读书笔记|《江城》(四)

River Town：Two Years on the Yangtze 

（中译名《江城》）

By Peter Hessler

1.「学汉语」

作者初到涪陵时，怀揣着40个汉字的词汇量，仅仅认识简单的“上”、“下”、“人民”、“国家”、“男”、“女”，汉语几乎是从零开始。但作者深知，了解一个国家和她的人民，最直接的方法就是先了解她的语言。于是，学好汉语成了作者两年涪陵生活的主线之一。

“Mandarin Chinese has a reputation as a difficult language.”学外语很难，学好中文又是难上加难。看着努力学汉语的作者，也像是在看着努力学英语的我们，阅读的过程中有同情，有共鸣，也有忍俊不禁。

Downtown Fuling looked good from my balcony. Often I’d gaze across the Wu River at the maze of streets and stairways, listening to the distant hum of daily life, and I’d think about the mysteries that were hidden in the river town. I wanted to investigate all of it—I wanted to go down to the docks and watch the boats; I wanted to talk with the stick-stick soldiers; I wanted to explore the network of tangled staircases that ran through the old part of town.I longed to figure out how the city worked and what the people thought, especially since no foreigner had done this before. It wasn’t like living in Beijing or Shanghai, where there were plenty of waiguoren who had discovered what the city had to offer. As far as foreigners were concerned, Fuling was our city — or it would be once we figured it out.

学外语的目的应该是什么呢？纳尔逊·曼德拉（Nelson Mandela）曾经说过一句话: “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”只有亲身去学习和体会一门外语，才能最大限度地接近这个语言背后的叙述者、以及叙述者背后的文化。对于不善言谈的人来说，即使做不到用外语跟人侃侃而谈，也能通过外语的遣词造句去理解浓缩在语言中的异域世界。就像是在大自然中，如果你突然听懂了树的语言，理解了风的话语，那就会有一片片别样的世界在你的面前点亮，仅仅是感受到它们的存在，就足以让人心满意足。

曾经在《被解释的美：英语的方法和趣味》（金雯著）这本书中，读到一段特别喜欢也深有共鸣的话：

“学习文学和文艺、文化的人在任何一天都可能处于不间断的审美体验中，有莫名心动，有智识交流，有逸趣雅谈，与日常生活可以很近，也可以很远。“头脑如旋转木马”，四处掠美，却始终不失优雅镇静。”

学会一门外语最让人欣喜的时刻，就是在阅读原版书籍时，可以自由自在地“四处掠美”，不必拾人牙慧，可以沉浸式地感受不同的符号和排列组合碰撞出的火花，可以欣喜于发现了一个特别有趣的小词，可以心满意足地完成一场跟作者面对面的谈心。

作者非常善于观察和描写细节，书中多次出现了作者在涪陵跑步时见到的宣传标语，这些文字在他眼中的样子，见证了他的漫漫汉语路，这种状态也像极了正在学外语的我们。

1）初到涪陵：词汇量40

There were three signs on the road out to the mountain, and to me they looked like this:

I finished my runs back in the center of campus, not far from the teaching building, where a stone wall served as a backdrop or an inscription of three-foot-high characters:

That was how Chinese appeared in my first few months. I arrived in Fuling able to recognize about forty characters, all of them simple: people, middle, country, above, below, long, man, woman. There hadn’t been time for more; the Peace Corps had given us an intensive course during our two months of training in Chengdu, but the emphasis was on learning enough spoken Mandarin to function. We had to study written Chinese on our own, and until I got to Fuling I simply hadn’t had enough time.

2）词汇量150:

By early October, when Dean Fu finally found two Chinese tutors, I had learned 150 characters. The signs on the way to Raise the Flag Mountain were still unintelligible, but the one in the center of campus had changed slightly :

3）几个月后：

As the months slipped past I realized that even these Sichuan hills, with their strange tombs and terraces, were starting to feel like home. But still the signs on the way to Raise the Flag Mountain were foreign, and even as they slowly became familiar they reminded me how far I still had to go:

4）庐山真面目：

Not long after the sentencing, I came back from a run and realized that the sign in the center of campus had become completely intelligible. This was a moment I had always looked forward to—from the beginning, I had seen that string of characters as a benchmark, and I traced my progress in the way those words became meaningful.And one day all of it finally made sense:

校园中心的标语，见证了作者汉语水平的进步。

随着标语上的汉字被逐个“破译”，作者也终于读懂了标语上完整的意思。这个过程很像玩“扫雷”：在一番与数字和规则斗智斗勇之后，看着自己的领地一点点扩张，眼前的“版图”逐渐清晰，很有成就感。带着这种“扫雷”的心境学外语，也是很有意思的体验。

2.「“不对”中的中美教育的差异」

“不对！”

这是作者在跟老师一对一学汉语时，经常听到的来自老师的反馈。作为一个本科毕业于普林斯顿、硕士就读于牛津大学的成年人，在中文老师的一声声“不对”中，也变得委屈巴巴，想念在国内的“糖衣炮弹”。

It was the Chinese way. Success was expected and failure criticized and promptly corrected. You were right or you were budui; there was no middle ground.

