9月21日至22日，为纪念红军长征胜利80周年及西安事变爆发80周年，作为西北大学外国语学院系列学术活动之一的“两个斯诺的中国情结”国际研讨会在西安举行。研讨会回顾了中美斯诺研究的发展与现状，并探讨了将来以斯诺为主题的跨文化交流项目的可行性。

本次研讨会汇聚了中美两个斯诺研究领域的几乎所有专家和学者，他们来自密苏里大学、杨百翰大学、科罗拉多州立大学和南犹他大学。容纳400人的报告厅里座无虚席，西北大学外国语学院的全体英语系学生聆听了嘉宾们精彩的讲座。

大会首先进行了陕西省斯诺研究中心落户西北大学外国语学院揭牌仪式。西北大学校长郭立宏、密苏里大学堪萨斯城分校校长史蒂芬·杜鲁门致开幕词。陕西省斯诺研究中心的创始人安危先生讲述了中心落户西大的使命意义，指出，中心的迁移将推动西北大学外国语学院的学科发展，提升学科意识，深化课程改革。

                          西北大学校长郭立宏教授致辞

研讨会上还揭晓并颁发了“第六届海伦·斯诺翻译奖”竞赛获奖名单。与往届一样，南犹他大学继续为最优秀的参赛者提供一个奖学金。副校长斯迪尔的·琼斯还为本届的奖学金获得者颁发了证书。  

                                                                           主旨发言

作为西北大学外国语学院纪念红军长征胜利80周年以及西安事变爆发80周年的系列学术活动之一，两个斯诺的研究与西北大学有着深厚的关系。早在1978年，退休教授李天舒曾在延安外办工作时接待了到访延安的海伦?斯诺及其摄制组。摄影组的成员之一提莫·康西丁参加了研讨会，用他那些老旧照片描绘出两个斯诺在中国西北的尘封往事，并透露出一些中西文化差异理解上的微妙之 西大外院在近几年来开展以海伦·斯诺为主的研究项目。如今，已有两名教师到访犹他州进行斯诺学研究。现阶段，对国际友人精神遗产的挖掘与保护逐渐受到各界愈加的重视。正视历史，解读文化，促进理解是永恒的斯诺精神。

                                                                               揭牌仪式

                                                                                       颁奖

                            海伦·斯诺基金托管会会长发言

    “两个斯诺的中国情结”国际研讨会在西安举行，这次研讨会聚集了中美两国斯诺研究领域的几乎所有专家和学者，作为研讨会的重要环节，众人还共同见证了陕西省斯诺研究中心落户西北大学外国语学院。

                                                                                        胡宗锋主持仪式

    提起著名美国记者、作家埃德加·斯诺，人们就会想起他那本《西行漫记》，而同为记者、著名作家和社会活动家，海伦·斯诺作为他的妻子和事业伙伴一样被世人尊重。21日研讨会上，来自中国北京大学、华中师范大学、西北大学；美国密苏里大学、杨百翰大学、科罗拉多州立大学和南犹他大学等高校的研究学者，与埃德加·斯诺纪念基金会主席南希·希尔以及斯诺的家人们，共同追忆了两个斯诺的一生，回顾了中美斯诺研究的发展与现状，并探讨了将来以斯诺为主题的跨文化交流项目的可行性。

                       西北大学校长郭立宏教授会见美国嘉宾

    作为研讨会的重要环节，21日，陕西省斯诺研究中心正式落户西北大学外国语学院并举行了揭牌仪式。美国海伦·斯诺文学托管会会长、海伦·斯诺侄女谢莉尔表示，西安乃至中国西北有两个斯诺的许多记忆，海伦非常喜欢西安的九月，甚至为此写过一首歌。而今中国唯一一家专注于研究埃德加·斯诺和海伦·斯诺的民间学术团体——陕西省斯诺研究中心正式落户西北大学，不仅将让更多学生和研究者得到关于他们的研究资料，更为这些珍贵的文献资料提供了妥当的保管场所，让人欣喜。

9月21日上午，第六届“海伦·斯诺翻译奖”竞赛颁奖仪式在西北大学长安校区长安报告厅隆重举行。本届的颁奖仪式作为“两个斯诺的中国情结国际研讨会”的一个主要部分，成为开幕式上靓丽的一个环节。

