2015考研英语阅读英文原刊《经济学人》：你生活在哪里？

　　2015考研英语复习正是强化复习阶段，考研英语阅读在考研英语中占了40分，所以考研英语阅读是英语科目中重要的一项。新东方名师范猛老师曾建议过考研生需要坚持每天泛读10-15分钟的英文原刊。强烈推荐了杂志《经济学人》.杂志中的文章也是考研英语的主要材料来源.希望考研考生认真阅读，快速提高考研英语阅读水平。

　　Where do you live?

　　你生活在哪里?

　　Town- and country-dwellers have radically differentprospects

　　城镇居民和农村居民的前途是截然不同

　　Rus in urbe

　　IN DAYI COUNTY, a couple of hours’ drive down a motorway from the city of Chengdu, thecapital of Sichuan Province, Chinese tourists stroll through the meandering courtyards of arural mansion. In the 1950s, soon after Mao seized power, the mansion was turned into amuseum, intended as a showcase of evil. It once belonged to Liu Wencai, a landownersupposedly notorious for ill-treating his tenant farmers. Liu embodied a class despised by Mao,who came to power on the back of a promise to give land back to the peasants.

　　在大邑县，距离四川省府成都市数小时车程的一个县城里，中国游客漫步于一家乡间宅所那曲折的庭院里。在1950年代，在毛泽东掌权后不久，这栋宅所被辟为了一家博物馆，以作为罪恶的展品。它曾一度归属为刘文彩(Liu Wencai)，作为地主，刘文彩因被断定虐待他自己的长工而臭名昭著。刘文彩代表了为毛泽东所鄙视的那样一个阶级。而毛泽东在掌权后，推动了将土地交还给农民的这样一个承诺的兑现。

　　In its Maoist heyday the museum was a place of pilgrimage. Red Guards swarmed there forritual denunciations of Liu and his ilk. A high point of their visit was a trip to the “waterdungeon”, a room with several inches of water covering the floor where Liu had allegedly keptdisobedient farmers. Another was a series of life-size sculptures of peasants and their viciousoppressors. A politically disfavoured curator from Beijing’s Forbidden City who happened tolook like Liu was forced to stand next to the sculptures as a “living Liu Wencai” so that visitorscould shout and (though not strictly permitted) spit at him, according to Geremie Barmé ofAustralian National University.

　　在毛泽东思想的全盛期，这个博物馆就是个圣地。红卫兵扫荡了这里，为的就是仪式性的宣示刘文彩和他的同类。他们的串联的一个高潮是参观“水龙”，即刘文彩非法拘禁不守规矩的长工的地方：一间数尺深的水漫过地面的房间。而另外一个高潮是，一套由长工和他们恶毒的压迫者组成的真人大小的雕塑。据澳洲大学的Geremie Barmé讲，一位来自北京紫禁城的，在政治上的失宠的馆长，因碰巧长得像刘文彩而被作为“活刘文彩”强迫站在这些个雕塑边上，以让参观者能够对着他大声喊叫，大吐口水(尽管严格的说，并没有得到这样的允许)。

　　The sculptures are still there, but in recent years awave of revisionism has been sweeping across Dayi.Local officials were already having second thoughtsby the early 1980s. But it was a book reassessingLiu’s life published by an outspoken journalist in1999 that finally convinced many that the man wasreally not that bad. His water dungeon was agovernment fabrication, the museum now pointsout. He spent a lot of money on local schools andpaid for a road to be built from Chengdu to Dayi.Last year a grandson organised a get-together inDayi for the extended Liu clan, whose members would once have been terrified of revealingtheir ties. More than 1,000 turned up.

