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| BEIJING — China did not move mountains to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. But it flooded a dried riverbed, diverted water from a key reservoir that supplies Beijing and resettled hundreds of farmers and their families, all to feed one of the most extensive snow-making operations in the history of the Games. |
| 北京——中国并没有为举办2022年冬奥会搬走高山。但它让一条干涸的河床又有了水，从向北京供水的一个重要水库引水，并让数百名农民和家人搬去了其他地方，所有这些都是为了满足奥运历史上最大的造雪行动之一。 |
| This is what happens when the International Olympic Committee decides to bring the Winter Games to a place almost completely lacking in one of the main ingredients for winter sports: snow. What’s more, Beijing and its nearby mountains did not have that much water to make the artificial kind, either. |
| 当国际奥委会决定在一个几乎完全缺乏冬季运动的主要元素之一——雪——的地方举办冬奥会时，就会发生这种情况。更糟糕的是，北京和它附近的山也没有那么多的水来制造人工雪。 |
| Machine-made snow has played a major role in winter sports for decades, even in snowier places like Norway, Switzerland and Colorado. In Beijing’s version of the Winter Games, the competitions that begin this weekend will for the first time take place almost entirely on artificial snow, necessitating an Olympic snow-making and water-management operation of enormous scale, and foreshadowing the reality of snow sports everywhere as the planet warms. |
| 几十年来，机械造雪一直在冬季运动中扮演着重要角色，甚至在挪威、瑞士和科罗拉多州等多雪的地方也是如此。在北京冬奥会上，本周末开始的比赛将首次几乎完全使用人造雪，这需要大规模的奥运造雪和水资源管理操作，由此也让人看到，随着地球变暖，各地雪上运动将要面对的现实。 |
| On the mountains where the Alpine competitions take place, which do not have any recreational skiing, narrow strips of white, visible from miles away, now cut through the brown mountains. |
| 在举行高山滑雪比赛的山上，不见任何休闲滑雪活动的踪迹，几英里外就能看到一条条狭窄的白色雪道沿着棕色的山脉而下。 |
| Beijing officials insist that snow production for the Games will not strain local water supplies, which have struggled to keep pace with the city’s demands. But China’s herculean investments in snow making are part of larger efforts to turn the arid mountains near Beijing into a permanent ski and snowboard hub, a project that could face challenges as climate change upends patterns of rainfall and drought. |
| 尽管单是满足城市用水需求就已经十分紧张，北京官员坚称，奥运造雪不会给当地供水造成压力。但是，中国在造雪方面的巨额投资是将北京附近的干旱山区变成永久性冰雪运动中心的更大努力的一部分，随着气候变化彻底改变降水和干旱模式，这种做法可能面临诸多挑战。 |
| Worldwide, the environmentally unfriendly secret of skiing and snowboarding competitions is that, as natural snow becomes less reliable, they almost always take place on the artificial kind. As the planet continues to heat up, machine-made snow will play an ever-larger role in guaranteeing a consistent, high-caliber field of play. |
| 在世界范围内，滑雪和单板滑雪比赛不环保的秘密是，随着天然雪变得越来越难以指望，这些项目几乎总是在人造雪上进行。随着地球持续升温，机器制造的雪将在保证一个稳定的、高水准的比赛场地方面发挥越来越大的作用。 |
| “You could not have winter sports now without man-made snow,” said Michael Mayr, the Asia manager of TechnoAlpin, the Italian company in charge of snow-making for the Beijing Games and at six previous Winter Olympics. |
| 负责这次北京冬奥会和之前六届冬奥会造雪的意大利公司天冰集团的亚洲区经理迈克尔·迈尔说，“现在如果没有人造雪，就不可能有冬季运动。” |
| What sets Beijing apart from many of those past venues are its tight supplies of water, whether for snow making or for anything else. Over the past few decades, rapid development has sapped Beijing’s groundwater. July and August often bring heavy rains, but the city and nearby mountains get only sprinkles of precipitation in the winter: less than 2.5 inches per season on average in recent decades, according to data from a weather station near the Olympic venues. |
| 北京与以往许多举办地点的不同之处在于水供应紧张，无论是用于造雪还是用于其他方面，都是如此。在过去的几十年里，快速发展消耗了北京的地下水。这里的降水主要集中在7月和8月，但在冬季，北京和附近的山区只有零星降水：根据北京附近的一个气象站的数据，近几十年来每个季节的平均降水量不到6.35厘米。 |
| In 2017, the last year for which international figures are available, Beijing had only about as much freshwater resources per resident — 36,000 gallons — as the western African nation of Niger, at the edge of the Sahara. Zhangjiakou, the city 100 miles northwest of the capital that will host some skiing and snowboarding events, had 83,000 gallons per resident, comparable to Djibouti in the Horn of Africa. |
