一只“流浪气球”为何让美国人如此上头？2023.02.

09 罗兰 CSE7

【课程导读】前几天，一只来自中国的“流浪气球”在美国火了。不仅多家媒体
大肆炒作带节奏，称这是“来自中国的间谍气球”，美国民众也迅速“上头”。对
此，中国外交部第一时间作出回应，澄清事实，表明这是一只用于气象研究的
民用飞艇，受不可抗力影响误入美国。美国民众为何如此关注这只“流浪气球”
？美国政府的处理方式反映出什么深层问题？一起来听今天的讲解。

Look! Up in the Sky! Its a … Chinese Balloon?

快瞧！往天上看！那是一个……来自中国的气球？
By Katie Rogers

As far as thrillers go, this one unfolded pretty slowly: A giant Chinese balloon air-
dawdled its way toward the Eastern Seaboard for several days until it was blown out
of the sky on Saturday by the U.S. military.
就悬疑片的推进节奏而言，这个故事展开得相当缓慢：一个来自中国的巨型气
球，在空中朝着美国东岸的方向慢悠悠地飘了几天，直到周六，它才被美国军
方从空中击落。

The lumbering orb, drifting at about 60,000 feet, did nothing to ease the tension
between the United States and China as it took its time floating across the country and
out to sea. People had time to think up some questions, including reporters who
shouted "Are you going to shoot down the balloon?" at President Biden shortly before
the dirigible came down.
这个圆球飘在 6 万英尺的高空，它慢悠悠地穿过美国、飞向大海，在此期间，
中美之间的紧张关系加剧了。人们也开始提出一些问题，比如就在飞艇被击落
前不久，记者们还在朝拜登总统喊话：“你到底要不要把这气球给打下来？”

Though the end came swiftly, the episode—and the national fixation it provoked—
reminded people of balloon episodes past. Anyway, what does it say about us that we
are so fixated on mysterious floating objects?
尽管结局来得很快，但这出闹剧，以及它造成的举国轰动，都让人联想到了曾
经的气球事件。无论如何，对于神秘的飘浮物体如此着迷，这揭示了我们自身
怎样的问题？

As it turns out, there are people who think deeply about this sort of thing. Greg
Garrett, a professor at Baylor University, says humans are hard-wired to be threatened
by things that we don't recognize.
结果发现，还真有人对这一点进行了深入思考。贝勒大学教授格雷格·加勒特（
Greg Garrett）称，人类天生就会对不认识的东西感到不安。

The diplomatic fallout was swift, and the political reaction, as usual, was split. Within
24 hours, former President Donald J. Trump had posted online and sent an email to
his followers. His message was concise: "SHOOT DOWN THE BALLOON." The
Biden White House took a more cautious approach.
这一事件也立即在外交层面上产生了负面影响，而毫无意外，政界对此事的反
应仍是分裂的。事件发生不到 24 小时，前总统唐纳德·J·特朗普就在网上公开表
态，还给他的支持者发了邮件。他的发言简单粗暴：“把气球打下来！” 而拜登
政府则采取了更谨慎的手段。

Beijing said on Friday that the craft was indeed from China, but described it as a
"mainly meteorological" blimp that had strayed far from its original course.
周五，中方表示，飞艇的确是来自中国，它是主要用于气象研究的飞艇，只是
严重偏离了预定航线而已。

【生词好句】

1.as far as
就……的程度来说（to the degree or extent that ...）
拓展:
as far as something goes 就......而言，关于......（with regard to, about）
As far as the weather goes, we've been having nothing but rain for the past week.
就天气而言，过去一周我们这儿一直下雨。

as far as it goes 在一定程度上

It's a good essay as far as it goes.
这篇文章还是不错的。

as far as I know 据我所知

as far as I am concerned 就我而言
as far as I can tell 依我看，按我的理解来说

2.thriller
n. 悬疑片；惊悚小说

3.unfold
v. （形势或故事）发展，呈现；打开，摊开
拓展:
I've watched the events of the last few days unfold on TV.
我这几天一直在电视上关注着事件的发展。