　　那些雕塑还在，但是近年来的一波回头客在大邑县境内来了次旧地重游。当地官员在1980年代就已经有了另外一种想法。在1999年，一本由一位率性直言(大嘴巴)的记者出版的一本重估刘文彩的人生的书最终证实了刘文彩这个人也并没有(上面写的)那么坏得透顶。现在的博物馆方面指出到，他的“水龙”是政府捏造的。刘文彩为当地学校花费了大量钱财，出资相互修建从成都到大邑县的公路。去年，刘文彩的一位重孙为了延续刘氏的香火，在大邑县组织了一次大团聚。这些人员曾一度对于自己身份的泄露而倍感恐惧，而那次团聚的出场人数超过1000人。

　　The slaughter of many thousands of landlords (not including Liu, who died of natural causes) byofficials and vengeful peasants shortly after the communist takeover resulted in profoundchanges in the system of rural land ownership. Peasants got the land Mao promised them,but only briefly. In the late 1950s the party took it back again and forced farmers intocollectively owned “people’s communes”. The legacy of that disastrous decision, whichcontributed to a famine that left tens of millions dead, still weighs heavily on rural China. Sotoo does a decision to confer hereditary status on peasants, who would be all but barredfrom cities to stop them rushing in to find work.

　　在共产党取得政权之后的极短时间里，政府官员和仇恨的农民就屠杀了数以千万计的地主(不包括刘文彩，他死于自然原因)，这导致了农村土地所有权体制的深刻变化。农民正如毛主席保证的那样夺取了土地，但仅仅是短暂的取得。在1950年代晚期，党又把土地收了回来，并强制农民加入集体所有的“人民公社”。这一灾难性的决策遗留下的祸害之处就是，招来了一场对中国农村仍然造孽深重的数以千万人死亡的饥荒。一个对只会被城市所阻止的，为了寻找工作而涌入城市的农民的世代相传的权利状态进行转变的决策，只会带来同样(的结果)。

　　The curse of the hukou

　　户口的诅咒

　　The hukou system, as this one-time apartheid is commonly known, applied to urban as well asrural dwellers, but peasants got a worse deal because they received hardly any welfare benefits,and job prospects in the countryside were dismal. The system has been much eroded sincethe Mao era because of the need for cheap labour to fuel China’s manufacturing boom. But itslingering impact, combined with the still collective ownership of rural land, will retard China’surbanisation in the years ahead just when the country is most in need of its consumption-boosting benefits. Two researchers from China’s finance ministry, Chen Xiaoqiang and Liu Ling,wrote in March that it was time to start returning land to the peasants, both to spurconsumption and to help defuse growing rural unrest. Most officials dare not say this sobluntly, but they admit that change is needed.

　　户口体制，这个为人所共知的一度起着隔离(城乡居民)体制，被同样施加于城市和农村居民身上。但农民的被更加恶劣的对待，因为他们几无福利，且在乡下的工作前途简直是凄惨。这一体制自毛泽东时代起就因为对推动制造业繁荣的廉价劳动力的需要而一步步的受到侵蚀。但是其绵延的影响，与农村土地仍在实施的集体所有制相结合，将会在接下来的几年里，在这个国家最为急切需要的消费拉动效益上拖累中国的城镇化。3月，中国财政部的两位研究员Chen Xiaoqiang和Liu Ling撰文指出，是该开始向农民归还土地的时候了，这样既可以刺激消费，又可以帮助消解农村持续增长的动荡。大多数政府官员并不敢在此事上如此直抒胸臆，但是他们承认变革是必需的。

　　In 2007 Chengdu, and Chongqing to its south-east, were given licence to experiment. Theprinciple of collective ownership could not be changed, but farmers’ rights could be clarifiedand rural land markets of sorts could be established. In Chengdu, which is responsible for alarge rural area including Dayi county, officials spoke of initiating a “new land reform” (hintingat similarities to the great land reform that divvied up the estate of landlord Liu). They began adrive to ensure that farmers at last got long-promised certificates showing the exactboundaries of their fields and housing as well as confirming their rights to use them (farmland issubject to a 30-year renewable contract).

　　2007年时，成都和位于其东南方向的重庆被授予进行探索实践的资质。集体所有制的根本原则不能动摇，但是农民的权益可以进行明确，各种类别的农村土地市场也可以建立起来。对包括大邑县在内的大片的农村地区负责的成都市的官方人员都在谈论对“新土改”的(暗示在一定程度上类似于划分刘地主的田产)尝试。他们开始了一轮保证农民最终能有显示他们的田产和房产的精确边界的得到长期保证的证明，同时也确认农民的使用它们的权利( 农田承包合同30年不变。)

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