双11购物狂欢挑战中国物流业极限
Alibaba and Others Push to Improve Delivery, on Singles’ Day in China
双11购物狂欢挑战中国物流业极限
HANGZHOU, China — It’s the biggest shopping day of the year in China and the discounts are steep. But Jiang Shan waited to buy some of what she wants.
中国杭州——这是一年之中中国最大的购物日，折扣相当可观。但姜闪并没有急着购买自己想要的一些东西。
On Tuesday, tens of millions of Chinese like Ms. Jiang bought more than $9 billion worth of products online in honor of Singles’ Day, China’s de facto e-commerce holiday, and the world’s largest Internet shopping event. But buying is one thing. Delivery is another.
周二，为了庆祝“光棍节”，上千万中国人在网上购买了价值超过90亿美元的商品。这一天实际上已经成为了中国电商的节日，也是世界上最大的网购狂欢。不过，购物是一回事，配送则是另一回事。
Ms. Jiang, who owns a bakery in the western Chinese city of Urumqi, spent 2,000 renminbi on a water purifier and kitchen supplies, and would have spent even more, she said, were she confident the products she ordered would get to her quickly and undamaged.
姜闪在中国西部的乌鲁木齐市经营着一家烘培店。她花2000元在网上购买了一台净水器和一些厨房用品。她说，要不是担心自己的订单无法快速无损地送达，她还会花更多的钱。
“I tend not to buy things on Singles’ Day because the logistics just worry me too much,” she said. “If I get the stuff I ordered this year in 10 to 15 days I’ll be happy.”
“我一般不在光棍节网购，因为太担心物流了，”她说。“如果今年我买的东西10到15天能送到，我就很高兴了。”
China has caught the e-commerce bug. An underdeveloped retail sector and a flourishing network of online merchants offering huge selections at cheap prices has led the Chinese to look to the web first to buy everything from shoes and ovens to toilet paper and toothbrushes.
中国人热衷网购。由于零售业尚不发达，加上以较低价格提供大量购物选择的电商网络的蓬勃兴起，互联网成为了中国人购物的第一选择。他们在网上购买所有商品，从鞋子、炉灶，到卫生纸和牙刷。
The Chinese e-commerce market is already bigger than the United States, and by 2020, is projected to be the size of the United States, Britain, Germany, Japan and France combined, according to a KPMG report.
根据毕马威(KPMG)的一份报告，中国电子商务市场的规模已超过美国，预计2020年将达到美国、英国、德国、日本和法国电商市场规模的总和。
But the country struggles with delivery, largely because of decades of underinvestment in inland logistics infrastructure and inefficient local regulation. Goods are slow to arrive in the interior of the country, and damage is a persistent problem — affecting both consumers and small businesses.
不过，订单配送却让中国不堪重负。这主要是因为，几十年来中国内陆物流基础设施一直投资不足，而且地方监管效率低下。内陆地区的送货速度缓慢，商品损坏的问题也长期存在——消费者和小企业都会因此而蒙受损失。
“Imagine having 30 N.B.A. teams but only a few high school gyms to play in — that was China’s logistics infrastructure when e-commerce took off,” said Shen Haoyu, chief executive of the Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com’s business-to-consumer website.
“想象一下，有30支NBA球队，但只有几所中学体育馆供他们使用——这就是电子商务迅速发展之后，中国物流基础设施的现状，”中国电商巨头京东旗下的B2C网站首席执行官沈皓瑜说。
Deliveries within China are so inefficient that the country spent 18 percent of its gross domestic product on logistics in the 2013, 6.5 percent above the global average and 9.5 percent above developed countries like the United States, said Fox Chu, director of Asia Pacific infrastructure and transportation at the consulting firm Accenture.
咨询公司埃森哲(Accenture)的亚太基础设施与交通运输业总监朱景丰(Fox Chu)称，中国国内的商品配送效率低下，以致于2013年中国18%的GDP都花在了物流上，比国际平均水平高了6.5个百分点，比美国等发达国家高了9.5个百分点。
“Shipping goods from Fujian to Beijing can be more expensive than shipping something from Beijing to California,” he said, referring to the roughly 1,200 mile trip between the southern Chinese province and the country’s capital.
