovering that Xinjiang offered far more than just a border cushion: It held something vital to their very survival as a nation. Xinjiang contains about 40 percent of China’s coal reserves and more than a fifth of its natural gas. Most important, it has nearly a fifth of the nation’s proven oil reserves, although Beijing claims it holds as much as a third. Never mind the massive deposits of gold, salt, and other minerals. Xinjiang isn’t empty. It’s strategic. And with that realization, other things came sharply into focus for China’s leadership: Xinjiang is the largest, most far-flung region. It borders more countries than any other. And it’s home to an ethnic group that has tried twice in living memory to make a break for freedom.
与此同时，中国人发现新疆可远不仅仅是一个边境缓冲区：这片土地上拥有的一些重要资源足以使其土地上的居民在建国后自给自足。新疆拥有中国40%的煤炭储量，超过1/5的天然气储量。最重要的是它拥有中国已探明的石油储量的1/5，而北京官方宣称的数字是1/3。更不用提这里还有丰富的金矿、盐和其他矿物。新疆是极具战略意义的。在意识到这些以后，中国领导层很快就把目光聚焦到了这里：新疆，这片最遥远又最幅员辽阔的地区。与新疆接壤的邻国数不胜数。它又是一个民族的家园，这个民族在短短的一段时间里就两次打破枷锁，冲向自由。

Demolition erases another block of Kashgar’s Old City, center of Uygur life in the historic oasis town. Claiming that the long-standing mud-brick structures are unsafe, officials clear space for high-rises. 拆迁工作又移除了一处喀什老城的居民区，这里曾是维吾尔人历史上的绿洲城市。官方声称年代久远的土质砖瓦建筑不安全，因此要将拆除建筑，腾出空间来造高楼。

From National Geographic

Where merchants once trekked through western China on the Silk Road, today pipelines, highways, and railroads serve as conduits of wealth. In recent years Xinjiang (“new frontier”) has attracted a flood of Han Chinese, with many going to new town sites like Alar on the desert rim. Uygurs still dominate the rural south, but the north looks increasingly like the rest of booming China. 当年商人们在丝绸之路上长途跋涉，穿越中国西部，如今这里输油输气管，高速公路和铁路密布，不断地有财富流入。近些年来，在新疆很多地方，如：沙漠边缘地带的Alar，出现了大量汉人涌入的状况。维吾尔人在南部原始地区仍然占到大部分人口，但在北部，这里和蓬勃发展的中国其他城市几无二致。

From National Geographic

Distinctly Uygur, the Sunday bazaar in Layka teems with shoppers in colorful scarves and embroidered caps. Here livestock sales, the hawking of crafts, and matchmaking schemes unfold as in generations past. 在Layka，周日的集会上到处都是购物者，他们都极富民族特色，穿戴着色彩绚丽的头巾和绣花帽。在这里，大家贩卖牲畜，叫卖手工艺品，相亲，和以前的人没什么两样。

From National Geographic

In 1947, during the second incarnation of Uygur independence, about 220,000 Han Chinese made up 5 percent of Xinjiang’s population. Uygurs numbered about three million, or 75 percent, the remainder being a mix of Central Asian ethnicities. By 2007 the Uygur population had increased to 9.6 million. But the Han population had swelled to 8.2 million.
1947年，在维吾尔族人第二次民族自决的独立时期，新疆大约有220,000汉族人，占到总人口的5%。维吾尔族人大约在三百万，或者说占到总人口75%，剩下的就是中亚的一些民族。到了2007年，维吾尔族人口上升到9,600,000万。但是汉族人口也飙升到8,200,000。

Some Uygurs found opportunity in the influx. In the 1980s in burgeoning Urumqi, a laundress named Rebiya Kadeer grew her business into a department store, then built that into an international trading empire. She became one of the wealthiest people in China and an inspiration for her compatriots—a Uygur woman who appeared in Asia’s Wall Street Journal and met with such businessmen as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. In many ways she seemed emblematic of Xinjiang: In the last two decades of the 20th century the region’s GDP increased tenfold.
有些维吾尔人将这种大融合视作机遇。在80年代，发展正处于上升期的乌鲁木齐，一个名叫热比娅·卡德尔的洗衣女工将她的事业渐渐发展成了一家百货公司，随后又将其建成为一个国际贸易帝国。热比娅·卡德尔——一个维族妇女，登上了亚洲华尔街日报并和商业大亨比尔·盖茨和沃伦·巴菲特会面。她成了中国最富有的 人，同时也成为了她的同胞引以为豪的榜样。

Daybreak in the village of Darya Boyi finds a daughter doing chores. Brightly draped wooden platforms serve as beds, and a future meal of mutton hangs from a hook. Uygur activists complain that government programs pressure young women in villages to move east to work in factories. 一个女孩在Darya Boyi的小村庄里打零工，现在正是休息的间隙。铺着颜色亮丽布料的木质板被当作床用，一块羊肉用钩子吊在半空中。维族激进分子抱怨说政府的种种举措使得村子里年轻的妇女倍感压力，不得不去东部的工厂里打工。

From National Geographic

Following tradition in the city, women in Kashgar take home gifts of flatbread after a wedding. 遵照喀什的传统，妇女们在结婚后领取了家里的礼物——大饼。

From National Geographic

But many more Uygurs languished. The big business in Xinjiang is oil, but all that oil is controlled from Beijing by state-owned energy companies. Many of the good jobs in Xinjiang are government jobs, and employees can advance more readily if they join the Communist Party, which requires renouncing their religion. And most Uygurs won’t do that. The result is an ironic and combustible symmetry: As Han settlers pour in, Uygurs, unable to find work in their fantastically wealthy and spacious homeland, migrate east to work in privately owned factories in crowded coastal cities.
但是更多的维吾尔人却越来越弱势了。新疆的支柱产业是石油，但是所有的石油资源都被北京国有能源公司所控制。很多新疆的抢手职位都在政府机构中，而其中的雇员如果能加入共产党晋升起来就会相对容易些，但入党就需要你放弃自己的宗教信仰。显然，大部分维吾尔人不会那么做。这样导致的结果就显得既滑稽讽刺又令人出离愤怒了：汉族定居者的涌入，使得维吾尔人无法在他们自己广阔富饶的家园上找到工作，他们不得不漂泊到拥挤的东部沿海城市，为私人公司打工。

In the past few decades local resistance has flared up around Xinjiang, fluctuating in scale and violence. During the 1980s Uygur students protested treatment by police in a handful of incidents; in 1990 a disturbance south of Kashgar against birth limits ended in perhaps four dozen deaths. In 1997 hundreds of people in a city called Gulja marched to protest repression of Islamic practices and were arrested; the number of casualties is unknown. Other examples abound, including bus bombings and assassinations.
在最近数十年里新疆当地的抗议活动骤然增加，形式规模和激进程度多种多样。80年代，维族学生对警察在处理一些事务时的态度表示了抗议；1990年喀什地 区居民因对计划生育而爆发骚乱，最终骚乱以大量人员伤亡而告终，外界猜测的伤亡人数为48。1997年， Gulja成百上千的人们因聚众反对对伊斯兰习俗的压迫而被捕；伤亡人数不得而知。其他的例子也是层出不穷，其中包括汽车炸弹和暗杀活动。

The Chinese government realized that it had a problem in Xinjiang, much as it had a problem in neighboring Tibet. Along with regulating mashraps—those traditional gatherings—the state monitored services at mosques, afraid they might provide a platform for dissidents. In general, officials downplayed the unrest as the work of isolated “ruffians” in a Uygur population that was otherwise blissful. In early September 2001, Xinjiang Communist Party Secretary Wang Lequan announced in Urumqi that “society is stable, and people are living and working in peace and contentment.”
中国政府于是意识到新疆问题和西藏问题一样棘手。他们担心清真寺里的各类活动会为异议人士提供平台，所以通过严格管理对传统的mashrap集会加以监 控。总的来说，官方低估了这场骚乱，他们以为只是维民中少数几个“害群之马”在兴风作浪，其他人对自己的生活现状并无怨言。2001年9月初，时任新疆党委书记王乐泉就乌鲁木齐形势发表声明称：“社会稳定，人民安居乐业。”

A few days later Beijing received a potent and unexpected propaganda tool: September 11.
几天后北京方面出乎意料地收到一个有力的政治宣传工具：911。

