53岁的北京茉莉花农吴传贞（Wu Chuanzhen，音译）在照看六个大棚的茉莉花（图片：纽约时报）
【看中国记者林雅丽编译】据纽约时报5月10日（周二）报道，今年二月初以来，当匿名的中国“茉莉花革命”号召开始在网上流传，“茉莉花”在中国大陆成为禁词，连中国主席胡锦涛唱“好一朵茉莉花”的录像亦被从网上下架。广西茉莉花开发投资有限公司经理吴光岩（Wu Guangyan音译）表示，当地官员因害怕茉莉花的“威力”而取消了今年夏季的“中国国际茉莉花文化节”。
虽然中国各城市一直未闻到茉莉花的革命芬芳，但有关茉莉花的“战斗”已经展开。公安部门抢先出手，拘捕了那些最瞩目的民运人士、博主及其他一些潜在的“麻烦人士”，包括著名的艺术家艾未未，他上月在北京国际机场被抓走后一直被警方关押。
北京大兴的茉莉花花农表示，他们的生意亦受殃及。他们说，三月份警方下禁令，无限期禁止在北京周边的鲜花零售和批发市场销售茉莉花，之后茉莉花价格狂跌。
47岁的甄伟仲（Zhen Weizhong音译）在大兴租了一亩地种了2,000株茉莉花。他说，一盆齐膝高的茉莉花现在批发价只能卖75分，是去年价格的1/3。“就算我能卖出去，每一盆花我还是亏钱，”他边说，边看着一些没有卖出去的花株，那些展开的花朵已经开始凋零。当被问及是否听说过“茉莉花革命”及相关茉莉花价格“跳水”的原因时，他耸耸肩说，“我对政治一无所知”，“我没有时间看电视”。
就象当初网上出现的“茉莉花”号召，呼吁示威者“静静地手拿一朵茉莉花散步”，当局对茉莉花的禁卖令也在秘密实施。北京公安局拒绝回答有关茉莉花的问题。但一些经营鲜花生意的店主表示，三月初就有警察来过或接到指示不能非法贩卖茉莉花。
在（北京市）孙和北东花卉市场，几名摊主表示：当地警察已经召集摊主开会，强迫他们签署一项声明称不销售茉莉花。一名女性摊主表示，警察还指示她如果见到任何人来买茉莉花要向当局报告，并抄下他们的车牌。她说目前她还没见到谁来她的摊位试图买茉莉花。
就茉莉花的“冻结令”，（警方）给一些摊主的解释很模糊，大意是茉莉花对那些想造反的人具有“象征意义”。绝大多数经营花卉生意的人都不清楚该禁令的背景原因。“多亏”北京对互联网的监控，绝大多数在中国大陆的中国人还从未听说过有关“茉莉花革命”的呼吁，他们也注意不到因此引发的打压。
由于缺乏具体的信息，各种想象开始流传开来。在北京南部的九州花卉市场一名鲜花批发商说，他听说禁止销售茉莉花是因为遭受了来自日本的核辐射。一名在美国大使馆旁边一家大型鲜花市场卖花的女业主称，她被告知茉莉花含有一些不确定的有毒物质，能够毒死人。她还问记者“不如您买点白玫瑰吧？”
（译文有删节，点击看原文）
http://www.kanzhongguo.com/node/403574
Catching Scent of Revolution, China Moves to Snip
DAXING, China — Do not be lulled by its intoxicating fragrance or the dainty, starlike blossoms whose whiteness suggests innocence and purity. Jasmine, a stalwart of Chinese tea and the subject of a celebrated folk song often heard while on hold with provincial bureaucrats, is not what it seems.
Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times
Some local officials fear the flower's destabilizing potency.
Readers' Comments
Share your thoughts.
Since Tunisian revolutionaries this year anointed their successful revolt against the country’s dictatorial president the “Jasmine Revolution,” this flowering cousin of the olive tree has been branded a nefarious change-agent by the skittish men who keep the Chinese Communist Party in power.
Beginning in February, when anonymous calls for a Chinese “Jasmine Revolution” began circulating on the Internet, the Chinese characters for jasmine have been intermittently blocked in text messages while videos of President Hu Jintao singing “Mo Li Hua,” a Qing dynasty paean to the flower, have been plucked from the Web. Local officials, fearful of the flower’s destabilizing potency, canceled this summer’s China International Jasmine Cultural Festival, said Wu Guangyan, manager of the Guangxi Jasmine Development and Investment Company.