        颁奖仪式由西北大学外国语学院院长、陕西省翻译协会主席胡宗锋教授主持。由于本次竞赛的大部分获奖者在外地高校，所以只有陕西省内的获奖者代表前来领奖。 南犹他大学斯迪尔特·琼斯副校长为本届南犹他大学海伦·斯诺翻译奖学金获得者的西安工业大学张文雅颁奖。

          
    美国埃德加·斯诺纪念基金会主席南希·希尔女士为一、二等奖获得者代表颁奖

           
        密苏里大学堪萨斯分校副校长史蒂芬·杜鲁门为三等奖和优胜奖获奖者代表颁奖

           科罗拉多州立大学副校长凯利·郎教授为优秀组织奖单位代表颁奖

                                                                                     本文作者和译者

Shaanxi Through Dr. Robin’s Eyes

罗宾博士看陕西(10) 

The Eastern Aspect: Banpo and Lantian 

                                                             东方一瞥：半坡与蓝田

                                                 （英）罗宾•吉尔班克

                                                       胡宗锋  译

Ancient Rome was overlooked by seven hills; Chang’an possessed eight rivers, namely the Wei, the Jing, the Feng, the Lao, the Chen, the Chan, the Yu, and the Ba. Half of them are scarcely more than mountain-fed streams, with courses stretching for fewer than one hundred kilometres. The Wei and Jing rivers, meanwhile, irrigated the 800 li Qin Plain, being vital arteries for agriculture and waterborne transport. It is reported that the Wei formerly teemed with fish, so much so that when the adventurer Arthur Sowerby (1885-1959) accompanied the Singer sewing-machine heir Robert Sterling Clark (1877-1956) across Guanzhong in 1909, they actually witnessed the practice of cormorant fishing from rafts (Clark and Sowerby, Through Shên-kan: the account of the Clark expedition in north China, 1908-9, Chapter 5; also shown in photographic plate 20). Now seldom seen outside the karst beauty spots of Guangxi, Shaanxi fishermen would launch the birds from bamboo rafts, their gullets tethered with twine so they would have to cough up their catch. Should the feathered slaves protest and refuse to dive, they would temporarily be untied and fed a few sprats. For George Hogg, who rode through the Tongguan Pass during the anti-Japanese War, this was an “ancient corroded countryside,” rescued from famine only by the timely inundations of the Wei. In his mind “the roads have been worn down by the wheels of centuries, so that only the tops of the carts passing along them are visible, and whole villages modeled in mud are scarcely distinguishable from the crumbling loess cliffs around them” (I See a New China, Chapter 2).

    七丘瞰罗马，八水绕长安。围绕长安的八水是渭、泾、沣、涝、潏、滈、浐、灞，如今半数几乎成了山间小溪，绵延不过百余里。泾渭之水曾灌溉八百里秦川，是农业和水运的大动脉。据记载渭河当年是鳞光闪闪，所以当探险家苏道味（英文原名为阿瑟·德·卡尔·索尔比Arthur Sowerby）陪着“胜家缝纫机”的继承人罗伯特·斯特林·克拉克（Robert Sterling Clark）在1909年路过关中时，都亲眼看到了竹排上的鸬鹚在河里叼鱼（见罗伯特·斯特林·克拉克和苏道味著《穿越陕甘：1908-1909年克拉克考察队华北行纪》第五章和插图20）。此情此景就是在今天广西美丽的喀斯特风景区也难得一见，那时陕西的渔夫把鸬鹚从竹排上放出去捕鱼，鸬鹚戴着脖套，叼到鱼咽不下去得吐出来。要是长着羽毛的奴隶反抗不潜水，主人就会解开脖套，喂它几条小鱼。抗日战争期间，当乔治﹒何克骑马走过潼关的时候，这儿还是一片“古代洪荒的乡下”，只有定期泛滥的渭河让其免受饥荒。在他的眼里，“几百年来的滚滚车轮压得山路沧桑不堪，人们能看到的只有沿途的车顶，泥淖中的村庄和其周围摇摇欲坠的黄土高坡难分彼此。”(见乔治﹒何克著《我看到了一个新的中国》第二章)。

