全亚洲最干净的村庄究竟在哪里？.

　　In eastern India’s Mawlynnong village, tidying up is a ritual that everyone – from tiny toddlers to toothless grannies – takes very seriously. This small, 600-odd person town in the Meghalaya region is renowned as the cleanest village in India.

　　在印度东部村庄Mawlynnong，保持卫生是人人都认真奉行的习惯，无论是蹒跚学步的孩子还是耄耋老人都不例外。位于梅加拉亚邦的这个600多人的小村庄以印度最干净的村庄而闻名于世。

　　And for India, that’s really saying something. Discarded bottles and crumpled food wrappers mixed with cow dung – and worse – are simply part of the topography in most of the country. So much so that prime minister Shri Narendra Modi launched the ambitious “Clean India Mission” (Swachh Bharat Abhiyan) in October 2014 with a goal of drastically sprucing up the country’s major cities by Mahatma Gandhi’s 150 birthday in 2019.

　　对印度而言，这的确值得大书特书。在印度大部分地区，司空见惯的是丢弃的瓶子和皱巴巴的食品包装纸，还有混杂着的牛粪，情况甚至会更糟。正因为如此，印度总理莫迪才于2014年10月发起一项雄心勃勃的“清洁印度”计划，旨在到2019年甘地150周年诞辰纪念日时，让印度各大城市的面貌焕然一新。

　　Mawlynnong is already way ahead of the curve, though. It was declared the cleanest village in Asia in 2003 and the cleanest in India in 2005 by Discover India magazine. More recently, Modi acknowledged Mawlynnong as the cleanest village in Meghalaya and a model for the rest of the county in a 2015 radio address. In May 2016 he highlighted it as “Asia’s cleanest village” in a celebration of the government’s successes (including the Clean India programme).

　　而在这次清洁浪潮中，Mawlynnong已经一马当先。在印度《发现》杂志的评选中，该村庄被评为 2003年亚洲最干净的村庄和2005年印度最干净的村庄。最近，在2015年的一次广播讲话中，莫迪将Mawlynnong称为梅加拉亚邦最干净的村庄和全国卫生典范。2016年5月，在一次政府庆祝活动(包括印度清洁计划)中，莫迪强调，Mawlynnong是“亚洲最干净的村庄”。

　　This claim to fame stuck, and the village has become a regional legend and source of pride. Walk in, and all the typical rubbish is mysteriously, miraculously absent.

　　走进村庄，所有的常见垃圾都踪迹全无，令人不可思议。

　　So how do you get a community to become a model of cleanliness and sanitation in a country where this has long been a problem? The answer, it seems, is to start them young.

　　那么，在一个长期存在卫生问题的国家，怎样才能让社区成为清洁卫生的典范呢?答案似乎是，卫生要从娃娃抓起。

　　Eleven-year-old Deity Bakordor starts her day around 6:30 am. Her chore, shared with all the village kids, is the beautification of the town. Teasel brooms in hand, the children storm the streets, sweeping up dead leaves and garbage bore school. The children are also responsible for emptying the rubbish bins – which are surprisingly pretty, hand-woven, cone-shaped baskets scattered throughout town – and separating organic waste from burnable trash. Leaves and other biodegradable waste are buried (and eventually used as fertilizer); everything else is driven far from the village and burned. There are also dedicated town gardeners who maintain riots of public plants and flowers that line the footpaths, making a walk here incredibly pleasant.

　　11 岁的Deity Bakordor在每天早晨的6:30开始新的一天。与村子里其他孩子一样，美化村庄也是她要从事的日常事务。上学前，孩子们会用起绒草做的扫帚清扫街道上的落叶和垃圾。孩子们还要负责倒空垃圾箱。垃圾箱为手工编织的锥形篮筐，在村庄各处星罗棋布，漂亮得出乎意料。孩子们会将有机垃圾与可燃垃圾分开。树叶和其他生物可降解垃圾被埋起来(最终作为化肥使用);其他垃圾则被拉到离村庄很远的地方烧掉。另外，村子里还有专门的园丁负责维护步道两边的公共花草树木，使得在这里散步令人格外愉悦。

　　I asked Bakordor if she was happy to live in such a clean place. She nodded, shyly. And what if a visitor dropped rubbish on the ground, what would she do? She replied that she wouldn’t say anything to the visitor directly. But she’d pick it up.

