铁轨上的丝绸之路 The Silk Road

26岁的火车司机阿扎马特·库利耶诺夫(Azamat Kulyenov)将黑色的操纵杆向前推，1800吨重、近半英里长的特快货运列车朝西面起动，开始穿越哈萨克斯坦东部广袤荒凉的草原，距离中国边境越来越远。

 

Dispatchers in the Kazakh border town of Dostyk gave this train priority over all other traffic, including passenger trains. Specially trained guards rode on board. Later in the trip, as the train traveled across desolate Eurasian steppes, guards toting AK-47 military assault rifles boarded the locomotive to keep watch for bandits who might try to drive alongside and rob the train. Sometimes, the guards would even sit on top of the steel shipping containers.

哈萨克斯坦边境小镇多斯特克的调度员给予这列货车最高通行权限，优先于包括客列在内的其他所有列车。车上有受过特别训练的警卫。在后来的旅程中，当列车横穿杳无人烟的欧亚大草原时，端着AK-47突击步枪的警卫登上火车头，留意可能试图开到近旁抢劫列车的强盗。有时候，警卫甚至还会坐到钢质集装箱的顶上。

 

The train roughly follows the fabled Silk Road, the ancient route linking China and Europe that was used to transport spices, gems and, of course, silks before falling into disuse six centuries ago. Now the overland route is being resurrected for a new precious cargo: several million laptop computers and accessories made each year in China and bound for customers in European cities like London, Paris, Berlin and Rome.

这列火车基本沿着传说中的丝绸之路行驶。这条连接中国和欧洲的古道曾用于运输香料、珠宝，当然还有丝绸，直到6个世纪前遭到弃用。如今这条陆上运输线因一种新的贵重货物而得到复苏，那就是每年在中国生产的数以百万计的笔记本电脑及配件，收货方是伦敦、巴黎、柏林和罗马等欧洲城市的客户。

 

Hewlett-Packard, the Silicon Valley electronics company, has pioneered the revival of a route famous in the West since the Roman Empire. For the last two years, the company has shipped laptops and accessories to stores in Europe with increasing frequency aboard express trains that cross Central Asia at a clip of 50 miles an hour. Initially an experiment run in summer months, H.P. is now dispatching trains on the nearly 7,000-mile route at least once a week, and up to three times a week when demand warrants. H.P. plans to ship by rail throughout the coming winter, having taken elaborate measures to protect the cargo from temperatures that can drop to 40 degrees below zero.

硅谷电子企业惠普(Hewlett-Packard)率先重启这条自罗马帝国时期就闻名西方的线路。过去两年，惠普越来越频繁地借助以50英里（约合90公里）时速穿越中亚的特快列车，将笔记本电脑及配件运送到欧洲的商店。最初，这不过是夏季月份的一种尝试，现在，惠普会在这条7000英里长的线路上每周至少发车一次，如果需求旺盛，还会增加到三次。惠普计划今年冬季也通过铁路运输，该公司采取了周全的措施，以保护货物免受有时降至零下40度的低温的损伤。

 

Though the route still accounts for just a small fraction of manufacturers’ overall shipments from China to Europe, other companies are starting to follow H.P.’s example. Chinese authorities announced on Wednesday the first of six long freight trains this year from Zhengzhou, a manufacturing center in central China, to Hamburg, Germany, following much the same route across western China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus and Poland as the H.P. trains. The authorities said they planned 50 trains on the route next year, hauling $1 billion worth of goods; the first train this month is carrying $1.5 million worth of tires, shoes and clothes, while the trains are to bring back German electronics, construction machinery, vehicles, auto parts and medical equipment.

尽管这条线路仍仅占从中国到欧洲的总货运量的一小部分，但其他一些公司也开始追随惠普的脚步。中国当局最近宣布，今年将有6趟长货运列车从华中制造业中心郑州开往德国的汉堡，首列于周三出发，其路线与惠普的列车大体相同，途经中国西部、哈萨克斯坦、俄罗斯、白俄罗斯和波兰。当局还表示，明年这条路线将安排50趟货运列车，运输价值10亿美元（约合62亿元人民币）的商品。本月的第一趟列车运载价值150万美元的轮胎、鞋类和服装，而回程列车上将运载德国的电子产品、工程机械、整车、汽车部件和医疗器材。

 

DHL announced on June 20 that it had begun weekly express freight train service from Chengdu in western China across Kazakhstan and ultimately to Poland. Some of H.P.’s rivals in the electronics industry are in various stages of starting to use the route for exports from China, freight executives said.