（古罗马七丘位于罗马城的心脏地带，根据古罗马神话，其为罗马建城之初的重要宗教与政治中心，七丘分别为凯马路斯Cermalus、契斯庇乌斯Cispius、法古塔尔Fagutal、奥庇乌斯Oppius、帕拉蒂尼Palatium、苏古沙Sucusa与威利亚Velia，故罗马也被称为是“七丘城”——译者注）

That off-yellow tedium which melds homes and landscape into a piece is still there, only now we peer down upon it from asphalted highways and have not the necessity to stoop to the level of a mule. Reclamation and greening are the order of the day through much of the territory due east of Xi’an. In 2004, partly in anticipation of the staging of the International Horticultural Expo seven years later, a new administrative unit, the Chanba Ecological Zone, was designated. The exhibition itself was staged on a 418-hectare former brown-field site (45% of which was wetlands), which had undergone rigorous decontamination. Upon its closure the expo site, as had been planned all along, was converted over to parkland. After the bedding plants have withered and been uprooted and the trellises discarded a few solid structures serve as a reminder of what went on there before. By night the Chang’an Tower glows in different colours, its segmented thorax blinking at motorists who wend their way back to the city.

     把家园和风景融在一起的单调黄色依旧在那里，只不过现在无须蹲到骡子的高度而是从铺着沥青的高速公路上朝下看了。西安以东的大多数地方已经被开垦和绿化了，2004年，为了给七年后举行的国际园艺博览会做准备，成立了一个新的行政机构：浐灞生态区。世园会是在以前的一块418公顷的褐色土地上（其中45% 是湿地），经过严格的排污后举行的。世园会闭幕后，这里按照先期的计划被转化成了公用场地。在花坛里的植物枯萎被拔除，场馆被拆除后，让人能想起这场世园会的建筑就寥寥无几了。晚上，“长安塔” 分割的塔层闪烁着不同的色彩，灯光一闪一闪的照着开车回城的司机。

The authorities hope that through investing 15.7 billion yuan in creating the Chanba Zone, a green corridor can be cleaved between the industrialized eastern suburbs and the verdigris slopes of the White Deer Plain and Lantian County. That Zone, which extends to 581 square kilometres, currently conserves 180 kinds of plant species belonging to 48 families, and 150 species of wetland creature falling into 27 orders and 50 families. The drive towards greater environmental protection and building a sustainable future forms a compelling and ongoing narrative in itself, but on closer inspection these districts are already a kind of cultural palimpsest, written and overwritten with countless layers of humanistic history.

      官方期望投资一百五十七亿元的浐灞生态区能成为一个绿色长廊，把东郊的工业区和白鹿原与蓝田的铜绿山坡连接起来。这个区绵延581平方公里，现保存有180个物种，分属48科，还有150种湿地生物，分属50科27目。而更大范围的环境保护和建立可持续发展的未来把这里谱写得越来越强势，然而细究起来，这些地方早就有了其文化底蕴，人文历史在此谱写了无数层的辉煌。

The earliest Xi’anese?: the Banpo Museum

                                                                最早的西安人： 半坡博物馆

Around four thousand years before the Emperor Qin Shihuang consolidated his imperial state, the plains to the east of Xi’an were settled by the prehistoric Yangshao people. Evidence of their existence lay hidden until 1953 when local labourers working on the foundations to a power plant began to uncover artefacts of obviously great antiquity. The subsequent archaeological dig advanced at what now seems like a breakneck speed. Barely three years after the first barrows of earth had been shifted, the Banpo Museum was ready for opening and Shaanxi people could appreciate the lifestyle led by their distant ancestors. The authorities were determined that this event be seen as the triumphant culmination of a modern, highly-efficient operation. Photographs taken at the time depict popular merriment and a clamour not normally witnessed outside of New Year celebrations.