　　我问Bakordor，她是否愿意生活在这样一个干净的地方。她害羞地点头。我又问，如果有游客在地上丢垃圾，她会怎么做呢?她回答，她不会直接对游客说什么，但她会将垃圾捡起来。

　　Bakordor explained that in Mawlynnong, there’s normal daily cleaning for children and adults, then extra on Saturdays when the village leader assigns out “social work” to be completed for the good of the town. For her, that might mean helping clean her school. It’s an impressive system, but even more impressive is that this is the norm. Cleanliness is deeply ingrained into living a good life here; it’s just what you do.

　　Bakordor 说，在Mawlynnong，孩子们和大人都要参加日常清洁工作，每逢周六，村子领导人还要分配为村子公益而完成的“社会工作”。对她而言，就是帮助打扫自己的学校。这种体系令人印象深刻，尤其是这已成为村里的规范。维护清洁卫生在这里的良好生活中深入人心;这里的人们就是这样做的。

　　I peeked at the family’s pristine outdoor cooking area to see the fruit of these labours, and Bakordor’s grandmother, Hosana, held aside the curtain that leads to their two-room home. Sure enough, each area was immaculate: the floors freshly swept, the dishware sparkling, bedding folded.

　　我悄悄观察这家人的户外烹饪区，想看看他们的劳动成果，Bakordor的祖母Hosana将通往他们两居室住处的帘子掀开。当然，到处都完美无瑕，地板干净，餐具闪闪发光，床铺叠得整整整齐齐。

　　So where did this sanitation routine come from? No one knows for sure, but, according to my guide Shishir Adhikari, it likely stemmed from an outbreak of cholera more than 130 years ago, and cleanliness was encouraged to control its spread. Early Christian missionaries probably helped implement and encourage the practice too.

　　那么，这种讲究卫生的习惯从何而来呢?没有人确切知道，但据我的向导 Shishir Adhikari 所言，它来自130多年前爆发的霍乱，当时鼓励通过加强卫生控制霍乱的传播。早期的基督教传教士可能也帮助实施和鼓励了这种做法。

　　The villagers are also of the Khasi people, a traditionally matrilineal society. Perhaps, with women in dominant roles in society, keeping the home and environment orderly also takes on a greater role, Adhikari and I speculated.

　　村民们为卡西族，这是一个传统的母系社会。Adhikari和我都推测，也许在女性发挥主导的社会，家庭和环境都会井井有条，这也起到很大的作用。

　　“We are Christians from more than 100 years back, and cleaning is learned from our elders,” said housewife Sara Kharrymba. “We pass on these skills, from me to my children, from them to their children.”

　　家庭主妇Sara Kharrymba表示，“100多年前我们的先辈都是基督徒，我们从老人那里学会讲究卫生。我们将这种技能传给孩子，从他们再传给下一代。”

　　In other words, this isn’t habit, it’s a long-time tradition. Kharrymba’s own day begins by cleaning their entire compound, she said.

　　换言之，讲究卫生并不是一种习惯，而是一种长期传统。她说，Kharrymba的一天从打扫整个住所开始。

　　While we chatted, she smiled at her six-year-old daughter, Sanjanai, who was swinging gleully on a swing made of ltover plastic bags. The question of what to do with plastic garbage is still a big one, as burning it is toxic. Often the materials are reused, with containers repurposed as planters and bags turned into swings.

　　在我们聊天时，她笑着望向六岁的女儿Sanjanai——她正在废塑料袋制作的秋千上欢快地荡着。塑料垃圾该怎样处理依然是个大问题，因为燃烧塑料袋是有毒的。材料往往被重复利用，废旧容器会被用作花盆，废塑料袋会被制成秋千。

　　“My kids know it’s different here,” Kharrymba said.

　　Kharrymba 说，“我的孩子知道这里和别处不同。”

　　Her children haven’t been outside the village yet, she added, but “sometimes guests stay here, and they talk.” She described how every home in the village has a toilet (another major goal of the Clean India programme), and how good her children are at following the rules for hygiene.She paused, staring out at the small pond on her property, whose water looked crystal clear. “I am very proud to live here,” she said.

　　她补充说，她的孩子还没有出过村子，但“有时候到访的客人会讲起外面的情况。”她还说，村里家家都有厕所，她的孩子们都有良好的卫生习惯。她停下来，凝望着屋外的小池塘，那里的水清澈透明。她说，“我为在这里生活感到自豪。”