好英语网从中国走向纽约：不锈钢栅栏成中产家装新风尚
On the residential streets of Flushing, Queens, and Sunset Park, Brooklyn, steel fences line almost every other house. They’re silver, sometimes embellished with gold, and they’re in striking contrast to the modest brick and vinyl-clad houses that they encircle, like a diamond necklace worn atop an old white T-shirt.
在皇后区法拉盛和布鲁克林日落公园的住宅区街道上，走几步就能见到一座安装了不锈钢栅栏的房子。栅栏是银色的，有时还点缀着金色，与它们身后环绕的那些砖砌和覆盖乙烯基壁板的不起眼房屋形成鲜明对比，就像穿白色旧T恤的人戴上一条钻石项链。
“If you have money to spare, you should always get the better option,” said Dilip Banerjee, gesturing toward his neighbors’ wrought iron fences and basking in the shine of his own steel fence, handrails, door and awning that cost him about $2,800 to add to his unassuming two-story house in Flushing.
“如果手头有余钱，你总会买更好的，”迪利普·班纳吉说，他指了指邻居的锻铁栅栏，对自家闪闪发光的钢制栅栏、扶手、门和遮阳篷十分满意。他花了大约2800美元，为自己在法拉盛一栋普普通通的两层房子添置了这些东西。
Like the white picket fence, long a symbol of the so-called American dream, the stainless steel fence embodies a similar sense of making it. But the steel fence is not muted or uniform; it twists and turns to the taste of the maker, personalized with various ornaments, including lotus flowers, “om” symbols and geometric patterns. At night, street lamps and car headlights exaggerate the glimmer of stainless steel that does not, cannot disappear into the darkness like wrought iron. Whereas some people might be turned off by the flashiness, standing out is exactly its point — the stainless steel fence is an undeniable signal that the homeowner has arrived.
长期以来，白色尖桩栅栏一直是所谓美国梦的象征，不锈钢栅栏也体现了类似的成就感。但钢栅栏并不柔和，也不统一；它会根据制作者的口味进行种种改变，用各种装饰品进行个性化处理，包括莲花、“om”符号和几何图案。在夜晚，路灯和车灯会放大不锈钢的光芒，它不会像锻铁那样消失在黑暗中。尽管有些人不喜欢这样的花哨，但引人注目正是它的意义所在——不锈钢栅栏是一个不可否认的信号，表明房主已经入住。
“It’s certainly a mark of middle class arrivals, especially for folks for whom this is their first home,” said Thomas Campanella, a historian of city planning and the urban built environment at Cornell University. “There is a status element to the stainless steel.”
“这当然是中产阶级到来的标志，尤其是第一次买房的人，”康奈尔大学研究城市规划和城市建筑环境的历史学家托马斯·坎帕内拉说。“不锈钢有一种表示地位的元素。”
The rise of these fences — commonly found on single-family houses but also surrounding restaurants, churches, doctors’ offices and more — parallels the growth of Asian Americans in New York. Last year, the city’s Office of Immigrant Affairs reported that Asians and Pacific Islanders are the city’s fastest growing racial group, increasing primarily by a surge in immigration. In 2010, there were more than 750,000 Asian and Pacific Islander immigrants in New York, and by 2019, that number grew to nearly 845,000. The city also found that more than half of those immigrants lived in Queens. Correspondingly, Mr. Campanella estimates that stainless steel fences started to take off in New York during the same time frame.
这些栅栏的流行——通常出现在独栋房屋周边，也出现在餐馆、教堂、医生办公室等建筑周围——与纽约亚裔美国人的增长同步。去年，纽约市移民事务办公室报告，亚裔和太平洋岛民是该市增长最快的种族群体，主要是由于移民激增。2010年，纽约有超过75万亚裔和太平洋岛民移民，到2019年，这一数字增加到近84.5万。该市还发现，这些移民中有一半以上住在皇后区。相应地，坎帕内拉估计，不锈钢栅栏也在同一时期开始在纽约兴起。
When his Hispanic neighbors moved and sold their houses to Chinese buyers, the fences started to spread, said Garibaldi Lind, a Puerto Rican resident who has lived in Sunset Park for decades. “There’s two down there,” he said, gesturing down 51st Street. “Up here, there’s three more.”
