中国人眼中的北朝鲜：世界上最糟糕的度假地

[2007.05.24] china: The world's worst holiday destination
[2007.05.24] china: The world's worst holiday destinationThe world's worst holiday destinationNorth Korea through Chinese eyesMay 24th 2007 PYONGYANGFrom The Economist print editionAll the misery of Maoism with none of the redeeming features世界上最坏的度假目的地中国人眼中的北朝鲜没有可取之处的毛主义THE place often seems like a black box from which the occasional horror (like a nuclear bomb) emerges without warning or welcome. North Korea certainly deserves its nickname, the hermit kingdom. Visitors are tightly controlled and only a trickle of Westerners admitted. Yet even North Korea needs dollars, and tries to get them by attracting Chinese tourists, who go for the gambling, and the bizarre allure of a bygone era of fanaticism and privation that China itself once endured. Joining a group of 60 visitors, this is what you find. 这地方常常好像一个在没有警告或是不受欢迎时偶尔释放出恐惧(如原子弹)的黑匣子。北朝鲜绝对值得她的昵称——隐士王国。所有参观者被严格地控制,只有极少数西方人能够获得入境的许可. 然而朝鲜需要美元,她设法吸引那些想去赌博, 或是想体验中国本身曾经受过的一个狂热、穷困、奇特的时代的中国游客.而你所能找到的，就是加入一个60名游客的旅行团.The North Koreans can put on a good show. In April and May, no fewer than 100,000 performers went through a series of synchronised gymnastic displays at the May 1st Stadium in Pyongyang, the capital. Even a few hundred Western tourists got a peek (many from the arch-enemy, America, whose tourists are normally kept at bay). To Chinese visitors, the show, known as Arirang, was reminiscent of similar extravaganzas in Beijing during the days of Mao Zedong. “Nowadays I doubt whether we could do it,” says one, wistfully. Next year's Olympic Games in Beijing, he suggests, might prove an exception. 北朝鲜可以演出一场好戏.今年四月和五月, 在其首都平壤的五一体育馆，不下十万演员进行了一系列的团体操表演. 甚至有数百名西方游客(许多参观者都来自其主要敌对国——美国，他们通常都不允许入境)观看了演出. 对于中国游客而言,看到那种被称为阿里郎表演，可以使人联想起***时代北京类似的表演。 "现在我怀疑我们是否可以这样做, "一位参观者若有所思的说. 他认为，明年在北京举行的奥运会, 可能是一个例外.In the late 1990s, the North Koreans allowed investors from Hong Kong and Macau to set up casinos in their closed world. One was in Rajin-Sonbong, a failed investment zone close to the Chinese border; another lurked in the basement of an isolated hotel for foreigners in Pyongyang. North Korea correctly reckoned that, since gambling is banned in China, these would be a big attraction (gambling is also banned in North Korea for ordinary citizens, but the government allowed Chinese to staff the casinos). 在1990年代末期，北朝鲜允许来自香港和澳门投资者在其封闭的世界设立赌场。其中一个是在罗津-先锋，这是一个靠近中国边境失败的投资区；另一个隐藏在平壤的一家专门对外国人开放的宾馆的地下室中。北朝鲜正确地估计到，既然赌博在中国是被禁止的，这对中国游客将是一大吸引力(赌博对北朝鲜的普通公民也是禁止的，但政府允许中国人去赌场)。As China saw it, the casinos proved rather too popular, drawing huge numbers of corrupt officials. Two years ago, China cracked down on cross-border gambling—appealing to neighbouring countries to close down casinos, banning travel agents from offering gambling tours, restricting foreign visits by officials—after one official allegedly embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars of government funds and gambled the money away at the casino in Rajin-Sonbong. This has now been closed. The one in Pyongyang is still open, but is beyond the range of weekend holiday-makers. These days you find few gamblers there, mostly Chinese tourists betting a few tens of dollars to help relieve the tedium of endless mind-numbing tours of political monuments. 在中国看起来，赌场太受欢迎，会引起大批官员腐败。两年前，中国严厉打击了跨境赌博活动，呼吁邻国关闭赌场，禁止旅行社提供赌博游。在一位官员涉嫌侵吞数以十万计的政府资金并在罗津-先锋的赌场输掉这些钱后，北朝鲜官方限制外国人访问该赌场。罗津-先锋的赌场现已被关闭。平壤的赌场则仍在营业，但超出周末度假的范围，你只能找到较少的几个赌徒在那儿，大多数中国游客仅投注数十美元以驱散参观了无穷无尽的政治纪念碑后厌烦的心情。Neither China nor North Korea publishes regular figures for tourism in each other's country but the crackdown seems to have taken its toll. One Chinese newspaper said there had been 20,000 job losses in Dandong, a border town through which Chinese tourists usually pass on their way to North Korea by train. The number of Chinese visitors to Dandong has fallen to a quarter of what it was in the peak years. Last August many travel agencies said North Korea had stopped accepting Chinese visitors. It is not clear why. Some cited floods. One official newspaper said it was because North Korea had reduced its annual quota for Chinese tourists. It is likely that it was also piqued by China's unusually tart response to its supposed ally's missile and nuclear tests. Early this year, restrictions appeared to ease again. 无论是中国还是北朝鲜都没有定期出版彼此旅游的人数,而打击似乎已经付出了代价. 一家中文报纸说，丹东市已减少了两万个就业岗位 ，中国游客通常会乘火车通过这个边境城市前往北朝鲜。 到丹东的中国游客已经降到了其高峰年份的四分之一。