DHL公司6月20日宣布，已开通从中国西部的成都经哈萨克斯坦抵达波兰的每周特快货运列车服务。一些货运业高管披露，惠普的一些电子业竞争对手正处于开始采用这条线路从中国出口的不同阶段。

 

The Silk Road was never a single route, but a web of paths taken by caravans of camels and horses that began around 120 B.C., when Xi’an in west-central China — best known for its terra cotta warriors — was China’s capital. The caravans started across the deserts of western China, traveled through the mountain ranges along China’s western borders with what are now Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and then journeyed across the sparsely populated steppes of Central Asia to the Caspian Sea and beyond.

丝绸之路从来就不是单一线路，而是骑着骆驼和马的商队所用的一个道路网。它始于公元前120年左右，那时中国的首都是中西部的长安（这里最为出名的是兵马俑）。这些商队从穿越中国西部的荒漠地区启程，然后翻越西部边境（另一边是今天的哈萨克斯坦和吉尔吉斯斯坦）的山脉，走过人烟稀少的中亚大草原，抵达里海或更远的地区。

 

These routes flourished through the Dark Ages and the early medieval period in Europe. But as maritime navigation expanded in the 1300s and 1400s, and as China’s political center shifted east to Beijing, China’s economic activity also moved toward the coast.

在欧洲的黑暗时代和中世纪早期，这些运输线持续繁荣。不过，随着13世纪和14世纪航海的发展，以及中国的政治中心东移至北京，其经济活动也转移到了沿海地区。

 

Today, the economic geography is changing again. Labor costs in China’s eastern cities have surged in the last decade, so manufacturers are trying to reduce costs by moving production west to the nation’s interior. Trucking products from the new inland factories to coastal ports is costly and slow. High oil prices have made airfreight exorbitantly expensive and prompted the world’s container shipping lines to reduce sharply the speed of their vessels.

今天，经济版图又一次处于变动之中。过去10年，中国东部城市的劳动力成本激增，制造商正试图通过将生产转移到内陆地区来降低成本。采用卡车把产品从内陆的新工厂运输到沿海的港口既昂贵又缓慢。高油价让航空货运贵得离谱，还驱使全世界的集装箱班轮公司大幅降低船速。

 

Slow steaming cuts oil consumption, but the resulting delays have infuriated shippers of high-value electronics goods like H.P’s. Such delays drive up their costs and make it harder to respond quickly to changes in consumer demand in distant markets.

慢速能降低油耗，但造成的延迟惹恼了惠普这样的高价值电子商品的货主。这种延迟推高了它们的成本，并让它们更难以应对遥远市场的消费者需求变化。

 

Trucking goods from inland factories to the ports of Shenzhen or Shanghai on the coast and then sending the goods by ship around India and through the Suez Canal takes five weeks. The Silk Road train cuts the shipping time from western China to retail distribution centers in western Europe to three weeks. The sea route is still about 25 percent cheaper than sending goods by train, but the cost of the added time by sea is considerable.

采用卡车把商品从内陆的工厂运输到深圳或上海的港口，然后装船启运，绕过印度、穿过苏伊士运河，这得花上5周时间。“丝绸之路”列车能把从中国西部到西欧零售配送中心的运输时间缩短到3周。海运目前仍比铁路运输大约便宜25%，不过海运所需的额外时间所带来的成本相当可观。

 

By switching from ocean freight to rail freight, “the inventory costs and lead times will see a lot of improvement,” said Jonney Shih, the chairman of Asustek, the world’s third-largest player in the global market for tablet computers, after Apple and Samsung. His company, too, has begun to experiment with the Silk Road.

华硕(Asustek)董事长施崇棠(Jonney Shih)表示，从海运转为铁路运输，“库存成本和交货期将有极大改善。”华硕是全球第三大平板电脑制造商，仅次于苹果和三星。施崇棠的公司也开始试水丝绸之路。

 

Scrambling for Rail Traffic

竞相采用铁路运输

Best known in the West as the Nationalist capital of China during World War II, Chongqing is now a smoggy metropolis, its city center perched on a bluff wrapped in a bend of the Yangtze River. The urban population of Chongqing is approaching 13 million, while an additional 15 million live in nearby rural areas that also lie within Chongqing’s administrative borders.

