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| HONG KONG — From the brine-soaked docks of a ferry pier to the red-painted pillars of a Buddhist temple, many an aging wooden structure in Hong Kong has found new purpose in the hands of Wong Hung-kuen. | 香港——从被海水浸泡的渡轮码头桩到佛教寺庙的红漆柱子，香港许多老旧的木结构部件在王鸿权手中找到了新的使命。 |
| Mr. Wong, 73, clambered over mountains of logs at Chi Kee Sawmill and Timber on a recent afternoon, loading wood onto a rumbling crane, veins of sawdust clinging to his gloves. Nearby were the parked bulldozers that had toppled neighboring businesses. Soon, they would come for his. | 在最近的一个下午，73岁的王鸿权从志记锯木厂堆积如山的原木上攀爬过去，将木料装载到一台隆隆作响的起重机上，一缕缕锯末落在他的手套上。附近停着的推土机，周围的厂房已被推倒。很快就要轮到他的木厂。 |
| Next month, Mr. Wong will have to give up the sawmill, which his family has owned since the late 1940s. It stands in the way of the Hong Kong government’s $13 billion plan to turn a quiet stretch of villages and wetlands into what it calls the Northern Metropolis, featuring tech start-ups, eco-tourism, housing for 2.5 million and easy access to Shenzhen, the city across the border in mainland China. Mr. Wong petitioned the authorities to spare Chi Kee, but in June, he said he had no choice but to shut it down. | 下个月，王鸿权将不得不放弃他的家族自1940年代后期以来一直拥有的锯木厂。它阻碍了香港政府将一片安静的村庄和湿地变成所谓的“北部都会区”的项目，该项目斥资130亿美元，以科技初创企业、生态旅游、可供250万人居住的住房以及方便来往中国边境城市深圳为特色。王鸿权呈请当局不要拆除志记，但在6月，他说他别无选择，只能关厂。 |
| He said he did not want to stand in the way of modernization. But he had hoped that his family’s soaring, 10,000-square-foot mill in Kwu Tung village — and the 1,000 tons of wood there, amounting to recycled Hong Kong history — could somehow be preserved. | 他说他不想妨碍现代化。但他曾希望，在古洞村的这座约930平方米、空间高挑的家族锯木厂能得到保留——它内部存放着的1000吨木材堪称一部回收再利用的香港历史。 |
| “Wood is life, even if it can’t speak,” Mr. Wong said. “I see it as my responsibility to extend its life span and find new purpose for it.” | “木头就是生命，即使它不会说话，”王鸿权说。“我认为延长它的寿命并为它找到新的使命是我的责任。” |
| For years, major development projects like the one slowly transforming the border region — part of China’s broader plan to bind Hong Kong more closely to the mainland — faced protests from environmentalists and conservationists. Activists held sit-ins at farmlands targeted for development and historic landmarks facing demolition. | 多年来，类似这样的大型开发项目正在缓慢改变边界地区，这是中国将香港与内地更紧密地联系在一起的更广泛计划的一部分，而这些项目面临着环境和保育人士的抗议。活动人士曾在将要被用于开发的农田用地和面临拆除的历史地标举行静坐。 |
| Since 2020, however, when a national security law was imposed on Hong Kong, protests of any kind have been rare. But since Mr. Wong said he would close Chi Kee, visitors have been coming to the mill — some to buy wood in a quiet show of solidarity, others just to see it. | 然而，自2020年香港实施国家安全法以来，任何形式的抗议都很少出现。但自从王鸿权说他将关闭志记后，一直有人来工厂参观——有些人是为了以购买木材默默声援，有些人只是想来看看。 |
| One was Oscar Yeung, a young jewelry designer who makes pendants and rings from colonial-era Hong Kong coins. He sees the same neglected value in Mr. Wong’s towering stockpile of wood that he sees in his coins. | 其中就有年轻的饰品设计师奥斯卡·杨，他用殖民时代的香港硬币制作吊坠和戒指。他在王鸿权高耸的木材库存中看到了他在硬币中同样看到的被忽视的价值。 |
| “I hope these things can stay in Hong Kong,” he said. “Once they’re gone, they’re lost forever.” | “我希望这些东西可以留在香港，”他说。“一旦它们没了，它们就永远失传了。” |