去年八月,很多旅行社说,北朝鲜已停止接受中国籍旅客，目前尚不清楚原因是什么。 有些人列举水灾。一家官方报纸则说,这是因为北朝鲜已削减其中国游客的年度限额。然而更可能的原因是，北朝鲜对中国罕见的对其传闻的盟友导弹和核实验激烈的反应感到不快。今年初,这一限制显示出再度放松的迹象。What remains is a niche market for the curious and sated. For all their professed ideological similarities, North Korea and China are worlds apart. Affluent urban Chinese who have travelled to other parts of Asia now visit North Korea for its rarity value, and for a taste of what they themselves have escaped from. One member of your correspondent's group was the son of a Korean war veteran. He and other Chinese visitors were disappointed to find little public acknowledgement of China's role in the Korean war of 1950-53, when hundreds of thousands of Chinese died fighting the Americans. 这是一个引起好奇心和满足欲的利基市场。尽管所声称的意识形态有相似之处,但北朝鲜与中国有着天壤之别。富裕城市中的中国人曾经前往亚洲其他地区旅游，现在则因为北朝鲜的特有的价值而去参观，他们去品味曾经逃离了的时代。一位报道团的成员是个韩战老兵的儿子。他和其他中国游客都失望地发现,北朝鲜很少公开承认中国在1950-1953年朝鲜战争中的作用，当时成千上万的中国人在与美国人的战斗中战死。Older Chinese visitors find striking comparisons with their own country, 30 or more years ago. The public worship of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il, and of his late father, Kim Il Sung, is similar to the cult of Mao. The state ideology of juche (self-reliance) has much in common with Mao's isolationism. Chinese tourists are given warning, before leaving, to avoid commenting on North Korean politics and to be careful where they point their cameras. China was once as prickly.年长的中国游客发现这里与30多年前自己的国家形成鲜明对比。大众崇拜的北朝鲜领导人金正日和他已故的父亲金日成，类似于当时中国崇拜***。国家意识形态的“主体思想”(自力更生)在许多方面与***的隔离主义很类似。中国游客在离开之前被给与了警告，要避免评论朝鲜的政治和小心哪里可以按下自己的相机的快门。中国一度有被刺痛的感觉。North Korea is almost as wary of Chinese visitors as it is of Westerners. Like Westerners, Chinese are assigned guides whose job is to prevent spontaneous contact with locals. Some guides express disdain for Chinese socialism. “China is so dirty now and so expensive, and takes no stance whatsoever against the American imperialists”, says one (with its industry barely operating, North Korea's air does seem refreshingly unpolluted to Chinese visitors). 北朝鲜几乎像警惕西方人一样警惕中国游客。像西方人一样，中国人被指派的导游人员的工作是防止他们同本地人接触。一些导游表示不屑于有中国特色社会主义，“中国现在很脏，很昂贵，并且在反对美帝国主义上没有任何立场。”一位导游说道(由于工业极不发达, 北朝鲜的空气对于中国游客来说似乎未受污染、很清爽)。The kind of tourism North Korea prefers is the carefully controlled tours by South Koreans to Mount Kumgang, a scenic resort on the northern side of their common border. There, they have virtually no contact with locals (South Korean tourists are rarely welcome in Pyongyang). On May 17th, North and South Korea opened the first rail links across the border since the Korean war. It was largely a symbolic act. Maybe one day such links will make it easier to travel to Mount Kumgang and to Kaesong, a South Korean investment zone in the north. But there is no sign North Korea plans to let South Koreans travel freely. Regular train services are still a distant prospect. 北韩更愿意推出的旅游是在小心控制下的韩国人到金刚山的旅游，这是一个两国共同边界北侧的风景名胜区。在那里，他们几乎不会接触到本地人(韩国游客很少被欢迎到平壤去)。5月17日,韩国和朝鲜开通了自韩战以来的第一列越过边界的火车线路。这很大程度上是一个象征性的行为。也许有一天,这条线路会更容易前往金刚山和开城，这是一个韩国在北方的投资区。但就目前而言，没有迹象显示北朝鲜计划让南韩民众能够自由旅行。定期列车服务仍然是一个遥远的憧憬。As mobile-phone-loving Chinese tourists frequently complain, North Korea does not allow visitors to bring their phones into the country—so fearful is it of unmonitored information conduits to the outside world. There is no internet access even in expensive hotels. North Koreans authorised to speak to visitors appear to be oblivious of their guests' annoyance at such privations. They boast that North Korea's economy once outperformed China's, particularly in the 1960s when China was gripped by famine. One Chinese visitor says her brother fled to North Korea then. The North Koreans do not allow her to try to contact him.作为中国热爱手机的游客常常抱怨, 北朝鲜并不容许旅客携带手机进入该国，他们惧怕这种不受监控的通往外面的世界的信息渠道。即使在昂贵酒店也不能联接上因特网。北韩官方发言说， 在这样的限制之下游客似乎忘记了他们的烦恼。他们吹嘘说，北朝鲜的经济一度超越了中国，特别是在60年代，当时中国陷入饥荒。一位中国游客说她的哥哥当时逃到了北朝鲜。北朝鲜不让她设法联络他。A Chinese travel agent says North Korea's poverty is part of its off-beat appeal. If North Korea were to become richer, she says, it would lose its competitive tourism advantage. Not that it is a huge draw, even when it does welcome tourists. The Arirang performance, originally due to last for a month, ended several days early because of insufficient paying visitors.一家中国的旅行社说，北朝鲜的贫困是其较弱的吸引力中的一部分。 如果北朝鲜变得富裕起来,她说,它将会失去旅游业的竞争优势。即使到时它欢迎游客，也没有很大的吸引力。阿里郎的表演原定为期一个月,但实际上早在几天以前表演就已经结束了,原因是没有足够的付费游客。 注：利基市场是指一个相对比较专门、集中的市场区块，针对性满足某个特殊需要、特殊族群。