A public payphone in China began ringing and ringing. Who was calling?

BEIJING – For years, the public payphone in Beijing — demurely shielded by its bulbous, yellow cover — sat underused, eclipsed by the rise of the smartphone. Then on a Saturday in July it began ringing … and ringing … and ringing.

北京 — — 多年来，北京的公共公用电话——被其球状黄色外壳端庄地保护起来——一直未被充分利用，因智能手机的兴起而黯然失色。然后在七月的一个星期六，它开始响……响……响。

It rang every Saturday for weeks with a barrage of calls, each a plea for help from residents of a community cut off from the rest of the world.

连续几周，每个星期六都会响起一连串的电话，每个电话都是来自与世界其他地方隔绝的社区居民的求助。

Curious pedestrians passing by answered the phone as well as volunteers. The pay phone is the star of a performance art to highlight the irony of a hotline in a city hundreds of miles away which has been ignoring cries for help from its own residents.

路过的好奇行人以及志愿者都接听了电话。公用电话是行为艺术的明星，突显了数百英里之外的一座城市的热线电话的讽刺意味，该热线一直无视其居民的呼救声。

“The air is constantly laced with a stinging, almond-like smell. We can barely breathe freely at home. My throat aches, as if someone is grasping it,” a woman named Hong Yu said on the other end of the phone one July afternoon.

“空气中始终弥漫着刺鼻的杏仁味。我们在家几乎无法自由呼吸。 7月的一个下午，电话那头的一位名叫洪宇的女士说：“我的喉咙很痛，好像有人抓住了它。”

Hong is among 2.71 million residents who live in a coastal city in northern China named Gourd Island, where they say they have been suffering from years of severe pollution emitted by a zinc factory and several pesticides and chemicals firms.

洪是居住在中国北方沿海城市葫芦岛的271万居民之一。他们说，多年来，当地一家锌厂以及几家农药和化学品公司排放的严重污染一直困扰着他们。

Despite a petition system that in theory allows any Chinese citizen to ask national leaders in Beijing for redress, Gourd Island residents say they have been stymied and harassed for years – highlighting how even the smallest social dissent in China can now be smothered by an extensive digital surveillance and online censorship apparatus.

尽管信访制度理论上允许任何中国公民向北京的国家领导人要求赔偿，但葫芦岛居民表示，他们多年来一直受到阻碍和骚扰——这突显出，即使是中国最小的社会异议现在也可能被广泛的数字化压制所压制。监视和在线审查装置。

The plight of the Gourd Islanders caught the attention of Nut Brother, a Chinese artist known for his environmental activism through absurdist performances. He’s vacuumed up dust from Beijing’s smoggy air and turned it into a brick, transformed a river discolored by pollution into soup by tossing in toy fish and fake red peppers, and clamped his mouth shut with a variety of devices, including a face mask that read “shut up,” to protest censorship.

葫芦岛民的困境引起了中国艺术家坚果兄弟的注意，他是一位以荒诞主义表演的环保活动而闻名的中国艺术家。他用真空吸尘器吸走了北京雾霾空气中的灰尘，把它变成了一块砖，把一条因污染而变色的河流扔进了玩具鱼和假红辣椒，变成了汤，并用各种装置堵住了他的嘴，其中包括一个写着“ “闭嘴”，以抗议审查制度。

Nut Brother came up with the idea of using the old payphone as a hotline for pollution victims.

坚果兄弟想出了利用旧公用电话作为污染受害者热线的想法。

The idea was to use a very old-school form of communication to draw attention to Gourd Island pollution, as online petitions and blog posts documenting the city’s air pollution were quickly deleted by online censors and dozens of formal complaints submitted by Hong and her neighbors to the provincial environmental bureau and municipal office were ignored.

这个想法是使用一种非常老式的沟通方式来引起人们对葫芦岛污染的关注，因为记录该市空气污染的在线请愿书和博客文章很快被在线审查机构删除，洪和她的邻居向葫芦岛提交了数十份正式投诉。省环保局和市环保局却置之不理。

“The local government has chosen the development of the economy at the cost of our health. We need help to get our voices heard,” Hong said.

