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| HSINCHU, Taiwan — Chuang Cheng-deng’s modest rice farm is a stone’s throw from the nerve center of Taiwan’s computer chip industry, whose products power a huge share of the world’s iPhones and other gadgets. |
| 台湾新竹——庄正灯那片不大不小的水稻田距台湾计算机芯片产业的神经中枢只有几步之遥。该产业供应了全球大部分iPhone和其他小电子产品的芯片需求。 |
| This year, Mr. Chuang is paying the price for his high-tech neighbors’ economic importance. Gripped by drought and scrambling to save water for homes and factories, Taiwan has shut off irrigation across tens of thousands of acres of farmland. |
| 今年，庄正灯为他的高科技邻居的经济重要性付出了代价。台湾遭受干旱困扰，想方设法将用水留给家庭和工厂，已经关闭了数万英亩农田的灌溉。 |
| The authorities are compensating growers for the lost income. But Mr. Chuang, 55, worries that the thwarted harvest will drive customers to seek out other suppliers, which could mean years of depressed earnings. |
| 政府正在补偿种植者的收入损失。但是现年55岁的庄正灯担心，收成下降会促使客户寻找其他供应商，这可能意味着未来多年收入低迷。 |
| “The government is using money to seal farmers’ mouths shut,” he said, surveying his parched brown fields. |
| 他望着他干涸的褐色农田说：“政府是利用这种金钱把农民的嘴巴封掉。” |
| Officials are calling the drought Taiwan’s worst in more than half a century. And it is exposing the enormous challenges involved in hosting the island’s semiconductor industry, which is an increasingly indispensable node in the global supply chains for smartphones, cars and other keystones of modern life. |
| 官员们称，这是半个多世纪以来台湾最严重的一次干旱。同时，它也暴露了承载该岛半导体产业所面临的巨大挑战。该产业是智能手机、汽车和其他组成现代生活的主要基石的全球供应链中越来越不可或缺的节点。 |
| Chip makers use lots of water to clean their factories and wafers, the thin slices of silicon that form the basis of the chips. And with worldwide semiconductor supplies already strained by surging demand for electronics, the added uncertainty about Taiwan’s water supply is not likely to ease concerns about the tech world’s reliance on the island and on one chip maker in particular: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. |
| 芯片制造商使用大量的水来清洁工厂和晶片——构成芯片基础的硅薄片。由于全球对电子产品的需求激增已经给全球半导体供应带来压力，台湾供水的不确定性进一步加剧了人们对科技界依赖该岛、尤其是芯片制造商TSMC（台湾积体电路制造公司，简称台积电）的担忧。 |
| More than 90 percent of the world’s manufacturing capacity for the most advanced chips is in Taiwan and run by TSMC, which makes chips for Apple, Intel and other big names. The company said last week that it would invest $100 billion over the next three years to increase capacity, which will likely further strengthen its commanding presence in the market. |
| 全球最先进的芯片产能超过90%在台湾，由台积电运营，该公司为苹果(Apple)、英特尔(Intel)和其他知名公司生产芯片。台积电上周表示，将在未来三年内投资1000亿美元以增加产能，这可能会进一步加强其在市场上的主导地位。 |
| TSMC says the drought has not affected its production so far. But with Taiwan’s rainfall becoming no more predictable even as its tech industry grows, the island is having to go to greater and greater lengths to keep the water flowing. |
| 台积电表示，到目前为止，干旱尚未影响其生产。但是，即使随着科技产业的发展，台湾的降雨也变得越来越难以预测，因此台湾必须不断加大努力以保持用水供应。 |
| In recent months, the government has flown planes and burned chemicals to seed the clouds above reservoirs. It has built a seawater desalination plant in Hsinchu, home to TSMC’s headquarters, and a pipeline connecting the city with the rainier north. It has ordered industries to cut use. In some places it has reduced water pressure and begun shutting off supplies for two days each week. Some companies, including TSMC, have hauled in truckloads of water from other areas. |
| 近几个月来，政府已经派出飞机，在水库上方燃烧化学品以促进云的形成。它在台积电总公司所在地新竹建造了一个海水淡化厂，并建立了一条将城市与多雨的北方连接起来的管道。它要求工厂减少用水，在一些地方降低了水压，并开始每周暂停用水供应两天。包括台积电在内的一些公司已经从其他地区用卡车运来了水。 |
| But the most sweeping measure has been the halt on irrigation, which affects 183,000 acres of farmland, around a fifth of Taiwan’s irrigated land. |
| 但最彻底的措施是停止灌溉，这影响了18.3万英亩的农田，约占台湾灌溉土地的五分之一。 |