      大约在秦始皇统一中国的四千年前，西安东边平原上定居的乃史前的仰韶人。他们的生存痕迹一直掩藏在地下，直到1953年，当地人修电厂挖地基时才发现了显然是古代文物的东西。随后的考古发掘速度今天看来似乎有点快得吓人， 就在掀开地面的三年后，“半坡博物馆”正式开放，陕西人就领略到了远古祖先的生活方式。官方认为这是现代、高效的辉煌成就，当时的照片记录下了这一普天同庆的场面，其热闹不亚于过新年。

One word that springs readily to mind whenever Banpo is mentioned is “quirky.” It sits nine kilometres to the east of the city centre in Baqiao District (the name literally means “Bridge over the River Ba”), an up-and-coming area which is still semi-rural. Prior to the completion of the East-West line of the Metro in the winter of 2013-14, “eastenders” were something of a people apart. Perceived by city folks as odd birds, new style paternalism in infrastructure projects has sought to lift them from their slough of insularity. The minutes it now takes to reach the suburb via subway had hitherto been unimaginable. Travelling on the city bus via Changying East Road or the parallel roadway stretching beyond the Chaoyang Gate, quarter hours could give way to half hours and more. The former route might be described as a concrete rat-run which gave way to flatlands broken up by nucleated groves of skyscrapers. The latter brings passengers by the tailors and clothes malls of Kangfulu, where bespoke suits can still be assembled and cut to order, not to mention two military colleges.

     一提到半坡，人心里冒出的第一个词就是“怪”。半坡位于距西安城中心九公里外东边的 灞桥区。这块大有开发前途的地区依旧是个半农业区。2013年至2014年的冬天，在西安地铁的东西线未竣工前，东郊的人有点疏远，城里的人觉得他们怪，而新的基础设施就是要把他们从狭隘的境遇中解放出来，现在坐地铁到郊区的速度以前是无法想象的。要是乘公交车沿长缨东路或其辅道去朝阳门外，十几分钟的车程可能要走半个多小时。长缨东路可以说是弯弯绕的水泥路，主要是为了给聚在平地的摩天大厦群让道。而其辅道则通往 康复路的裁缝店和服装批发市场，那里到现在还可以定做衣服，就更不用提还有两所军事院校了。

At the entrance to the Banpo museum visitors are greeted by a colossal, unexpected gateway. The great arch mimics the crisscrossing beam structure of Yangshao houses. The same feature appears elsewhere in the precinct, even inspiring the design of the concrete public toilet block. Contrary to the illusions of primitivism, the Banpo latrines glister white and the cubicles are scrubbed and regimented.

      在半坡博物馆的入口，迎接游客的大门出人意料，巨大的拱门演绎的是仰韶人房屋的十字梁结构。同样的特征也出现在博物馆的其它地方，就连混凝土建筑的公共厕所设计也得到了这样的启发。与原始想象不同的是，半坡的厕所洁白闪亮，马桶也擦洗的很干净。

To date, only about twenty per cent of total remains of the prehistoric community have been excavated; that is to say an area of approximately 50 000 square metres. As the site is surrounded by a horseshoe of modern high-rise developments, with yet more construction work promised the remainder is unlikely to see the light of day. The visitor experience is divided into three discrete sections – a museum offering displays of dioramas and unearthed objects, the visitor hall erected around the uncovered remains, and finally an outdoor reconstruction of the “primitive village.”

     至今，在这块大约五万平米的地方，对史前社区的发掘只有20%。 由于遗址周围是现代化的高大马蹄形建筑，这意味着将有许多未发掘的东西见不到天日。游客能看的有三个独立的展馆，即半坡遗址出土文物展，半坡遗址大厅和户外重建的“原始村落”。

A quotation from Zhuangzi (c. 369-c. 286 BC) looms large in the foyer to the museum: “One knows his mother, not knowing his father/ Setting to work at sunrise and resting at sunset” . This couplet retrospectively encapsulates what was thought to be the guiding principle of the Banpo civilization. In the 1950s, archaeologists, working according to the then prevalent Marxist paradigm of history, claimed that this was an early matriarchal society. The mother was acknowledged as the head of the family and as the crucible of new life. Men played a subordinate role.

     博物馆的大厅里很突出的引有一句庄子的话“民知其母，不知其父”；“日出而作，日落而息”，这副对联回顾性的总结了半坡文明当时的主导思想。在二十世纪五十年代，考古学家遵循的是马克思主义的历史观，认为这是早期的母系氏族社会。一家之长与生活的引领者是母亲，男人处于次要地位。

    Mao Zedong lent his approval to this widespread view of the Yangshao peoples. His 1964 speech ‘Discourse on Philosophical Problems’ compared the unequal situation of present-day women with the dominance achieved by these forebears.  