I grew to hate budui: its sound mocked me. There was a harshness to it; the bu was a rising tone and the dui dropped abruptly, building like my confidence and then collapsing all at once. And it bothered me all the more because I knew that Teacher Liao was only telling the truth: virtually everything I did with the language was budui. I was an adult, and as an adult I should be able to accept criticism where it was needed. But that wasn’t the American way; I was accustomed to having my ego soothed; I wanted to be praised for my effort. I didn’t mind criticism as long as it was candy-coated. I was caught in the same trap that I had heard about from some of my Chinese-American friends, who as children went to school and became accustomed to the American system of gentle correction, only to return home and hear their Chinese-minded parents say, simply, budui. That single B on the report card matters much more than the string of A’ s that surrounds it. Keep working; you haven’t achieved anything yet.

传统中式教育更看中成绩单上一串“A”中那个显眼的“B”，所以在给孩子的反馈中，“不对”总是远多于“对”，“不好”总是先于诸多的“好”。一个有着优秀教育履历的成年人尚且不愿听到负面的反馈，更别提心智尚未成熟的孩子了。鼓励和批评，究竟该在教育中如何配比，即使在30年后的今天，依然是个值得思考的问题。

3.「酒桌上的战役」

There was strategy to this part of the banquet and usually the shots were preceded by low murmurings, the teachers speaking the Sichuan dialect while Adam and I muttered English back and forth. The trick was to get a two-for-one—if Party Secretary Zhang toasted both Adam and me, then we would both drink and immediately afterward Dean Fu could do the same. Our response was to hit them with a preemptive strike;if we sensed that they were plotting, one of us would toast the pair, or the entire table, and then they would have to recover before resuming the attack.Occasionally they tried to focus on me, sensing weakness, but when that happened Adam would step in and cover me. That was acceptable in Sichuan—a friend could take a shot for you. Sichuanese drinking was a lot like war.

作者把中国的酒桌文化描写成了一个热闹的战场：推杯换盏之间，有进攻，有防守，有掩护；觥筹交错之际，有密谋，有偷袭，有反击。涪陵的酒桌上，上演着紧张刺激的攻防战，一圈圈下来，必得酒酣耳热，不醉不休，喝到住院才真够意思。

4.「何伟 vs. Peter Hessler」

Peter Hessler的中文名叫何伟，这个中文名字给了他一个全然不同的身份：一个逐渐融入本地生活的笨拙的外国人；而在何伟的身后，是作为观察者的Peter Hessler，透过何伟的眼睛，他观察并记录着这座城、这里的人、以及这里的自己。

It was different from living in most countries, where you could use your real name or something similar to it, which was a clear link to who you had originally been. My Chinese name had no connection to my American name, and the person who became Ho Wei had no real connection to my American self.There was an enormous freedom in that—at the age of twenty-eight, I suddenly had a completely new identity.

I never changed my Chinese name, but I sensed the ease with which my Chinese identity became distinct from my American self. Eventually,I came to think of myself as two people, Ho Wei and Peter Hessler. Ho Wei wasn’t really a person until my second year in Fuling, but as time passed I realized that he was becoming most of my identity: apart from my students, colleagues, and the other foreigners, everybody knew me strictly as Ho Wei, and they knew me strictly in Chinese. Ho Wei was completely different from my American self: he was friendlier, he was eager to talk with anybody, and he took great pleasure in even the most inane conversations. In a simple way he was funny; by saying a few words in the local dialect he could be endlessly entertaining to the people in Fuling. Also Ho Wei was stupid, which was what I liked the most about him. He spoke with an accent; he had lousy grammar; and he laughed at the simple mistakes that he made.People were comfortable with somebody that stupid, and they found it easy to talk with Ho Wei, even though they often had to say things twice or write new words in his notebook. Ho Wei always carried his notebook in his pocket, using it to study the new words, as well as to jot down notes from conversations. Andwhen Ho Wei returned home he left the notebook on the desk of Peter Hessler, who typed everything into his computer.

