 Li Wanzhi and her husband, Wang Zhijun, were trapped together in the rubble of their apartment building for 28 hours after the earthquake in Sichuan Province.
四川大地震，李婉芝和她的丈夫王志军被困在房屋的瓦砾下，整整28个小时。（纽约时报Shiho Fukada拍摄）
By Edward Wong
Published:December 31,2008 翻译：落雨 LUOCHEN VILLAGE, China: Li Wanzhi has learned to do certain things with just one arm.
中国罗川村：李婉芝现在已经学会怎么用一只手臂去做事情了。 Dressing herself, for example. That was easy. Washing clothes was something else entirely. For that, she needed the help of her mother-in-law. 例如穿衣服，那个很简单。但洗衣服却是一件另外事情。为了洗衣服，她必须需要婆婆的帮助。 Her husband, Wang Zhijun, was in good shape, by comparison. He had all his limbs, even though he and his wife had been trapped together in the rubble of their apartment building for 28 hours after the earthquake in Sichuan Province last May. They had lain with their arms wrapped around each other, their faces only inches apart. His right hand still aches, but he can hold chopsticks now. 相比起来，她的丈夫王志军四肢健全，健康很多，虽然在五月份的四川地震中，他和他妻子一起被困在他们住宅的碎石长达28个小时。在地震中，他们用手臂互相拥抱着，他们的脸只隔着几英寸。虽然现在他的右手还疼着，但还是能举起筷子。 "Sometimes when we think of that night, we say, 'Let the past be the past,"' Li said with a faint smile. "We feel we've already started a new life." “有时候，当我们回忆起那个夜晚时，我们会说，让过去的就成为过去吧”，李婉芝呆着微弱的微笑说，“我们都觉得我们已经开始了新的生活了” Like the stories of many survivors, the journey of Li and Wang after the earthquake has been one of steps taken by the inch. They are slowly piecing together a future after a disaster that left 88,000 people dead or missing and five million homeless in the rugged hills of southwest China. 像很多幸存者一样，震后，李婉芝和她丈夫开始了他们新旅程。在中国西南方崎岖的山区，经历了一个造成8，8000人个或死或失踪和中有5百万人无家可归的大灾难后，他们开始慢慢拼凑着未来。 The two sat on wooden chairs by a field of garlic on a gray afternoon, sipping tea with visitors. The empty left sleeve of Li's brown winter coat was tucked into a pocket. Wang rubbed his aching hand. They listened to their 14-year-old daughter playing with girlfriends in a makeshift tent. 在一个昏暗的下午，他们俩坐在靠近一堆大蒜的木制椅子上，同来访者喝茶。李婉芝穿着褐色的冬衣，她的左袖空荡荡地塞进口袋中。王志军在搓着他依然会感到疼痛的手。他们可以听见14岁的女儿在一个临时帐篷跟他们的女伴们玩。 This is Wang's home village in Sichuan, where irrigation canals line fields and a cement factory belches fumes. 这就是王志军在四川农村的家，用来灌溉的水渠穿过农田和一个水泥厂正吐着烟。 Li and Wang now live in a flimsy wooden hut with a dirt floor. Their disabilities prevent them from working. Besides missing an arm, Li has problems with her right foot. But they say they consider themselves lucky to be alive, and their spirits are much higher than when they were in a hospital room just three days after their harrowing ordeal last May. 李婉芝和王志军现在住在一个简易的木头小屋里，地板很脏。他们的残疾使得他们不能工作。除了失去一个手臂，李婉芝的右脚也有问题。但是他们觉得能活着已经很幸运了。况且他们的情绪比五月份在医院时好多了，那时他们经历了悲惨的折磨才刚过三天。 Before the quake, Wang, 40, had been traveling across China doing odd jobs, and his marriage with Li had been on the wane. Since their rescue, it has proved sturdier than the thousands of buildings that crumbled to dust. 在地震前，40岁的王志军，在中国的各个地方打零工。他和李的婚姻已经越来越脆弱了。自从经过他们得救后，事实已经证明他们的婚姻比那成千上万被夷为平地的房子要坚固得多。 The night they were trapped beneath the rubble, they made promises to each other: They would rededicate themselves to each other if they made it out alive; together they would raise their daughter, Xinyi. 他们被困在碎石下的那个晚上，他们彼此发誓：如果他们能活着的话，他们要为对方付出好好付出，一起抚养他们的女儿——欣宜。 "He won't travel for now because he has to stay home to take care of me," said Li, 38. 38岁的李婉芝说：“他现在不会到处去打工了，因为他要呆在家里照顾我。” Wang grinned. "Yeah, I have to be here to take care of her," he said. 王志军也咧嘴笑着说：“是啊，我必须在这照顾她。” Li glanced at Wang's hand. "My father often jokes, 'Look at this couple - one has a third-degree disability, the other has a second-degree disability; they're made for each other,"' she said. 李婉芝看了丈夫的手说：“我爸爸经常开玩笑说，看这对夫妇，一个有三级伤残，另一个有二级伤残，他们这是天生一对啊。” They spend their days doing simple exercises to get back into shape. At night, they eat dinner with Wang's younger brother at his home, a large, wooden shelter where villagers gather around four tables to play mah-jongg. Then they return to their cold hut to sleep. 他们每天花时间做简单的运动来恢复他们的身体健康。晚上，他们就去王志军的弟弟家吃饭。他弟弟家是一个很大的木制避难所，在那里村民们聚在桌子旁玩麻将，然后各自回到他们的小屋睡觉。 