As America and much of the West launched the “war on terror,” China recognized the momentum of global public opinion and chose a new tack. The shift happened so fast it came with an almost audible crack. On October 11 a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry described China as “a victim of international terrorism.” Then the government issued a report on unrest in Xinjiang blaming none other than Osama bin Laden. “It’s an effective strategy,” says James Millward, a professor at Georgetown University and an expert on Xinjiang, “because in America we see Muslims somewhere who are unhappy and maybe even violent, and we assume it’s because of religious reasons.”
美国和其他西方国家启动“反恐战争”后，中国方面意识到了全球人民的反恐意愿，于是选定了一条新的行动路线。这一转变令人始料不及，一时间人们议论纷纷。10月11日中国外交部发言人称中国“饱受国际恐怖主义摧残”。随后政府发布公告，将新疆的混乱局面归罪于奥萨马·本·拉登。“这是个行之有效的策略，”乔治敦大学教授兼新疆问题专家James Millward如是说，“因为在美国，我们看到有些地方的穆斯林们看上去很苦闷甚至可能有暴力倾向，所以我们就认为这可能是宗教原因导致的。”

And just like that, the Uygurs—with the complexity of their culture, the richness of their past, the fullness of their grievance against the Chinese state—fell into a tidy classification. China asked the United States to include a group of militant separatist Uygurs on its list of terrorist organizations but was rebuffed—at least at first.
一切看上去也正是如此，维吾尔族人带着自己文化的博大精深，过往生活的富裕美满和对中国政府无尽的怨恼沦为了一个数量可观的底层阶级，被划分为社会中的异类。中国政府要求美国在它的恐怖组织名单上加上维族武装分裂分子，但是被断然拒绝——至少一开始是这样。

In December 2001, 22 Uygurs were captured in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where they may have received weapons training with the intent of battling the Chinese military back in Xin jiang. The men were rounded up by bounty hunters, handed over to U.S. forces, and sent to Guantánamo Bay. (Years later a U.S. court would order their release.) In August 2002 Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage traveled to Beijing to discuss, among other issues, America’s upcoming mission in Iraq. While there, he announced a reversal in the U.S. stance: A militant Uygur group called the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement would now be listed as a terrorist organization.
2001年12月，22名维族武装分子在巴基斯坦和阿富汗被捕，他们在那些地方接受了军事训练，目的是回到新疆后和中国军队作战。这些由赏金猎人组成的武 装人员被移交给了美国，并被押往关塔那摩监狱。（几年后美国法院宣布释放他们。）2002年8月，美国副国务卿Richard Armitage访问北京，而美国即将在伊拉克展开的军事行动也是其中的话题之一。在北京，Richard Armitage改变了美国先前的对华姿态，宣称将军事武装力量——东突伊斯兰运动组织列为恐怖组织。

Near Hotan, gamblers crowd around after a dogfight—a sharp contrast to the folk dances and wrestling matches Uygurs perform for tourists. In rural areas especially, men and women tend to socialize separately. 在和田附近，一大群人围着看斗狗。这和一般人印象中维吾尔人唱歌跳舞玩摔跤的形象大不相同，那些是做给旅游者看的。尤其是在农村地区，男人和女人一般是不在一起参加社会活动的。

From National Geographic

Idling at a night market in Kashgar, a motorcycle taxi driver waits for his next fare. Limited job opportunities tend to stall many Uygurs as the gap widens between haves and have-nots. According to a U.S. government report, in a recent recruiting effort the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps reserved some 800 of its 840 civil service job openings for Han workers. 一个摩托车司机在喀什的夜市里无所事事，等着他的下一单生意。工作职位的稀缺使得维吾尔人之间的贫富差距越来越大。根据美国政府的报道，新疆生产建设兵团提供的840个职位中有800个是仅对汉族人开放的。

From National Geographic

Unbowed by a sandstorm, pilgrims pray at the graves of Islamic saints during the Imam Asim festival near Hotan. Chinese officials restrict activities at mosques but so far have tolerated rural religious gatherings. 朝圣者Imam Asim节那天在和田附近的伊斯兰圣墓地前进行祷告，即使遭遇沙尘暴他们也不为所动。中国官方对清真寺内的各类活动重重限制，但目前为止他们对农村的宗教集会还是容忍的。

From National Geographic

The heart of Uygur tradition is the ancient capital of Kashgar. Today its Old City looks much as it must have when Marco Polo spied it after descending through the mountain pass—a warren of passageways and ancient mud-brick homes that resemble a jumble of oversize children’s blocks. Early this year the Chinese government undertook a bold step: They began systematically bulldozing the Old City block by block and moving the inhabitants into a new compound on the edge of town.
维吾尔族人的传统核心是曾经的古老首府——喀什。如今这座的古城景观一定和当初马可波罗下山时在山间小道里看到的一模一样：一个到处是街道和土质砖瓦房屋的大庄院，看上去就像放大了的儿童玩具屋。今年早些时候中国政府又有大胆的新举动：他们开始一片区域一片区域地铲平这座古城，居民被迁往这座城边缘地带的复式居民区。

Uygurs don’t discuss the subject in public for fear of imprisonment, but one man who lives in the Old City, Ahun, agreed to talk with me in his home. A rendezvous would not be easy, because for days the Chinese security services had been following me. I was to wait in the main square during the busy midday until I saw him pass under Mao’s statue, then follow at a distance without acknowledgment.
维族人不敢公开讨论这个话题，因为害怕会被捕入狱，但是一个名叫Ahun的人同意带我去他家谈这个问题，他就住在老城里。但碰头地点可不那么好选，因为这 几天来中国秘密警察们一直在跟踪我。热闹的中午时分，我站在广场上等着，直到我看见他从毛泽东像下经过，然后我在无人察觉的情况下很快地跟了上去。

As we walked through city streets, he stopped casually to take a drink of water at a cart and later to tie his shoe. Finally we entered the Old City. The Chinese government’s ostensible reason for demolishing the neighborhood is that it’s too old to withstand an earthquake. But there may be another motive. As Ahun and I wove our way deeper into the warren, I watched his shoulders relax and his gait loosen. He was hard to trace in here. The Old City is a refuge.
当我们穿梭在城市的街道上时，他小心翼翼地停下来在小摊上买了瓶水喝，后来又绑了绑鞋带。最后我们进到了古城。中国政府将此地夷平的理由是房屋陈旧，无法 抵抗地震。但这只是表面上说辞，或许他们还有其他的目的。当我们越来越深入到这个大庄院，我看他放下了紧耸的双肩，脚步也放慢了下来。在这里他就没那么容 易被抓到了。这片老城区就像是一个避难所。

The homes are adjacent and interconnected, and each is two stories high and arranged around a central courtyard. I followed Ahun up a flight of stairs, and when he flung open the door, it struck me that these homes are like oysters: On the outside they’re drab and crude, but on the inside whitewashed plaster walls gleam, and many-colored rugs complement painted ceilings. “I pray. When I worship, I ask Allah, ‘Rescue me my house,’” Ahun said. From his house he has a clear view of a government wrecking crew at work on a nearby home. According to the demolition schedule, they’ll arrive at Ahun’s home in three years.
这里一幢幢房屋都交织在一起，相互紧邻，每幢房子都有两层楼高，中间围着个园子。我跟着Ahun走上一段楼梯后他推开了门，我当时就震惊了，这些屋子就像 贝壳一样：外面看起来单调乏味，但是里面却别有洞天，白色石膏刷过的墙面闪着微光，色彩绚丽的毛毯和画满图案的天花板搭配得相得益彰。”我在做礼拜时向阿拉祷告，‘救救我的屋子，’“Ahun说。从他的屋子里望出去，政府拆迁部门在附近的作业被看得清清楚楚。根据拆迁计划，他们将在三年内拆除Ahun的房 屋。

He was born in the house, he said. So was his father. So was his grandfather, after his great-grandfather built it on family land. “I have two sons,” he said. That’s five generations who have lived in the same house.
他说他是在这间屋子里出生的。他父亲也是。他爷爷也是，这间房子是他祖父建起来的。“我有两个儿子，”他说。这也就意味着五代人都曾居住在同一屋檐下。

If Hotan represents Xinjiang’s past—with a Uygur majority that gathers to sharpen knives, trim beards, sing songs—then Kashgar is its present. Uygurs still make up most of the city’s population, but their culture here is embattled. The government is working fast to tear it down.
在和田，维吾尔族扎堆聚在一起打磨刀具，修整胡须，放声歌唱。如果说这代表着新疆的过去，那喀什则代表着维吾尔族人的现状。这里维吾尔族人在人数上仍然占主体地位，但他们的文化却遭到了围剿。政府正在迅速将其摧毁。