| “TSMC and those semiconductor guys, they don’t feel any of this at all,” said Tian Shou-shi, 63, a rice grower in Hsinchu. “We farmers just want to be able to make an honest living.” |
| “像比如台积电啊，那些半导体的，他们没什么感觉，”新竹市水稻种植者、现年63岁的田守喜说。“我们农夫就想能够安分守己种稻种田。” |
| In an interview, the deputy director of Taiwan’s Water Resources Agency, Wang Yi-feng, defended the government’s policies, saying the dry spell meant that harvests would be bad even with access to irrigation. Diverting scarce water to farms instead of factories and homes would be “lose-lose,” he said. |
| 台湾水利局副局长王艺峰在接受采访时为政府的政策辩护，他说干旱意味着即使有灌溉条件，收成也会不好。他说，将稀缺的水转移给农场而不是工厂和家庭将会是“两败俱伤”。 |
| When asked about farmers’ water troubles, a TSMC spokeswoman, Nina Kao, said it was “very important for each industry and company” to use water efficiently and pointed to TSMC’s involvement in a project to increase irrigation efficiency. |
| 当被问及农民的缺水问题时，台积电的发言人高孟华说：高效用水“对每个行业和公司来说都非常重要”，并指出台积电参与了提高灌溉效率的项目。 |
| That Taiwan, one of the developed world’s rainiest places, should lack for water is a paradox verging on tragedy. |
| 作为世界上降雨量最多的发达地区之一，台湾出现缺水是一个近乎悲剧的悖论。 |
| Much of the water used by residents is deposited by the summer typhoons. But the storms also send soil cascading from Taiwan’s mountainous terrain into its reservoirs. This has gradually reduced the amount of water that reservoirs can hold. |
| 夏季台风为这里带来了大部分居民用水。但暴雨也导致台湾山区的泥土倾泻进水库。这逐渐减少了水库的蓄水量。 |
| The rains are also highly variable year to year. Not a single typhoon made landfall during last year’s rainy season, the first time that had happened since 1964. |
| 每年降雨量的变化也很大。去年雨季，没有任何台风登陆台湾，是自1964年来的首次。 |
| Taiwan last shut off irrigation on a large scale to save water in 2015, and before that in 2004. |
| 台湾上一次靠大规模停灌来节约用水是在2015年，再之前是2004年。 |
| “If in another two or three years, the same conditions reappear, then we can say, ‘Ah, Taiwan has definitely entered an era of major water shortages,’” said You Jiing-yun, a civil engineering professor at National Taiwan University. “Right now, it’s wait and see.” |
| “如果过两年又一样状况，过三年又一样状况，其实我们就会说，‘啊，台湾以后一定进入了一个高缺水的时代，’”国立台湾大学的土木工程系教授游景云说。“我们现在就是wait and see（静观其变）。” |
| In 2019, TSMC’s facilities in Hsinchu consumed 63,000 tons of water a day, according to the company, or more than 10 percent of the supply from two local reservoirs, Baoshan and Baoshan Second Reservoir. TSMC recycled more than 86 percent of the water from its manufacturing processes that year, it said, and conserved 3.6 million tons more than it did the year before by increasing recycling and adopting other new measures. But that amount is still small next to the 63 million tons it consumed in 2019 across its Taiwan facilities. |
| 据台积电称，2019年，该公司在新竹的厂房每天要消耗6.3万吨水，占当地两个水库——宝山水库和宝山第二水库蓄水量的10%以上。台积电还表示，当年其已在生产过程中循环利用了86%以上的用水，依靠增加循环利用和采取其他新措施，比前一年多节约了360万吨水。但与其2019年全部台湾工厂消耗的6300万吨水相比，这一数字仍然很小。 |
| Mr. Chuang’s business partner on his farm in Hsinchu, Kuo Yu-ling, does not like demonizing the chip industry. |
| 庄正灯在新竹农场的生意伙伴郭玉翎并不喜欢把芯片产业妖魔化。 |
| “If Hsinchu Science Park weren’t developed like it is today, we wouldn’t be in business, either,” said Ms. Kuo, 32, referring to the city’s main industrial zone. TSMC engineers are important customers for their rice, she said. |
| “如果没有今天科学园区这样子发达，我们其实也做不起来，”32岁的郭玉翎在谈到该市的主要工业园区时说。她表示，台积电的工程师是购买他们大米的重要客户。 |
| But it is also wrong, Ms. Kuo said, to accuse farmers of guzzling water while contributing little economically. |
| 但郭玉翎说，指责农民耗水却对经济贡献甚微的做法也是错的。 |
| “Can’t we take a fair and accurate accounting of how much water farms use and how much water industry uses and not stigmatize agriculture all the time?” she said. |
| “能不能合理算准农业的需水，然后工业的用水，不要老是污名化农业？”她说。 |
| The “biggest problem” behind Taiwan’s water woes is that the government keeps water tariffs too low, said Wang Hsiao-wen, a professor of hydraulic engineering at National Cheng Kung University. This encourages waste. |
