从waiguoren眼中看中国

断断续续看完何伟的《寻路中国》后，我决定看一看他的“中国三部曲”的英文原版。 初看《river town》时我就在想，中译版是删了多少内容才得以出版的呢？不禁庆幸自己选择了英文原版。

不得不承认，这是一部非常成功的描写中国的书（甚至我觉得中国人比外国人更应该读一读这本书）。起初我是比较抵触一个外国人来揭露中国的这些缺点的：作者描述的这些发生在九十年代一个四川偏远地区的一些事情总是让我觉得很荒唐，让我觉得作者对中国有偏见。遗憾的是，当我仔细回想这些事时，我发现他描写的这些事都是确实存在的（甚至在今天的中国，我也得承认这些问题中的绝大部分还依然存在！）所以我说，这本书我们中国人也应该好好读一读，我们日常生活中的那些习以为常，在一个外国人眼中是多么的荒唐，因为它确实很荒唐，只是我们从小生活在这样的环境，这样的教育体系中，我们都变得对其充耳不闻。

作者在刚来涪陵时刚好碰到学生体验长征路线从陕西回来，他对长征有一句很有意思的评价：

It struck me as a particularly appropriate way to honor the history of Chinese Communism, to march a thousand miles and end up bankrupt in Yan’an.

在课堂上每次讲到一些中国不好的事情时，学生们总是低头不语：

My students had difficulty criticizing anything Chinese, and this was not surprising, because they were constantly being indoctrinated by the Communist Party.

在涪陵师范学院，学生的学生证上面印着：

1. Ardently love the Motherland, support the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership, serve Socialism’s undertaking, and serve the people. 2. Diligently study Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought, progressively establish a 3. Proletariat class viewpoint, authenticate a viewpoint of Historical Materialism. Diligently study, work hard to master basic theory, career knowledge, and basic technical ability.

作者好奇，为什么关于努力学习这件事被放在了第三位，放在第一位的永远是politics，学生学习不应该是最重要的吗？是啊，回想自己二十年的校园生活，满目可见的各种学校教室的标语，作业本的封面上，可不都是这么写的嘛。这是多么的反常，可是我这二十年来竟一直习以为常。

A few times I asked students to explain what some of these phrases meant—Historical Materialism, the People’s Democratic Dictatorship, Socialism with Chinese Characteristics—but they were never able to answer in clear and simple language.

中国的学习教育每天都谈到“历史唯物主义”，“人民民主专政”，“中国特色社会主义”，十几年的教育下，竟没有一个学生能给这个外国老师解释清楚这些中国特色的专有名词。可见在一个处处讲政治的国度里，政治教育是多么的失败。

当作者和街上的一些农民探讨一些中国的问题时，发现他们的思想比学习学生的思想更客观，于是作者在想，学校教育是不是禁锢了学生的自由思考能力（其实这种考虑在美国很早就有大量的讨论，但是在中国这是明显的更为严重的事实，但是却未见有任何讨论。

I realized that as a thinking person his advantage lay precisely in his lack of formal education. Nobody told him what to think, and thus he was free to think clearly.

作者作为“waiguoren”在街上走路的时候经常会有人朝他大喊大叫，说一些侮辱性的话语，甚至是向他任石头，在他们眼中，这些外国人可能根本就不是人，只是一些能引发他们好奇心的“东西”。唉，中国人这种喜欢瞎起哄的习惯也是没办法。

对于汽车鸣笛这件事，作者也很crazy：

They honked whenever they passed somebody, or whenever they were being passed themselves. They honked when nobody was passing but somebody might be considering it, or when the road was empty and there was nobody to pass but the thought of passing or being passed had just passed through the driver’s mind.

这种大小各种车辆在街上随意鸣笛的现象现在在大城市上很少见了，但是在小县城里情况还是不容乐观。

为了避免放“高温假”，不管多高的温度，官方总是宣称今天是35℃，作者在这里不失幽默的说了一句“中国或许是唯一一个政府能控制温度的国家”。后来进不了（这算是进步吗？我不知道），官方会宣布真实的气温，但是即使到了37℃（规定的放“高温假”温度）也没有放过假。

Every day it was thirty-five degrees Celsius (ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit). Supposedly the government had a policy that if the temperature reached thirty-seven degrees everybody was given the rest of the day off, and so they always announced the official temperature as thirty-five.