“把商品从福建运到北京，要比从北京运到加州还贵，”他说。福建省位于中国南部，到北京约有2000公里的路程。
Recently, both Alibaba, China’s main e-commerce company, and its smaller rival, JD.com, have tried to make things more efficient, especially inland.
近段时间以来，中国大型电商集团阿里巴巴和规模较小的竞争对手京东，都在努力让物流更迅捷，尤其是在中国内陆。
Alibaba has pledged to invest 100 billion renminbi ($16.3 billion) in an initiative to link up third-party companies that deliver its shipments. The idea is to form an alliance that uses Alibaba’s consumer and shipment data to better anticipate orders and make delivery more efficient.
阿里巴巴已经宣布，将投资1000亿元人民币(约合163亿美元)，让配送货物的第三方公司联系起来。阿里巴巴的设想是利用消费者和快递数据组建一个联盟，从而更好地为订单做预判，让配送更迅捷。
JD.com, on the other hand, is building its own warehouses and shipping its own goods. Currently, the company can manage same-day deliveries in 100 cities and next-day deliveries in 600 others, said Mr. Shen, the JD.com executive.
另一方面，京东高管沈皓瑜则表示，公司正在建设自己的仓库，从而为旗下的商品提供配送服务。目前，京东可以在100个城市实现当日送达，在另外600个城市实现次日送达。
As with most things in China, the state of logistics can be broken down by geography and wealth. In the largest and most affluent cities on the country’s eastern coast, just about anything can be delivered within a day.
就像中国的许多事情一样，物流的效率因为地理和经济状况的不同而有天壤之别。在东部沿海的最富裕的大城市，几乎所有快递都可以在一天之内送达。
Zhang Rui, an information technology salesman who lives in Beijing, doesn’t even buy small daily necessities at stores anymore.
在北京居住的张睿是一名IT销售人员，如今，就连小的日常用品他也不在实体店购买了。
“Just about anything I need at home I buy online, whether it’s groceries, toilet paper, rice, cooking oil, salt, a toothbrush or shampoo,” he said.
“我在家需要的所有东西都在网上买，生鲜食品、卫生纸、大米、油、盐、牙刷，还有洗发水，”他说。
For Ms. Jiang, living inland, it’s another story. She recalled when a courier refused to help her carry a heavy parcel up the stairs to her apartment. Some won’t wait for her to open the package to ensure the goods she ordered are all there and undamaged. Her friends who live on the east coast and use Alibaba question how she survives out west.
对于住在内陆城市的姜闪来说，情况则完全不同。她记得有一次，快递员拒绝帮她把一个大包裹搬到楼上的家中。有些快递员甚至不会等她打开包裹并确保商品完好无损就离开。她的一些朋友住在东部沿海地区，并在阿里巴巴的网站购物。他们对姜闪在西部城市的这些遭遇感到不可思议。
“When the package comes, I don’t expect it to be pretty,” she said. “Even if there’s a few scratches on something I don’t care anymore.”
“包裹到的时候，我并不指望它完好无损，”她说。“就算有些东西上有几道划痕，我也不在乎了。”
Safety has also become an issue. In late 2013 one person was killed and seven hospitalized after a toxic liquid sent by a chemical company leaked onto other parcels being delivered. In 2012 a China Southern Airlines plane caught fire when weatherproof matches left inside a parcel ignited.
安全也成为了问题。2013年末，一家化学品公司委托运输的有毒液体泄露到了同时运送的其他包裹里，导致1人死亡，7人入院。2012年，中国南方航空公司的一架飞机起火，原因是遗留在一个包裹内的耐风火柴发生了自燃。
China’s delivery problems are highlighted on Singles’ Day, which was originally conceived as a way for the unmarried of China to shop away their loneliness. Beginning on Tuesday night, items from the 278.5 million orders placed on Singles’ Day at Alibaba’s e-commerce sites will be shipped, largely by truck, across a land mass the size of the United States and crisscrossed by dizzying mountain ranges.
中国的配送问题在“光棍节”得到了突显。这个节日起初是用来让中国的单身人士通过购物来排遣孤独。从周二夜间开始，消费者在光棍节期间在阿里巴巴的电子商务网站上下的2.785亿个订单将开始发货，运输工具主要是卡车。这些货物将穿过一片与美国大小相当的山峦遍布的陆地。
The trucks will shuttle the packages from warehouses to smaller distribution centers, paying costly tolls and running into traffic jams along the way. After dropping off the goods, many vehicles can’t bring packages back because of convoluted local regulations.