“当地政府选择了以牺牲我们的健康为代价来发展经济。我们需要帮助让我们的声音被听到，”洪说。

Residents began calling the yellow Beijing public payphone 265 miles away in a desperate attempt to raise attention in the country’s seat of political power.

居民们开始拨打 265 英里外的北京黄色公用电话，拼命地试图引起人们对这个国家政治权力所在地的关注。

Nut Brother then pasted a poster on the phone booth, sharing a clip of it online, and called on volunteers to come and answer the phone: “Every Saturday, between 3 PM to 5 PM. Let’s petition to this public payphone in Beijing rather than to call the mayor’s hotline.”

坚果哥随后在电话亭贴了一张海报，并在网上分享了一段视频，并号召志愿者前来接听电话：“每周六下午3点到5点。我们可以向北京的公用电话请愿，而不是拨打市长热线。”

What’s going on in Gourd Island

葫芦岛发生了什么

Originally built by a Japanese colony in the 1930s in the mineral and natural gas-rich city of Gourd Island, the zinc smelter there remains one of Asia’s largest.

这座锌冶炼厂最初由日本殖民地于 20 世纪 30 年代在矿产和天然气丰富的葫芦岛建造，至今仍是亚洲最大的锌冶炼厂之一。

Nearly half of the heavy metal components discharged in sewage in Liaoning province, where the city is located, are attributable to Gourd Island, and the lead content of its air also far exceeds the permitted limit, according to Greenpeace, the environmental protection organization.

据环保组织绿色和平称，该市所在的辽宁省污水中排放的重金属成分有近一半来自葫芦岛，其空气中的铅含量也远远超过允许限量。

The city remains densely populated by heavy industry, with 194 factories identified by local environmental authorities as high emissions factories, according to a regulatory list published in 2022. Nearly three quarters of the factories listed are in the metals and chemicals industries.

该市仍然是重工业密集区，根据 2022 年公布的监管清单，有 194 家工厂被当地环保部门认定为高排放工厂。列出的工厂中近四分之三属于金属和化工行业。

China has tried to correct some of its environmental excesses. In recent years, it has shut down inefficient steel plants and invested heavily in state renewable energy projects, especially solar power and hydropower, though the country’s power grid still struggles to transport that energy to the densest cities.

中国试图纠正一些环境方面的过度行为。近年来，中国关闭了效率低下的钢铁厂，并对国家可再生能源项目进行了大量投资，特别是太阳能和水力发电，尽管该国的电网仍然难以将能源输送到最密集的城市。

However, cities like Gourd Island, whose municipal revenue is still reliant on jobs and taxes from the chemicals sector and heavy industry, have struggled to make the shift toward stronger environmental protection.

然而，像葫芦岛这样的城市，其市政收入仍然依赖于化工行业和重工业的就业和税收，一直在努力转向加强环境保护。

The city remains heavily indebted, and its per capita GDP ranking, a measure of a nation’s standard of living, has fallen to the bottom 25% at only about a third of the national average.

该市仍然负债累累，衡量一个国家生活水平的人均GDP排名已跌至垫底的25%，仅为全国平均水平的三分之一左右。

Meanwhile, current Communist Party leader Xi Jinping’s regime has tightened political control, decimating a once-nascent civil society movement that had notched some notable wins for environmental protection.

与此同时，现任共产党领导人习近平政权加强了政治控制，摧毁了一度新生的公民社会运动，该运动在环境保护方面取得了一些显着的胜利。

Now, those who push for social change, even if their cause has little to do with politics, are increasingly detained and boxed in by digital surveillance controls that curb online speech.

现在，那些推动社会变革的人，即使他们的事业与政治无关，也越来越多地受到限制在线言论的数字监控控制的拘留和限制。

Weeks after trying to share information online about air pollution, Hong Yu, the woman NPR spoke to on the public payphone, was detained by Gourd Island authorities for 24 hours. After she was released, she published a TikTok video in which she seemed under strain. The video was likely filmed under coercion.