| 2017年，也就是可获得国际数据的最后一年，北京的人均水资源量只有3.6万加仑（约合13.6万升），与撒哈拉沙漠边上的西非国家尼日尔大致相当。张家口位于首都西北160公里处，将举办一些滑雪和单板滑雪赛事，这里的人均水资源量是8.3万加仑（约合31.4万升），与非洲之角的吉布提相当。 |
| The United States, by contrast, had 2.3 million gallons per person. Countries with less than 260,000 gallons of freshwater resources per person are considered water-scarce. |
| 相比之下，美国人均水资源量为230万加仑（约合870万升）。人均水资源不足26万加仑（98.4万升）的国家被视为缺水国家。 |
| Florian Hajzeri, who has been in China for four years overseeing the snow-making project for TechnoAlpin, said he realized the magnitude of his task as soon as he saw the landscape of the Olympic competition areas. |
| 过去四年，天冰集团在中国负责造雪项目的弗洛里安·哈泽里说，当时他一看到奥运比赛场地的景观情况后，就意识到自己的任务有多艰巨。 |
| “There are trees and vegetation, but it is not like an Alpine forest: It is vegetation for a drier climate,” he said. “It snows, but it is not enough for the competitions.” |
| “这里有树木和植被，但不像阿尔卑斯山森林：这里的植被是为更干燥的气候而生的，”他说。“这里也会下雪，但雪量对比赛来说还不够。” |
| Before TechnoAlpin could install pumps and build more than 40 miles of pipe, at a cost of nearly $60 million, Chinese officials first had to figure out how to deliver enough water to the mountains. |
| 在天冰集团安装水泵和建造60多公里长的管道之前，中国官员必须首先弄清楚，要如何向这片山区输送足够的水。 |
| How much water? Roughly one million cubic meters, according to TechnoAlpin, enough to fill 400 Olympic-size swimming pools. And that is just to start the Games. More snow, and more water, will likely be needed as the competitions take place. |
| 需要多少水？根据天冰集团的数据，大约100万立方米，足以填满400个奥运标准泳池。而这仅仅是奥运会的开始阶段需要的量。随着比赛的进行，可能还需要更多的雪，或者说更多的水。 |
| To gather it all, Chinese authorities have built pumping stations to carry water from reservoirs miles away. |
| 为了取水，中国政府修建了泵站，从数英里外的水库引水。 |
| According to a state-run newspaper, Beijing has diverted water from the city’s Baihebao Reservoir to the Guishui River, which flows near the Olympic zone but had long been mostly dried up in winter. Previously, Baihebao had primarily supplied the Miyun Reservoir, one of the largest stores of clean water for Beijing households. |
| 据一家官方报纸报道，北京将白河堡水库的水调入妫水河。妫水河流经奥运场馆附近，但在冬季大部分时间处于干涸状态。以前，白河堡水库主要为密云水库供水，密云水库是北京最大的饮用水水源地之一。 |
| Officials in Zhangjiakou — which is pronounced sort of like “jong jah coe” — have turned off irrigation across tens of thousands of acres to conserve groundwater, and resettled farmers who were living in what is now the Olympic competition area in high-rise apartments. |
| 为了保护地下水，张家口的官员关闭了数万英亩土地上的灌溉设施，并将住在奥运赛场位置上的农民安置到高层公寓里。 |
| Modern China is no stranger to monumental water projects. Its biggest effort to ease Beijing’s water troubles began well before the Olympics: a colossal series of waterways that is transferring trillions of gallons of water a year from the nation’s humid south to its thirsty north. Hundreds of thousands of villagers were relocated to make way for the canals. Water from the project accounted for a sixth of Beijing’s water supply in 2020. |
| 今天的中国对大型水利工程并不陌生。早在冬奥会之前，中国政府为缓解北京的水资源短缺问题，就已经开始采取大动作：通过一系列巨大的水道，每年将数万亿加仑的水从降水充沛的南方输送到干旱的北方。为了修建运河，成千上万的村民被重新安置。2020年，该项目提供的水占北京供水量的六分之一。 |
| While the Chinese government has made progress on water issues in recent years, scientists and environmentalists say the capital cannot afford to rest on its laurels. |
| 尽管中国政府近年来在水资源问题上取得了一些进展，但科学家和环保人士表示，北京还有很多工作要做。 |
| “They still have to do more on water conservation, increasing water-use efficiency and ensuring social equity in water allocation,” said Ximing Cai, a professor of water resources engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. If the Olympics spur a burst of economic development in the hills near Beijing, he said, “the water use associated with that should be planned with caution.” |
| 伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校的水资源工程教授蔡喜明表示：“他们仍要在节水、提高用水效率和确保水资源分配的社会公平方面做更多工作。”他说，如果冬奥会刺激了北京周围山区的经济发展，“与此相关的用水应谨慎规划。” |
| But climate change could both deepen northern China’s need for water and affect southern China’s ability to provide it. Scientists have found that recent severe heat waves and floods in China were much more likely to occur because of human-caused climate change. |
