大多数人通常不会把Facebook创始人马克•扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)和“休假”这个词联系在一起。
扎克伯格素以长时间加班著称；今年夏季开发新产品（如Mail）时，开发人员有两个月时间在办公室里“闭关”。
因此，扎克伯格在中国度假时并不只是游览庙宇、出席酒会，也不应让人感到惊讶。
上周末有人发现，携女友到访北京的扎克伯格现身百度公司(Baidu)，百度是中国最大的搜索引擎。他与中国首富之一、百度CEO李彦宏(Robin Li)共进午餐，还参观了百度办公室。
百度一位发言人证实了扎克伯格来访，还在Twitter上开玩笑说，百度收购Facebook的传闻“太夸张了”。
他表示：“李彦宏和马克认识已经有一段时间了。大家也都知道，马克对中国很感兴趣。”
密切关注Facebook的人都知道，扎克伯格在赴中国旅行前就一直在学习普通话。近期做客奥普拉(Oprah)脱口秀节目时，他的普通话老师也在场，他还向Facebook上的好友询问哪些地方最值得游览。
尽管他在哈佛认识的女朋友Priscilla Chan是中国人，但扎克伯格对中国的关注远非仅仅是个人兴趣。
今年夏天，他在戛纳国际广告节(Cannes Lions advertising festival)上表示，中国是Facebook未来增长的一个关键目标，还提到了该网站在中国能做的一些“具体事情”。
第一要务当然是解除Facebook目前在中国受到的屏蔽。上周发布的一幅Facebook社交关系图，形象地展示出一片13亿人的空白。这幅图用蓝线表示全球各地的人们之间的联系，而中国几乎全部是黑暗。
想要知道扎克伯格此行是否会面见中国官员几乎是不可能的。Facebook与中国本土社交网络企业腾讯(Tencent)之间存在一些关联，后者今年早些时候购买了Facebook俄罗斯投资方DST的股份。但如果Facebook大举进军中国，损失最大的恐怕也是腾讯。
与百度之间结成某种关系，是否属于可能帮助Facebook突破“防火长城”的“具体事情”之列？正如谷歌(Google)所认识到的那样，美国互联网企业在中国经营的难度极大——如果没有本土合作伙伴，可能性几乎为零。
Facebook的一位发言人只愿意证实扎克伯格正在中国度假，拒绝就“任何猜测”予以置评。
译者/王柯伦
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001036164
“Mark Zuckerberg” and “vacation” aren’t phrases that most people would normally associate.
The Facebook founder is known for working long hours; a two-month “lockdown” over the summer kept developers in the office for extended periods while new products – such as Mail – were created.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that when Mr Zuckerberg takes holiday to China, it isn’t all temple visits and cocktails.
Visiting Beijing with his girlfriend this weekend, Zuck was spotted in the offices of Baidu, China’s largest search engine. He had lunch with Robin Li, Baidu’s chief executive and one of China’s wealthiest men, and toured around the search engine’s offices.
A Baidu spokesperson confirmed the visit, joking on Twitter that rumours the company was buying Facebook were “greatly exaggerated”.
“Robin and Mark have known each other for a while,” he said. “Mark’s interest in China is well known.”
Avid Facebook watchers will know that Mr Zuckerberg has been learning Mandarin ahead of the trip. His tutor was shown on his recent Oprah appearance and he asked his Facebook friends about the best places to visit.
Even though his girlfriend since Harvard, Priscilla Chan, is Chinese, the region is of more than just personal interest to Mr Zuckerberg.
This summer, he told an audience at the Cannes Lions advertising festival that China was a key target for Facebook’s future growth, alluding to “specific things” that the site could do there.
Top of the list, surely, is lifting the current block on Facebook across China. That 1.3bn-person hole in the Facebook network was illustrated by the map released last week showing the blue lines connecting people around the world – leaving China almost entirely in the dark.
It’s almost impossible to know whether Mr Zuckerberg will meet with Chinese officials on this trip. There is a second-degree connection with Tencent, the local social networking giant, which bought a stake in Facebook’s Russian investor, DST, earlier this year. But Tencent could also have the most to lose if Facebook made great strides in China.
So would some sort of relationship with Baidu be one of those “specific things” which might break Facebook through the great firewall? As Google has found, China is a notoriously difficult market for US internet companies to work in – and almost impossible without a local partnership.
A Facebook’s spokesperson would only confirm that he is there on holiday and declined to comment on “any speculation”.
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