Given enough time, Ahun said, China’s economic development will bring political change, and hope for his people. “China will be obliged to receive a democratic system,” he said. But right now, for a man who prays each day for the survival of his family home, no act is too desperate. “You do not understand our rage,” he said. “In the Middle East there are human bombs, who connect their bodies with bombs. But with our rage, we don’t need bombs connected. We ourselves explode.”
Ahun说。随着时间的推移，中国经济的持续发展将最终将会为他的人民带来一场政治变革和一丝希望的曙光。“中国将被迫接受民主政治模式，”他说。但是此 时此刻，对于一个为了保住自己房产而每天祈求的男人来说，不拿出点实际行动来，一切只能陷入无尽的绝望中。“你不知道我们有多么愤怒，”他说。“在中东有 人体炸弹，他们将自己和炸弹绑在一起。但我们不需要炸弹，我们的怒气直接就能把我们气炸了。”

In June of this year, a disgruntled worker at a toy factory in Shaoguan, near Hong Kong, reportedly claimed that Uygurs had raped two women. A melee followed. The violence lasted several hours and left scores injured. Angry Han workers in the factory’s dormitory beat to death two Uygur co-workers.
今年6月，有报道说香港附近的韶关地区，有一个积郁的玩具厂工人宣称有维吾尔人强奸了两名妇女。紧接着一场大斗殴开始了。暴力持续了数小时，有多人在冲突中受伤。气恼至极的汉族工人在工厂宿舍里将两名维吾尔族同事殴打致死。

This spark lit a fire 2,000 miles away, in Xin jiang. On July 5 thousands of Uygurs—the numbers reported varied widely—took to Urumqi’s streets to protest the treatment of the Uygur workers. The authorities were caught off guard.
远在2,000公里外的新疆维吾尔族的怒火因此被点燃了。7月5日，成千上万的维族人（各类报道中的数字彼此差异悬殊）走上街头抗议对维族工人的不公平待遇。民众的行动给了官方当头一击。

I spoke to a young woman named Arzigul, who had attended the protest. She said it started off peacefully as young people circulated around the capital’s public square. “They were screaming the name ‘Uygur! Uygur! Uygur!’” she said. When security forces arrived, something happened—exactly what is unclear. Each side says the other struck first, but at some point the authorities tried to quell the crowd, which apparently devolved into a mob attacking Han on the street. Two days later a group of Han—apparently numbering in the thousands—took to the street with meat cleavers and clubs and knives. They in turn attacked Uygurs.
我和一个参加过抗议活动的年轻妇女交谈过，她叫Arzigul。她说刚开始年轻人渐渐聚拢到首府的广场上，一切都显得很有秩序。“他们高呼自己的族名‘维 吾尔！维吾尔！维吾尔！’”她说。当安全部队到达后，发生了一些事，具体情况不是很清楚。反正双方各执一词，都坚称是对方先动的手，不过某些迹象表明，官 方试图去驱赶人群，很明显，结果最终演变为一群暴徒在大街上大肆攻击汉族人。两天后一群手持砍刀，棍棒和匕首的汉族人走上街头，人数显然超过了 1,000。他们开始报复维吾尔族人先前的攻击。

Chinese officials say they’re protecting their citizens from terrorists. In July, Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei called the riots “a grave and violent criminal incident plotted and organized by the outside forces of terrorism, separatism, no comma after separatism in original source and extremism.” James Millward, the Xinjiang expert, says many Han—even officials—sincerely believe Xinjiang faces a threat from terrorists and interlopers. “It’s what they are constantly told.” Eventually military forces and police clamped down on Urumqi, and there seemed no possibility of further unrest. That’s when the three men emerged from the mosque in the Uygur quarter, scattering people in every direction.
中国官方称他们在保护自己的公民免受恐怖分子的侵害。7月外交部副部长何亚非将这场暴乱称作是“一场由境外恐怖分子，分裂分子和激进分子联手策划组织的一 起重大暴力犯罪事件。”新疆问题专家James Millward说，很多汉族人，甚至是官员，都真的相信新疆面临恐怖分子和敌对分子的威胁。“这是他们一贯的宣传口径。”最后，部队和警察进驻乌鲁木齐 实行戒严，看起来骚乱不可能在这里进一步升级了。但我们前文中提到的三个维吾尔人正是在这个时候出现在了乌鲁木齐清真寺的一角，把人们吓得四散逃窜。

I watched them stride up the street and back, then run at the Chinese forces. First came the single shot, which missed. The Uygurs continued their charge, and I realized that the running men with their rusted swords did not expect to prevail. They expected to die.
我看见他们大步地在街上走着，一会又折返回去，然后冲向中国部队企图袭击。于是枪声响起，开始只有一枪，没有命中任何目标。三个维族人继续固执地向着部队冲去，我意识到那些拿着锈刀的男人并不指望能胜利。他们但求一死。

A moment later another officer released a burst of automatic fire. The lead Uygur—the man in the flowing blue shirt—fell with the sudden slackness of a thrown rag doll. His body hit the pavement, but the momentum of his sprint sent him tumbling, and his feet flew up and over his head.
不一会，另一个军官就用自动武器打出一梭子弹。冲在前面的蓝衣男子应声而倒，他身上滑落出一个布娃娃。他身体重重地倒在人行道上，由于奔跑的惯性，他双脚离地，翻了个跟头。

For a few seconds the incident played out in tableau on the opposite sidewalk. The remaining two Uygurs ran into the street, and the scene became three-dimensional, with bullets flying in my direction. I ran into a nearby building and found myself in the lobby of an enormous department store. People pressed themselves into corners and behind clothing displays; women wailed, and two men improvised a door lock by shoving a metal bar through the door’s handles. Beyond the building’s glass doors, all three of the Uygur men now lay in the street, one injured and two dead. Soldiers, police, and plainclothes security officers were firing upward, into the windows of surrounding buildings.
几秒钟后，剩下的两个维族人回过神来，冲到街上。刚才对面人行道上肃然静止的画面也因为子弹飞梭而又活跃了起来。因为不时有子弹向我飞来，我跑进了附近一 幢建筑物，进来后我发现自己身处在一个大型百货公司的大厅里。人们或是蜷缩在角落，或是躲在衣架后；妇女们在哭泣，两个男人随手将一根金属棒塞进门把，算是把门锁上。玻璃大门外，三个维族人都倒在了地上，两死一伤。士兵，警察和便衣的国保官员朝天鸣枪，子弹射入了周边建筑的玻璃窗里。

The department store held special significance for the Uygurs. It belonged to their heroine Rebiya Kadeer, the laundress turned mogul who had become beloved after she began to speak out against China’s treatment of the Uygurs. In 1999, as an American delegation arrived in China to meet Kadeer, security officers arrested her. She spent the next six years in prison, then joined her exiled husband in the U.S. Her imprisonment only raised her status among her people, who regard her as the “mother of all Uygurs.”
这幢百货大楼对维民来讲有着特殊的意义。它属于他们的女英雄——热比娅·卡德尔，她从一个默默无闻的洗衣女工转变为声名远播的显赫人物，她因为公开谴责中 国的维民政策而备受爱戴。1999年，美国大使团来到中国会见了卡德尔，国保官员随后就逮捕了她。她入狱六年后和她流亡的丈夫在美国重逢。她的牢狱之灾反而提升了她在维民心目中的地位，维民们视她为“维吾尔族人的母亲。”

She’s a grandmother, just over five feet tall, and she terrifies the Chinese authorities. Mentioning her name in Xinjiang brings swift and severe punishment. When I went with Ahun to his home in Kashgar’s Old City, he spoke freely of rebellion against China’s government, but when I mentioned Rebiya Kadeer, he froze. “If China finds this,” he said, pointing to my voice recorder and then reaching for my throat in mock vengeance, “on Judgment Day I will catch your neck.”
她是一个身高仅5尺的祖母级人物，但她却让中国政府寝食难安。在新疆，只要提及她的名字就可能马上会受到严厉的惩罚。当我在喀什老城的Ahun家 时，Ahun对针对中国政府的反叛活动谈得毫无避讳，但当我提到了热比娅·卡德尔时，他就僵住了。“如果中国政府找到这个，”他指了指我的录音设备，又指 了指我的脖子，故作凶狠地说，“在审判日那天，我不会放过你的。”