4.dawdle
v. 磨蹭，拖沓
拓展:
Stop dawdling! You'll be late for school!
别磨蹭了！你上学要迟到了！

5.the Eastern Seaboard

美国东岸（the East Coast，the Atlantic Coast / Seaboard）
拓展:
seaboard n. 海滨，海岸

6.blow
v. 炸毁；吹气
拓展:
be blown to pieces 被炸得粉碎

7.lumber
v. 缓慢笨拙地移动（to move slowly and awkwardly）
拓展:
A herd of elephants are lumbering across the plain.
一群大象缓缓穿过平原。

8.orb
n. 球体
拓展:
orbit n. 轨道

9.take one's time

不着急，慢慢来
拓展:
take your time 别着急，慢慢来

10.think up
动脑筋想出或创造出（to use one's mind to form or invent）
拓展:
Quick! We have to think up an excuse.
快！我们必须要编出一个借口。

11.dirigible
n. 飞船，汽艇

12.swiftly
adv. 迅速地，动作敏捷地
拓展:
swift adj. 迅速的，动作敏捷的
Thank you for your swift reply.
感谢你及时的回复。

13.episode
n. 一连串事件，一段经历；（尤指电视或广播节目的）一集

14.fixation
n. 执著、着迷的状态；癖
拓展:
fix v. 固定
fixate v. 迷恋，执着
fixate on something 对......很热衷、很执著
High achievers sometimes fixate on their own flaws.
优秀出众的人对于自身的缺点有时候会过于偏执。
Recently, she has been fixated on losing weight.
最近，她痴迷于减肥。

15.turn out
结果是（尤指出乎意料的结果）
拓展:
The truth turned out to be stranger than we had expected.
结果是，真相比我们预期的更离奇。

16.be hard-wired to
天生的、本能的；（本义）在硬件上设置好的，改不了的
拓展:
Humans are hardwired to love fattening foods.
人会本能地喜欢那些令人发胖的食物。

17.fallout
n. 不良影响，恶果；（本义）（核爆炸后产生的）放射性坠尘
拓展:
The political fallout of the revelations has been immense.
这些被曝光事件产生的负面政治影响是巨大的。

18.craft
n. 工艺，手艺；（水上或空中行驶的）交通工具
拓展:
naval craft 海军舰艇
rescue craft 救生艇
aircraft / craft 飞行器，航空器，飞艇

19.stray
v. 偏离原路；adj. 流浪的
拓展:
a stray dog 一只流浪狗

【外刊原文】
Look! Up in the Sky! It's a … Chinese Balloon?
By Katie Rogers
@The New York Times

WASHINGTON — As far as thrillers go, this one unfolded pretty slowly: A giant
Chinese balloon air-dawdled its way toward the Eastern Seaboard for several days
until it was blown out of the sky on Saturday by the U.S. military.

The lumbering orb, drifting at about 60,000 feet, did nothing to ease the tension
between the United States and China as it took its time floating across the country and
out to sea. People had time to think up some questions, including reporters who
shouted “Are you going to shoot down the balloon?” at President Biden shortly before
the dirigible came down.
“We’re going to take care of it,” the president told reporters in Syracuse, N.Y., where
he was visiting family.

As promised, on Saturday afternoon, the slow-moving caper finally reached its

conclusion as U.S. fighter pilots fired a missile at the balloon over the Atlantic.

“It was two fighter jets dancing with this thing going around and around it,” said
Jeffrey Billie, a retired defense contractor who lives in Pawleys Island, S.C., and
witnessed the one-sided confrontation. Mr. Billie said a third jet flew near the balloon
and fired a missile just as the craft crossed the coastline. “Then, of course, the round
big white ball that we saw all of the sudden looked like a shriveled Kleenex.”

Though the end came swiftly, the episode — and the national fixation it provoked —
reminded people of balloon episodes past. (Wasn’t there some other runaway balloon,
years ago, with a child inside it? Can that be right?) Anyway, what does it say about
us that we are so fixated on mysterious floating objects?

As it turns out, there are people who think deeply about this sort of thing. Greg
Garrett, a professor who teaches literature, pop culture and theology at Baylor
University, says humans are hard-wired to be threatened by things that we don’t
recognize.

“As human beings, to look up in the sky and see something we’re powerless over
makes us crazy,” he said. “It’s one part of the political reaction, which is, ‘we’ve got
to shoot this thing out of the sky,’ regardless of the difficulty and the danger.”

