Han Yu ordered a pig and a goat thrown into a crocodile-infested river in 819 AD, then read aloud a formal proclamation ordering the crocodiles to leave Chaozhou within seven days or face death by poisoned arrow.
公元八一九年,韩愈下令将一猪一羊投入一条鳄患严重的江中,随即当众宣读一篇祭文,勒令鳄鱼七日之内离开潮州,否则将以毒箭剿灭。
Han had arrived in Chaozhou only months earlier, exiled for criticising Emperor Xianzong’s veneration of a Buddhist relic. Instead of political intrigue, he found a river so plagued by crocodiles that it was known locally as Evil Creek, its waters blamed for devouring most of the livestock in the surrounding countryside.
韩愈抵达潮州不过数月,此前因谏阻唐宪宗迎奉佛骨而被贬至此。等待他的并非朝堂纷争,而是一条因鳄鱼为患、被当地人称作”恶溪”的江水,周边百姓的牲畜大多丧命于此。
According to the New History of the Tang Dynasty’s own biography of Han Yu, the crocodiles duly vanished not long after the proclamation, and the river’s waters shifted course westward soon afterward; locals renamed it the Han River in his honour, a name it still carries some twelve centuries later.
据《新唐书·韩愈传》记载,祭文宣读后不久,鳄患果然平息,江水随后也向西改道;当地百姓感念其功,将这条江更名为”韩江”,这一名字沿用至今,已逾十二个世纪。
A Coastline Built for the World’s Largest Wind Farm
一片足以承载全球最大风电场的海岸线
The waters off Chaozhou’s own coast, rather than its rivers, have since attracted a different kind of ambition; the city’s official development plan calls for a 43.3-gigawatt offshore wind farm sited between 75 and 185 kilometres out in the Taiwan Strait, an installed capacity that, if completed in full, would exceed the installed capacity of Norway’s entire power system.
如今,吸引着另一种雄心的,并非潮州的江河,而是其外海海域;该市官方发展规划提出建设一座装机容量达四十三点三吉瓦的海上风电场,选址位于台湾海峡外七十五至一百八十五公里处,若全部建成,其总装机容量将超过挪威全国电力系统的总装机容量。
The stretch of sea was chosen for winds strong and steady enough to achieve a projected capacity factor of 43–49 percent, well above the industry norm; the first concrete phase, three projects each rated at one gigawatt and collectively known as the Eastern Guangdong Offshore Wind Base, now sits within Chaozhou’s own nationally administered waters, part of a broader 14.3-gigawatt slate of offshore projects Guangdong province listed among its key construction priorities for 2025.
之所以选定这片海域,是因其风力强劲而稳定,预计容量因数可达百分之四十三至四十九,远高于行业平均水平;首批具体落地的项目——粤东海上风电基地4-1、4-2与4-3号项目,单个装机容量均为一百万千瓦,目前正位于潮州国管海域内推进,是广东省二零二五年重点建设项目中一份十四点三吉瓦海上风电清单的组成部分。
Mountains Just as Windy, Given Over to Tea Instead
同样多风的山地,却选择了种茶
Chaozhou’s own mountains catch much of that same wind, yet almost none of it has been harnessed there; Phoenix Mountain, rising to 1,497.8 metres at its main peak, is instead devoted to tea gardens holding more than 15,000 Dancong tea trees over a century old, some 4,600 of them over 200 years old, and a single tree, the Song Zhong, said to have survived for 600 years since the Southern Song dynasty.
潮州本身的山地同样承受着这股风力,却几乎未曾用于风力发电;主峰海拔一千四百九十七点八米的凤凰山,取而代之的是漫山遍野的茶园,园内现存单丛古茶树逾一万五千株、树龄超过百年,其中约四千六百株树龄逾两百年,更有一株宋种古茶树,相传自南宋以来存活至今已达六百年。
Each of those trees is still picked and processed separately, a practice dating to the Qing dynasty that gave the tea its name, Dancong, meaning single bush, an approach to the mountainside that trades the scale of a wind farm for the patience of a single ageing plant.
这些茶树至今仍遵循单株采摘、单株制作的传统,这一做法源自清代,也正是”单丛”这一茶名的由来——面对同一片山地,人们选择的不是风电场式的规模化,而是守候一株株老树,静待其年复一年地生长。
According to the city’s own 2024 economic communiqué, Chaozhou’s GDP reached ¥140.3 billion that year, up 3.7 percent, with per capita output at ¥54,441; the permanent population stood at 2.5774 million, up slightly on the year before, with an urbanisation rate of 65.35 percent.
据该市自身发布的二零二四年经济统计公报显示,当年潮州市GDP达一千四百零二点八三亿元,同比增长百分之三点七,人均产值为五万四千四百四十一元;常住人口为二百五十七点七四万人,较上年略有增长,城镇化率为百分之六十五点三五。
Getting to Chaozhou means a short flight into Jieyang Chaoshan International Airport, shared with neighbouring Jieyang and Shantou, or a high-speed rail journey along the Guangzhou-Shantou line that runs within sight of both the Han River and, further out to sea, the turbines now rising off the coast.
前往潮州,可乘飞机抵达与邻近的揭阳、汕头共用的揭阳潮汕国际机场,也可乘坐广汕高铁前往,沿线既可望见韩江,亦能远眺海面上正拔地而起的风力发电机组。
Palaeontologists who later identified fossils of an extinct crocodile species from this same river named it Hanyusuchus, after the man who once ordered its ancestors to leave. It was not Han Yu’s proclamation that doomed the species, but the centuries of drainage and farming that followed it; the name, however, remained.
后来,古生物学家在这条江中发现了一种已灭绝鳄鱼的化石,并以”韩愈鳄”为其命名,纪念这位当年下令驱逐其祖先的官员。真正令这一物种消亡的,与其说是韩愈当年的驱鳄祭文,不如说是此后数个世纪的排水造田;但这个名字,还是这样留存了下来。