After the July riots, trucks with loudspeakers circled the public squares of Urumqi, proclaiming that the unrest had been organized by Kadeer from her office in Washington, D.C. Chinese officials accused her in news reports around the globe and were said to be planning to tear down her trade centers. “The Chinese authorities are fearful of me because of what they have been doing to the Uygur people,” she told me recently. In her office an enormous East Turkistan flag—symbol of a free Uygur nation—hangs on one wall, and photos of her 11 children, two of whom are in prison, hang on another.
七月的骚乱过去以后，装有大喇叭的卡车绕着乌鲁木齐广场不停地广播宣传，声称这次骚乱是由卡德尔在她华盛顿特区的办公室里远程组织指挥的。中国官方在全球 的新闻报道中谴责了她的行径，并称正计划推倒她的商业中心。“中国政府害怕我是因为他们对维吾尔人的所作所为，”她最近告诉我。在她办公室里，象征维吾尔独立的大幅东突厥斯坦旗挂在一面墙上，而另一面墙上挂着她11个儿子的集体照，其中两个还在监狱里。

The Western world knows of the struggle for freedom by Tibetans largely because the Dalai Lama presents a warm and charismatic embodiment of his people. The Uygurs have remained obscure, in part, because they have no such figure. But the Chinese government’s recent efforts to demonize Rebiya Kadeer have lifted her into a representative role. “I keep advocating for my people, for the self-determination of Uygurs,” she told me. Whether that means autonomy within China or a push for full independence depends on the government’s reaction, she said. “At the moment I’m trying to invite the Chinese authorities to come to the dialogue peacefully.”
西方世界很清楚西藏在争取独立自由方面作的努力，这很大程度上要归功于达赖喇嘛，他热情、充满人格魅力的形象成了西藏人民最好的代言。但维吾尔族人处境却几乎不为人知，某些方面是因为他们缺乏这样一个代表人物。但最近中国政府试图妖魔化热比娅·卡德尔的努力反而促使她成为了这样的一个代表人物。“我矢志不渝地为我的人民，为维吾尔人自己的诉求而呐喊发声，” 她曾对我这样说过。她还说，无论这意味着在中国范围内实现自治还是完全从中国独立出取决于中国政府的回应。“此时此刻，我想邀请中国领导人坐下来进行一次 和平的对话。”

Even as Kadeer spoke, another round of strife loomed in Xinjiang—rumors, allegations, protests—and she acknowledges that a peaceful resolution may be impossible. After seeing the region’s past and present through Hotan and Kashgar, we may be glimpsing its future in Urumqi: a sprawling city that serves Han migrants drawn by Xinjiang’s natural resources, where a Uygur minority stays confined to its quarter.
而当卡德尔说完这番话后，新疆又一轮骚动喷薄欲出——各种谣言，论调，抗议层出不穷——她知道和平解决争端或已成为了不可能。从新疆的和田和喀什，我们看 到了这个地区的过去和现在，借此我们或许可以瞥见乌鲁木齐的未来：一个为汉族人汲取新疆天然资源的大城市，但少数派的维吾尔人却处处受限。

And on an otherwise silent Monday afternoon, men detonate on the street from the sheer force of their rage.
周一，一个死寂的午后，维吾尔人们满腔的愤怒又一次在街头爆发。

A Uygur disco in Hotan attracts young couples to a nightlife of their own. The scene belies the official Chinese portrait of Uygurs as “colorful, quaint folks,” says China scholar James Millward. “In the cities they are modern and worldly.” Many Uygurs also fight the separatist label. But unless more of Xinjiang’s wealth is shared and their culture is respected, more Uygurs will demand change. 一家位于和田的迪斯科舞厅吸引年轻的情侣们，他们有自己的夜生活。这幅场景和中国官方形容的维吾尔族是“独特传统的民族”不大一样，中国学者James Millward说。“在城市里他们很现代，也很与时俱进。”很多维吾尔人也都极力想撕掉分裂分子的标签。但是如果新疆的财富分配仍然不公，文化也不被予以尊重，会更多的维吾尔人要求改变。

From National Geographic

Alike in dress and devotion, sisters use the traditional mourning day of Thursday to visit the grave of a family member near their village. 着装打扮相似的姐妹俩在周四——传统的哀悼日那天来到离自己村庄不远处的祖坟悼念亲人。

From National Geographic

In Kashgar’s Old City a child stares at the grown-up work of slaughtering an animal for a wedding feast. 在喀什老城，一个小孩正看着大人们为筹办婚礼的盛宴而宰杀动物。

From National Geographic

Surrounded by furnishings worthy of a Silk Road trader, the father of an antiques dealer takes tea in his home in Kashgar’s historic center. 在喀什老城里，一个老资历的古玩商在家中喝茶，他家的各类装饰和他“丝路商人”的身份很相符。

From National Geographic

Religious traffic moves through the Taklimakan Desert in May during the Imam Asim festival. Uygurs from across Xinjiang walk a path that ends at the mazar, or shrine, of an 11th-century Islamic martyr who died fighting Buddhist forces, according to legend. 宗教队伍在五月的Imam Asim节里穿过塔克拉玛干大沙漠。新疆各地的维吾尔人都会走到mazar墓，或者说是圣殿，根据传说，11世纪这位伊斯兰英雄在这里和佛教势力死斗，最后英勇献身。

From National Geographic

Incongruous Chinese-themed posters decorate a Uygur barbershop. 在一家维吾尔人理发店里挂满了中式的海报，显得有些古怪。

From National Geographic

Many hands help make samsa—mutton pies—in the kitchen of a family restaurant in Layka. The stuffed dough will cook inside a traditional clay oven. A major difference between Chinese and Uygur cuisine: Han Chinese love pork, while Uygurs, most of whom are Sunni Muslims, do not eat it. 在Layka，一个小家庭经营的旅店厨房里，很多人在帮忙做 samsa——一种羊肉饼。这塞满东西的面团要放到一种传统的容器里去烧。和中式的做法不同：汉人喜欢吃猪肉，而大部分维吾尔人是逊尼派穆斯林人，他们不吃猪肉。

From National Geographic

Potential buyers check the merchandise at the Kashgar livestock market. Explorer Marco Polo, traveling the Silk Road, stopped at the Kashgar oasis in the 1270s. From here, he wrote, “many merchants go forth about the world on trading journeys.” 喀什牲畜市场，一个买主正在查看自己的商品是不是值得购买。探险家马可波罗在1270年左右沿丝绸之路走到了沙漠中的绿洲城市——喀什。在这里，他写道，“很多商人从这里走出去开始了解世界。”

From National Geographic

Keeping to the gender roles defined by rural Uygur society, a wife manages the cooking and tends to a child, while her husband, a local official (at right), conducts business with an elderly villager. 遵照维吾尔人古老的男女角色传统，妻子在准备好食物后开始照顾孩子，而他的丈夫，一个当地官员（在图中的右侧），在和一个年长的村民谈生意。

From National Geographic

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Post tags: NG, photo, 翻译

注意：如果你没什么办法能看到放在picasa图库上的图片的话，我还是劝你放弃阅读此文，一来领略不到视觉上带来的冲击力，二来纯文字的东西也确实是挺枯燥。

原文: 这里

图片: 这里

Three leaf-litter toads collected within yards of each other almost disappear on a forest floor in Panama. Staying alive in the tropics, where nearly everything is food for something else, often calls for such trickery to fool a predator’s eye. Three 几码之内聚集了三只枯叶蟾蜍（leaf-litter toad），几乎隐入了巴拿马森林的这块地面。在热带地区，几乎一切生物都是另一些生物的美餐。要存活下去，往往就需要利用这种伪装来骗过捕食者的眼睛。

From Drop Box

Create a Diversion A bird zeroing in on a flag-footed bug perched on a passionflower might see the flutter of red “flags”—the insect’s attempt to divert the hunter’s bite to nonessential limbs, away from its vital core. Anisocelis flavolineata (insect); Passiflora sp. (flower) 转移注意力 一朵西番莲花（passionflower）上栖息着一只旗足虫（flag-footed bug），一只觊觎已久的鸟儿可能看到了它飘扬的“红色旗帜”—— 旗足虫试图借此使得其天敌在下嘴时远离要害之处，咬它无关紧要的部位。 Anisocelis flavolineata（昆虫）;Passiflora sp.（西番莲属，花）

From Drop Box

The Art of Deception
伪装的艺术

Sometimes survival means lying, stealing, or vanishing in place.

欺骗、窃取、消失，有时即是生存之道。

By Natalie Angier
Photograph by Christian Ziegler

作者 : Natalie Angier
摄像 : Christian Ziegler

When Macbeth was told he had nothing to fear until the local woods started ambling up to his castle, the tyrant sighed with relief, for “who can impress the forest, bid the tree unfix his earth-bound root?”