     毛泽东是赞成仰韶人的这种观点的，1964年在《关于哲学问题的讲话》中，他比较了现代女人的不平等地位和历史上的主导地位。

       The resourcefulness of the Yangshao is certainly evident throughout the exhibition. They benefited from the rich soils of the Guanzhong Plain, which were well-suited to growing vegetables, and could hunt wild deer or fish as well. One mannequin display depicts a hunting scene in which it is the women, and not the men, who form the front phalanx, wielding spears and capture-nets.

    仰韶人的足智多谋在整个展览中当然是一览无余了，他们依赖关中平原这片沃土，这里适合种植蔬菜，还可以猎鹿和打鱼。在一个仿制的狩猎图中，挥舞着长矛和套索打头阵的是女人，而不是男人。

The earth also furnished them with raw material for craftwork. As the potter’s wheel had not yet been invented Banpo residents created ceramics using the ring-building method. Sausage-like rolls of wet slip were coiled around and around in a spiral until a stable vessel developed. The contours were smoothed out with a moistened hand. These pots were then fired in the nearby kiln, which, it is estimated, could have reached temperatures as high as 1000 degrees Celsius. Banpo pots are a deep shade of red with several distinctive designs painted over the surface, including what must be one of the earliest examples of a vase fashioned after the form of a gourd. Inexpensive replicas are available on-site.

      这块土地也给半坡人提供了制作工艺品的原始材料。 当时还没有发明陶工用的陶瓷轮，半坡人创造了泥条盘筑法。就是用粗细一致的泥条，层层盘叠垒筑，按着渐次增大或减小的规律连接在一起，垒集成所需要的形体。再用湿手将做好的形体抹光。成型后就放进旁边的窖里烧制，据估计窖里的温度可达到摄氏1000度。半坡的陶器是深红色，表面有彩绘的图案，包括有最早的葫芦形陶器，博物馆里就有很便宜的仿制品。

For experts and visitors alike, it is the decorations upon the surface of the clay which present the greatest conundrum. A number of ceramic items bear an ambiguous symbol that appears to combine a naïve fish drawing with a spiky human face. The exhibition offers five versions of what the symbol potentially represents:-

1) That this is a totem which formed part of the Banpo people’s superstitions;

2) That the Yangshao revered their ancestors and this is a representation of what they were believed to have looked like;

3) That the fish’s horns and caps symbolize power;

4) That it is a shaman’s mask which was used in a ritual.

   The fifth, less probable, explanation posits that it is an image of an alien face, and that the Yangshao had contact with extraterrestrial life!

对于专家和游客来说，陶器表面的彩绘最让人费解。有好多陶器上带有象征意义模糊的人面鱼纹，展览中的解释有五种：祖先形象说、原始信仰说、权力象征说和巫师的面具说，

        第五种说法不大可信，说这是外星人的面孔，因为仰韶人与外星生命有接触。

The tribe’s prowess at fishing is plain to see. This is indicated in a rather quaint way to visitors. Where a single vertebra from a Chan River fish was retrieved among the domestic refuse at Banpo, curators have thought to have it mounted upon a custom-made wooden template. Contemporaneous hooks are affixed to a square of velvet near the creature’s mouth.

     半坡人的捕鱼技术显然很高超，给游客展示的方式很精巧。来自浐河的一条鱼的脊椎骨被还原到了半坡人的生活垃圾中，博物馆里的人把它绑在了一个做好的木模板上，当年的鱼钩还挂在鱼的嘴里。

                      汉语原文刊登于《美文》2016年第10期 （未完待续）

Shaanxi Through Dr. Robin’s Eyes

罗宾博士看陕西(10) 

The Eastern Aspect: Banpo and Lantian 

                                                             东方一瞥：半坡与蓝田

                                                 （英）罗宾•吉尔班克

                                                       胡宗锋  译

Further special features vivify our sense of Banpo as a living community. A miniature diorama provides a twenty-first century twist on “Pepper’s ghost,” an old Victorian illusion practiced by stage magicians in Britain. In the original trick, an assistant would stand concealed under a trapdoor beneath the stage level. A strong light from the rear allowed his or her reflection to appear in an angled pane of glass placed directly above. It seemed as if a ghostly spectre were floating upon the stage. At Banpo the trick is done using a nonstop film of actors performing everyday activities in Yangshao dress. Their images are projected upwards so that to the viewer they are apparently interacting in amongst a miniature village consisting of plastic huts and trees.