在西方，重庆最出名的是二战期间被国民党政府用作“陪都”，如今它是一座雾都，市中心坐落在扬子江河湾包围的峭壁之上。重庆的市区人口接近1300万，另有1500万人生活在附近的农村地区，也在重庆市的行政管辖区内。

 

Deng Xiaoping began opening China to foreign investment in the late 1970s, and for the next quarter-century Chongqing was a place that people fled, seeking better-paying jobs on the coast. But in the last few years, it has emerged as an industrial hub of western China, attracting multinationals like the chemical giant BASF and the Ford Motor Company. H.P. took the first steps to move production west from Shanghai four years ago. Now its contractors employ 80,000 workers in Chongqing, making 20 million laptops and 15 million printers a year.

上世纪70年代末，邓小平带领中国走上开放的道路，开始吸引外国投资。在接下来的四分之一个世纪里，重庆是人口流出地，人们纷纷到沿海地区寻找薪水更高的就业机会。但在最近几年，重庆崛起为中国西部的工业中心，吸引了化工巨擘巴斯夫(BASF)和福特汽车(Ford Motor Company)这样的跨国企业。四年前，惠普开始将生产从上海转移到西部。如今，惠普的代工厂在重庆雇佣了8万名工人，年产2000万台笔记本电脑和1500万台打印机。

 

Foxconn, the big Taiwanese electronics contract manufacturer, has twice as many workers in nearby Chengdu, mainly making Apple iPads, and has been shifting production there from Shenzhen.

大型台湾电子产品代工制造商富士康(Foxconn)在附近的成都市雇佣了两倍于上述人数的工人，主要制造苹果的iPad。该公司也在把深圳的生产活动陆续转移到这里。

 

Tony Prophet, a senior vice president at H.P., said the company began thinking about a rail route west almost as soon as it started production in Chongqing. The company, Mr. Prophet said, was pursuing a strategy of moving products, not people: instead of encouraging a migration from inland provinces to coastal factories, H.P. would manufacture in the inland provinces and then ship the products from there.

惠普的高级副总裁托尼·普罗菲特(Tony Prophet)表示，在重庆开始生产后，该公司几乎马上就开始考虑西行的铁路线。他还称，惠普的策略是转移产品，而不是转移人：与其鼓励内陆省份的人到沿海地区的工厂工作，不如在内陆省份进行生产，然后从那里发运产品。

 

To attract the company, the city built an extra runway at its airport long enough to accommodate Boeing 747 cargo jets. Airfreight to Europe takes only one week, including customs processing.

为了吸引惠普，重庆市在机场新建了一条长度足以让波音747货运飞机起降的跑道。从这里将货物空运到欧洲只需一周时间，包括办理海关手续在内。

But persistently high oil prices made the cost of airfreight daunting — as much as seven times the cost of rail freight. H.P. was also concerned about the carbon emissions involved in airfreight, which are 30 times those of the rail or sea routes.

但是，油价持续高企让空运成本高得可怕，相当于铁路运输的7倍。惠普还对空运产生的碳排放量感到担忧，因为它相当于铁路或海运的30倍。

 

Trucking computers to the coast and then putting them on ships meant tying up huge sums of money in the inventory hauled across the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. That delay would make it hard to shift sales strategies quickly in Europe if competitors came up with breakthrough products. So H.P. began looking at going west by land, across Kazakhstan.

用卡车将电脑运到沿海地区，再将它们装船运出，意味着有大笔资金被套在穿越南海和印度洋的库存上。一旦竞争对手发布突破性产品，这种延迟将使企业难以迅速调整欧洲的销售策略。于是，惠普开始寻找穿越哈萨克斯坦的西行陆路运输线。

President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan has been encouraging this idea. Last December, he called for his country to upgrade its rail network as a way to reclaim its historical role as the crossroads of Asia. “We are reviving a New Silk Road,” he said, “by setting up a Western Europe-Western China transportation corridor.”

 

哈萨克斯坦总统努尔苏丹·A·纳扎尔巴耶夫(Nursultan A. Nazarbayev)一直对这个想法加以鼓励。去年12月，他要求哈萨克斯坦升级铁路网，重拾该国在历史上曾经扮演的亚洲十字路口的角色。他说，“我们正在修建连接西欧和中国西部的运输走廊，重筑一条新丝绸之路。”

Kazakhstan, which already has 8,700 miles of rail, is rapidly building new rail routes to its borders with China in the east and Turkmenistan to the south. One goal is to connect China through Turkmenistan to Iran, assuming that the political situation in Iran improves, said Kanat K. Alpysbayev, the vice president for logistics at Kazakh National Railways. The Kazakh rail authority is also negotiating to help fix and manage the rail network in Afghanistan, where Chinese companies are building a vast copper mine.