China was perhaps the only country in the world where the government controlled the temperature,

作者提到很多中美之间的对比，有相同的地方也有不同的地方，描写的很客观：

The differences between these countries interested him. “All Chinese like Americans,” he said, a while later. “But many Americans think there are problems with human rights here. In fact, Old Hundred Names doesn’t care about that. Old Hundred Names worries about eating, about having enough clothes. Look out there.”

Of course, such citizens were the natural by-product of a system like China’s, but this worked both ways: the Chinese system could also be seen as the natural creation of people who had little faith in their own power.

中国的老百姓不关心人权，因为在中国，我们关心“吃“，“住”，和美国相比，我们的政治参与度更低，我们不关心这些“虚的”，因为我们生活上的刚需还没有解决。我们也不相信自己有能力去改变什么。

在提到长城的时候，作者写道：

But it also seemed very Chinese that despite its original failure the wall now had great value. It had become perhaps the most powerful symbol of national pride, and nobody connected it with negative qualities like isolationism and stubbornness.

Every time I watched it, I thought: Your China built that wall to keep you people out.

I realized that these myths were a sort of link between America and China—both countries were arrogant enough to twist some of their greatest failures into sources of pride.

作者认为整个长城的存在是愚蠢的，不管是在古代作为防御工事还是在现在继续存留都是不可理喻的，但是中国政府却把长城成功的渲染成了中华文化的精神图腾。关于这一点我是不认同的，且不说长城在建造之初是不是起到了防御工事的作用，单说它现在作为中国的象征我觉得是合理的，它确实能代表中国的精神。作者的这种认识可能是中西方文化差异遭成的。

中国人不管做什么都要讲“关系”这件事也令作者感到费解：

For people in Fuling, the sense of self seemed largely external; you were identified by the way that others viewed you. That had always been the goal of Confucianism, which defined the individual’s place strictly in relation to the people around her: she was somebody’s daughter, somebody else’s wife, somebody else’s mother; and each role had its specific obligations.

作者有一个女学生自杀了，作者谈了一些“中国式自杀”的看法：

When the Chinese commit suicide, it’s common for them to jump off things—bridges, buildings, cliffs. Sometimes in the countryside they eat pesticide.

China is the only country on earth in which more women kill themselves than men.

也揭露了一个事实：中国是唯一一个女性自杀率比男性高的国家。

中国人对这个国家其他地区的人总是有莫名的偏见：

“It’s because of the river and the mountains,” she said. “All places with mountains and water have beautiful women.”

“The people in Sichuan are very jiaohua—sneaky. And their women have a bad reputation.” “They don’t have culture in Sichuan like we do in Shaanxi. Did you know that this is the cradle of Chinese culture?”

because I knew that the Chinese always had strong prejudices about people from other parts of the country.

这个是事实，我自己也见过很多这种情况，作者在他的《寻路中国》中也描写过工厂招工不招某几个省份的人的事情。

作者也讲了一些比较有意思的事情：

It’s meaningless to say that hot pot was spicy—everything the people ate in Sichuan was spicy, from breakfast rolls dipped in hot pepper to kongpao chicken.

People ate it year-round, but it was particularly popular in the summer; the theory was that the hot pot made you sweat, and the sweat made you cool.

作为一个在成都生活了一年的人，我承认，四川点什么都是辣的......看到这里我好想回到成都去吃一次火锅，另外，宫保鸡丁的官方翻译“kongpao chicken”。

同时四川的人民也很热情好客：

It seemed that you could travel indefinitely in rural Sichuan without any money at all, because the people were so generous that they considered

Today we look back at the Cultural Revolution and say it’s so ridiculous, but perhaps in the future people will look back at today, and maybe they’ll say the same thing.”

书中还有很多有趣的地方值得细细品味，这里就不一一列举处理了。其他一些书中提到的政治事件就不在这里提及了。

我们存在的这些这样那样的毛病，有则改之无则加勉吧。

我以上列举的这些问题，作者都站在比较客观的立场上做了一定的分析，作者也肯定了中国人的一些优点，也看到了中国的进步。在他的后来的一部关于中国的作品《寻路中国》中，作者更多的看到的是中国人的一些宝贵的品质。这也是我们的进步。

---

P.S. 第一次在豆瓣写东西，以后要养成看完的书写点什么东西的习惯。这也是一个迫使自己思考的方式吧。