| 国立成功大学的水利工程学系教授王筱雯表示，台湾用水危机背后“最大的问题”是政府定下的水价太低了。这等于是鼓励浪费。 |
| Households in Taiwan use around 75 gallons of water per person each day, government figures show. Most Western Europeans use less than that, though Americans use more, according to World Bank data. |
| 政府数据显示，台湾家庭平均每人每天使用大约75加仑（约284升）水。根据世界银行(World Bank)的数据，西欧大多数人的用水量低于这个数字，不过美国人用水量比这更高。 |
| Mr. Wang of the Water Resources Agency said: “Adjusting water prices has a big effect on society’s more vulnerable groups, so when making adjustments, we are extremely cautious.” Taiwan’s premier said last month that the government would look into imposing extra fees on 1,800 water-intensive factories. |
| 水利署的王艺峰表示：“如果你把它做调整，对社会比较弱势的族群，它的打击会相当的大，因此我们在进行水价的调整的时候都非常的审慎。”台湾行政院院长上个月表示，政府将考虑对1800家耗水量大的工厂征收额外费用。 |
| Lee Hong-yuan, a hydraulic engineering professor who previously served as Taiwan’s interior minister, also blames a bureaucratic morass that makes it hard to build new wastewater recycling plants and to modernize the pipeline network. |
| 曾担任台湾内政部长的水利工程学教授李鸿源也批评称，官僚主义的泥淖使新建废水回收厂和现代化的管道网络变得困难。 |
| “Other small countries are all extremely flexible,” Mr. Lee said, but “we have a big country’s operating logic.” He believes this is because Taiwan’s government was set up decades ago, after the Chinese civil war, with the goal of ruling the whole of China. It has since shed that ambition, but not the bureaucracy. |
| “其他的小国都非常flexible（灵活），”李鸿源说，但“我们是一个大国的运作逻辑”。他认为，这是因为台湾政府成立于数十年前中国内战结束之后，其目标是统治整个中国。此后它虽然放弃了这一雄心，但官僚主义并未消失。 |
| Taiwan’s southwest is both an agricultural heartland and a rising center of industry. TSMC’s most advanced chip facilities are in the southern city of Tainan. |
| 台湾西南部既是农业中心，也是新兴的工业中心。台积电最先进的芯片工厂就位于南方城市台南。 |
| The nearby Tsengwen Reservoir has shrunk to a marshy stream in some parts. Along a scenic strip known as Lovers’ Park, the floor of the reservoir has become a vast moonscape. The water volume is around 11.6 percent of capacity, according to government data. |
| 位于那附近的曾文水库的某些地方已经缩减成一条泥流。在被称为情人公园的风景沿线，可以看到水库底部已经变得仿若巨大的月球表面。政府数据显示，这里的水量占到蓄水总量的约11.6%。 |
| In farming towns near Tainan, many growers said they were content to be living on the government’s dime, at least for now. They clear the weeds from their fallowed fields. They drink tea with friends and go on long bike rides. |
| 在台南附近的农业城镇，许多种植户表示，至少现在，他们还满足于靠政府补贴过活。他们在休耕地里清除杂草。他们与友人喝茶，骑着自行车远游。 |
| But they are also reckoning with their futures. The Taiwanese public appears to have decided that rice farming is less important, both for the island and the world, than semiconductors. The heavens — or larger economic forces, at least — seem to be telling the farmers it is time to find other work. |
| 但他们也在考虑自己的未来。台湾公众似乎已经认定，无论是对岛内还是对世界而言，水稻种植都不如半导体重要。老天（或者至少是更大的经济力量）似乎在告诉农民，是时候找其他工作了。 |
| “Fertilizer is getting more expensive. Pesticide is getting more expensive,” said Hsieh Tsai-shan, 74, a rice grower. “Being a farmer is truly the worst.” |
| “肥料也涨价，农药也涨价，”74岁的水稻种植户谢财山说。“当农民最不好的呀。” |
| Serene farmland surrounds the village of Jingliao, which became a popular tourist spot after appearing in a documentary about farmers’ changing lives. |
| 因为出现在一部讲述农民改换生计的纪录片里，四周环绕着宁静田野的菁寮村变成了一个热门旅游景点。 |
| There is only one cow left in town. It spends its days pulling visitors, not plowing fields. |
| 镇子里只剩下一头牛。它每天都在拉游客，而不是犁地。 |
| “Around here, 70 counts as young,” said Yang Kuei-chuan, 69, a rice farmer. |
| “我们这边70岁算是年轻，”69岁的稻农杨桂川说。 |
| Both of Mr. Yang’s sons work for industrial companies. |
| 杨桂川两个儿子都在工业企业工作。 |
| “If Taiwan didn’t have any industry and relied on agriculture, we all might have starved to death by now,” Mr. Yang said. |
| “台湾如果没有工业，靠农业，可能都饿死了，”杨桂川说。 |
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