 

哈萨克斯坦境内已有8700英里的铁路线，现在正在快速修建东至中国边境、南到土库曼斯坦的新铁路。哈萨克斯坦国家铁路有限公司(Kazakh National Railways)负责物流工作的副总裁卡纳特·K·阿尔普斯巴耶夫(Kanat K. Alpysbayev)称，他们的目标之一是将中国和伊朗经土库曼斯坦连接起来，前提是伊朗的政治局势有所改善的话。哈萨克斯坦铁路部门也正在就修复并管理阿富汗的铁路网进行谈判。中国企业正在那里修建一座大型铜矿。

The effort to move more cargo from China to Europe by rail received considerable help from a development so obscure that few outside the transport sector initially noticed it. Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus created a customs union that took full effect in January 2012, eliminating lengthy inspections at their borders with one another. The measure saved days of transit time and greatly reduced pilferage.

将更多的货物从中国经铁路运往欧洲的努力，得到了一项发展的有力帮助。但这件事如此不引入注目，以至于运输业以外最初几乎没有人注意到。哈萨克斯坦、俄罗斯和白俄罗斯创建了一个2012年1月全面生效的海关联盟，取消了穿越三国边境时冗长的海关检查。此举为运输节省了好几天时间，还大大减少了货物失窃的情况。

The Kazakhstan rail initiative has spurred regional competition. On June 21, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia announced a $43 billion infrastructure plan focused heavily on improving rail links to China, notably through improvements to the trans-Siberian railroad. The competition is ultimately a positive for manufacturers that make goods in China, like H.P.

哈萨克斯坦的铁路计划刺激了地区竞争的出现。6月21日，俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·V·普京(Vladimir V. Putin)宣布了一项430亿美元基础设施建设计划，该计划主要是为了升级与中国相连的铁路，特别是改善西伯利亚大铁路的状况。这一竞争最终给那些在中国制造产品的生产商带来好处，比如惠普公司。

The journey of H.P. computers and accessories begins in Chongqing with workers like Zheng Xiaoxue. A cheerful 18-year-old, she was raised by her grandparents on the outskirts of Chongqing; her parents had migrated to work at a plastics factory near Hong Kong in Shenzhen, where wages and benefits now reach $500 a month.

 

惠普的电脑和零配件的旅程，始于重庆郑晓雪（音译）这样的工人手里。郑晓雪是个开朗的18岁女孩，从小在重庆郊区的祖父母家里长大；她的父母曾在深圳的一家塑料厂工作。毗邻香港的深圳现在的工资水平已达到每月500美元。

But her parents have now returned home, complaining that the food in Shenzhen was bland and unappetizing compared with the fiery Sichuan cuisine they preferred. So instead of migrating, Ms. Zheng chose a job paying $190 a month, as well as free room and board, at a Taiwanese-run factory making notebook computers for H.P.

但是她的父母现在已经回家，抱怨深圳的饭菜和他们喜欢的川菜相比平淡无味，让人没胃口。所以郑晓雪没有出远门打工，而是找了一家为惠普生产笔记本电脑的台资厂打工，月工资为190美元，公司提供食宿。

“At work, we speak Mandarin, but after work, we mostly speak Sichuanese — almost all of us are from Sichuan,” Ms. Zheng said, while downing a free plate of pork and cabbage for dinner in the factory cafeteria.

郑晓雪一边吃着工厂食堂里免费提供的猪肉炖白菜一边说，“工作时我们说普通话，但是下班以后，我们主要说四川话，因为几乎所有人都是四川人。”

For the train that Mr. Kulyenov would drive, workers loaded finished laptops into 43 of H.P.’s specially designed dark blue containers, each 40 feet long, 8 feet wide and 9 feet 6 inches high, and loaded computer monitors into seven more identical containers. The 50 containers were sealed shut with a series of locks and loaded onto a train at the Chongqing rail yard, which left the station on June 14.

