With ‘Smog Jog’ Through Beijing, Zuckerberg Stirs Debate on Air Pollution
By PAUL MOZUR

HONG KONG — A morning run can be the perfect way to overcome jet lag, but usually not when it’s through the choking haze of auto exhaust and industrial discharge.

In a Friday morning post, Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, announced his arrival in Beijing with a blithe message about what must have been a dizzying jog through the center of China’s capital, which has been suffering from a weeklong bout of hazardous air pollution.

“It’s great to be back in Beijing! I kicked off my visit with a run through Tiananmen Square, past the Forbidden City and over to the Temple of Heaven,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook, most likely using a virtual private network to get around the Chinese government Internet filters, which block his site.

In a photo accompanying the post, made about 10:30 a.m., Mr. Zuckerberg smiles alongside several running companions in front of the famous portrait of Mao Zedong that overlooks Tiananmen Square.

At 9 a.m. an air-quality monitor at the United States Embassy in Beijing calculated the level of PM2.5, ultrafine particles that damage respiration, at 305 micrograms per cubic meter. That level is deemed “hazardous” under American air-quality standards.

The color of the sky was the sort of gray hue that indicates a bad pollution day. The faint smell of something burning hung in the air. Many children on buses, or scooting to school with their parents or nannies, wore face masks. In homes and offices, air purifiers were cranked up to the highest setting.

The background for the photo of Mr. Zuckerberg’s run, directly in front of the Forbidden City at the center of Beijing, is normally public-relations friendly. But by ignoring the air quality, Mr. Zuckerberg inadvertently stirred an online debate about China’s major air pollution problems.

During the past two years, Mr. Zuckerberg has made several high-profile trips to China and has done little to stifle conjecture about his ambitions to bring Facebook to the country. During a visit by China’s Internet czar, Lu Wei, to Facebook’s campus in the United States in 2014, Mr. Zuckerberg showed off a copy of a collection of speeches and propaganda directives by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.

Mr. Zuckerberg has also been public with his personal project of learning Mandarin. In two recent trips to Beijing, Mr. Zuckerberg has spoken Chinese, the first time in an informal chat at China’s Tsinghua University and the second time in a more formal speech about his plans for Facebook.

On Facebook, responses to Mr. Zuckerberg’s run ran the gamut from mocking to genuinely concerned about his health.

One user, Christina Tan, sought to warn Mr. Zuckerberg: “Mark, don’t u see the air pollution? Stop running outside! Beijing is my home, but I’m not recommending you run outside.”

Although some noted he should have worn a face mask, others joked about his ability to access Facebook despite the Chinese government’s cracking down on ways to get around the so-called Great Firewall, which keeps Chinese users cordoned off from the wider Internet.

Others simply took umbrage with where the photo was staged, at the heart of Tiananmen Square.

“The floor you stepped has been covered by blood from students who fought for democracy. But, enjoy your running in China, Mark. :),” wrote a user named Cao Yuzhou.

On Twitter, that sentiment was reflected in an image in which Mr. Zuckerberg had been photoshopped in place of the famous “tank man” in front of a line of tanks from the 1989 military crackdown on the student-led protests in Tiananmen Square.

Within China, news of Mr. Zuckerberg’s run was quickly picked up by the tech media. On China’s Weibo, the microblogging service, Chinese users were as sarcastic as those on Facebook.

One named Bpxue wrote, “He climbed over the Great Fire Wall to breathe in smog. He’s trying too hard!”

Another wrote, “Shoot, he is running without a face mask, no wonder it’s called fei si bu ke,” a reference to a sarcastic nickname for Facebook in China that roughly translates to “must die” or “doomed.”

祖克柏北京慢跑 被虧「最貴吸塵器」

到大陸參加中國發展高層論壇的社群網站臉書（Facebook）創辦人祖克柏昨天在臉書上傳一張自己和五名友人在北京天安門前慢跑的照片，寫著：「回到北京太棒了」，還說自己沿途經過天安門和天壇。但昨天照片一傳出就被微博網友笑稱：「他是全世界最貴的吸塵器。」

根據照片，祖克柏和友人一起慢跑，經過紫禁城天安門入口懸掛的毛澤東遺像，後面是一片霧霾籠罩天空，而且祖克柏一行人都沒有戴口罩。

根據美國駐北京大使館的資料，北京昨天上午的細懸浮微粒（PM2.5）濃度每立方公尺超過三百毫克，是世界衛生組織公告最高標準的十二倍，建議「人人都應避免從事所有戶外活動。」

祖克柏經常上傳在旅行時慢跑的照片，這張照片卻遭到若干大陸網友嘲弄。

祖克柏一直在尋求臉書能進軍大陸，而臉書目前仍被大陸封鎖。

一名微網誌平台微博用戶說：「原來他是來大陸吸霧霾的嗎？」另一位澳洲華僑網友挖苦他說：「這個慢跑團裡共有六人，你有向大陸當局申請在街上慢跑嗎？如果沒有，這在大陸屬違法。」

澎湃新聞報導，祖克柏此次到訪大陸當然不只是為了感受在「重霾害環境下跑步」，據中國發展高層論壇二○一六年會日程顯示，祖克柏將在今天上午與阿里巴巴集團董事局主席馬雲圍繞「創新：引領發展的第一動力」的話題，進行一個小時的對話，雙方將針對虛擬實境（VR）技術深入交流。Facebook在虛擬實境有著不容小覷的實力，而阿里巴巴也在三月十七日成立實驗室。

此外，Uber創始人卡蘭尼克、聯想集團董事局主席柳傳志等八十多位世界五百強企業董事長或CEO都將出席本次論壇。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/19/world/asia/mark-zuckerberg-jogging-beijing-smog.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/china/20160318/c18chinazuckerberg/zh-hant/

2016-03-19．聯合報．A16．兩岸．記者孫淑瑜