| Chi Kee was named after Mr. Wong’s father, Wong Chi, a migrant from southern China, who was a cook and a rickshaw driver in Macau before coming to Hong Kong in the 1940s. He found work at a sawmill, and he sold cull lumber and firewood to people in Hong Kong’s shantytowns. | 志记的名字来自王鸿权的父亲王志——一名来自中国南方的移民，在1940年代来到香港之前，他曾在澳门做过厨师和人力车夫。他在一家锯木厂找到了工作，向香港贫民区的人们出售木材边角料和柴火。 |
| By 1948, he had opened his own mill. He began by cutting planks for commercial crates. Once he could afford heavy equipment, he began processing bigger pieces of timber, much of it from the rainforests of Borneo. Builders and carpenters turned it into wall panels, tables, benches and coffins. | 到1948年，他开设了自己的木厂。起初，他为商业板条箱切割木板。等到能买得起重型设备后，他开始加工更大的木材，其中大部分来自婆罗洲的热带雨林。建筑工人和木匠把木材做成了墙板、桌子、长凳和棺材。 |
| Over the years, as Hong Kong grew, Chi Kee moved four times, making way for new roads and tunnels, subway stations and public housing. Wong Hung-kuen and his brother, Simon Wong, were building the current mill when their father died in 1983, leaving them to run the family business with their youngest sister, Wong Mee-kiu. | 多年来，随着香港的发展，志记为给新的道路和隧道、地铁站和公共住房让路搬迁了四次。1983年父亲去世时，王鸿权和弟弟西蒙·王正在建造现在这家工厂，他们与最小的妹妹王美娇一起经营这个家族企业。 |
| During the construction boom of the 1970s and 1980s, the mill thrived. But business dried up in the 1990s, as international treaties to protect rainforests stopped the legal flow of tropical timber (though the clandestine trade continues). Hong Kong had been one of the world’s leading importers of tropical wood — much of which was used wastefully, as temporary reinforcements or walkways on construction projects, a practice that the government began to discourage. | 木厂在1970年代和1980年代的建筑热潮期间蓬勃发展。但是，由于保护热带雨林的国际条约阻止了热带木材的合法流通（尽管地下贸易仍在继续），生意在1990年代变得枯竭。香港曾经是世界主要的热带木材进口地区之一——其中大部分被用作建筑项目的临时加固或人行道，政府开始不鼓励这种浪费的做法。 |
| Big sawmills like Chi Kee essentially became obsolete. Some closed their doors; others became warehouses, or sold lumber that had been cut elsewhere and shipped to Hong Kong. But Mr. Wong made a name for himself as a recycler. | 像志记这样的大型锯木厂基本上已经成为过去。有些关门了；有些则成为仓库，或出售在其他地方切割并运往香港的木材。王鸿权则建立了回收商的口碑。 |
| He looked for reusable wood in landfills, ports and country parks. He sorted through thousands of lamp posts retired by the city. About a decade ago, as the landmark Wan Chai ferry pier was being demolished, Mr. Wong recycled its dock pilings, which were embedded with shells and nails that made other mills reluctant to take on the job. Artisans saw character in the wood and turned some of it into cafe furniture. | 他在垃圾填埋场、港口和郊野公园寻找可再利用的木材。他对市政淘汰的数千根路灯柱进行了收集整理。大约十年前，当标志性的湾仔渡轮码头被拆除时，王鸿权回收了码头桩，由于这些桩内嵌着贝壳和钉子，其他木厂不愿接手这项工作。工匠们在木头中看到了特色，并将其中的一些变成了咖啡厅家具。 |
| But it was a far cry from the boom years. Since the turn of the century, Mr. Wong says, the mill has been making a fraction of what it once did, almost all of it going to salaries and the maintenance of the heavy machinery. | 但这仍与繁荣时期相去甚远。王鸿权说，自世纪之交以来，这家工厂的收入只是以前的一个零头，几乎所有的钱都花在了工资和重型机械的维护上。 |
| “We gritted our teeth and got through crisis after crisis. Now we’re old,” said Ms. Wong, Mr. Wong’s sister. She has worked her whole life at Chi Kee and watches over Mr. Wong with a fierce protectiveness. (Their brother Simon no longer takes an active role in the business.) | “我们咬紧牙关，度过了一次又一次的危机。现在我们老了，”王鸿权的妹妹王美娇说。她在志记工作了一辈子，并以强烈的保护之心照顾着王鸿权。（他们的兄弟西蒙不再在企业中发挥积极作用。） |