直到树木开始缓缓攀上Macbeth的城堡时他才开始感到恐慌，这位暴君轻叹一声，聊以自慰道：“谁能迫使森林俯首听命，强令树木拔起自己深植的根？”(本博主注：没读过莎士比亚《Macbeth》，不知道所指何意，不过句子写得很拽。我猜主要是强调《Macbeth》里树木会动，与后文各种生物伪装成植物，所以看似“植物”也会动相关联。另外，《V for Vendetta》里V也引用过《Macbeth》中一个句子：I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none.)

Macbeth obviously had never been to Barro Colorado Island in Panama.

显然，Macbeth从没去过巴拿马的Barro Colorado岛。

It is 9 p.m. and as dark as a witch’s mummy, but in the cone of light cast by my headlamp, parts of trees seem to be unfixing themselves and wandering at will. A four-inch twig buzzes overhead and thuds onto a nearby branch. A lime green leaf scratches through a pile of brown leaves, finds nothing of interest, and crawls toward another pile.

现在是晚上9点，天气漆黑得如同一具女巫的干尸一般，但是在我头顶小灯发出的一柱柱亮光下，树木的某些部分却像是活了起来，并在随意地游走着。一根四英寸长的“细枝”在高处嗡嗡作响，砰的一下撞上了旁边的树枝。一片淡绿色的“叶子”在一堆枯叶中刨来刨去，感到无甚意思，于是慢慢爬向了另一堆叶子。

I approach the migrants for a closer look, knowing full well what they are but still dazzled by the details, by the almost comical earnestness of the charade they embody. The “twig” is a stick insect, a magnificent specimen of the Phasmatodea clan, its outer sheath a persuasive rendering of striated bark, its tubular body and head punctuated by fake axillary buds and leaf scars—the little knobs and notches that make a twig look twiggy.

我凑近了些，将这些跑动跑西的家伙看了个仔细，我很清楚它们是什么，但它们的很多细节还有它们所拥有的滑稽却又一本正经的伪装还是令我心驰目眩。那“细枝”是一只竹节虫，它极好地代表了竹节虫目这一神奇的种群，它的外鞘像极了皱巴巴的树皮，以假乱真的花苞和叶痕点缀在它管状的身体和头部——这些细小的凸起和凹陷让这根“细枝”看起来更像是很多细枝拼接起来的。

During the day these insects move little and are nearly impossible to distinguish from the sylvan backdrop they imitate, and that, of course, is the point: to remain invisible to sharp-eyed predators that use vision to hunt. Come nightfall, however, sticks and leaf katydids shake off their vegetal torpor to do some feeding of their own—on leaves and forest-floor detritus—at which point their ancient artifice can be admired by grace of our modern artificial lights.

白天这些昆虫伪装起来一动不动，隐身于森林中，很难被发现，而这正是重点所在：不让那些目光锐利的掠食者发现。然后夜幕降临，这时竹节虫和纺织娘们就不再装做是呆呆的植物了，它们开始在叶子上和地表的沙砾中觅食，透过优雅现代的人造光源我们可以欣赏到它们那古老的伪装术。

We are drawn to mimicry and disturbed by it too. As children, we play dress up and let’s pretend, and we understand our fellow hominins through private reenactment. Our most elaborate masquerades—for Halloween, say, or the Day of the Dead—are often tangled up with our deepest fears. What self-respecting Hollywood slasher would be seen without his Munchian mask or mother’s wig?

我们对伪装术既着迷又害怕。在孩童时代，我们就着装扮演各种角色，通过一次次地重新演绎来认识我们的祖先。就说我们万圣节吧（也叫亡灵节），这是我们最为精心准备的化妆舞会，这其中经常夹杂着我们内心深处的恐惧。如果自视甚高的好莱坞恐怖片里没有了面具或者假发会怎么样呢？

Mimicry in nature likewise can charm or repel us, but whatever our human judgments, this much is true: Scamming works, and the natural world abounds with P. T. Barnums, which fill every phyletic niche, sucker every sense. Biol­ogists have barely begun to tally life’s feinting legions or trace the evolutionary and genetic details of each imposter’s disguise. Sometimes the deception serves as camouflage, allowing its bearer to elude detection by predators, prey, or quite often both: In Panama I found a mantid that looked like a few sprigs of radicchio, the perfect cloaking device for a stealth hunter of leaf-eating insects that is itself much coveted by insectivorous reptiles and birds. At other times the swindler wants its merchandise to be noticed; that’s the whole point. An anglerfish wags its head until its fleshy protuberance shimmies like a worm and baits other fish. Carrion orchids sprout large, purplish, fetid blossoms that look and smell like dead meat to attract scavenger flies, which will alight on the flowers, get dusted with pollen, and maybe, just maybe, help the orchid breed.

自然界中的各种伪装术既吸引我们也恐吓我们，但不管我们怎么看，有一点是千真万确的：自然界中的每个角落里都充斥着吓人的把戏和逼真的表演，欺骗无所不在（原文此处提到P. T. Barnum，关于此人的介绍请参见wiki，点这里。简单说来，他说过这样一句话 : There’s a sucker born every minute. 即笨蛋无处不在。其言下之意就是说人是很好骗的。p.s : 不过此句的语法有误。本博主注）。生物学家们对生命的种种伪装现象，对伪装者的进化和基因细节的记录和追踪才刚刚起步。有时，伪装术是一件隐身衣，穿上它可以不被掠食者或者猎物（经常是兼而有之）发现：在巴拿马我发现一种长得很像菊苣（莴苣）枝叶的螳螂，无论是对自己垂涎欲滴、酷爱捕食昆虫的爬行动物和鸟类，还是作为悄无声息的食叶类昆虫杀手而言——这身着装都堪称完美。在其他情况下，这些骗子希望自己的鬼把戏被注意到；这其实是辩证统一的。琵琶鱼会摇头晃脑，让它头上的肉瘤看起来像条虫子，并等着其他鱼上钩。腐肉兰花会开出很大且带有阵阵恶臭的紫色花朵，看起来、闻起来都很像死肉，食腐的苍蝇会被吸引过来在花上停留，并因此沾上花粉，也许会帮助兰花播种，记住，这仅是也许而已。

A finger-length katydid disguised as lichen-coated bark barely registers in the dim understory of a Panama forest. But camouflage is more than just looks—the wearer must also act the part. This nocturnal insect holds stock-still during daylight hours to help conceal its contours. 一只长螽斯（纺织娘，katydid）伪装成一块覆有青苔的树皮，躲在巴拿马森林那不见天日的下层植被中，很难被发现。不过，这种伪装并不仅局限于其外表，披着这层外衣的生物自身也必须成为伪装的一部分。这种夜间活动的昆虫，在白天偃旗息鼓，以达到隐藏踪迹的目的。

From Drop Box

The sensory form that an act of mimicry takes varies according to the sensory talents of the mimic’s target audience. Most familiar to us visual primates are the visual mimics, the ones adapted to fool the eye, like the riparian frogs that crouch in a riverbed and look as slick and round and inorganic as the polished stones around them, or the caterpillar that, when frightened, will hold up its front end to flash a fluorescent salmon pink face with a pair of scary snake eyes. But there are vocal mimics too, like a palatable species of tiger moth that deters bats by parodying the ultrasonic clicks of a toxic moth the bats detest, or like the greater racket-tailed drongo of Sri Lanka, which mimics the calls of other birds to drum up a mixed-species flock in which the drongos can more safely and efficiently forage.

伪装术所采用的感知形式会根据施术者所面对的对象的感知能力而发生变化。对我们视觉发达的灵长类来说最熟悉的莫过于视觉欺骗术，此术用来糊弄眼睛是再适合不过了，比如岸边的青蛙会蹲到河床里，看起来和它周围的鹅卵石一样光滑圆润，绝无生气，或者像毛虫，当它们受到了惊吓它们会抬起身体前段突显出一张长着恐怖蛇眼并发出橙红色荧光的面孔。但是也有针对声音的欺骗术，比如有一种自身美味无比的灯蛾会很搞笑地模仿一种令蝙蝠厌恶的毒性飞蛾的超声波频率，藉此逃避被吞吃的命运；还有一种长着像火箭似的尾巴的伊斯兰卡燕卷尾（反正是一种鸟，我以前没听到过，长相如何请参见wiki，点这里。本博主注）会模仿其他鸟类的叫声，招揽来各式各样的鸟群，它们身处其中会更加安全而且掠夺食物也有效率得多。

Then there are olfactory mimics, such as that mad parfumier the bolas spider, which can lure male moths by secreting perfect knockoffs of the counterpart females’ eaux de toilette. There are even tactile mimics, including a parasitic fungus that lives in the inner chambers of termite mounds, where it is kept warm, moist, and competitor free. Termites are notoriously zealous housekeepers. How does the fungus elicit indulgence rather than expulsion? By assuming the shape and texture of ripe termite eggs.

