帶信鴿坐高鐵，兩名男子在賽鳥中作弊獲刑

BEIJING — If you ever try to cheat in a pigeon race, just remember this: Bullet trains travel much faster than homing pigeons.

北京——如果你曾試圖在信鴿比賽中作弊，請記住這一點：高鐵列車遠遠快于信鴿。

Two men who tried to rig a bird race in China — and claim $160,000 in prize money — have learned that lesson the hard way. Both have been convicted of criminal fraud. Their pigeons did not survive.

中國的兩名男子在慘痛的教訓中學到了這一課——為了16萬美元的獎金，他們試圖在一場賽鳥中作弊。兩人都被判詐騙罪。他們的鴿子也沒有活下來。

Homing pigeon races are a sport dating back at least to the 1800s. The pigeons are raised in lofts, then taken hundreds of miles away and released. The first pigeon to fly home to its loft wins.

信鴿比賽是一項至少可以追溯到19世紀的運動。鴿子被養(yǎng)在鴿籠里，然后被帶到幾百英里以外的地方放飛。第一只飛回鴿籠的鴿子贏得比賽。

Pigeons have been clocked at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour for short stretches, and more than 80 miles an hour for hundreds of miles. Their speed and endurance have made it hard for people to cheat, even by smuggling a racing pigeon by car to a finish line.

鴿子在短距離內(nèi)的飛行速度能超過每小時100英里(約合160公里)，能以每小時超過80英里(約合130公里)的速度飛行數(shù)百英里。它們的速度和耐力使得人們很難作弊，哪怕用汽車將賽鴿偷偷帶到終點線也不可行。

But China, where pigeon-racing remains popular, has been feverishly building a high-speed rail network, with trains that can travel at nearly 200 miles an hour.

但在信鴿比賽仍然很受歡迎的中國，政府一直在狂熱地建設(shè)高速鐵路網(wǎng)，列車時速可達近200英里(約合320公里)。

A Shanghai court announced this week that it had convicted two men of using fraud to win the Shanghai Pigeon Association’s annual Grand Prix. The court sentenced each man to three years in prison, but suspended the sentences so that they only have to report to a jail if convicted in another crime.

本周，上海一家法院宣布給兩名男子定罪，他們利用欺詐手段贏得了上海市信鴿協(xié)會的年度大獎賽。法庭判兩人各三年徒刑，但緩期執(zhí)行。只有他們再被判一項罪名成立，才需要向監(jiān)獄報告。

The case was first reported by the Legal Daily, an official government publication.

官方出版物《法制日報》率先報道了這起案件。

The rules of the Grand Prix call for pigeons to be raised in a Shanghai pigeon loft until the age of 1. For the race, the yearling birds are released from Shangqiu in Henan Province, which is 462 miles northwest of Shanghai by road, or 405 miles as the pigeon flies.

信鴿大獎賽的規(guī)則要求鴿子在上海的鴿舍里養(yǎng)到一歲。在這次比賽中，這些一歲大的鳥從河南商丘放飛。商丘位于上海西北，公路距離462英里(約合745公里)，鴿子飛行的距離是405英里(約合650公里)。

The two men came up with a scheme almost rivaling Mark Twain’s famous short story of a rigged animal race in Northern California, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” But the pigeon plot did not work.

這兩個人想出了一個幾乎可以與馬克·吐溫著名的短篇小說《卡縣名蛙》(The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County)相媲美的計策。但是這一鴿子計謀沒有得逞。

The essence of the plan involved training the pigeons to believe they had two homes. The birds had been secretly raised not just in Shanghai but also in Shangqiu.

這個計劃的重點是訓練鴿子，使它們相信自己有兩個家。這些鴿子在上海和商丘兩地被秘密飼養(yǎng)。

When the race was held in the spring of last year, the Shanghai Pigeon Association took all the entrants from Shanghai to Shangqiu and released them. Most of the pigeons started flying back to Shanghai.

當去年春天舉行比賽的時候，上海鴿子協(xié)會把所有的參賽鴿子從上海帶到商丘放飛。大多數(shù)鴿子開始飛回上海。

But the four specially raised pigeons flew instead to their second home in Shangqiu. According to the court, the two men caught the birds there and then carried them on a bullet train back to Shanghai, concealed in milk cartons. (China prohibits live animals on bullet trains.)

但這四只經(jīng)過特別飼養(yǎng)的鴿子卻飛回了商丘的第二個家。法庭認為，兩名男子在那里抓住這些鴿子，然后把它們藏在牛奶盒里，用高鐵運回了上海(中國禁止把活體動物帶上高鐵)。

When the men arrived in Shanghai, they released the pigeons, which quickly fluttered to their Shanghai loft, seemingly winning the race. But then the trouble started.

當這兩人到達上海時，他們放飛了鴿子。鴿子迅速地飛到它們在上海的鴿籠，似乎贏得了比賽。但之后麻煩開始了。

The men had released the birds too soon, shattering records for the race. Driving from Shangqiu to Shanghai, a distance roughly equal to New York City to Raleigh, N.C., takes nearly eight hours, and racing pigeons usually take almost as long. But the bullet train takes as little as three hours and 18 minutes.

這兩人過早地放飛了這些鳥，打破了比賽紀錄。從商丘開車到上海，距離大約相當于紐約到北卡羅來納州的羅利。賽鴿通常需要飛差不多8個小時的時間。但是高鐵只需3小時18分鐘。

Other pigeon racers cried foul. The result seemed like an avian echo of Rosie Ruiz’s famous victory in the Boston Marathon nearly 40 years ago, which was invalidated after evidence emerged indicating that she had run only part of the race.

其他的賽鴿手直喊犯規(guī)。這一結(jié)果似乎與羅茜·魯伊斯(Rosie Ruiz)近40年前在波士頓馬拉松賽(Boston Marathon)上的著名勝利如出一轍。在有證據(jù)表明她只跑了一部分賽程后，她的冠軍頭銜被取消。

Shi Bin, a lawyer at Shanghai Runshen law firm who represented both men, said that the court had shown lenience in suspending the sentences because his clients had turned themselves in and confessed as soon as other pigeon racers challenged the result, and before the police opened a formal investigation.

代表兩人的上海潤申律師事務所律師石彬表示，法院在判處緩期執(zhí)行判決時表現(xiàn)得很寬容，因為他的客戶在其他參賽者質(zhì)疑判決結(jié)果，警方展開正式調(diào)查之前就自首了。

According to the Shanghai court, the two men destroyed the evidence, smashing the pigeons against the ground to kill them. But then they did make one good decision: They decided not to collect the prize money for the top finishers in the race.

上海的法院稱，這兩人毀滅了證據(jù)，把鴿子們摔死在地上。但接著他們也做了一個好決定：他們決定不領(lǐng)比賽給冠軍的獎金。

If they had accepted the money, the court said, the fraud would have qualified as a much more serious crime, and both men would have been liable to spend more than a decade in jail.

法院表示，如果他們接受了這筆錢，這種欺詐行為就會被認定為一種嚴重得多的犯罪，兩人可能都要在監(jiān)獄里關(guān)10年以上。