卡车将把包裹从仓库运送到规模较小的配送中心，支付昂贵的通行费，并加入沿路的堵车队伍。在卸下物资之后，因为令人费解的地方监管规定，许多车辆都不能再把包裹带回去。
From the distribution centers, equipped only with shelving to hold the deluge of packages, hundreds of thousands of deliverymen will begin the slow process of bringing each parcel to recipients spread out across distant Himalayan hamlets, eastern Chinese megacities and jungle towns on the South China Sea.
配送中心只有一些用来放置大量包裹的架子。从那里开始，大批大批的送货员将开始把每个包裹送到收件人手中的缓慢过程。这些收件人遍布在中国各地，从偏远的喜马拉雅小村庄，到中国东部的大都市，再到南海的丛林小镇。
Part of Alibaba’s plan to improve things is to establish warehouses at critical choke points to help streamline deliveries. “China is too big, so we cannot buy a lot of land for warehouses,” said Alibaba’s chief operating officer, Daniel Zhang. “Instead, we will choose key areas, very strategic locations where resources are quite limited.”
为了改善目前的局面，阿里巴巴打算在关键的瓶颈处建立仓库，以提高配送效率。“中国太大了，我们没法买下大片土地来建仓库，”阿里巴巴首席运营官张勇表示。“相反，我们会选择一些关键地区、一些资源十分有限而具有重要战略意义的地点。”
The company will share the new warehouse space with logistics partners like YTO Express.
公司将与圆通速递等物流合作伙伴共享新仓库。
As an early partner of Alibaba, YTO grew huge by delivering the millions, and then billions, of goods ordered on the company’s e-commerce sites. Last year, just 13 years after it was founded, YTO’s 130,000 employees filled 1.5 billion orders across China.
作为阿里巴巴的早期合作伙伴，圆通得到了极大的发展，从运输消费者在阿里巴巴的电商网站上购买的数百万件货物，增长到后来的数十亿件。去年，在成立仅13年之后，圆通的13万名员工就完成了中国各地的15亿个订单。
For the jump in orders on Singles’ Day orders, YTO hired 30,000 temporary workers. Next year it plans to buy its first airplane.
为了应对“光棍节”突增的订单，圆通聘请了3万名临时工。它还计划明年购买公司的第一架自有飞机。
This year for the first time, Alibaba is hoping to track the location of every item ordered during Singles’ Day.
今年，阿里巴巴头一次希望追踪消费者在“光棍节”购买的每件商品的位置信息。
JD.com’s 538,000-square-feet warehouse in southern Beijing, the largest in the city, shows the advantages it gets by building its own delivery service.
京东则在北京南部设有一座5万平米的仓库。这里体现了它建立自己的配送系统的好处。
The huge structure is ergonomically organized and employees run full speed, pushing carts loaded with goods in lanes segmented for those going at different speeds. A screen displays how many orders each employee has processed.
这个巨大的建筑物井然有序，员工们都在全速工作，在各条通道上推着满载货物的小车。根据运货速度不同，通道被划分为不同的区域。有一块屏幕显示了每名员工已处理多少订单。
It’s a far cry from most warehouses in China, which are often open-air and exposed to the elements, seemingly organized to cause traffic jams.
它与中国的大多数仓库迥然不同。后者往往是露天的，暴露在各种环境之下，似乎不可避免地要造成拥堵。
To help reduce the backlog during Singles’ Day, JD.com has run promotions the week before and brought in temporary workers from around the country for extra help. The warehouse can process more than 200,000 orders a day.
为了减轻“光棍节”的配送积压问题，京东在一周前开始促销，而且还从全国各地请来临时工帮忙。这座仓库每天可以处理20多万个订单。
Though it has proved costly to build up what is effectively its own FedEx, the strategy enables JD.com to process orders more quickly than rivals, even as its scale lags.
虽然建立自己的快递系统成本不菲，但通过这种策略，京东能够以比竞争对手更快的速度来处理订单，尽管它的规模较小。
Most critically, it’s able to train the couriers that Mr. Shen calls “literally the face of JD.com.”
更关键的是，京东能够培养一些被沈皓瑜称作“京东脸面”的快递员。
