by Evan Osnos

When you live in Beijing for a while， you gain a finely tuned understanding of air. After seven years here， I feel a bit like those 1）apocryphal Eskimos， with their thirty words for snow.

In Beijing， we talk about air purifiers the way that teen-age boys talk about cars. More than once， Ive gone into a friends apartment and put an admiring hand on a top-of-theline， 2）IQAir HealthPro， and said， “Niiiice.”（The cost？ About nine hundred bucks per room.） At our house we have a lesser brand， and the following will sound like a joke， but Im sorry to say its not： the filters for these machines are so expensive that we get ours under the table， through a connection that my wife has involving a stern Russian woman from Vladivostok. How she gets them， I dont ask and she doesnt tell.

For Christmas last year， our families gave us air purifiers.

在北京住上一段时间后，你就会对空气有更细致的感受。在北京住了七年后，我感觉自己有点像那些坊间杜撰的爱斯基摩人，传说能用30个词精准地描述不同的雪。

在北京，我们谈论空气净化器，其方式就像青年男孩子们经常谈论汽车一样。我曾不止一次去一位朋友家里，无比羡慕地抚摸着他家的顶尖产品——全能高效空气净化器啧啧惊叹道：“真是太太太好了！”（多少钱？每间房大约花费九百美金。）而我家的那个牌子可没这么响，来源听起来就像个笑话，但我不得不说这并非笑话。由于这些空气净化器的过滤器太贵，我们的这个是偷偷交易得来的，还是我妻子通过一个凶巴巴的俄国海参崴女人搞定的。至于那个女人是如何搞到手的，我没问，她也没说。

就在去年圣诞节时，我们家用上了空气净化器。

By now， the world has looked on with sympathy（and a 3）soup？on of “4）airenfreude”） at pictures of the misery here in Beijing these days. Thanks to an extra-cold winter， which has caused people to burn more coal； an ever-increasing number of cars； and a windless few days， Beijing entered a tunnel of record-breaking air pollution this weekend—and its still going on. The most dangerous kind of pollution， the 5）ultrafine 6）airborne particles， 7）spiked to 993 micrograms per cubic meter on Saturday. How high is that？ The World Health Organization advises cities not to exceed 25. （As I type this， were down to 285， which the U.S. Embassy describes as“8）hazardous.”）

For me， the clearest technical measure of the severity came from an environmental-law expert who reported that the closest the United States has ever come to measurements like this was in the midst of forest fires—and Beijings level this weekend was far higher than that.

如今，全世界对照片上这些日子饱受苦难的北京人投以同情（并且带点幸“霾”乐祸）的目光。由于今年冬天遭遇严寒，人们不得不燃烧更多煤炭来取暖，再加上日益增长的私家车数量和连续数日的无风天气，本周末北京空气污染的严重程度可谓史无前例——且还在继续加重。其中最危险的一种污染，即超微颗粒物在周六飙升到每立方米993微克。这个浓度究竟有多高呢？世界卫生组织建议的超微颗粒物每立方米最好不要超过25微克。（在我撰写本文之际，北京的每立方米超微颗粒物已降至285微克，但是美国大使馆还是称这已达到“危险”水平。）

对我而言，最为清楚的污染严重性技术测量来自一位环境法律专家，据他所说，以往森林火灾发生时，美国的空气污染才会接近这样的危险水平，而北京周末的污染程度就已经远高于此。

I first noticed that something odd was happening around midday on Saturday， when Beijing passed the first of a series of unscientific measurements I use to 9）take stock. First came the“indoor smog” test. When my wife and I walked into a mall in Beijing on Saturday， the air inside the 10）vaulted-glass 11）atrium had the color and weight of fog over a fishing village at dawn. We hadnt noticed it before we got there because weve largely engineered our lives to avoid having to dwell on the issue. We live in a one-story house with windows that face the yard， in part because we discovered， years ago， that sweeping views from a high floor are just a daily reminder of all that you cant see. We gave up running outside years ago and bought a treadmill， after a doctorfriend weighed the issue and concluded that running inside was better than going without exercise. This weekend， I climbed on the treadmill and wheezed to the end of a half an hour before deciding that we had now passed my next threshold： the “screw the treadmill” test.

