As scalpers offered smuggled new iPhones in front of an Apple store in Beijing on Thursday, a day before the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were officially to go on sale in mainland China, two men seated on a nearby bench arranged on the floor before them an iPhone 5s, an iPhone 6 and a string of six apples — all attached to leashes. One of the men had just taken a bite out of each of the apples.
在iPhone 6和iPhone 6 Plus在中国大陆正式发售的前一天，黄牛们周四正在北京一家苹果店门前兜售走私得来的新款iPhone。而附近长椅上坐着的两个男人，却在他们面前的地上摆放了一部iPhone 5s，一部iPhone 6，和一串苹果——它们都被绳拴着。这两个男人中的一个刚才在每个苹果上都咬了一口。
Passers-by, and even the scalpers, were instantly riveted. They gathered around and tossed out questions. But the two men just smiled and said nothing. They wanted to maintain the suspense as they prepared to take the iPhones and apples for a walk at Taikoo Li, a shopping center in the city’s trendy Sanlitun district.
过路的人，甚至那些黄牛，都立刻被吸引了。它们纷纷围过来，丢出各种问题。但是那两个男人微笑着，什么都没有说。他们想保持一份悬疑——他们准备在北京潮人地带三里屯的一家名叫太古里的购物中心，遛这两部苹果手机和那些苹果。It was all part of a performance artwork the two men, the artists Han Bing and Hui Li, planned to satirize consumers’ hunger for the newest iPhones and encourage reflection on urbanites’ addiction to smartphones in general, said Mr. Han, who came up with the idea.
这是艺术家韩冰和翚力的一个行为艺术作品。据设计出这个构想的韩冰说，这件作品是为了讽刺消费者对于最新iPhone的渴求，以及引发都市人对智能手机上瘾的反思。
But they were forced to abort their plan before they could even begin their apple walk. Members of the management staff at the shopping center approached and asked them to leave, setting off a squabble that soon turned into a vigorous debate between the staff members and bystanders defending the artists.
但是他们这次在还没开始遛苹果之前，就被迫放弃了计划。购物中心的管理人员走上前来，叫他们离开，引起了一场口角，并很快演变成了一场管理人员和支持这两位艺术家的旁观者之间的激辩。“Why should we leave?” Mr. Han asked.
“我们为什么要走？”韩冰问。“Just leave,” said a uniformed staff member. “What do you mean by placing these objects on the floor?”
“你们就走吧，”一位身穿制服的管理人员说。“你们把这些东西放地上什么意思？”“It’s a game,” Mr. Han answered.
“就是玩儿的，”韩冰回答道。“Then play the game somewhere else,” the staffer said.
“那上别处玩儿去，”那位管理人员说。“But this is public space,” Mr. Han said. “I can do whatever I want in here as long as I’m not blocking traffic or disturbing the peace. I don’t think I’d even be stopped if I did this in Tiananmen Square.”
“但是这里是公共区域，”韩冰说。“我在这儿做什么都可以，我又没有阻塞交通，又没有破坏社会秩序。我到天安门去遛都不会有人管我。”“Then go do it in Tiananmen Square and find out,” the staffer said.
“那你去天安门遛去试试吧，”管理人员说。“I never got stopped when I walked objects in other countries,” Mr. Han said.
“我在国外遛东西从来没有人阻止我，”韩冰说。“This is China,” countered the staffer, who later threatened to call the police.
“这是中国，”管理人员反驳道。他随后威胁报警。A group of bystanders intervened.
一群围观者加入了辩论。“What’s wrong with you?” one man asked the staffer. “They were just having fun. Everyone was orderly until you guys showed up. Look who’s causing the trouble.”
“你怎么回事啊？”一个男人问那位管理人员。“他们就是玩儿。你们来之前大家的秩序很好。所以你看看到底是谁在制造麻烦呢？”“It’s only art! It’s because of people like you that China has no imagination!” shouted a woman, as Apple personnel gathered near the entrance of the store and watched.
“他们就是搞艺术！就是因为有你们这样的人，中国才没有想象力！”一个女人喊道。苹果店员在店门口处聚集，围观这一场面。In the end, Mr. Han and Mr. Hui left. Dragging the leashed iPhones and apples, the two walked out of the shopping center, tailed by a group of management staff members and turning many heads.