在库利耶诺夫将要驾驶的那列火车上，工人们将成品笔记本电脑装入43个特别设计的惠普深蓝色集装箱，再将电脑显示器装入另外7个同样的集装箱。这些集装箱每个长40英尺（约合12米）、宽8英尺，高9英尺6英寸。这50个集装箱用一串串的锁锁得严严实实，然后在重庆铁路集装箱中心站被装上火车。这列火车在6月14日出发。

It would take five days for the train, carrying nothing but H.P. equipment, to cross 2,000 miles of western China to reach the eastern border of Kazakhstan.

 

这列满载惠普产品的专列要用5天时间穿过中国西部2000英里的路程，到达哈萨克斯坦的东部边境。

An Unexpected Delay

意外的延迟

The train was punctual in reaching the Dzungarian Gate, a low, wide valley through the snow-capped mountain ranges that separates China and Kazakhstan. Chinese customs officers there opened documents that had been sealed since the shipment left Chongqing. For 49 of the 50 containers, the documents matched the cargo in every detail.

这列火车准时到达了低矮宽阔的准噶尔山口。准噶尔山口是一个穿过分隔中国和哈萨克斯坦的雪山的谷地。那里的中国海关人员打开从重庆启运以来一直被密封的报关文件。50个集装箱中，有49个的文件与货物完全相符。

But for one of the laptop computer containers, the numbers didn’t match. The documents showed that the total weight of one container was 10,135 kilograms. But the scale showed that the container weighed 10,153 kilograms — a difference of just two digits, transposed accidentally.

但是，有一个装着笔记本电脑的集装箱的数据对不上。文件显示，这个集装箱的重量是10.135吨，但是称重的仪器上显示它的重量为10.153吨，末尾两位数字恰好相互颠倒。

Hours passed on the Kazakh side as H.P. and its shipping agents hustled to amend the paperwork, which was not easy because the error was discovered at the end of a workday. After thundering across China, through Xi’an, across a corner of the Gobi Desert and skirting the vast arid wastes of the Taklamakan Desert, where temperatures can hit 120 degrees, the train simply sat. For 26 hours.

列车停在哈萨克斯坦边境，时间一个小时又一个小时地过去，惠普及其货运代理商匆忙修改文件，这并非易事，因为这个差错是在那天快下班时发现的。这列火车在隆隆驶过西安、戈壁沙漠一角以及塔克拉玛干沙漠广袤的不毛之地（气温可高达120华氏度）后，就这样一动不动地停着。足足26个小时。

Such extreme delays are unusual — H.P. managers say the longest previous delay was 10 hours, at the Belarus-Poland border. Sea shipments have sometimes been delayed up to three days because of bad weather and other problems.

 

 

惠普管理人员说，这种极端的延误十分少见，此前的纪录是在白俄罗斯和波兰边境耽误了10个小时。海运有时会因为恶劣天气等原因最多耽误3天时间。

H.P. has made strenuous efforts to keep the products moving, sending representatives to remote Central Asian border crossings to explain its plans, said Ronald Kleijwegt, the company’s director of logistics for Europe, the Mideast and Africa.

惠普公司欧洲、中东和非洲物流负责人罗纳德·克莱基维格特(Ronald Kleijwegt)说，公司竭力确保产品运输，派代表前往偏远的中亚边境关口，说明公司的计划。

H.P. helped China overhaul its software for processing customs documents. China’s previous system allowed clerks to choose only an adjacent country in Asia as the final destination for rail shipments, Mr. Kleijwegt said, because no one had envisioned that exports in sealed rail cars might be sent nearly 7,000 miles to destinations in Europe.

惠普帮助中国全面升级了处理海关文件的软件。克莱基维格特说，中国以前的系统只能让海关人员选择一个亚洲邻国作为铁路运输的最终目的地，因为没有人预想到，这些火车上的货物会是被发往近7000英里外的欧洲目的地的出口产品。

The company also negotiated special customs clearance, permitting its containers to stay locked and uninspected at border crossings along the route, although the containers are X-rayed for contraband. That was mostly to shorten the time needed for the trip, but also for security. Two years ago, H.P. sent 200 computers in a single, unsealed container as a test shipment on a general-purpose freight train. The shipment went through comprehensive customs checks at border crossings. By the time the train reached Germany, many of the computers had disappeared.