在日落公园居住了几十年的波多黎各居民加里波迪·林德说，当他的拉美裔邻居搬了家，把房子卖给中国买家时，这种栅栏开始蔓延。“那边有两家，”他指着51街说。“这里还有三个。”
But other homeowners have also embraced the style of fence. “Throughout Queens Village and Richmond Hill, if you see a fence like this, it’s typically a West Indian household,” said Farida Gulmohamad, a Guyanese real estate agent.
但其他房主也接受了这种栅栏的风格。“在整个皇后区和里士满山，如果你看到这样的栅栏，那通常是西印度群岛的家庭，”圭亚那房地产经纪人法里达·古穆罕默德说。
“It is our status symbol,” she added.
“它是我们地位的象征，”她还说。
They’re not to everyone’s liking. “I’m not a fan myself. They’re unavoidable, but they’re a strange thing where they’re too shiny or they call too much attention to themselves,” said Rafael Herrin-Ferri, the photographer behind the book “All the Queens Houses.” “They have a very tawdry quality about them. There’s a lot of tawdry, cheap stuff in Queens, but they don’t blend or complement any of the other stuff.”
并不是所有人都喜欢它们。“我自己也不怎么喜欢。到处都是，但它们是一种奇怪的东西，太闪亮了，或者说太引人注目了，”《皇后区房屋》(All the Queens Houses)一书的摄影师拉斐尔·赫林-费里说。“它们有一种花里胡哨的特质。皇后区也有很多俗气、廉价的东西，但是它们跟其它任何东西都无法融合或互补。”
Still, for all their fanciness and gaudiness, the fences are also practical, requiring low maintenance compared to iron fences with peeling paint. Newly renovated houses for sale are dressed up from head to toe (or more aptly, awning to gate) in glittering steel.
不过，这些栅栏尽管花哨，却也很实用，与油漆剥落的铁栅栏相比，它们需要的维护费用很低。如今，新装修的待售房屋从头到脚（或者更确切地说，从遮阳篷到大门）都用闪闪发光的不锈钢装点着。
Priya Kandhai, a real estate agent in Queens who frequently has listings in the Ozone Park and Jamaica neighborhoods, said, “South Asians and East Asians seem to gravitate more toward stainless steel because it looks nicer.”
皇后区的房地产经纪人普里亚·坎海经常在臭氧公园和牙买加社区挂牌营业，她说：“南亚人和东亚人似乎更喜欢不锈钢，因为样子更好看。”
She said when she shows her clients houses with steel fencing and awnings, they feel that the house is more valuable and modern, similar to a kitchen having a stainless steel fridge instead of a white plastic one.
她说，当她向客户展示带有不锈钢栅栏和遮阳篷的房子时，他们会觉得这栋房子更有价值，更现代，就像厨房里有一个不锈钢冰箱，而不是白色塑料冰箱一样。
A Love for Stainless Steel Across Continents
跨越大洲的不锈钢之爱
The story of stainless steel goes back several decades.
不锈钢的历史可以追溯到几十年前。
It was first invented in 1913 in the United Kingdom. It started to be adopted en masse in China in the 1980s and 1990s, according to Tim Collins, secretary-general of the World Stainless Association, a nonprofit research organization based in Brussels.
它于1913年在英国发明。总部位于布鲁塞尔的非营利研究机构世界不锈钢协会秘书长蒂姆·柯林斯说，上世纪八九十年代，中国开始大量采用不锈钢。
In recent years, “stainless steel has become more widely understood as a material with longevity associated with it,” Mr. Collins said. “The ability to produce it and form it into interesting shapes and have symbolic features from people’s home countries has been a more recent revolution.” In comparison, wrought iron is much harder to customize, he added.