| 但气候变化既可能加剧中国北方的缺水，也可能影响中国南方的供水能力。科学家发现，由于人类活动导致的气候变化，中国最近发生严重热浪和洪水的可能性要大得多。 |
| “Under the backdrop of global warming, the risks to major infrastructure projects in China are increasing,” Zheng Guoguang, then the country’s top weather official, told a Communist Party journal in 2015, citing the South-North transfer project among others. |
| “正是在全球气候变暖的背景下，出现了我国极端天气气候事件频发的状况，”时任中国气象局局长郑国光在2015年对一份党报说，其中他提到了南水北调工程。 |
| Chinese officials say they are limiting the impact of snow-making, particularly because the snow that is made will be collected after it melts so it can be reused. |
| 中方官员表示，他们正在对造雪的影响施加限制，尤其是造出的雪在融化后会被收集起来，以便重新利用。 |
| But scientists who study snow-making have found that a portion of the water evaporates after it is blasted out of a cannon but before it can crystallize into a flake. Some of the flakes are blown away by wind. Some droplets do not fully freeze and end up draining into the ground. |
| 但是研究造雪的科学家们发现，一部分水在从雪炮机喷出后，在结晶成雪花之前就蒸发了。有些雪花被风吹走。有些水滴没有完全冻结，最后流到地面。 |
| Two researchers in Switzerland, Thomas Grünewald and Fabian Wolfsperger, conducted experiments at a ski resort near Davos and found that as much as 35 percent of the water used for snow making was lost in these ways. (Water that seeps into the ground is not gone completely, of course. It helps replenish groundwater.) |
| 瑞士的两名研究人员托马斯·格鲁内瓦尔德和法比安·沃尔夫斯佩格在达沃斯附近的一个滑雪度假村进行了实验，发现用于造雪的水有35%是通过这些方式流失的。(当然，渗入地下的水并没有完全消失，它可以补充地下水。) |
| Still, Wolfsperger said, “It’s definitely not environmentally friendly” to build a ski hub near a water-scarce place like Beijing. “But winter sports have never been that in general.” |
| 尽管如此，沃尔夫斯佩格说，在北京这样缺水的地方建滑雪中心“绝对不环保”。“但一般来说，冬季运动从来都是如此。” |
| Other research has found that artificial ski runs can erode the soil and degrade vegetation, regardless of the kind of snow they use. |
| 另外还有研究发现，无论使用哪种雪，人工滑雪道都会侵蚀土壤，破坏植被。 |
| For skiers and snowboarders, competing entirely on machine-made snow changes everything about how they prepare for the Olympics, the biggest event of most of their lives, from the wax they use to increase speed, to training for the heightened risk of a slicker surface. In warmer weather, man-made snow surfaces tend to break down more quickly than those made of natural snow, athletes said. |
| 对于滑雪者和单板滑雪者来说，奥运会是他们大多数人一生中最重要的赛事，完全在人造雪上比赛从各方面都改变了他们为奥运会所做的准备，从用来提高速度的蜡，到在更滑的表面进行高风险训练。运动员们说，在温暖的天气里，人造雪的表面往往比天然雪的表面更容易遭到破坏。 |
| “This is not the first time we have been racing on artificial snow, and unfortunately it does not seem like it’s going to be the last,” said Jessie Diggins, a gold medalist in cross-country in 2018 who has become a climate change activist in recent years. |
| “这不是我们第一次在人造雪上比赛，不幸的是，这似乎也不会是最后一次，”杰西·迪金斯说。她是2018年越野滑雪项目的金牌得主，近年来已经成为一名气候变化活动人士。 |
| “It’s harder and icier and transforms differently with different weather,” she said. “And because it is faster, some of the downhills ski much faster when you are rolling in. It can make the course — I don’t want to say dangerous — but more tricky in terms of figuring out how you are going to navigate corners.” |
| “它更硬、更冷，而且随着天气的不同而变化，”她说。“因为它更快，有些高山滑雪的速度要快得多。我不想说它很危险，但它会让赛道变得更加棘手，因为你要弄清楚如何通过弯道。” |
| Under certain conditions, though, such as the very cold temperatures expected in China, Alpine skiers sometimes prefer artificial snow, because technicians can produce wet flakes that freeze into the kind of smooth, rock-hard surface they prefer. |
| 然而，在某些条件下，比如预计中国会出现的非常低的气温时，高山滑雪者有时更喜欢人造雪，因为技术人员可以生产出湿雪，冻成他们喜欢的那种又滑又硬的表面。 |
| “It is more dense,” said Travis Ganong, an American who specializes in speed events. “It doesn’t really form flakes, and when it is groomed it gets more packed. It just sits really well, and it becomes very uniform. It’s actually how we like it.” |
| “它的密度更大，”专门从事速度项目的美国运动员特拉维斯·加农说。“它不会真的形成雪花，经过雪道修整后会变得更蓬松。它非常稳固，变得非常均匀。我们就喜欢这样的。” |
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