惠普还通过谈判争取到了特别的清关程序，让该公司的集装箱在沿途穿越边境时不受开箱检查，而只是接受X光扫描，以检查是否装有走私物品。这主要是为了缩短运输过程所需的时间，但也保障了安全。两年前，惠普公司曾做过一次发货试验，在一列普通的货运列车上用一个未密封的集装箱发运200台电脑。这批货物在通关时经过繁琐的海关检查，等火车到达德国时，其中很多电脑早就不翼而飞了。

 

 

‘Much Respect on the Track’

‘铁轨上的极大尊重’

Once the problem of the transposed numbers was cleared up, the train crossed into Kazakhstan. An overhead crane and two cranes that looked like cottages on wheels lifted the H.P. containers off the Chinese train, and loaded them onto flat cars with wider wheel gauges in the rail yard in Dostyk on the Kazakh side of the border. Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus, all traversed on the trip, have wide rails inherited from the Soviet rail system. China and Europe have narrower rails, so cargo transfers take several hours.

数字错位的问题解决后，火车驶入了哈萨克斯坦。一台桥式起重机和两台像装了轮子的房屋一样的起重机将惠普的集装箱从中国的火车上吊起来，放到哈萨克境内停在多斯特克调度场里的平板车上。这些火车的轮距更宽。列车要经过哈萨克斯坦、俄罗斯和白俄罗斯，这些国家的铁轨沿用苏联时代的宽轨标准。中国和欧洲的铁轨较窄，因此需要几个小时转移货物。

Mr. Kulyenov, a freight train driver fourth class who dreams of being promoted someday to reach the rank of passenger train driver first class, considered himself lucky to be driving the train. Sitting in the cab of a new diesel locomotive, he waited in the Dostyk rail yard for a messenger in a bright yellow safety jacket to bring him a computer printout of his cargo. When the printout arrived, he carefully made notations in the locomotive’s purple velvet-bound log book, a concession to tradition, then typed many of the same weight details into a dashboard computer that helps precisely calibrate the engine for pulling each load.

库利耶诺夫是个四级货运火车司机，梦想着有一天能成为一级客运火车司机。他认为自己能开这列火车很幸运。他在多斯特克调度场坐在一辆新的柴油机车的驾驶室里，等着一个穿有亮黄色安全背心的信使拿来车上货物的打印清单。拿到打印单之后，他按照传统，认真地在这辆机车紫色的绒面记录本里做着记录，然后在仪表盘的一台电脑上输入很多同样的重量数据，以帮助校准引擎，使其在最优状态下拉动货物。

When the signal lights ahead turned from red to green, Mr. Kulyenov moved the huge train smoothly out of the yard. “It’s a new engine; it’ll have no problem,” he said.

 

 

当前方的信号灯由红转绿，库利耶诺夫缓缓启动这列庞然大物，平稳驶出调度场。“这辆机车是新的；不会有问题，”他说。

The locomotive was built at a new factory in Astana, Kazakhstan’s capital, by a Russian-Kazakh joint venture that licensed the design from General Electric. The locomotive’s body, generator, radiator and wheels are made in Kazakhstan, but G.E. exports the diesel engine from Erie, Pa. — although G.E. and the joint venture are making plans to start building a diesel engine factory in Astana as well next year.

火车头是在哈萨克斯坦首都阿斯塔纳的一座新工厂里制造的。拥有该厂的是一家俄罗斯和哈萨克斯坦的合资企业，它取得了使用通用电气(General Electric)设计的授权。火车头的车身、发电机、冷却器和车轮在哈萨克斯坦制造，不过柴油引擎由通用电气在宾夕法尼亚州伊利的工厂出口。通用电气与这家合资企业正在策划，明年开始在阿斯塔纳建造一家柴油引擎厂。

As the train moved forward, the lattice of train tracks in the rail yard narrowed to three, then two and then one that headed off across the flat grasslands of the steppe. Mr. Kulyenov and the assistant driver next to him, Alexander Nemtzev, 31, glanced around for the small flock of two-humped Bactrian camels that live near the rail line. They were nowhere in sight.

随着火车继续前行，调度场的铁道减少到三条，随后并为两条，最后合为一条，朝着平坦的欧亚大草原延伸，一眼望不到头。库利耶诺夫和身旁的副驾驶、31岁的亚历山大·涅姆采夫(Alexander Nemtzev)四处张望，寻找着生活在铁路线旁的小型双峰驼群。它们没有出现。

A few Kazakh houses lay long and low against the wind, with whitewashed walls, tile roofs and mastiffs prowling out front. Herders on horseback, wearing pointy woolen knit caps, tended flocks of sheep, cattle and horses.