在试图在网上分享有关空气污染的信息几周后，美国公共广播电台 (NPR) 通过公共公用电话采访的女士洪宇 (Hong Yu) 被古德岛当局拘留了 24 小时。获释后，她发布了一段 TikTok 视频，视频中她看起来压力很大。该视频很可能是在胁迫下拍摄的。

“I made up the information in my previous videos to get likes,” Hong said in the video, before apologizing for sharing false information about zinc pollution. “Actually, life is great in Gourd Island,” she added.

“我之前视频中的信息是为了博取点赞而编造的，”洪在视频中说道，然后为分享有关锌污染的虚假信息而道歉。 “事实上，葫芦岛的生活很棒，”她补充道。

Lessons in how to evade surveillance

如何逃避监视的教训

Such digital and political controls have made even reaching Gourd Island residents a challenge. A small group of volunteers is working with the artist Nut Brother to film the phone booth project and amass testimonies from pollution victims without catching unwanted attention from eagle-eyed authorities.

这种数字和政治控制甚至使接触古德岛居民成为一项挑战。一小群志愿者正在与艺术家坚果兄弟合作拍摄电话亭项目并收集污染受害者的证词，而不会引起目光敏锐的当局不必要的关注。

“The biggest challenge is that the pollution victims are all using Chinese-made phones, and [these individuals] are all a bit older, so they are new to digital tools,” said Li Yuchen, an encryption expert who has been helping residents circumnavigate state censors and evade surveillance using readily available open-source software tools, which are not commonly used in China and are difficult for the government to keep an eye on.

“最大的挑战是，污染受害者都使用中国制造的手机，而且[这些人]年龄都比较大，所以他们对数字工具还很陌生，”一直帮助居民绕行的加密专家李雨辰说。使用现成的开源软件工具进行国家审查和逃避监视，这些工具在中国并不常用，而且政府很难监视。

“I want the residents to be seen and to help them to be noticed by not just me, one person, but a broader audience,” said Li. “As long as there’s one person who learns how to use open-source software, I feel hope. I do not have a particular goal; the meaning of activism lies in practice itself,” he said.

“我希望居民能够被看到，并帮助他们不仅被我一个人，而且更广泛的观众注意到，”李说。 “只要有人学会如何使用开源软件，我就感到希望。我没有特定的目标；行动主义的意义在于实践本身。”他说。

Li’s efforts with Nut Brother and the residents of Gourd Island appear to have borne some fruit. Authorities in Gourd Island say they have since started an investigation into 21 factories discharging toxic gases, during which the companies must suspend operations.

李与坚果兄弟以及葫芦岛居民的努力似乎取得了一些成果。古德岛当局表示，他们已开始对 21 家排放有毒气体的工厂进行调查，调查期间这些公司必须暂停运营。

However, Gourd Island residents worry that the polluting activity will resume once public attention dissipates and suspect the factories are still secretly operating at night, when regulatory scrutiny is less intense.

然而，葫芦岛居民担心，一旦公众注意力消散，污染活动就会重新开始，并怀疑这些工厂仍在监管审查不那么严格的夜间秘密运营。

The environmental authorities in Gourd Island and Liaoning Province did not respond to NPR’s requests for comment.

葫芦岛和辽宁省环保部门没有回应美国公共广播电台的置评请求。

And now, someone is interfering with the residents’ efforts to raise awareness. A month into the public art project, the most frequent users of their Beijing-based public payphone “hotline” became irate strangers claiming to be nearby Beijing residents. When they answered, they told the islanders: Stop calling, no one cares.

现在，有人正在干扰居民提高认识的努力。公共艺术项目进行一个月后，北京公共付费电话“热线”最常使用的用户变成了自称是附近北京居民的愤怒陌生人。当他们接电话时，他们告诉岛民：别再打电话了，没人在乎。

When NPR tried to call the public payphone in late September, the phone no longer rang.

九月底，当 NPR 试图拨打公共公用电话时，电话不再响了。

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