我最初发现，在周六中午时分有些奇怪现象正在发生，这时的北京突破了我自用的一系列非科学测量方法中的第一项。首先是“室内烟雾”测试。周六那天，我和妻子走进北京的一家商场，拱形玻璃中庭里流动的空气，其颜色和分量犹如黎明时分笼罩着渔村的浓雾。在进入中庭之前我们并未发觉，这是因为我们的生活空间早已经过精心安排，就是不想在空气问题上伤神伤身。我们住的房子只有一层楼，窗户朝向院子，部分原因是因为几年前我们发现，高层楼房虽然可以一览无余，但也只是每日提醒你什么都看不见罢了。多年前我们就放弃了室外跑步，而是在一位从医朋友的权衡后买了台跑步机，朋友得出的结论是，室内跑步比不锻炼要强。这个周末，我爬上跑步机，在上面气喘吁吁地跑了半个小时，之后觉得如今我们已经跨过了我的下一个临界测试——“让跑步机见鬼去吧”。

By Sunday， Beijing was advising people not to leave their houses. The airport cancelled dozens of flights because pilots couldnt see， and the capital ordered cars off the roads. Factories were shutting down， and the Website of the environmentalmonitoring center crashed. “The number of people coming into our emergency room suffering heart attacks has roughly doubled since Friday when the air pollution became really severe，”Ding Rongjing， the deputy head of 12）cardiology at Peking University Peoples Hospital， told Bloomberg News. At our house， we holed up with an air purifier and a 13）pirated DVD of Lincoln.（Sorry， 14）Daniel Day-Lewis； desperate measures.）

周日，北京当局建议民众留在室内，不要外出。北京机场因为空气能见度低而取消了大批航班，交管局下令禁止机动车上路，工厂关闭，环保监测中心网站也“瘫痪”了。北京大学人民医院心脏中心副主任丁荣晶告诉彭博新闻社道：“自周五，北京的空气污染达到严重污染以来，送进我们急诊室的心脏病患者人数基本已经翻了一倍。”而我和家人则躲在家里，呼吸着净化过的空气，观看电影《林肯》的盗版碟。（对不起了，丹尼尔·戴·刘易斯，我这也是没有办法的方法。）

The smog this weekend passed another threshold I hadnt seen before： a test we might call“the local tolerance.” For years， Chinese people called their smog “fog，” a subtle way of saying， in effect， Western countries were polluted on their way up， too， so give us a break. Not anymore. The Chinese press was full of stories about smog this weekend， including a reminder of the hideous fact that high levels of particulate matter caused a combined 8，572 premature deaths in Beijing， Shanghai， Guangzhou， and Xian last year， according to estimates in a study by Greenpeace and Peking Universitys School of Public Health.

Someday， Ill write about some places like Hungary， one of the first issues around which they organized was the environment， because it was 15）visceral.

But not today. Today， Im lying low and taking 16）shallow breaths.

这个周末的烟雾跨过了我前所未见的又一个临界点：该测试我们可称之为“局部耐受性”。多年来，中国人把烟雾叫做“雾霾”，这是一种很微妙的说法，而事实上，西方国家当年在经济发展的路上也面临着日益严重的污染，所以，让我们喘口气吧。再也不要了。本周末，有关烟雾的报道充斥着中国各大媒体版面，其中包括提醒民众这样一个可怕的事实，即根据绿色和平组织和北京大学公共卫生学院的估计，高浓度颗粒物造成去年北京、上海、广州和西安各地共计8572人过早死亡。

有朝一日，我将写一篇文章，谈谈像匈牙利这样的一些国家，他们关注的首要问题之一便是环境保护，因为这个事业是发自内心去做的。

但不是今天。今天，我要继续躺着做浅呼吸。