几栋哈萨克斯坦的长矮房迎风挺立，外墙刷成白色、屋顶盖着瓦片，大驯犬在屋前徘徊。马背上的牧人戴着尖顶毛织帽，赶着牛羊马群。

Mr. Kulyenov marveled at how quickly freight trains headed in the opposite direction moved onto sidings to make way for his high-priority shipment.

对面方向的火车迅速转到边道上，给库利耶诺夫驾驶的这辆拥有最高通行权的车让路，速度之快让他惊叹。

“This is the first time I’ve driven the H.P. train,” said Mr. Kulyenov, who has been a train driver for eight years, “and the first time I’ve seen so much respect on the track.”

已经当了八年火车司机的库利耶诺夫说，“这是我第一次开惠普专列，也是第一次在铁轨上受到如此的尊重。”

China’s smog was far behind, swept away by the crystalline air of the high, barren steppes. Dawns and sunsets played on the horizon in nearly hourlong shows of pink, mauve and purple. Kazakhstan looks a bit like North Dakota; both grow a lot of wheat. But Kazakhstan is slightly larger than the United States east of the Mississippi River, with fewer people than Florida.

中国的雾霾被远远甩在了身后，高海拔的贫瘠大草原上清透的空气将其一扫而空。黎明和日落的时候，天边呈现近一小时的粉红、淡紫和深紫交织的光影。哈萨克斯坦看起来有点像北达科他州，两地都大量种植小麦。哈萨克斯坦领土略大于密西西比河以东的美国，但人口比佛罗里达州还少。

The train was not built for comfort. There were no bunks for sleeping, or even bathrooms. Just as the Pony Express of the American West relied on a series of riders to carry the mail, the H.P. train relies on a new driver, assistant driver and guards to board the locomotive at stops every three or four hours. Even the locomotives are replaced with fresh ones every third or fourth stop. At each stop, railway guards dressed in black or military fatigues hustle up and down the train, checking the cars for signs of tampering. Over the course of each three-week journey, more than 100 drivers and guards board the train.

这列火车在设计中没有考虑司机的舒适。没有卧铺，就连厕所也没有。正如旧时美国西部的驿马快信靠一连串骑手接力递信一样，惠普专列靠的是每隔三、四个小时靠站，换一名驾驶员、一名副驾驶和一群警卫。就连机车本身也会在三、四个站后换成新的。每次停靠，身穿黑色制服或迷彩军服的铁路警察会沿着列车快速巡视一番，检查车上是否被人动过手脚。每趟为期三周的旅程期间，登车的驾驶员和警卫超过100名。

 

To Mr. Kulyenov and Mr. Nemtzev, the Silk Road is an abstraction, a little-remembered historical detail studied in school. Mr. Nemtzev, who grew up in easternmost Kazakhstan, remembered how he would play with little plastic trains as a boy and yearned to drive real trains someday. “I’ve never wanted to do anything else,” he said as the headlights traversed a vast emptiness. We traveled for nearly an hour at one point without illuminating a single house, car or person anywhere near the tracks.

对库利耶诺夫和涅姆采夫而言，丝绸之路是个抽象的概念，是上学时念过的历史细节，几乎完全记不得了。涅姆采夫在哈萨克斯坦的最东部长大，记得自己小时候拿塑料小火车当玩具，渴望长大了能开真正的火车。“我从来就没想过干别的，”他这样说道。火车前灯穿透广袤的空地，我们一度走了近一个小时，却没照到铁轨附近有任何房屋、车辆或人烟。

An hour after sunset, Mr. Kulyenov and Mr. Nemtzev were replaced by the next pair of drivers. Vladimir Kolozorkin, 52, took over as the main driver. With a gray crew cut and an uncanny ability to distinguish complex patterns of railway signal lights at enormous distances, he greeted visitors with a gruff warning that rules strictly prohibited distracting the driver in any way.

日落后一小时，库利耶诺夫和涅姆采夫被另两名司机接替。52岁的弗拉基米尔·科洛佐尔金(Vladimir Kolozorkin)成为主驾驶。他留着平头，发色灰白，拥有远距离分辨铁路信号灯复杂组合的神奇本领。看到访客，他不客气地警告，相关规则严禁以任何形式干扰驾驶员。

But he mellowed as the hours passed, saying that he remembered from his early boyhood in eastern Kazakhstan how camel caravans, a fixture on the Silk Road for two millenniums, had still traveled to mountain villages.

