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| Duncan Clark’s flight was rolling down the runway in Paris in late October when President Emmanuel Macron announced a second national lockdown in France. The country had nearly 50,000 new Covid-19 infections that day. The United States had almost 100,000. | 去年10月下旬，邓肯·克拉克(Duncan Clark)所乘坐的航班在巴黎的机场跑道上滑行时，埃曼纽尔·马克龙(Emmanuel Macron)总统宣布了法国的第二次全国封锁。法国当日新增近5万例新冠感染病例。美国则有近10万例。 |
| He sighed with relief. He was headed to China. That day, it had reported 25 new infections, all but one originating abroad. | 他如释重负地叹了口气。他要去的是中国。那一天，那里报告了25例新感染，除了一例本土病例，其余皆为境外输入病例。 |
| Mr. Clark, a businessman and an author, returned to China after spending nine months in the United States and France, his longest time away from the country since he moved to Beijing in 1994. He had been spending more time outside China over the past few years to get away from air pollution, censored internet and an increasingly depressing political environment. | 克拉克是商人兼作家，他在美国和法国呆了九个月后回到了中国，这是他自1994年搬到北京以来离开中国最久的一段时间。过去几年，为了远离空气污染、互联网审查和日益压抑的政治环境，他在中国之外生活的时间越来越多。 |
| But when he returned in October, he felt something new: safe, energized and free. | 但当他在10月回去的时候，他感觉到了一些新的东西：安全、活力和自由。 |
| “The ability to just live a normal life is pretty amazing,” he said. | “能过上正常的生活真是太棒了，”他说。 |
| While many countries are still reeling from Covid-19, China — where the pandemic originated — has become one of the safest places in the world. The country reported fewer than 100,000 infections for all of 2020. The United States has been reporting more than that every day since early November. | 当许多国家仍饱受新冠之害，疫情的起源地中国已经成为世界上最安全的地方之一。该国在2020年全年报告的感染人数不到10万人。自去年11月初以来，美国每天报告的病例都超过了这个数字。 |
| China resembles what “normal” was like in the pre-pandemic world. Restaurants are packed. Hotels are full. Long lines form outside luxury brands stores. Instead of Zoom calls, people are meeting face to face to talk business or celebrate the new year. | 中国就像疫情前世界的“常态”一样。餐馆人满为患。酒店全部住满。奢侈品牌店外排着长龙。人们不用开Zoom会议，而是面对面商谈业务，或庆祝新年。 |
| The country will be the only major economy to have grown this past year. While such forecasts are often more art than science, one outfit is forecasting that the Chinese economy will surpass that of the United States in 2028 — five years earlier than previously predicted. | 中国将是过去一年唯一实现增长的主要经济体。一家机构声称，中国经济将在2028年超过美国，比之前的预测提早了五年——虽然这样的预测更像一种艺术而非科学。 |
| The pandemic has upended many perceptions, including ideas about freedom. Citizens of China don’t have freedom of speech, freedom of worship or freedom from fear — three of the four freedoms articulated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt — but they have the freedom to move around and lead a normal day-to-day life. In a pandemic year, many of the world’s people would envy this most basic form of freedom. | 这场疫情颠覆了许多认知，包括自由的概念。中国公民没有言论自由、信仰自由或是免于恐惧的自由——这是富兰克林·D·罗斯福(Franklin D. Roosevelt)总统提出的四项自由中的三项——但他们可以自由走动，过上正常的日常生活。在一个发生疫情的年份，世界上许多人都会羡慕这种最基本的自由形式。 |
| The global crisis could plant doubts about other types of freedom. Nearly half of voting Americans supported a president who ignored science and failed to take basic precautions to protect their country. Some Americans assert that it is their individual right to ignore health experts’ recommendations to wear masks, putting themselves and others at increasing risk of infection. The internet, which was supposed to give a voice to the voiceless, became a useful tool for autocrats to control the masses and for political groups to spread misinformation. | 这场全球危机可能会让人们对其他形式的自由产生怀疑。近一半美国人把票投给了一位无视科学、未能采取基本预防措施保护国家的总统。一些美国人声称，无视卫生专家佩戴口罩的建议是他们的个人权利，这让他们自己和其他人都面临越来越大的感染风险。原本应该让无声者发声的互联网，变成了让独裁者控制大众、政治团体传播虚假信息的有力工具。 |
