Wu Dengming, environmental activist, died on July 19, 2013 at age 73.
吴登明，环保运动者，7月19日逝世，享年73岁。
IN THE main room of the small, old-fashioned house, stacked full of books, an old fan scarcely moved the stuffy air around. Wu Dengming’s daughter kept pleading for air-conditioning. Elsewhere in Chongqing, China’s fastest-growing inland city, where 10m people lived in a battery of skyscrapers, almost everyone had it. Mr Wu would not hear of it. It was expensive, and was not green. He had a dream of making everyone in the city turn their coolers to 26ºC, and no lower. Why not? He had managed to organise Chongqing’s first no-car day, in 2006, and as a result—perhaps—you could sometimes glimpse blue sky through the smog that blanketed the place.
狭窄的老式房，堆满了书的主房间里，一台老旧的电扇几乎吹不动闷热的空气。吴登明的女儿过去总是恳求父亲安装空调。在中国发展最快的内陆城市——重庆，高楼耸立的市区居住着1000万人口，几乎每家都有空调。但吴是不会听取的。因为空调既贵又不环保。他有一个梦想，让重庆的每一位市民把空调调到26度，然后不能再低了。这个梦想何尝不可呢？他已经在2006年成功组织了重庆的第一个无车日，（或许是）拜其所赐，有时你能透过笼罩城市的烟雾看到蓝天。
Green, green, green, was all he thought about, the family grumbled. In 1997, at 57, he had retired from his security job at the university; but rather than slowing down he had revved up, racing round the city and the region to track down polluters of air, water or earth and report them to the authorities in Beijing. He was hardly ever at home. A row of shoes, many times mended, stood under his bed; most of them were still dirty from when he had sploshed around on the muddy banks of the Jialing or the Yangzi, pointing out to the world’s press where the outlet from a battery factory had stained the rocks yellow, or where the pipeline from a chromium plant had killed all the vegetation.
他的家人抱怨道，他满脑子想的就是绿色，绿色，绿色。1997年，57岁的他从大学的保卫处退休，但他并未将生活放慢下来，反而加快脚步，在该城市及地区驾车疾行，追踪空气、水源和土地的污染者，并向北京当局举报他们。从此，他很少在家。在他的床底下摆着一排鞋子，不知缝缝补补了多少次；当中大部分鞋子仍旧很脏，因为他曾穿着它们，走在嘉陵江和长江泥泞的河岸，为世界媒体指认，是哪家电池工厂的排污管把岩石染成了黄色，又是哪家铬金属工厂的管道杀死了所有的植被。
His business card listed five titles and six awards, including “Top-ten Person, China Legal News, 2007”. The most important title was “Founder, Chongqing Green Volunteer League” (motto: “Action, not words”). He had set this up in 1995, originally as a campus group that planted trees, picked up litter and lectured people on their environmental duty. It had grown fast, and had notched up big successes. In 1998 he had taken a TV crew to film illegal logging in the wild forests of Sichuan outside the city; the film was a sensation, and logging was banned. Some 15,000 students signed his petition to stop the Nu river dams. His was one of the few NGOs to be recognised officially by Beijing, and in 2011, for the first time, a court admitted his suit against a factory that had dumped 5,000 tons of chromium waste in Yunnan province. No wonder he had a spring in his step, a smile on his face, and burst so readily, if hoarsely, into the old songs.
他的名片上列着五个头衔和六个奖项，其中包括2007年获得的“十大法制新闻人物”。当中最重要的头衔是“重庆绿色志愿者联合会会长”（口号：“少说多做、身体力行”）。该联合会是他在1995年创立的，最初是一个种树、捡垃圾和向人们宣传环保责任的校园组织。组织发展迅速，并取得了巨大的成功。1998年，他带领一电视摄制组进入重庆市外的四川天然森林，拍摄记录当地的非法砍伐行为；该片取得了轰动，并让砍伐得以禁止。还有一万五千多名学生在他的请愿书上签字，阻止怒江大坝的建造。他的组织是北京官方承认的少数几个NGO之一。在2011年，他起诉某工厂向云南省倾倒了5000吨的铬废物，法院首次采信了他的诉讼。难怪他走路连蹦带跳，满面春风，嘴里随时可能蹦出一首老歌，不顾嗓音嘶哑。
It was all so dangerous, though, said his wife. What if she lost him? In the Sichuan forest, when he first went, the loggers had smashed the crew’s equipment. Factory owners frequently sent hoodlums to beat him up. Well, risk-taking was necessary, Mr Wu said. He was tough enough, having done his bit for Mao in the People’s Liberation Army; he also practised t’ai chi every day, to calm himself; and when security guards started towards his car he would just roar away, laughing.
