by Evan Osnos

When you live in Beijing for a while， you gain a finely tuned understanding of air. After seven years here， I feel a bit like those 1）apocryphal Eskimos， with their thirty words for snow.

In Beijing， we talk about air purifiers the way that teen-age boys talk about cars. More than once， Ive gone into a friends apartment and put an admiring hand on a top-of-theline， 2）IQAir HealthPro， and said， “Niiiice.”（The cost？ About nine hundred bucks per room.） At our house we have a lesser brand， and the following will sound like a joke， but Im sorry to say its not： the filters for these machines are so expensive that we get ours under the table， through a connection that my wife has involving a stern Russian woman from Vladivostok. How she gets them， I dont ask and she doesnt tell.

For Christmas last year， our families gave us air purifiers.

在北京住上一段時間后，你就會對空氣有更細致的感受。在北京住了七年后，我感覺自己有點像那些坊間杜撰的愛斯基摩人，傳說能用30個詞精準地描述不同的雪。

在北京，我們談論空氣凈化器，其方式就像青年男孩子們經(jīng)常談論汽車一樣。我曾不止一次去一位朋友家里，無比羨慕地撫摸著他家的頂尖產(chǎn)品——全能高效空氣凈化器嘖嘖驚嘆道：“真是太太太好了！”（多少錢？每間房大約花費九百美金。）而我家的那個牌子可沒這么響，來源聽起來就像個笑話，但我不得不說這并非笑話。由于這些空氣凈化器的過濾器太貴，我們的這個是偷偷交易得來的，還是我妻子通過一個兇巴巴的俄國海參崴女人搞定的。至于那個女人是如何搞到手的，我沒問，她也沒說。

就在去年圣誕節(jié)時，我們家用上了空氣凈化器。

By now， the world has looked on with sympathy（and a 3）soup？on of “4）airenfreude”） at pictures of the misery here in Beijing these days. Thanks to an extra-cold winter， which has caused people to burn more coal； an ever-increasing number of cars； and a windless few days， Beijing entered a tunnel of record-breaking air pollution this weekend—and its still going on. The most dangerous kind of pollution， the 5）ultrafine 6）airborne particles， 7）spiked to 993 micrograms per cubic meter on Saturday. How high is that？ The World Health Organization advises cities not to exceed 25. （As I type this， were down to 285， which the U.S. Embassy describes as“8）hazardous.”）

For me， the clearest technical measure of the severity came from an environmental-law expert who reported that the closest the United States has ever come to measurements like this was in the midst of forest fires—and Beijings level this weekend was far higher than that.

如今，全世界對照片上這些日子飽受苦難的北京人投以同情（并且?guī)c幸“霾”樂禍）的目光。由于今年冬天遭遇嚴寒，人們不得不燃燒更多煤炭來取暖，再加上日益增長的私家車數(shù)量和連續(xù)數(shù)日的無風天氣，本周末北京空氣污染的嚴重程度可謂史無前例——且還在繼續(xù)加重。其中最危險的一種污染，即超微顆粒物在周六飆升到每立方米993微克。這個濃度究竟有多高呢？世界衛(wèi)生組織建議的超微顆粒物每立方米最好不要超過25微克。（在我撰寫本文之際，北京的每立方米超微顆粒物已降至285微克，但是美國大使館還是稱這已達到“危險”水平。）

對我而言，最為清楚的污染嚴重性技術測量來自一位環(huán)境法律專家，據(jù)他所說，以往森林火災發(fā)生時，美國的空氣污染才會接近這樣的危險水平，而北京周末的污染程度就已經(jīng)遠高于此。

I first noticed that something odd was happening around midday on Saturday， when Beijing passed the first of a series of unscientific measurements I use to 9）take stock. First came the“indoor smog” test. When my wife and I walked into a mall in Beijing on Saturday， the air inside the 10）vaulted-glass 11）atrium had the color and weight of fog over a fishing village at dawn. We hadnt noticed it before we got there because weve largely engineered our lives to avoid having to dwell on the issue. We live in a one-story house with windows that face the yard， in part because we discovered， years ago， that sweeping views from a high floor are just a daily reminder of all that you cant see. We gave up running outside years ago and bought a treadmill， after a doctorfriend weighed the issue and concluded that running inside was better than going without exercise. This weekend， I climbed on the treadmill and wheezed to the end of a half an hour before deciding that we had now passed my next threshold： the “screw the treadmill” test.