接下来还是嗅觉欺骗术，就像疯狂的香水商人——博拉斯蜘蛛（老规矩，长相请参见wiki，点这里。本博主注），它能分泌出雌性飞蛾的体味，虽然这些都是赝品却相当完美，可以藉此诱捕雄蛾。更有甚者，还有触觉欺骗术，生活在白蚁堆内部的寄生菌就深谙此道，白蚁巢穴里既温暖又潮湿，而且还没什么竞争对手。白蚁是出了名的家务工作狂。这些真菌是如何不被扫地出门反而能肆意放纵呢？秘诀就是伪装出成熟白蚁卵的形状和质感。

Mimicry fables can sound like O. Henry stories, offbeat dilemmas dapperly resolved. For example, caterpillars are voracious eaters. They chomp their way through many leaves in their lifetimes. Birds love fattened caterpillars, and as they fly overhead, they search for signs of caterpillar activity, most notably damaged leaves. To thwart the aerial reconnaissance, one species of caterpillar has adopted a novel dining style. Rather than tearing through foliage at random, the Geometridae caterpillar cuts its leaves deftly, mincingly, moving along the edges like a seamstress with her scissors, in and out, zig and zag. By the time the caterpillar is done, the leaves may be much smaller, but their borders maintain their maiden serrated form.

模仿秀的故事听起来就像欧·亨利的小说，种种匪夷所思的窘境被天衣无缝地一一化解。比方说毛毛虫——永不知足的贪食者。它们终日啃食着所经路上的叶子。鸟儿们非常喜欢肥肥的毛毛虫，当在上空飞行时，它们搜寻着毛毛虫的活动迹象——那些最显而易见的残枝败叶。为了应对这种高空侦查，有一种毛毛虫采取了很新奇的用餐方式。尺蝶幼虫不是随意地撕开叶子乱吃一通，而是将叶子有模有样地整齐切开，沿着叶边爬行，像个女裁缝拿着剪刀曲曲折折、一进一出地裁剪着。当它饱腹之时，叶子看上去可能会小了很多，但边缘仍保留着完整的锯齿状。

Sometimes the best offense is a ghoulish pretense. Reporting recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Leslie Saul-Gershenz and Jocelyn Millar described the case of the abominable blister beetle and the benighted solitary bee. Blister beetles live in the southwestern deserts of the United States. Females lay their eggs in grassy patches where solitary bees forage. The beetle eggs all hatch simultaneously, and the thousand or so newborn larvae immediately gather together into a tight formation. They form a nice oval shape, all dark and fuzzy. They travel as an inseparable unit, up and down the blades of grass. They look and act just like—a female solitary bee. Before long, they start releasing a pheromone mimic, and now they smell like a female bee too. A male bee lands on what he thinks is a mate, and the blister pack clings to him en masse. Disappointed by the encounter, and seemingly unaware of his cargo, the male bee flies on in search of new love. Should he find and approach a real female bee, the beetle larvae will instantly abandon him and cling to her. The female will take them where they want to go, back to her well-provisioned nest. The larvae will deplane, settle down, and gorge themselves to maturity on nectar, pollen, and, best of all, the bee’s eggs.

令人毛骨悚然的伪装有时是最好的攻击手段。在《Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences》(国家科学学术系列报道)的最新报道中，Leslie Saul-Gershenz 和Jocelyn Millar向我们描述了讨厌的斑蝥（老规矩，长相请参见wiki，点这里。本博主注）和善良的独居蜂（老规矩，长相请参见wiki，点这里。本博主注）之间的故事。斑蝥生活在美国西南部沙漠。雌性斑蝥将卵产在有独居蜂觅食的草地上，这些卵会同时孵化出来，然后这成千上百的新生幼虫立即聚集起来，紧紧地团成一块。它们呈一个规则的椭圆形，黑乎乎、毛茸茸的。它们作为一个密不可分的整体一同行动，在草叶上上下移动。无论外观和行为上，它们看起来都和一只雌蜂无异。不久之后，幼虫开始释放信息素来伪装自己，现在它们连闻起来都和雌蜂一样了。一只雄蜂以为找到了配偶，于是停落过来，这时幼虫们一起附着了上去。雄蜂对这次的相遇非常失望，于是又飞往他处去结识新欢了，而它却好像没有意识到自己已经带上了“货物”。一旦它找到并靠近了一只真正的雌蜂，斑蝥幼虫会马上弃它而去，转而附着到雌蜂上。雌蜂会带着它们去它们想去的地方——回到雌蜂供给丰富的蜂巢。幼虫们、于是下机住了下来，这里有花蜜、花粉，还是最好的一样东西——蜂卵，这些可以供它们狼吞虎咽，直到它们成熟为止。

Of course, even the most cunning of nature’s caricatures have no narrative mastermind behind them. Mimicry exemplifies evolution by natural selection, the relentless struggle in which parents spawn a diversity of offspring that chance and nature’s cruel eye for weakness shear almost clean away. If your slight resemblance to bird dung gives you enough of an edge that you survive to breed, your progeny may inherit your lucky guano cast. Maybe one will even top you as a droppings imposter, and within a few hundred generations the trait will have spread through the whole population and be the gold standard for your kind.

当然，即便是对大自然最精妙的模仿，其背后也不是有什么人在出谋划策。伪装术是对物竞天择下的生物进化的一种典型诠释，生物进化过程中充满了残酷无情的斗争，父母会产下很多特点迥异的后代，而机会从不会留给羸弱者，大自然的双眼冷冷地盯着那些不完美的成品，几乎将它们消灭地一干二净（这句是我认为最难翻的，高人指点下才有些眉目，主要是要注意句子结构。the relentless struggle…是evolution by natural selection的同位语，看不清这点后面就都看不懂了。而in which parents spawn…这些都是在对the relentless struggle做补充说明。本博主注） 。如果你有那么一点长得和鸟屎相似，并刚好因此而得以存活下来，繁衍生息，那么你的子嗣就可能已遗传到你狗屎运般得来的装屎术。甚至可能有人把你推崇为屎形秀第一人，随后经过数百代的遗传，这个特征将遍及到你的子子孙孙中并成为你们一族的黄金生存法则。（这一段实在太恶搞了，原来NG的文章都会出现这么恶搞的文风啊。。。本博主注。）

Resembling flora more than fauna, a female walking leaf of Malaysia stems from a long line of extreme leaf mimics. This insect group is little changed over 47 million years, judging from a recent fossil find in Germany. The largest of thousands of leaflike species, Phyllium giganteum can unfurl to some four inches in length. 长久以来祖先对树叶惟妙惟肖地模仿被一只马来西亚的雌性叶科昆虫继承了下来，这使得它看上去更像植物而不是动物。从最近在德国找到的一块化石来判断，这类昆虫在470万年间都没有发 生什么变化。作为数千类叶状动物中体型最大的那种，叶虫（Phyllium giganteum）伸展开来可以达4英寸长。

From Drop Box

Mimicry also reveals just how messy evolution can be, how ad hoc and make-do. For example, Ximena Nelson and Robert Jackson report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society on the dilemma of the male Myrmarachne, a jumping spider. Like a number of the world’s jumping spiders, these arachnids have evolved to look like ants, a strategy that plays into the antipathy many predators have for the aggressive, noxiously armed, and ecologically dominant social insects. But the male spiders have a problem with the basic strategy, for mating rituals demand that they sport elongated mouthparts, which could detract from the overall antlike effect. Evolution has hammered out a compromise: Whereas the female spiders look like ordinary ants, the males with their enlarged fangs have come to resemble ants carrying bundles in their mandibles, as worker ants sometimes do. Ingenious, yes, but not perfect. It turns out that although the male jumping spiders are as effective as their female counterparts at deterring the generally ant-phobic among hunters, the males alone fall prey to predators that target ants least likely to fight back—those encumbered with bundles.

