We Made A New Channel! · Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
夜行者频道首条视频讲述郑一嫂建立全球最大海盗集团的传奇故事，展现历史中的权力与人性。适合练习历史类词汇和叙事表达。
Today we're proud to present our new channel: Nightshift - Kurzgesagt After Dark For years we've wanted to make something new.
今天，我们非常自豪地为大家推出我们的新频道：“Nightshift – Kurzgesagt After Dark”。多年来，我们一直渴望创作一些全新的内容。
A place for the stories that keep us up at night.
一个用来讲述那些让我们夜不能寐的故事的地方。
So we finally did it.
我们终于成功了。
Here are the first 2 minutes of our first video.
这是我们第一个视频的前2分钟内容。
Flames light the sky over the Pearl River Delta as war junks swarm the banks of Sanshan, a fishing village in southern China.
火焰照亮了珠江三角洲上空的天空；与此同时，许多战舰涌向了中国南部一个渔村——三山的河岸。
It is 1809.
现在是1809年。
The attackers captain has promised ten silver coins for every villager's head.
袭击者的队长承诺：每杀死一个村民，就会奖励十枚银币。
By now, the villagers know it was a mistake not to pay the pirate confederation protection money.
到现在为止，村民们已经意识到：不向海盗联盟缴纳保护费确实是一个错误。
They have built a wooden palisade and armed every man between sixteen and sixty, but now everything goes wrong:
他们建造了一道木栅栏，并为所有年龄在十六至六十岁之间的男性配备了武器，然而现在一切都出了问题……
Their only cannon explodes in their faces and their leader gets stabbed in the back in the turmoil.
他们唯一的一门“大炮”在爆炸时直接炸到了他们自己身上；而在混乱中，他们的领袖还被从背后刺伤了。
One man makes a last stand from a rooftop, hurling dust onto the attackers, until they bring him down with spears.
一名男子在屋顶上进行最后的抵抗，向攻击者抛洒尘土；直到他们用长矛将他击倒。
The looting lasts three days.
抢劫行为持续了三天。
Two thousand are dead.
有两千人已经死亡。
And when the pirates finally sail away, they set the village on fire and leave eighty severed heads hanging from a banyan tree,
当海盗们最终扬帆离开时，他们放火烧毁了村庄，并将八十颗被砍下的头颅挂在榕树上。
staring blankly across the water as a warning.
茫然地凝视着水面，以此作为一种警告。
The southern Chinese coast is living in fear and no one comes to help.
中国南部沿海地区的人们生活在恐惧之中，却没有人前来帮助他们。
The Chinese empire, the largest and wealthiest state on Earth, can’t protect its people.
中国帝国曾是地球上最大、最富有的国家，但却无法保护自己的人民。
How?!
怎么可能？！
The Middle Kingdom Around 1800 China governs 300 to 400 million people, a third of the world's population,
大约在公元前1800年的中王国时期，中国统治着3亿到4亿人，占当时世界人口的三分之一。
and its economy is the largest on Earth.
其经济规模是地球上最大的。
While European powers fight over colonies and trade routes, Imperial China has been running the same operating system for over 2,000 years.
当欧洲列强为争夺殖民地和贸易路线而争斗时，中国帝国却一直沿用着相同的治理模式，这一模式已经持续了2000多年。
When their Western contemporaries were still hacking at each other with swords and hauling chests of gold, they had already invented gunpowder and used paper money.
当他们的西方同时代人还在用剑互相攻击、争夺金子时，他们早已发明了火药，并开始使用纸币。
Their compass helped Europeans “discover” already-inhabited lands and eventually led them back to China for tea and porcelain.
他们的指南针帮助欧洲人“发现了”那些早已有人居住的土地；最终，这些欧洲人又回到了中国，为了购买茶叶和瓷器。
China sees itself as the Middle Kingdom, the center of civilization, while everybody else are barbarians, slowly learning what it has known for centuries.
中国将自己视为“中央之国”——文明的中心；而其他所有人都被视为野蛮人，他们还在缓慢地学习中国几个世纪以来所掌握的知识。
The current dynasty running this ancient machine is the Qing, but to most people, they’re still outsiders.
目前统治这个古老国家的王朝是清朝，但对大多数人来说，清朝仍然属于“外来者”（即不属于这个国家的传统统治者）。
They’re Manchu, descendants of horse-riding warriors from the north who smashed through the Great Wall in 1644, realized the Chinese system was too sophisticated to replace,
他们是满族人，属于那些来自北方的骑马战士的后裔。1644年，他们攻破了长城，随后意识到中国的政治制度过于复杂，无法被他们所取代。
and simply kept it running with themselves in charge.
他们只是继续让这个系统运行下去，并由自己来负责管理它。
Imagine this realm as a gravitational field.
可以将这个领域想象成一个引力场。
At its center sits the emperor in Beijing, like a supermassive black hole, bending the fabric of society around him.
在北京，皇帝处于整个社会的中心位置；他就像一个超大质量的黑洞一样，扭曲着周围的社会结构（即社会运行的规则与秩序）。