軟裝設計配色手冊下載圣誕老人車間：制造全球圣誕飾品的義烏(雙語)

義烏工人

　　There’s red on the ceiling and red on the floor, red dripping from the window sills and red globules splattered across the walls. It looks like the artist Anish Kapoor has been let loose with his wax cannon again. But this, in fact, is what the making of Christmas looks like; this is the very heart of the real Santa’s workshop – thousands of miles from the North Pole, in the Chinese city of Yiwu。

　　天花板是紅的，地板是紅的，紅色從窗臺滴落，紅色濺滿了墻壁。這看上去就像藝術家安尼施·卡普爾又把他的蠟塞到炮筒里在房間里放了一炮似的。但這實際上就是圣誕節的制作過程，開家居飾品店，這是圣誕老人真正的車間的核心——它離北極有幾千英里遠，就在中國義烏。

　　(譯注：安尼施·卡普爾是當代著名雕塑藝術家，他部分后現代風格作品中大量運用了紅色以及紅色的蠟，與“圣誕村”廠里的場景頗為相似)

　　Our yuletide myth-making might like to imagine that Christmas is made by rosy-cheeked elves hammering away in a snow-bound log cabin somewhere in the Arctic Circle. But it’s not. The likelihood is that most of those baubles, tinsel and flashing LED lights you’ve draped liberally around your house came from Yiwu, 300km south of Shanghai – where there’s not a (real) pine tree nor (natural) snowflake in sight。

　　我們的圣誕神話可能更喜歡想象，在北極圈里某個銀裝素裹的小木屋，里面臉頰紅潤的小精靈錘錘打打造出了圣誕飾品。但這不是真的。你家的圣誕裝飾球、金屬箔、你掛滿屋的閃閃發亮的LED燈，它們十有八九是從義烏來的。義烏在上海以南300公里，那里既沒有真正的松樹，也看不到天然雪花。

　　Christened “China’s Christmas village”，寶億萊軟裝設計， Yiwu is home to 600 factories that collectively churn out over 60% of all the world’s Christmas decorations and accessories, from glowing fibre-optic trees to felt Santa hats. The “elves” that staff these factories are mainly migrant labourers, working 12 hours a day for a maximum of ￡200 to ￡300 a month – and it turns out they’re not entirely sure what Christmas is。

　　義烏被稱作“中國圣誕村”，有600家工廠，它們共同生產出了全世界60%的圣誕裝飾品，從發光的光纖圣誕樹，到毛氈圣誕帽，不一而足。在這些工廠里工作的“精靈”們大部分都是外來工，一天工作12小時，每個月最多拿到200-300英鎊——我們發現他們并不完全了解什么是圣誕節。

義烏農民工

　　Wei gets through at least 10 face masks each day, trying not to breathe in the cloud of red dust. Photograph: Imaginechina/Rex

　　魏每天至少要帶十個口罩，以防吸入紅色的塵霧

　　“Maybe it’s like [Chinese] New Year for foreigners,” says 19-year-old Wei, a worker who came to Yiwu from rural Guizhou province this year, speaking to Chinese news agency Sina. Together with his father, he works long days in the red-splattered lair, taking polystyrene snowflakes, dipping them in a bath of glue, then putting them in a powder-coating machine until they turn red – and making 5,000 of the things every day。

　　“可能就像(中國的)新年吧，就是外國人過的節。”19歲的魏這么對中國的新浪新聞說。他今年從貴州農村到義烏工作，和他的父親一起，在濺滿了紅色的洞穴里每天工作很長時間。拿起泡沫雪花，把它們泡在膠水里，然后把它們放進涂粉末的機器里，直到它們變成紅色——他就是這樣每天生產出5000件產品。

　　In the process, the two of them end up dusted from head to toe in fine crimson powder. His dad wears a Santa hat (not for the festive spirit, he says, but to stop his hair from turning red) and they both get through at least 10 face masks a day, trying not to breathe in the dust. It’s a tiring job and they probably won’t do it again next year: once they’ve earned enough money for Wei to get married, they plan on returning home to Guizhou and hopefully never seeing a vat of red powder again。

　　在這個過程中，父子倆最后都會從頭到腳沾滿紅色的細小粉末。他的父親戴著一頂圣誕帽(他說，不是為了應節，開一家家居飾品店要多少錢>，只是為了不讓頭發變紅)，為了不吸入粉塵，父子倆每天都分別用掉至少10個口罩。這份工作很累人，他們明年可能不會再干了：只要他們掙到了魏結婚用的錢，他們就打算會貴州老家，就有希望再也不用見到成桶的紅色粉末了。

　　Packaged up in plastic bags, their gleaming red snowflakes hang alongside a wealth of other festive paraphernalia across town in the Yiwu International Trade Market, aka China Commodity City, a 4m sq m wonder-world of plastic tat. It is a pound shop paradise, a sprawling trade show of everything in the world that you don’t need and yet may, at some irrational moment, feel compelled to buy. There are whole streets in the labyrinthine complex devoted to artificial flowers and inflatable toys, then come umbrellas and anoraks, plastic buckets and clocks. It is a heaving multistorey monument to global consumption, as if the contents of all the world’s landfill sites had been dug-up, re-formed and meticulously catalogued back into 62,000 booths。

　　他們閃著微光的紅色雪花會用塑料袋包起來，和一大堆其他的圣誕裝飾品一起掛滿義烏國際商貿市場。這里又稱中國小商品城，是塑料廉價制品構成的一個4百萬平方米的神奇世界。這兒是兩元店天堂，巨大的貿易展，寶億萊家居飾品軟裝生活館，里面有世界上全部你雖然不必買但在某些時候又不得不買的東西。迷宮般的建筑里面一條條的街賣的都是假花、充氣玩具，還有雨傘、雨衣、塑料桶和時鐘等。這就像一座巨大的、好幾層的全球消費品紀念碑，家居軟裝體驗館>，好像全世界的垃圾填埋場里的東西都被挖了出來，重組之后又仔細地劃歸到這6萬2千個小攤里。

義烏農民工

　　The two men produce 5,000 red snowflakes a day, and get paid around ￡300 a month. Photograph: China Daily/Reuters

　　這兩個人一天能生產5000個紅色雪花，每個月拿折合300英鎊的工資