Before it became an international obsession and a source of diplomatic panic, the

balloon first appeared as a rural unsolved mystery. On Wednesday, a sudden ground
stop at the Billings Logan International Airport in Billings, Mont., caused residents to
cast their eyes skyward.

James Goossen, a page designer at The Billings Gazette, said he and his colleagues
had gathered in a parking lot outside the newspaper for their first glimpse of the
balloon. He recalled the group’s initial reaction: “Holy crap.”

Flash forward several days, and the story suddenly seemed much more complicated,
and the undercurrent of danger more pronounced. Mr. Biden, who first heard about
the balloon on Tuesday, was getting regular briefings and asked his top generals to
review military options. The Pentagon determined that it was, in fact, a Chinese
surveillance device, and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken postponed his trip to
China.

The diplomatic fallout was swift, and the political reaction, as usual, was split.

“Shoot. It. Down,” Representative Ryan Zinke, Republican of Montana, tweeted on

Thursday. “The balloon is clear provocation. In Montana we do not bow. We shoot it
down. Take the shot.”

Within 24 hours, former President Donald J. Trump had posted online and sent an
email to his followers. His message was concise: “SHOOT DOWN THE BALLOON.”
The Biden White House took a more cautious approach. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White
House press secretary, said the balloon did not present a military threat but called its
presence a “violation of our sovereignty.”

As more Americans logged on to stare at the balloon on Friday, a spokesman for the
Pentagon said the U.S. military was not going to be providing regular updates on its
whereabouts.

“What we’re not going to do is get into an hour-by-hour location of the balloon,”
Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said then. “The public has the
ability to look up in the sky and see where the balloon is.”

Beijing said on Friday that the craft was indeed from China, but described it as a
“mainly meteorological” blimp that had strayed (very) far from its original course.
The spotting of a second balloon — this time over South America, on Friday night —
made the coincidental-lost-balloon theory less likely.

Still, the brouhaha briefly called us back to the early days of collective social-media
viewing, when it was still novel to watch something bizarre unfold on television
alongside a cascade of tweets and cackle-inducing memes. Recall that time in 2009,
when it seemed like the entire country was captured for several hours as some sort of
large silver bag—thought at first to be carrying a 6-year-old boy, of all things—zipped
around in the sky over Colorado.

It was the day Balloon Boy was born. After the boy, named Falcon, was found hiding
out in the attic of his house, his parents were convicted of misleading a public servant
and falsely reporting an incident.

They were later pardoned, and their lawyer called the whole matter “balloonacy.”

In 2012, balloon enthusiasts around the globe were again transfixed as Felix
Baumgartner, an Austrian daredevil, rode a helium balloon to an altitude of 128,100
feet, breaking the sound barrier before landing safely back on the ground. That event
set a livestream record, racking up some 9.5 million views.

Will Leitch, a novelist and contributing editor at New York magazine who writes
about internet culture, said that, given the range of technological options available to
dueling superpowers, there was an absurdist element to the idea that a “menacing
balloon” could be a harbinger of conflict between the United States and China.

“I understand arguments to the idea that a balloon could have some sort of technology
and could be threatening to us,” Mr. Leitch said. “Also, I just kind of think it’s weird
to be afraid of a balloon.”

“It seems like a prank that someone would pull in the 1920s,” Mr. Leitch added.

Those who have built and studied these balloons say not to be fooled by this one’s
steampunk-looking exterior.
The balloon likely masks formidable technology, according to Art Thompson, an
aerospace engineer whose company, Sage Cheshire, worked with the Red Bull Stratos
team to design and build the 600-foot-tall balloon that pulled Mr. Baumgartner toward
the sky.

Mr. Thompson — who was also part of a team at Northrop Corporation that helped
design the B-2 Spirit, the so-called stealth bomber used by the U.S. military —
studied images of the balloon and said that the one seen over Montana was outfitted
with solar panels, a control panel — and, it appeared, a parachute system. Balloons of
this type, he said, can be controlled by radio signals and a system that adjusts air
compression and, with it, the balloon’s altitude. The crafts can use solar power to
collect radio data, communications signals and even phone data.

“You could collect a lot of information from a balloon, and it has a very long reach,”
Mr. Thompson said. “They could be collecting a lot of data to analyze for future
applications.”

2023©The New York Times