| In 2019, the government told Mr. Wong that the site would have to be surrendered. Since then, he has petitioned various agencies in a doomed attempt to save it, even proposing that it become a museum. He was offered compensation but considered it insufficient. | 2019年，政府告诉王鸿权，必须交出该地块。从那以后，他向各种机构请愿，极力试图挽救它，甚至提议把它变成博物馆。当局向他提供赔偿，但他认为赔偿不足。 |
| As warehouses and factories in Kwu Tung fell to the bulldozers, he looked in vain for an affordable new site. The Hong Kong Development Bureau said Chi Kee had been given two extensions, which it said “should have left sufficient time for the operator to arrange removal and if necessary relocation.” It said it could help arrange to move the wood to a public facility that recycles yard waste, some of which ends up as fertilizer. | 随着古洞的仓库和工厂接连被推土机推倒，他在寻找一个负担得起的新址，但徒劳无功。香港发展局表示，志记已获得两次延期，并表示“应该留出足够的时间让运营者安排搬离，并在必要时进行迁移。”它说它可以帮助安排将木材转移到回收庭院废物的公共设施，其中一些木材最终成为肥料。 |
| Mr. Wong is pained by that possibility. “This is valuable wood. Not waste,” he said. | 王鸿权为木材可能的命运感到痛苦。“这是珍贵的木材。不是废料，”他说。 |
| Visitors gaped as they wandered around the mill, their shoes crunching on wood shavings. In the loft, a cellist was filming a music video, her brooding arpeggios mixing with the whiz and whirs of machinery. | 参观锯木厂的人们惊叹不已，他们的鞋子在木屑上嘎吱作响。在阁楼里，一位大提琴手正在拍摄一段音乐视频，她忧郁的琶音与机械的嗡嗡作响混合在一起。 |
| Mr. Wong had been repurposing battered old pillars from a Buddhist temple on Lantau Island, taking out nails and sawing off rot so they could become planks, to be used again in the temple’s renovation. “This place can make you work until you collapse,” he said. | 王鸿权一直在对大屿山一座佛教寺庙的破旧柱子进行重新利用，他取出柱子里的钉子并锯掉腐烂的部分，将它们加工成木板，重新用于寺庙的修缮。“这个地方会让你一直工作下去，直至倒下，”他说。 |
| Mr. Yeung, the jewelry designer, had come looking for planks for new shelves. He ended up getting a carpentry lesson. | 饰品设计师杨先生来这里本是为新货架寻找木板。结果他上了一堂木工课。 |
| Mr. Wong, overwhelmed with other tasks, offered a “special price” if Mr. Yeung pulled up his sleeves and got to work. His sister, Ms. Wong, showed the visitor how to run a hand-held planer, sawdust spraying like steam. | 忙于其他事情的王鸿权提出如果杨先生亲自动手的话可以“打折”。他的妹妹王美娇向参观者展示了如何操作手持电刨，锯末像蒸汽一样喷射出来。 |
| After seven hours, Mr. Yeung was ready to go home. “This is really tiring. It’s no joke!” he said. | 七个小时后，杨先生准备回家。“这真的很累。不是开玩笑！”他说。 |
| “You put in only half a day’s work,” Mr. Wong said with a slight smile, sipping herbal tea on a stool. “But you got a lot in return.” | “你才做了半天的工作，”王鸿权在凳子上喝着凉茶，微微一笑说道。“但你得到了很多回报。” |
| He thinks young people could learn a great deal from wood. “I hope they’ll learn from its resilient nature and stay grounded and not run away from difficulty.” | 他认为年轻人可以从木材中学到很多东西。“我希望他们能从木头的韧性中学习，保持脚踏实地，不要逃避困难。” |
| Mr. Wong peeled a kiwi and fed the better half of a sandwich to Little Knife, Little Black and Siu Mai, the three mongrels who live at the mill. | 王鸿权剥了一个猕猴桃，然后把一多半三明治喂给了住在木厂里的三只唐狗——“小刀”、“小黑”和“烧麦”。 |
| “The government might treat all this as garbage,” he said, surveying his repository. “But what’s considered useless now could someday become valuable again.” | “政府可能会将所有这些都当作垃圾，”他一边说，一边查看他的库存。“但现在被认为无用的东西有一天可能会再次变得有价值。” |
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