但是，干这行实在太危险了，他妻子如是说。如果她失去他怎么办？当他第一次进入四川森林时，伐木工把摄制组的设备砸得粉碎。工厂主经常派地痞流氓去打他。吴先生说，承担风险是必须的。他足够强壮，过去曾在解放军中为毛主席效力；他还每天练太极，为的是调节情绪；即便保安逼近他的汽车，他也只是大笑着发动引擎，扬长而去。
But the money he spent! At home he was a miser; the few clothes in his wardrobe cost 15 yuan at most, except the grey-and-white favourite jumper in which he liked to meet the press. Why wear fancy clothes? he would say. Why build fancy mansions? Why drive cars? He used one himself, though, to race back and forth, with a GPS to track down the factories and an MP3 player to record conversations. So extravagant, his family complained; the government gave almost nothing to NGOs, so he had to fund much of it out of his tiny pension, his savings and his grandson’s lottery winnings. What was left for them? Well, countered Mr Wu, he was frugal on his trips, making stale pancakes last several days and drinking from roadside taps.
但他这样要花多少钱？家里的他是只铁公鸡，衣柜里衣服只有寥寥几件，除开他最喜欢的穿来和媒体见面的那件灰白色套衫，最贵的不超过15块他会说，为啥要穿贵衣服？为啥要建豪宅？为啥要开车？但他自己确实有一辆车载着他四处出行，车上的GPS系统用来追踪工厂的位置，还有一台录音用的MP3播放器。“太浪费钱了”，他家人抱怨道；政府几乎是一分钱都不会给NGO的，因此他的开销绝大部分来自微薄的退休金、他的积蓄和孙子买彩票的奖金。可是他为家人留下了什么呢？而吴先生会反驳道，他在外非常节俭，煎饼不新鲜了也想办法保存个好几天，喝水靠的是路边的水龙头。
The people’s voice
人民之声
He had disappointments, for sure. Companies and local government were too deeply in cahoots for much to change. Factories that were meant to be closed down just kept going. Court cases mysteriously ran into the sand. Petitions were ignored. His chief worry was the huge raft of rubbish and sewage in the Three Gorges reservoir on the Yangzi, but the project was so entangled with national pride that nothing was being done. China was so hell-bent on growth and prosperity that it had lost its sense of moral obligation.
当然，也有很多事情让他失望。企业和地方政府勾结至深，不会有大的改变。本应关闭的工厂照旧运作无误。打的官司也莫名般泥牛入海。请愿也屡次遭到无视。他过去最担忧是长江三峡库区里大量的垃圾和废水，但三峡工程中卷入了太多民族自豪感，没有采取任何措施。当时的中国在增长和繁荣的道路上一意孤行，失去了道德义务的判断力。
The old days had been better: the days when Dragon Spring and Clear Stream, two half-dried-up and polluted creeks, had run with pure water, and he had grown up as a farm lad in green paddy fields and forests that stretched beside the Jialing. (He still swam in it, though it was now dense brown and lined with factory chimneys.) He missed old Chongqing, with its gossipy warren of houses and gardens, and preferred to drink his green tea in cheap teahouses in the old style.
旧日的时光更加美好：那时的龙泉和清溪流淌着清澈的河水，现在则是两条半干涸的污浊细流；他是农村长大的孩子，年少时徜徉在嘉陵江两侧延伸的绿地和森林里。（他后来仍在嘉陵江里游泳，尽管现在这条河是稠密的棕色，河岸上耸立着一排工厂的烟囱。）他怀念老重庆，他宁愿在老重庆的廉价茶馆里喝他的绿茶,那时的人们喜欢在狭窄密集的房屋和公园里闲话家常。
There he would listen to the environmental horror-stories of ordinary working people, and teach them how to cope. No one else would. The party had placed itself too far above the woes, and rights, of common folk. As a farmer who had moved to the city himself, he spoke the language of the peasants forced from their plots by landslides, the fishermen whose stocks were dead, the weeping, terrified villagers whose livers had been enlarged by strontium in the river water. China, he kept saying, needed to know about these things. Thanks to him, one of the first forthright voices, it began to. Even his daughter, after years of griping at him, was suddenly moved by the tales of the sick, displaced and dying to become a green activist herself; and, at last, understood him.
他会在茶馆里听普通工人讲述骇人听闻的环境故事，并教导他们该如何处理。但没有人按他说的做。党已经把自身高高置于普通百姓的苦痛与权利之上。他自己就是一位移居城市的农民，他用农民的语言诉说他们的故事，譬如因山体滑坡而被迫离开自己土地的农夫，譬如渔民饲养的鱼群死亡，以及饮用了锶污染的河水，导致肝脏肿大而恐惧哭泣的村民的故事。他总是说，中国需要懂得这些事情。他是最早的直言进谏者之一，多亏了他，中国开始懂了。就连他女儿也突然被这些流离失所、遭受病痛折磨的人的故事所打动，成为了一名环保活动家。在约束他多年之后，终于理解了他。