近年来，“不锈钢被更普遍地视为一种耐久的材料，”柯林斯说。“生产不锈钢，将其塑造成有趣的形状，并且加入人们故乡的标志性特征，这是最近出现的一场革命。”他还说，相比之下，定制铸铁的难度要大得多。
The popularity of stainless steel fences could be attributed to “people wanting to remember their heritage but also embrace a modern-looking material,” Mr. Collins said.
柯林斯说，不锈钢栅栏的流行可能是因为“人们想要记住自己的传统，但也喜欢一种具有现代外观的材料”。
Wu Wei, an associate professor at Nanjing University’s school of architecture and urban planning, said that many private stainless steel companies formed in the late 1990s and early 2000s in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces of China. “They made a lot of household products,” said Ms. Wu, who remembered the first stainless-steel product in her home was a vegetable washing basin. In the ’90s, stainless steel products were considered valuable, but today, they’re “everywhere and everyone can have it, and sometimes you have to use it now,” she said.
南京大学建筑与城市规划学院副教授吴蔚表示，1990年代末、2000年代初，中国江浙两省出现了许多私营不锈钢企业。“他们做了很多家用产品，”吴蔚说，她记得家里的第一件不锈钢产品是一个洗菜盆。在90年代，人们认为不锈钢产品很有价值，但今天，它们“无处不在，每个人都可以拥有，现在有时候也只能使用它”，她说。
According to Ms. Wu, the ornate design of the fences could stem from the Chinese tradition of including lucky patterns on everyday objects. She said that Chinese characters (such as “fu” which means lucky), the white crane which stands for longevity, flowers which stand for blossoming and other auspicious symbols can be commonly found “in traditional vernacular dwelling in China.” For the wealthy, Ms. Wu said, these symbolic designs became the aesthetic of choice.
据吴蔚说，栅栏的华丽设计可能源自中国在日常用品上加入吉祥图案的传统。她说，一些汉字（如寓意幸福的“福”）、代表长寿的白鹤、代表繁荣的鲜花以及其他吉祥符号在“中国传统民居”中随处可见。吴蔚说，对富人来说，这些象征性的设计成了首选审美。
Chinese people immigrating to the United States in recent years brought with them this affinity for stainless steel. And as steel-fence fabrication shops started to crop up in Queens and Brooklyn, New Yorkers of all backgrounds started to install these fences as well.
近年来移民到美国的中国人也带来了对不锈钢的执着偏爱。随着不锈钢栅栏制造商店开始在皇后区和布鲁克林出现，各种背景的纽约人也开始安装这些栅栏。
Mr. Banerjee, 77, who emigrated from Kolkata, India, in the 1970s, said he always aspired for more. “My parents never drove a good car, but I have a Mercedes,” he said on a recent spring afternoon, standing at the top of his doorsteps adorned with stainless steel railings.
77岁的班纳吉于1970年代从印度加尔各答移民到美国，他说自己一直渴望拥有更多东西。“我父母从没开过一辆好车，但我有一辆奔驰，”不久前一个春天的下午，他站在用不锈钢栏杆装饰的家门口说。
One of his first jobs was working in a jute mill in India. When he first came to New York, he crashed at various friends’ apartments. He started applying for jobs he saw advertised in the newspaper, and he eventually got hired as an engineer at a firm.
他的第一份工作是在印度一家黄麻厂工作。他刚到纽约时借住过许多朋友的公寓。他开始申请在报纸的广告上看到的工作，最终被一家公司聘为工程师。
After getting settled in 1998, Mr. Banerjee bought the house he now lives in, and over the years, he painstakingly renovated every bit of it, making it fit the vision he had — the carpets, the windows, the garage and, of course, the fence were all swapped out. “The fence protects it all. It’s growing in value,” he said proudly.
1998年定居下来后，班纳吉买下了他现在住的房子，多年来，他煞费苦心地翻修每一个角落，使其符合他的设想——地毯、窗户、车库，当然，还有栅栏，全都换成了新的。“栅栏保护着一切。它是升值的，”他自豪地说。