我最初發(fā)現(xiàn)，在周六中午時分有些奇怪現(xiàn)象正在發(fā)生，這時的北京突破了我自用的一系列非科學測量方法中的第一項。首先是“室內(nèi)煙霧”測試。周六那天，我和妻子走進北京的一家商場，拱形玻璃中庭里流動的空氣，其顏色和分量猶如黎明時分籠罩著漁村的濃霧。在進入中庭之前我們并未發(fā)覺，這是因為我們的生活空間早已經(jīng)過精心安排，就是不想在空氣問題上傷神傷身。我們住的房子只有一層樓，窗戶朝向院子，部分原因是因為幾年前我們發(fā)現(xiàn)，高層樓房雖然可以一覽無余，但也只是每日提醒你什么都看不見罷了。多年前我們就放棄了室外跑步，而是在一位從醫(yī)朋友的權衡后買了臺跑步機，朋友得出的結論是，室內(nèi)跑步比不鍛煉要強。這個周末，我爬上跑步機，在上面氣喘吁吁地跑了半個小時，之后覺得如今我們已經(jīng)跨過了我的下一個臨界測試——“讓跑步機見鬼去吧”。

By Sunday， Beijing was advising people not to leave their houses. The airport cancelled dozens of flights because pilots couldnt see， and the capital ordered cars off the roads. Factories were shutting down， and the Website of the environmentalmonitoring center crashed. “The number of people coming into our emergency room suffering heart attacks has roughly doubled since Friday when the air pollution became really severe，”Ding Rongjing， the deputy head of 12）cardiology at Peking University Peoples Hospital， told Bloomberg News. At our house， we holed up with an air purifier and a 13）pirated DVD of Lincoln.（Sorry， 14）Daniel Day-Lewis； desperate measures.）

周日，北京當局建議民眾留在室內(nèi)，不要外出。北京機場因為空氣能見度低而取消了大批航班，交管局下令禁止機動車上路，工廠關閉，環(huán)保監(jiān)測中心網(wǎng)站也“癱瘓”了。北京大學人民醫(yī)院心臟中心副主任丁榮晶告訴彭博新聞社道：“自周五，北京的空氣污染達到嚴重污染以來，送進我們急診室的心臟病患者人數(shù)基本已經(jīng)翻了一倍?！倍液图胰藙t躲在家里，呼吸著凈化過的空氣，觀看電影《林肯》的盜版碟。（對不起了，丹尼爾·戴·劉易斯，我這也是沒有辦法的方法。）

The smog this weekend passed another threshold I hadnt seen before： a test we might call“the local tolerance.” For years， Chinese people called their smog “fog，” a subtle way of saying， in effect， Western countries were polluted on their way up， too， so give us a break. Not anymore. The Chinese press was full of stories about smog this weekend， including a reminder of the hideous fact that high levels of particulate matter caused a combined 8，572 premature deaths in Beijing， Shanghai， Guangzhou， and Xian last year， according to estimates in a study by Greenpeace and Peking Universitys School of Public Health.

Someday， Ill write about some places like Hungary， one of the first issues around which they organized was the environment， because it was 15）visceral.

But not today. Today， Im lying low and taking 16）shallow breaths.

這個周末的煙霧跨過了我前所未見的又一個臨界點：該測試我們可稱之為“局部耐受性”。多年來，中國人把煙霧叫做“霧霾”，這是一種很微妙的說法，而事實上，西方國家當年在經(jīng)濟發(fā)展的路上也面臨著日益嚴重的污染，所以，讓我們喘口氣吧。再也不要了。本周末，有關煙霧的報道充斥著中國各大媒體版面，其中包括提醒民眾這樣一個可怕的事實，即根據(jù)綠色和平組織和北京大學公共衛(wèi)生學院的估計，高濃度顆粒物造成去年北京、上海、廣州和西安各地共計8572人過早死亡。

有朝一日，我將寫一篇文章，談談像匈牙利這樣的一些國家，他們關注的首要問題之一便是環(huán)境保護，因為這個事業(yè)是發(fā)自內(nèi)心去做的。

但不是今天。今天，我要繼續(xù)躺著做淺呼吸。