最后，韩冰和翚力离开了。他们拖着iPhone和苹果走出了购物中心，一组管理人员尾随着他们，回头率甚高。“In this country, whenever you do something different, it becomes political,” Mr. Han said as he walked along the street.
“在这个国家就是，只要你做的和他们不一样，这就是政治，”韩冰在路上走时说道。According to the original plan, Mr. Han, who was walking the iPhones, was to have played the role of a “gaofushuai,” Chinese for “tall, rich and handsome.” The term is commonly used by young Chinese to refer to men who have it all, and presumably can easily afford the new iPhones. Mr. Hui, by contrast, was to drag the bitten apples in the role of a “diaosi,” a slang term for a loser. A diaosi can only afford actual apples, not the high-tech ones.
按照原本的计划，韩冰负责遛iPhone，演“高富帅”的角色。这个词常被中国的年轻人用来指代那些什么都有的男人，可以想见，他们也可以轻易买下新款iPhone。翚力则负责遛那些被咬过的苹果，演一个“屌丝”，一个指代人生输家的俚语词。屌丝只买得起真苹果，却买不起那些高科技的“苹果”。Mr. Han said the performance was intended to ridicule how Chinese people have embraced iPhones as status symbols, as if one could become a gaofushuai merely by having the newest model.
韩冰说，这件艺术作品也是讽刺中国人把iPhone当成身份的象征，好像买了最新的iPhone就能跻身高富帅行列。The iPhone craze has continued unabated in China since the smartphones’ third generation entered the mainland market in 2009.
中国的iPhone热潮在这款智能手机的第三代于2009年进入中国大陆市场后，就一直热度不减。Mr. Han said he also intended a commentary on people’s over-reliance on smartphones. They are never not attached to their phones, he said, just as he was while leashed to the iPhones.
韩冰说，他还想指出人们过度依赖智能手机的问题。他们无时无刻不和他们的手机在一起，他说，就像他牵着iPhone遛一样。“People take their iPhones with them wherever they go,” he said. “They communicate only through their phones, even when there are people face to face with them.”
“现在的人不管去哪儿都带着手机，”他说。“他们只用手机交流，哪怕有人面对面和他们在一起。”“The smartphones have become a bodily organ,” he said. “They have changed every single aspect of our lives, emotionally and mentally.”
“手机已经成了人的一个器官了，”他说。“它们改变了我们生活的每一个层面，情感的，认知的。”This was not the first time Mr. Han had walked something that does not walk on its own. He has been walking cabbages on a leash in public for more than a decade to explore people’s relationship to objects. “I’ve walked a lot of things — cabbages, bricks, even coal briquettes,” he said.
这不是韩冰第一次遛自己不会走的东西。他已经在街头遛白菜超过十年了，借此探索人与物的关系。“我遛过很多东西——白菜啊，砖头，还遛过煤球，”他说。In an earlier video interview he had said: “Now people are driving fancy cars like the BMW. They live with their cars every day. In some ways, it’s the same thing as my cabbage and I.”
在一个早些时候的视频采访中，他说：“很多人开宝马啊，豪车嘛，他们每天与这个车相依为命，其实某种意义上讲它和我和白菜是一个道理。”Sitting by the roadside after being forced out of the shopping center on Thursday, he elaborated.
在周四被迫从商场出来后，他坐在路边，继续阐释。“I’ve walked cabbages, and people say I’m insane,” he said. “But nobody says people are insane when they drive their cars.”
“我遛白菜，他们说我疯了，”他说。“但是他们开车，就没人说他们疯了。”“Like the people who stopped me just now. I walked my iPhones. That might be my daily, normal behavior. But my normal behavior is unacceptable to him,” he said of the shopping center management.
“像刚才那些不让我在那里的人。我遛iPhone，这是我的日常行为。但是我的日常行为是他不能接受的，”他说，指那些购物中心管理人员。Mr. Han paused and lowered his eyes. He said he had been emphasizing his freedom.
他停顿了一下，低下眼睛。他说他想强调的是自由。“But freedom is not the ultimate goal. Freedom itself is an empty concept. What we’ve been striving for is actually a sense of ease and comfortableness,” he said.
“但是自由本身并不是一个目标。自由它是一个虚无的概念。我们想要争取的其实是自然自在，”他说。“We only think of freedom when we are fettered, don’t we?”
“只有你身上有枷锁的时候，你才会想到自由，对吧？”