然而，随着时间的流逝，他缓和下来，说他记得在童年时的哈萨克斯坦东部，骆驼商队——丝绸之路两千年来的象征——仍在山里的村子巡回经商。

“They were used to go places you couldn’t reach in a car,” he recalled. “In the old days, people used them for caravans, but now they’re just kept for the wool, the meat and the milk.”

 

“那时，骆驼被用于前往开车到不了的那些地方，”他回忆道。“在过去，人们用骆驼来组成商队。但现在，养骆驼只是为了毛、肉和奶。”

China to Holland, in 21 Days

21天，从中国到荷兰

When the train reached the Belarus-Poland border, the containers had to be moved again to flat cars with a narrower wheel gauge. While 41 flat cars headed on across Europe right away, 9 more had to wait for a separate locomotive because the train would otherwise exceed European regulations for a freight train’s maximum length. The first train reached Duisburg, Germany, on July 3, or 19 days after the containers left Chongqing. Trucks then took the containers overnight to their final destination, H.P.’s European distribution center, in Oostrum, the Netherlands.

当火车抵达白俄罗斯和波兰的边境时，集装箱必须再次转移到轮距较窄的平板车上。41节平板车立即向着欧洲内陆进发，剩下的9节不得不等待另一辆机车，因为50节车厢超过了欧盟规定的货运火车最大长度。第一列火车在7月3日，即集装箱离开重庆19天之后，抵达了德国的杜伊斯堡。随后，卡车把集装箱连夜拉到最终目的地：荷兰奥斯塔姆的惠普欧洲配送中心。

All 50 containers, including the nine that left Poland later, ended up arriving in Oostrum in 21 days, or three weeks. Ask ocean shipping executives about the possible challenge from the new Central Asian rail route and they say that it will not take away enough business to affect their bottom lines.

包括随后离开波兰的那9个集装箱，全部50个集装箱最终抵达奥斯塔姆的时间是21天，即3周。海运公司高管在被问及中亚新铁路线可能带来的挑战时表示，铁路运输抢走的业务将不足以影响他们的盈利。

Kazakhstan forecasts that rail freight will grow to 7.5 million 40-foot containers by 2020, from just 2,500 transported from western China to Europe last year. That would be a huge increase that could sorely tax Kazakhstan’s rail network; Mr. Alpysbayev said plans were under way to build extra tracks to help handle the traffic. But even at 7.5 million containers, rail freight transiting Kazakhstan would still be only a tenth of ocean freight between Europe and Asia.

 

哈萨克斯坦预测，到2020年，铁路货运将增长至750万个40英尺集装箱，而去年从中国西部运输到欧洲的仅有2500个集装箱。这一巨大增长可能会给哈萨克斯坦的铁路网带来极大压力；阿尔普斯巴耶夫称，已制订了铺设更多铁轨的计划，以应对流量。但即便达到750万个集装箱的水平，经过哈萨克斯坦的铁路货运量将仍只有欧亚之间海运的十分之一。

Mr. Prophet, the H.P. vice president, said that despite the occasional delays — like the 26 hours at the Kazakh border — the company still planned to shift more shipments from sea freight, and especially from airfreight, to rail. The journey to Europe can take as little as 18 or 19 days by rail, but to allow for delays, H.P. doesn’t plan for the train to arrive in fewer than 22 days, he noted.

惠普副总裁普罗菲特说，尽管偶尔会有延误——例如在哈萨克斯坦边境的26个小时——该公司仍计划把更多的海运和空运（尤其是后者）改为铁路运输。他指出，到欧洲的铁路运输可能只需18到19天，但考虑到可能出现延误，惠普在规划中允许火车至少花22天到达。

Zhengzhou’s and DHL’s move to offer regularly scheduled rail service across Kazakhstan, not to mention the lengthening list of industries trying the route, suggests that despite the occasional customs delay, many companies now share H.P.’s view that the Silk Road has re-emerged as a viable transport route.

且不提准备尝试这条路线的行业清单越来越长，郑州和DHL开通经过哈萨克斯坦的铁路班车服务表明，尽管偶然会有海关延误，许多公司现在同意惠普的观点，即丝绸之路已再度成为一条可行的运输线路。

“They were all highly interested,” Mr. Kleijwegt of H.P. said, “but wanted to see someone else prove it.”

“它们都非常感兴趣，”惠普的克莱基维格特说，“但希望看到其他人来证明这一点。”