| China’s freedom of movement comes at the expense of nearly every other kind. The country is about the most surveilled in the world. The government took extreme social-control measures at the beginning of the outbreak to keep people apart — approaches that are beyond the reach of democratic governments. | 中国的行动自由，是以牺牲几乎所有其他形式的自由为代价的。该国是世界上监控最多的国家。在疫情暴发之初，政府采取了极端的社会控制措施，将人群分隔——这都是民主政府力所不及的办法。 |
| “There are actually a lot of parallels between how the Chinese government treats a virus and how they treat other problems,” said Howard Chao, a retired lawyer in California who invests in start-ups on both sides of the Pacific. | “事实上，中国政府对待病毒的方式跟对待其他问题有很多相似之处，”加利福尼亚州退休律师霍华德·赵(Howard Chao)说，他对太平洋两岸的初创企业都有投资。 |
| “It’s kind of a one-size-fits-all approach: Just completely take care of the problem,” he said. “So when it comes to a virus, maybe that’s not too bad a thing. When it comes to certain other problems, maybe not such a good thing.” | “那就是一刀切的办法：只要把问题彻底解决就行，”他说。“就病毒而言，也许这不是太坏的事。但就某些其他问题而言，可能就不是那么好的事了。” |
| That realization has not stopped Mr. Chao from enjoying his time in China. Since flying to Shanghai from San Francisco in mid-October, he has hosted business dinners attended by as many as 20 people, gone to a jazz bar, seen a movie, visited a seafood market and flown to Shenzhen, in southern China, to check out a self-driving car start-up. | 这一认识并没有阻止霍华德·赵享受他在中国的时光。自去年10月中旬从旧金山飞抵上海以来，他举办过多达20人参与的商务晚宴，去过一家爵士酒吧，看了一场电影，去了一家海鲜市场，还飞到中国南方的深圳，考察一家做自动驾驶汽车的初创企业。 |
| “This is where I had lunch in Shanghai today,” he wrote on Facebook on Nov. 6, alongside a photo of people dining. “Starting to remember what normal life looks like.” | “这是我今天在上海吃午饭的地方，”去年11月6日，他在Facebook上写道，配了一张人们用餐的照片。“开始记起正常的生活是什么样子了。” |
| Mr. Chao said the people he met in China were “perplexed” and “incredulous” that the U.S. daily infections were so high. “They rolled their eyes and were like, ‘How was it even possible?’” he said. | 霍华德·赵说，他在中国遇到的人都对美国如此之高的每日感染数字感到“困惑”和“难以置信”。“他们会不以为然地说，‘怎么可能会这样？’” |
| Of course, the Chinese government is eager to help the world forget that it silenced those who tried to warn the world in the early days of the outbreak. | 当然，中国政府急于帮助世界忘记，在疫情初期，它曾噤声那些试图警醒世界的人。 |
| But there’s no denying that China’s success in containing the outbreak burnished Beijing’s image, especially when compared with the failures of the United States. It has given currency to the so-called China model — the Communist Party’s promise to the Chinese public that it will deliver prosperity and stability in exchange for its unrelenting grip on political power. | 但不可否认的是，中国在控制疫情方面的成功提升了北京的形象，尤其是与美国的失败相比。它宣扬所谓中国模式——即共产党向中国公众承诺，它将带来繁荣和稳定，以换取对政治权力的无情控制。 |
| “In this year of pandemic, the Communist Party has provided the public a social good: stability,” said Dong Haitao, an investor who moved to Beijing from Hong Kong in August. | “共产党这次提供了一个社会公共品，就是稳定，”今年8月从香港移居北京的投资者董海涛（音）表示。 |
| For Mr. Dong, China’s success gives him an opportunity to achieve financial independence. | 对董海涛来说，中国的成功让他有机会实现财务自由。 |
