a very interesting read about the rapid expansion of refrigeration in China:
關(guān)于中國制冷業(yè)的快速發(fā)展,有一個有趣的事實:

It is not simply transforming how Chinese people grow, distribute and consume food. It also stands to become a formidable new factor in climate change; cooling is already responsible for 15 percent of all electricity consumption worldwide, and leaks of chemical refrigerants are a major source of greenhouse-gas pollution. Of all the shifts in lifestyle that threaten the planet right now, perhaps not one is as important as the changing way that Chinese people eat.
制冷業(yè)的發(fā)展不僅在改變中國人種植、分配、消費糧食的方式,還成為影響氣候變化的一個不容忽視的新因素。制冷業(yè)消耗的電能站到了全球電能消耗總量的15%,化學制冷劑的泄露是造成溫室氣體污染的一個主要原因。人類生活方式的諸多變化都會給地球帶來威脅,在這些變化中,最重要的就是中國人飲食方式的變化。

Take a look at the rapid growth of the cold chain in China, which its corporate and government promoters envision will reduce waste and improve food safety.
讓我們看看中國制冷產(chǎn)業(yè)鏈的高速發(fā)展現(xiàn)狀吧。中國的企業(yè)和政府說客們預言說制冷產(chǎn)業(yè)鏈的高速發(fā)展將減少能源浪費,提高食品安全性。

Leading up to the 2008 Olympics, the Beijing municipal authorities embarked on an ambitious program of “supermarketization,” designed to get meat and vegetables out of the open-air “wet” markets — where food is cooled by standing fans and the occasional hose down from the cold tap — and safely behind sneeze-guards in modern, climate-controlled grocery stores. Mass refrigeration would provide an added value worth $160 billion per year by 2017.
2008年北京奧林匹克運動會前期,北京市政府曾發(fā)起一場雄心勃勃的“食品進超市”項目,旨在肉類和蔬菜都從露天的、“潮濕”的菜市場搬出來——在菜市場里,人們通過立扇給食品降溫,或者通過時不時的用自來水管里的冷水沖淋食物來給它們降溫,把食物搬進現(xiàn)代化的,溫控的雜貨店里的的東盆里去。到2017年,民用制冷業(yè)可以創(chuàng)造的產(chǎn)值高達平均每年1600億美元。

An artificial winter has begun to stretch across the country, through its fields and its ports, its logistics hubs and freeways. China had 250 million cubic feet of refrigerated storage capacity in 2007; by 2017, the country is on track to have 20 times that. At five billion cubic feet, China will surpass even the United States, which has led the world in cold storage ever since artificial refrigeration was invented. And even that translates to only 3.7 cubic feet of cold storage per capita, or roughly a third of what Americans currently have — meaning that the Chinese refrigeration boom is only just beginning.
一個人造的冬季正逐漸覆蓋整個中國大地,從田野到港口,從交通樞紐站到高速公路。在2007年,中國的冷凍貨物總量為2億5千萬立方英尺;到2017年,中國的冷凍貨物總量將達到這一數(shù)字的20倍。屆時,中國將擁有50億立方英尺的冷凍貨物,超過了美國的冷凍貨物總量,自從人工制冷業(yè)誕生以來,美國一直在冷凍存儲量上位居世界第一。不過這一總量也僅意味著中國的人均擁有冷凍存儲量為3.7立方英尺,僅為美國人均現(xiàn)有量的1/3——中國冷凍業(yè)的勃興才剛剛開始。

Feels like anytime China's mentioned it's drama, but the article's a sharp reminder of the high costs of contemporary – corporate – food supply systems; there's simply no future, anywhere – in China, in Asia, in Africa, anywhere – in adopting variations of what dominates in the US or Europe... well, apart from future profits for the handful of dominant players who will quickly replace the hundreds of millions of street hawkers, fresh market vendors, small-scale processors and peasant farmers that much of the world's food supply rests on now.
似乎每次面對這種質(zhì)疑,中國都會覺得這是夸大其詞,不過,這篇文章旨在警示人們注意當代企業(yè)化的食品供應(yīng)鏈所導致的高昂代價。無論是中國、亞洲、非洲或任何地方,想要把美國和歐洲現(xiàn)行的食品供應(yīng)鏈化為己用都是毫無出路的,只有那少數(shù)幾家食品儲存壟斷企業(yè)可能感到前途光明,利潤豐厚,他們很快就會取代數(shù)以百萬的街頭菜販、菜市場商販、小額食品供應(yīng)商和農(nóng)民,而全世界的食品供應(yīng)如今正是這些人的貢獻。