伪装术也同样揭示出生物进化可以是多么的糟糕，能将就就将就，能凑合就凑合。举例来说，Ximena Nelson和Robert Jackson在《Proceedings of the Royal Society》（皇家社会系列报道）中讲述了一种雄性跳蛛的窘境。和世界上相当一部分的跳蛛一样，这些蛛形纲生物进化得看起来和蚂蚁一样，它们采取的是一种与其他掠食者截然不同的战略，多数掠食者极富攻击性，武装得凶神恶煞，在生态链上主宰着群居类昆虫。但雄蛛在实行这个战略上有一点点小问题，因为在交配仪式上雄性会被要求炫耀和展示它们细长的口器，这会让雄蛛表现得不那么像蚂蚁。生物进化于是做出了这样的妥协：雌蛛看起来和普通蚂蚁一样，而雄蛛将它们大牙伪装得像用下颚在搬运一捆捆东西的模样，工蚁有时候就是这个样子的。不可否认，这个方法很天才，但却并不完美。事实证明虽然雄蛛和雌蛛一样，能有效的吓阻那些一看到蚂蚁就心生恐惧的猎手，但是当雄蛛落单时它就会沦为捕食者的猎物，这些捕食者通常更喜欢攻击那些无力反击的目标，而最无力反击的正是那些拖着一捆捆东西的蚂蚁。

Scientists are particularly intrigued by imperfect mimicry, where one organism only vaguely resembles another. In some cases, the crude form may indicate a lineage newly embarked on the mimicry path, when evolution has only begun to hone the simulation. In other instances, the disjunction is a result of the mimicked species pulling away from its unwanted copycats. If the warning colorations that you have evolved to advertise your hard-won unpalatability are mimicked by too many edible free riders, your brand name will be cheapened and lose its protective value.

科学家们对于那些瑕疵百出的伪装术尤为感兴趣，这种情况往往发生在一种生物刚刚开始不娴熟地模仿另一种生物时。有些情况下，这些粗糙的造型会揭示出生物和其进化之路上才刚刚开始磨练起来的伪装术之间的关系。另外一些情况下，“李逵们”希望摆脱那些恼人的“李鬼们”，其结果导致了“李逵们”的特征无关性（我发明的词汇。本博主注）。你辛辛苦苦进化而来的警告色是旨在告诉对手自己可不是什么美味佳肴，如果这被太多的效仿者冒充，而它们本身却都非常的美味，那你的牌子就算是砸了，再也起不了什么保护作用了。

Mimicry can also be a great way to preen, or learn, or make a new friend. Among songbirds and humpback whales, competing males seem to imitate each other’s songs. And some dolphins duplicate each other’s flying leaps. Parrots are masters at parroting, and ape is what the great apes do, which is why orangutans can learn to cook pancakes and chimpanzees to hunt with tools, and we compare each other to a summer’s day and mirror each other’s joy with a smile.

伪装术也可以是一种很好的炫耀，学习和交友的方式。在鸣禽或者座头鲸之间，雄性相互竞争的手段似乎是模仿对方的叫声。另外，一些海豚还模仿对方跃出海面飞跃时的姿势。鹦鹉和大猩猩都是模仿大师，这就是为什么大猩猩可以学会煎煎饼，黑猩猩能够用工具捕猎，而我们会互将对方视作明媚的阳光（”compare… to a summer’s day”，这个词是有出处的，借用莎士比亚的一个句子，原话是：Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day. 老外的文学素养好高啊，叹服。。。本博主注）并和对方一样开怀大笑。

Make Like A Tree Leaf knockoffs down to brown spots and notched edges, two Mimetica katydids with twiglike legs can rest or feed without drawing attention. Still, their best efforts at blending in sometimes fail. Fleshy, protein rich, and toxin free, katydids are avidly sought and caught by keen-eyed monkeys, birds, lizards, frogs, and snakes. Mimetica mortuifolia (at top); Mimetica viridifolia 装扮成树 这两只迷彩螽斯（Mimetica katydids）翅膀貌似树叶，上有褐色的斑点，边缘也不平滑；腿则形如细枝。它们在休息或进食时，能够不引起注意。尽管如此，它们这绝佳伪装也还是有失败的时候。肉多味美、蛋白质丰富且无毒性，眼尖的猴、鸟、蜥蜴、青蛙、蛇都不遗余力地寻找和捕获它们。

From Drop Box

Show Two Faces A butterfly pupa, a species discovered in Costa Rica by Daniel Janzen of the University of Pennsylvania, also shows a false face. “Peering” from a rolled-leaf shelter, its eyespots may deter small birds exploring the foliage for insect prey. Though a prevalent ploy in nature, the fake-eye look isn’t foolproof. Animals that get caught may have secondary defenses, like a foul taste or toxic secretion. The plant hopper takes a more spirited approach, buzzing like a stinging wasp to provoke a quick release. “两面派” “蝶蛹（butterfly pupa）”——宾夕法尼亚大学的丹尼尔·简森（Daniel Janzen）在哥斯达黎加（Costa Rica）发现的一个物种——也有一张假脸。住在一张卷起来的树叶里，它从中“探出一双眼睛”，对于那些在层层树叶中探索昆虫的小鸟，它的眼斑可以起到威慑作用。虽然这是自然界一个比较普遍的伎俩，但“假眼策略”看起来也不是万无一失的。被捕获的动物们可能有第二重防御，例如散发出异味或分泌出毒素。飞虱则采用了一种更聪明的方式——模仿蜇人的黄蜂常发出的嗡嗡声，吓得对方忙不迭地放手。

From Drop Box

Fake Your ID Hiding in plain sight, the broad-headed Hyalymenus nymph (upside down) has evolved to look and act like sap-eating ants, much fiercer creatures that can sting or wield toxins, spines, and communal grit. Predators that learn to avoid the ants will also bypass the imposter. But the ploy is risky: If the ants discover the innocuous copycat among them, they’ll attack. Hyalymenus sp. nymph (ant mimic); Ectatomma sp. (ants) 身份造假 藏在你面前的是头很大的Hyalymenus若虫（脚朝天了），它的外观和行为都已进化地和食树汁液的蚂蚁——这种更凶猛的生物会蜇人或使用毒素、刺以及群体攻击。捕食者通常都会避开这种蚂蚁，于是也就会错过冒名顶替者。但是这种伎俩是很危险的：如果这种蚂蚁在族群内发现了这种无毒的冒牌货，它们就会发动攻击。 Hyalymenus类若虫（蚂蚁模仿者）; Ectatomma sp.（蚂蚁）

From Drop Box

Confound the Enemy Cryptic coloration and a shape like a leaf spine help shield a tropical Geometridae caterpillar, but its feeding behavior is the master stroke. By munching along a leaf’s scalloped contours and keeping the edges well-balanced left to right, “it disguises the damage that could clue a predator to its whereabouts,” says University of Utah biologist Phyllis Coley. For such a nondescript little inchworm, she says, “it’s pretty sophisticated.” 迷惑敌人 保护色和如叶脊般的形状能够帮助一只热带尺蛾（Geometridae）毛虫隐蔽它的行踪，但是更为高明的是它的摄食动作。沿着叶片的扇形轮廓下嘴，同时保持叶子左右两半的边缘对称。“它通过掩饰叶子的受损情况来避免捕食者追踪到它的下落。”犹他大学 （University of Utah）的生物学家菲利斯·康利（Phyllis Coley）说道。她说，这么一只不起眼的小尺蠖可是非常的不简单。

From Drop Box

Confound the Enemy Modeling fake parts and elegant disguises, many caterpillars keep their enemies guessing. A silk moth caterpillar comes with a false head, complete with mock antennae, to lure predators into biting its rear. Plan B: If the ruse fails, extra spines on the real head may prompt the attacker to spit out its prey still intact. 迷惑敌人 通过制造假象和优雅的伪装，许多毛虫都让它们的敌人琢磨不透。蚕蛾（silk moth）毛虫有一个假头，甚至连假触角都配齐了，在天敌攻击时诱惑对方咬它的后部。它们的B计划是：一旦诡计不奏效，它们真正的头部还暗藏毒刺，能逼迫攻击者马上将其吐出，从而全身而退。

From Drop Box

Get Noticed For one nematode parasite, the goal is not to escape, but to be eaten. When it hijacks an ant, it turns its host’s back end as red and prominent as a ripe fruit. “This likely dupes a bird into feeding on it and getting a mouthful of nematode eggs,” says ecologist Steve Yanoviak. The bird spreads the eggs via its feces, which the ants eat, continuing the cycle. 引起注意 对于一条线形寄生虫来说，其目的可不是逃跑，而是被吃下去。当它寄生于一只蚂蚁身上时，它会将它宿主的屁股变得像一个成熟的果子一样又红又显眼。生态学家史蒂夫（Steve Yanoviak）说：“这可能能骗得一只鸟把它吃掉，然后这只鸟就吃下了一肚子的线虫卵。” 然后这只鸟通过排便四处散播这些虫卵，而蚂蚁又吃鸟粪，于是就形成了一个循环。