| Mr. Dong, who is setting up an asset management firm as well as a start-up devoted to pu’er tea, is bullish on the Chinese economy. He believes that after the pandemic, China will have even stronger supply chains and a vibrant consumer economy driven by a young generation that is more interested in China’s traditional culture, like tea, than his generation, which grew up in the era of globalization. | 董海涛正在建立一家资产管理公司，以及一家专门经营普洱茶的初创企业，他看好中国经济。他认为，大流行过后，中国将拥有更加强大的供应链和充满活力的消费经济，其驱动力来自于年轻一代。与成长在全球化时代的他那一代人相比，年轻一代对中国传统文化更感兴趣，比如茶。 |
| Mr. Dong, who moved to Hong Kong from New York in the middle of the 2008 financial crisis, decided to leave Hong Kong because the city has felt anemic during the pandemic, while many mainland cities seem to glow with energy and hope. | 董海涛是在2008年金融危机期间从纽约搬到香港的，他决定离开香港，是因为那里在疫情期间让人感觉缺乏生机，而许多大陆城市似乎都焕发着活力和希望。 |
| “I don’t think I can find the kind of freedom I want in Hong Kong,” he said. | “我不认为在香港能找到我想要的自由，”他说。 |
| It isn’t clear whether this shift in perception can be sustained after the pandemic ends. But the West may find it has to work harder to sell its vision of freedom after China has made its model seem so attractive. | 目前尚不清楚这种观念的转变在疫情结束后能否持续。但西方可能会发现，在中国让自己的模式变得如此吸引人之后，它必须更加努力地推销自己的自由愿景。 |
| Mr. Clark, the businessman and author, founded a technology consulting firm in Beijing in 1994 and was an adviser to Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, in the company’s early days. Since leaving quarantine in mid-November, he has traveled to four cities and attended many events and conferences, including one with about 900 people. | 商人兼作家克拉克1994年在北京创立了一家科技咨询公司，在中国电商巨头阿里巴巴成立初期担任过它的顾问。自11月中旬隔离结束以来，他已去过四个城市，参加了许多活动和会议，其中一个活动有900人参加。 |
| “Normally, China was sort of an adventure,” he said. “But that has flipped. Something has changed in the world.” | “通常，中国是一种冒险，”他说。“但是情况在转变。世界发生了一些变化。” |
| Mr. Clark said he had made the acknowledgment with mixed feelings. “You kind of want it to be not true,” he said, “but it is kind of true.” | 克拉克说，他是怀着复杂的心情承认这一点的。“你希望它不是真的，”他说，“但它确实有点像真的。” |
| Beijing and Shanghai are increasingly cosmopolitan, and their consumers are growing more sophisticated, he said. Last month, he went to a Scottish ball in Beijing. The bagpiper was Chinese because the organizer couldn’t fly in anyone from Scotland. | 他说，北京和上海越来越国际化，那里的消费者也越来越成熟。上个月，他去北京参加了一个苏格兰舞会。风笛手是中国人，因为组织者不能让苏格兰人飞过来。 |
| China “feels a bit like the Epcot Center at Disney,” he said. “It’s like the microcosm of the West is still here, but the West is shut down at the moment.” | 中国“感觉有点像迪士尼里的‘未来世界’”，他说。“就好像西方世界的缩影还在这里，但西方世界现在已经关闭了。” |
| For Mr. Clark, being in crowds again has taken some getting used to. “If you’re talking to people at a party or something, you can’t just mute somebody if they’re annoying,” he said. At the first big event he attended, he said, he noticed somebody had really bad breath. | 对克拉克来说，再次置身人群需要一些时间来适应。“如果你在派对上和别人说话，如果有人很烦人，你不可能给他们静音。”他说。第一次参加大型活动时，他注意到有人口臭得很厉害。 |
| “I’m like, oh my God, I haven’t had to experience that for nine months because everyone was wearing masks, and you didn’t see anybody,” Mr. Clark said. | “我想，天哪，我已经有九个月没遇到过这种事了，因为大家都戴着口罩，你什么人都见不到，”克拉克说。 |
| “I feel like I’m living in the future here,” even when thinks about bad breath, he said. “I mean, it’s like, ‘Get ready.’” | “在这里，我感觉自己活在未来”，即使是想到口臭，他说。“我的意思是，感觉就像，‘做好准备。’” |
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