Even if Chinese cities have been free from any whiff of revolutionary turmoil, the war on jasmine has not been without casualties, most notably the ever-expanding list of democracy advocates, bloggers and other would-be troublemakers who have been pre-emptively detained by public security agents. They include the artist provocateur Ai Weiwei, who remains in police custody after being seized at Beijing’s international airport last month.
Less well known are the tribulations endured by the tawny-skinned men and women who grow ornamental jasmine here in Daxing, a district on the rural fringe of the capital. They say prices have collapsed since March, when the police issued an open-ended jasmine ban at a number of retail and wholesale flower markets around Beijing.
Zhen Weizhong, 47, who tends 2,000 jasmine plants on about an acre of rented land here, said the knee-high potted variety was wholesaling at about 75 cents, one-third last year’s price. “Even if I could sell them, I would lose money on every plant,” he said, glancing forlornly at a mound of unsold bushes whose blossoms were beginning to fade. Asked if he knew about the so-called Jasmine Revolution and whether it had played a role in collapsing demand, Mr. Zhen shrugged. “I don’t know anything about politics,” he said. “I don’t have time to watch television.”
Much like the initial calls on the Internet for protesters to “stroll silently holding a jasmine flower,” the floral ban is shrouded in some mystery. The Beijing Public Security Bureau declined to answer questions about jasmine. But a number of cut flower and live-plant business owners said they had been either visited by the police in early March or given directives indicating that it had become contraband.
Several of those who run stalls in one large plant outlet, the Sunhe Beidong flower market, said the local police had called vendors to a meeting and forced them to sign pledges to not carry jasmine; one said she had been instructed to report to the authorities those even seeking to purchase jasmine and to jot down their license plate numbers. (She said she had yet to detect any subversives seeking to buy jasmine at her stall.)
Although some vendors were given vague explanations for the jasmine freeze — that the plant was “symbolic” of those people who wanted to sow rebellion — most people involved in the flower trade have been largely left in the dark about why they should behave with such vigilance, and some professed ignorance of the ban altogether. Thanks to a censored Internet, most Chinese have never heard of the protest calls in China, nor are they aware of the ensuing crackdown.
In the absence of concrete information, fantastic rumors have taken root. One wholesale flower vendor at the Jiuzhou Flower and Plant Trading Center in southern Beijing said he heard the ban had something to do with radiation contamination from Japan. A young woman hawking floral bouquets at Laitai, a large flower market near the United States Embassy, said she was told jasmine blossoms contained some unspecified poison that was killing people. “Perhaps you’d like some white roses instead?” she asked hopefully.
Wu Chuanzhen, 53, a farmer who tends eight greenhouses of jasmine on the outskirts of the city, said other growers had insisted that adherents of Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement deemed an “evil cult” by the authorities, might use the flowers in their bid to overthrow the governing Communist Party. “I heard jasmine is the code word for the revolution,” she said. Her laughter suggested she thought such concerns were absurd.
Many sellers, however, were less than eager to discuss jasmine with a foreigner, particularly at the Sunhe Beidong market, where a policeman could be seen last month nosing around the bouquets. Most quickly steered the conversation to more promising topics. “You don’t want to buy jasmine. It’s just not trendy this year,” said one clerk at the Laitai market, pointing to pots of lavender and rosemary.
As is often the case in China, controls have a tendency to wilt in the face of mercantile pressures. After two months with little sign of jasmine at the markets, a few vanloads of the plants, their branches thick with blossoms, began to show up at wholesale centers last week. They were priced so low, the buyers could not resist. One retailer, who asked that only her surname, Cui, be printed, acknowledged that the original order had not been officially lifted but that the authorities had yet to interfere.
Another vendor waved away talk of revolution and broke into a rendition of “Mo Li Hua,” a version of which was played each time medals were presented during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing:
A beautiful jasmine flower,
A beautiful jasmine flower,
Perfumed blossoms fill the branch,
Fragrant and white for everyone’s delight.
Let me come and pick a blossom
To give to someone,
Jasmine flower, oh jasmine flower.
[欢呼中国茉莉花革命 chinajasminerevolution.blogspot.com]
没有评论:
发表评论