From Drop Box

Get Noticed In frogs, conspicuous colors often signal toxicity. But a species on islands off Panama doesn’t stick to a single color signal. That’s counterintuitive, says Martine Maan of the University of Texas at Austin, “We’d expect the frogs to look similar so predators could easily learn to associate toxicity and coloration.” But another selective force is in play. Females on different islands have developed tastes for mates of different colors, probably driving male hues to diverge instead of merge. Still, the poison alarm seems effective. Most predators likely just avoid vivid frogs, Maan says, a precautionary tactic for a perilous world. 引起注意 对于蛙类来说，醒目的颜色往往是有毒的信号。但是，在巴拿马的群岛中，有一种蛙并不局限于发出单一颜色的信号。这是反常 的，得克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校（University of Texas at Austin）的马汀娜·马安（Martine Maan）说：“我们以前认为，如果蛙都同色，会使得其天敌很容易地将毒性和颜色联系起来。”但另一种决定性力量在起作用。不同岛屿上的雌蛙已经培养出对 不同颜色的配偶的倾好，这可能使得雄蛙的颜色各异而不是相同。但是，有毒警告似乎仍是有效的。马安说，大多数捕食者可能遇到颜色鲜明的青蛙就避开，这是在 一个危险的世界采取的预防性策略。

From Drop Box

Long, lean, and colored for camouflage, a Deinopis spider, known for its pinched, ogre-like face, vanishes against a dry palm leaf in Panama. 体型又长又窄，还有保护色的一只巨眼蜘蛛（Deinopis spider），“消失”在巴拿马一片干枯的棕榈叶里。该类蜘蛛因其皱巴巴的、怪物般的脸闻名于世。

From Drop Box

Filling a niche separate from its green cousins, Deroplatys trigonodera, a leaf-litter mantid, has evolved the look of a leaf decomposing on the tropical forest floor. The stealthy insect, with large compound eyes for nocturnal hunting, is a master sit-and-wait predator. It lurks unseen and then, with a flash of spiny front legs, snags its unsuspecting insect prey. 作为绿色的Deroplatys trigonodera的近亲，这只枯叶螳螂已经融入了周围环境。这种螳螂的外表，已经进化得就像落在热带森林地表之上的腐叶。由于是夜间出动寻找猎物， 这种隐形昆虫有很大的复眼，是一个守株待兔的大师级捕食者。它静悄悄地潜伏着，然后用带刺的前腿将丝毫没有察觉有何异样的猎物猛地勾取进来。

From Drop Box

When crypsis—the ability of an organism to avoid detection—fails, Deroplatys angustatat, a dead-leaf mimic from Southeast Asia, can flash bright colors and eyespots on the undersides of its legs and forewings to startle enemies. 当crysis（隐形能力）——生物避免被发现的能力不能奏效的时候，东南亚的一种模仿腐叶的螳螂Deroplatys angustatat，可以亮出其腿部和前翅下侧的明亮的颜色和眼斑，将敌人吓得心惊肉跳一跳。

From Drop Box

Eyes and antennae barely reveal the head of the leaf insect Phyllium giganteum. Early botanists believed that leaf insects actually incorporated the foliage they mimicked. As Royal Society Fellow Richard Bradley wrote in 1759, “The insect is nourished by the juices of the tree … and at the fall of the leaf, drops from the tree with the leaves growing to its body like wings, then walks about.” The description “may seem comical with hindsight,” says Edward Baker of the Natural History Museum of London, “but the fact is, we still know very little about the biology of the majority of these species.” 即使是眼睛和触角也很难将这只叶虫（Phyllium giganteum）的头部暴露出来。早期的植物学家认为，叶科昆虫真的和它们所模仿的树叶结合在了一起。英国皇家学会研究员理查德·布拉德利（Richard Bradley）在1759年写道：“昆虫被树的汁液所滋养…树叶就像翅膀一样长入了它们的身体里，随着树叶飘落，它们也掉落地面，然后四处游荡。” 这段描述“在后来看来，似乎有点可笑，”伦敦自然历史博物馆的爱德华·贝克（Edward Baker ）说，“但事实是，对这些物种的大多数生物的生活规律，我们仍然知之甚少。”

From Drop Box

It may take a second look—or even a third—to spy Lonchode jejunus, a walking stick detected in Malaysian Borneo. 可能你要看两眼，或是甚至是看三眼，才能发现Lonchode jejunus——马来西亚婆罗洲（Borneo）的一种竹节虫（walking stick）。

From Drop Box

What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Keep working, keep walking~

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Recent Comments

• T : @xelloss 还能看到部分？最近gfw封了picasa，我以为啥都看不到了呢。
• xelloss : 天生的忍者
• xelloss : 为什么可以看到部分图？存放地址变了？
• T : @Joya Oops... 可没指望到您会大驾光临啊，请上坐...
• Joya : 现在还来不及慢慢看完，下班后慢慢研究。对于伪装术，我是相当的有兴趣，太神奇了。

© T for 知易行难,知行合一 (Walk the Talk), 2009. | Permalink | 9 comments
Post tags: NG, 翻译

Clusters of Khmer homes , perched on spindly stilts to cope with flooding during the summer monsoon, dot the landscape from the Tonle Sap, the “great lake” of Southeast Asia, some 20 miles to the south, to the Kulen Hills, a ridge jutting from the floodplain a roughly equal distance to the north.

• 单词扫盲

1. perch: place(sth), esp in a high or dangerous position 将（某物）置于尤指高处或危险处
2. spindly: very long or tall and thin 细长的；又高又瘦的
3. stilt: any one of a set of posts or poles on which a building, etc is supported above the ground （将建筑物等支离地面的）桩子，支柱
4. monsoon: 季风
5. jut: 突出，生出

• 看图理解（不要嘲笑我的摄影技巧，因为我确实没有技巧。。。）

From Drop Box

• 无责任翻译

高棉人的房屋由一根根细长的柱子支起以应对夏日季风来临时的洪水，它们簇拥在一起正好将陆上的风景与Tonle Sap(东南亚著名的湖泊)相区别，Tonle Sap距离Kulen山以南20英里左右，而Kulen山的山脊横贯整个泛滥平原 ，大致将其南北平分开来。

经人提醒发现错的相当离谱，基本的句子结构也没弄清楚，请不要被我误导了，修改了一下。

句子其实是这样：Homes dot the landscape.

再稍微扩展一下：Homes dot the landscape from the Tonle Sap to the Kulen Hills.

这下看起来就很明朗了，句子中的其他部分都可以看成是同位语，在修饰各自的名词部分，我起先完全没有把握住句中地点状语部分的 from…to… 句式。

高棉人的房屋由一根根细长的柱子支起以应对夏日季风来临时的洪水，它们成群的散布在从Tonle Sap湖一直到Kulen山之间广阔的土地。 Tonle Sap–东南亚著名的湖泊，距离（吴哥窟）以南20英里左右；Kulen山–一座径直插入泛滥平原的山脉 ，在（吴哥窟）以北大致也是20英里左右的地方。

• 总结

知道我花了多久读懂的吗？不怕大家笑话，至少20分钟，还是照着图才看懂的。面对如此文字，其实并不难但对我而言确如天书一般，这是多么痛苦而又无奈的事情啊，还是基础差了。在此记下一笔，权当努力过了。

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© T for 知易行难,知行合一 (Walk the Talk), 2009. | Permalink | No comment
Post tags: NG, 翻译

…After the deadly protests of Tiananmen Square in 1989, which topped off a year of political unrest exacerbated by high food prices, the government started offering tax incentives to large industrial farms to meet the growing demand…

怪不得没有，这谁还敢翻啊？练练手，无责任翻译如下：
…由于高昂的食品价格而恶化的政治动荡形势持续了一年，直到the deadly protests of Tiananmen Square in 1989之后才结束，这时政府开始对大型工业化农场推行税收刺激政策（以鼓励生产）来满足持续增长的（食品）需求…

p.s 2 : 李笑来老师的讲座果然很吸引人，对不起我的词汇很贫乏，如果你有更华丽的词藻，尽可以往上加。对此人不了解的，我强烈建议你关注这个网站。这是我google reader里读的最多的博客之一（另一个是孔庆东老师的博客）。是的，再次强烈建议你关注。

p.s 3 : 在李老师的讲座里学到一个新词：strike home. 释义如下：

hit/strike home : (of remarks etc) have the intended (often painful) effect. (指言语等)产生预期的(常为令人痛苦的)效果，击中要害

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Recent Comments

• T : @tripley 那是些置顶的文章。。正文在下面。。当然我其实是用google reader读文...
• tripley : 我打开你给的“李笑来”老师的链接，看到总是一个搜索结果的页面。

© T for 知易行难,知行合一 (Walk the Talk), 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments
Post tags: NG, 翻译