I had two desks in my apartment. One was for studying Chinese, and the other was for writing; one desk was Ho Wei’ s and the other belonged to Peter Hessler.Sometimes this relationship unnerved me—it seemed wrong that behind Ho Wei’ s stupidity there was another person watching everything intently and taking notes. But I could think of no easy resolution to this divide; I had my Chinese life and my American life, and even if they occupied similar territory, they were completely different. My apartment was big and I kept the desks in separate rooms. Ho Wei and Peter Hessler never met each other. The notebook was the only thing they truly shared.

一个房间，两张桌子，一张属于“何伟”，一张属于“Peter Hessler”。何伟友善、健谈、有些愚笨、受人喜欢，而Peter Hessler冷静、严肃，更多的时候是在记录和思考。他们就是彼此的分身。这种跳脱出自己来旁观自己的状态，被作者的文字准确描述了出来。

从小到大，我就是个“起名字困难户”。英文名换了无数个，至今没有一个是真正的“我”；各种社交媒体上的起名过程也是异常纠结，又想有很多意义，又想什么都不代表，QQ名、微信名、微博名各不相同，那些也不是我。大概是很难像作者那样将自己清楚地分裂开吧。

5.「寒冷让一切变简单」

涪陵是三峡工程的核心库区之一，随着工程的推进，很多地区都将面临着巨大的变化。

作者作为旁观者，时常站在理性和道德的高点上，对三峡工程带来的影响提出了诸多疑问；但作为一个生活在这里两年的“本地人”，又切实体会着每一度电的温度，于是不忿着，拧巴着，理解着。

There was a great deal of history in China and if you protected all the ancient sites the people would have nowhere to grow their crops.

There were days when I stood on my balcony and felt a touch of sadness as I looked at the Yangtze, because I knew its days as a rushing river were numbered.

I also gained new perspective on this issue during the winter, when there were periodic power cuts to conserve electricity. My apartment had only electric heating, and sometimes these blackouts lasted for hours—long, cold hours, the dark apartment growing steadily more uncomfortable until my breath was white in the candlelight. I found that during these periods I didn’t think too much about whether Fuling’ s new dike would hold, or if the immigrants would be well taken care of, or whether the White Crane Ridge would be adequately protected.What I thought about was getting warm. Cold was like hunger; it had a way of simplifying everything.

作者在之前讨论了非常多三峡工程欠考虑的问题，如移民安置、野生动物保护、历史古迹存留等，但在这段中，又非常接地气地把自己拉回到现实的处境中：Cold was like hunger; it had a way of simplifying everything. 

就像之前奇葩说讨论过的问题，是该救画还是救猫？是该倾听远方的哭声还是回应近处的呼喊？时代的沙粒和个人肩头的大山究竟孰轻孰重？或许只能是冷暖自知，没有正解吧。

6.「乌江 vs. 长江」

All rivers have distinct personalities, intangible traits that go beyond width and length and swiftness, and the two rivers in Fuling are so dissimilar that their conversation is limited to the terse color line at the Wu’ s mouth. The Yangtze is peopled—it has been channeled, prodded, diverted, dammed; buoys mark its shallows and boats of all sizes crest its polluted waters. It goes to Shanghai. The Wu—clear, green, lightly traveled—comes from the mountains. One river is all about origin; the other, destination: this is what defines the contrast in their personalities. The Yangtze in its size and majesty seems to be going somewhere important, while the Wu in its narrow swiftness seems to have come from someplace wild and mysterious; and the faint forms of its distant hills suggest that the river will keep its secrets. You can fish all day long and the Wu will give you nothing.

一段绝佳的对比描写。

7.「长江上的船夫 vs. Mark Twain」

“The Three Gorges aren’t too risky if you understand the river, though. Of course, if you don’t know the river, it’ s difficult, but we’ve been through there many times. And after all those trips it’ s not so interesting any more. The scenery is beautiful, of course, but I’ve seen it many, many times.”

His remarks echo the words of another boatsman, written long ago: “Now when I had mastered the language of this water, and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry, had gone out of the majestic river!”

后面这段话出自马克·吐温的经典散文《两种看河的方式》（Two Ways of Seeing a River），他在文中回忆自己从蒸汽船上的学徒成长为领航员，但在精通河流知识的同时，也失去了对自然之美的感知。

长江上的普通船夫和美国大作家马克·吐温，在作者面前好似隔空击了个掌。河流壮观又诗意的景象，在日复一日的劳作中渐渐消散。