The hut has a stack of quilts and a cardboard box that serves as a table. Its one luxury is an old television set and DVD player that Wang's older sister rescued from her home. 小屋里有一堆被子，一个充当桌子的纸板箱。那里唯一的奢侈品是一个老式的电视机和一个DVD播放器，那是王志军的姐姐从他们家里找出来的。 The sister and her husband sleep next door in an even flimsier shelter, made of plastic tarps. 他的姐姐和她的丈夫住在隔壁在一个更简陋的掩蔽处里，它由塑料防水布做的。 Each day, all across the village, survivors mix cement and stack bricks atop bricks to build new homes. But Li and Wang are in no condition to do such work. 每天，村庄附近的灾民都会用水泥把砖头垒起来建设他们的新家，但是李婉芝和王志军却没办法去做这个工作。 "This year, we'll do our best to recover," Li said. "Next year, we'll live on our own and maybe start a small business." 今年，我们要尽快地康复，李婉芝说，明年我们要自力更生，或许会开始做写小生意。 Like other earthquake victims, they get a government subsidy of $44 a month. An American couple who read the tale of their survival last May in The New York Times gave them a small donation. And although Li no longer works, her employer, a chemical production company with a factory in the nearby town of Luoshui, continues to pay her a monthly salary of $150. 像其他的地震受害者一样，他们每个月收到政府300块钱政府补助，一对美国夫妇，在纽约时报上看了他们在五月劫后余生的故事后，给了他们一笔小的捐款。虽然李婉芝不再工作，他们的老板，一个工厂靠近罗川的化工企业，，还是给了她每月2000块的工资。 The couple had been living on the fourth floor of a workers' dormitory when it and the factory collapsed on the afternoon of May 12. More than a hundred of Li's co-workers died. 在5月12日下午，当宿舍和工厂倒坍的时候，这对夫妇正住在四层的职工宿舍。李婉芝的同事超过一百人死亡。 "My colleagues often call me to ask if I'm doing well," she said. "In my department, several died. Some others are fine." “我的同事经常打电话来问我是不是过得好。”她接着说道：“我所在的那个部门，有的死了，有些人就活着。 Wang says he wants to buy a small truck next year to transport goods. Li may try her luck at business. 王志军说他想会去买一部小货车来送货，李想去碰碰运气，做些生意。 "I want to start a clothes shop," she said. "I often say to my husband, 'I want to feel like a beautiful woman, and to look at beautiful clothes every day.' I want to get my confidence back." 李婉芝说：“我想去开一个服装店，我经常跟我老公说，我喜欢去做一个漂亮的女人，每天看着自己能穿漂亮的衣服。我想找回我的信心。 Li's arm became gangrenous after being crushed in the rubble. After it was amputated at a local hospital in May, she was flown to Shanghai for more surgery. Doctors gave her a plastic arm for upper-body balance and cosmetic purposes, but she rarely wears it. 李婉芝的手臂被压在碎石底下后来腐烂了。五月份，在一家当地的医院进行切除手术之后，她被送到上海做更好的外科治疗。医生给她安了一个塑料手臂，这样可以使上半身保持平衡也更加美观，但是她很少安上。 At a recovery center in Shanghai, she saw other amputees outfitted with metal prosthetic arms. Someone told her the price for one: an astounding $4,400. Her dream now, she said, is to have an arm she can use again. 在上海的一个康健中心，她看到其他经过切断手术的人配备一个金属的辅助手臂。有人告诉她这个东西的价格：令人吃惊地高达30，000元。她说，她做梦也想是有一个可以再用的手臂。 On weekends, Xinyi, their daughter, comes home. Most days, she stays at a friend's home close to her school in Shifang. Poorly built schools collapsed across southwestern China during the earthquake, killing as many as 10,000 children, but Xinyi's remained standing. The school was later torn down, though, and the students now go to class in a prefabricated schoolhouse. 周末，他们的女儿欣宜回家了。大多数的时间，她住在什邡一个靠近学校的朋友家里。中国的西南地区，简陋的学校在地震中倒坍，杀死高达10,00个的孩子。但是欣宜所在的学校没有倒塌，后来学校被拆掉了。现在学生们在一个预制的校舍里上课。 "It's not bad," Xinyi said of life after the earthquake. "Baba and Mama are here. I don't think about the earthquake much." “其实也不是太糟糕。”欣宜谈起地震后的生活时说道：“爸爸和妈妈都在这里，我也不会想地震里发生的那些事情。” But for Li, the hours she and her husband spent buried in the rubble are forever seared into her memory. 但是对李婉芝来说，她和她丈夫被埋在碎石里几个小时的煎熬将会永远留在了她的记忆中。 "I still think often of the earthquake," she said. "Sometimes when I see a high building, I think, 'I was buried after falling from the fourth floor, and I survived. How lucky I am!' The other day, I saw a six-story building and I thought, 'How did I survive?"' “我还是经常回忆起地震。”她接着说：“有时候当我看见一个高楼，我想，我从四层掉下来，然后被埋起来，结果我得救了。我多么幸运啊。前几天我看见一栋六层楼，我想我怎么幸存下来的啊？” Li fell quiet and looked at her husband. The pale winter light was fading. They got up from their chairs and walked into the tent where their daughter had been laughing all afternoon with other children. 李婉芝静静地望着坐在身边的丈夫。冬天的光线褪色。他们从椅子站起来，走进帐篷，他们的女儿已经和别的孩子一起玩了一下午了。 |
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