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
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
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
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。
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.
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.
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.
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.
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。
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