其它的特色使我们对半坡居住区的感觉更加鲜活。微缩的模型提供给我们的是二十一世纪的 “佩珀尔幻象”，犹如英国舞台上的魔术师在上演古老的维多利亚时期的景象（ 佩珀尔幻象Pepper’s ghost是一种在舞台上与某些魔术表演中产生幻觉的技术。这种技术借用一面平坦的玻璃与特定的光源技术，使物体可以出现或消失，或是变形成其他物体——译者注）。在原来的机关中，有一位助手会站着藏在台下的暗门里，台后的一束强光将其身影反射到头顶一块有角度的玻璃板上，这样就好像有一个诡异的幽灵在舞台上漂浮。而在半坡，则是通过电影胶片的连续播放，让演员穿着仰韶人的衣服演绎当时的日常活动。演员的身影被反射，这样参观的人就明显感到自己是在一个有塑料房子和树木的微型村子里和当年的人仰韶人在互动。

      Moving on into the excavated section of the site, visitors pass through a roomy, aircraft hangar-like space, not dissimilar in feel to the hall which houses the Terracotta Army in Lintong. The building, which was completed in large-scale renovations carried out between 2003 and 2006, is aesthetically-satisfying, complimenting perfectly the contents. A muted amount of sunlight is admitted via apertures in the roof. These elongated “eyes” are shaped exactly like the horizontal lozenge found on the Banpo face insignia.

         来到遗址被挖掘的地段，游客可以穿过一个宽敞的、犹如飞机库房的空间，感觉和临潼的兵马俑大厅一样。整个遗址大厅从2003年至2006年进行了大规模的翻新，审美感强，十分吻合其中的展览内容。柔和的阳光透过大厅顶上的气孔飘洒进来，这些细长的“眼睛”，形状和半坡人脸上的菱形标志一模一样。

    Surveying this extensive plot, we can appreciate two chief peculiarities. First of all, the Banpo people inhabited homes with spacious underground cellars. Secondly, their burial rites seem indicative of their own special cultural values. Whilst men and women were interred alongside each other in the village cemetery, the bodies of children were placed in shallow graves but a short distance from the inhabited houses. Their exclusion from the main burial ground perhaps signifies that they were not accepted as full members of the adult community. Arguably, the bereaved mothers still wanted to keep them close by. Furthermore, they hoped that should their souls wish to migrate they should not be imprisoned within an ordinary casket. Hence, jars with holes bored in the sides formed the receptacle of choice for dead infants.

       参观这个遗址大厅， 我们可以欣赏到两大特色。其一是半坡人居住的房子有一个宽敞的地窖，其二是半坡人的葬礼有其独特的文化价值。男人和女人被埋在村里的墓地里，但儿童埋得浅一些，离人们居住的地方很近。孩子没有埋进公墓，也许说明他（她）们还没有被接纳为成年社会的正式成员。无可争辩的是，失去孩子的母亲依旧希望孩子在身边。另外，母亲还期望如果孩子要还魂，就不能把孩子封死在普通人的棺材里。于是，为夭折的孩子选的是边上带有窟窿的陶罐。

      Beyond the two inside exhibition zones, the full quirkiness of Banpo comes into its own. The rear of the site is given over to a series of contemporary huts meant to recreate the environment of the original village. Perhaps a few years ago these were studios forming part of a live-action performance involving pottery-making and other arts. The thatched roofs have by now grown threadbare and shards of bowls and jars wait to be swept up. Interspersed with these structures are a few incongruous signs and symbols added when the grounds were restyled. These appear to bear no relationship to the authentic archaeological remains. Fertility images, such as tessellations of matrons with heaving bosoms, abound. Not so much matriarchal clan society brought to life as the fleshliest mythologizing of The Golden Bough solidified into concrete.

除了两个室内展厅，还有演绎半坡人完整的离奇故事的地方。在遗址的后面，有一排现代修建的模仿原来村落环境的小屋。也许几年前，这里还是实景展示陶艺和其它艺术的地方。茅草屋顶现在已变得破烂不堪，地上是破了的碗和陶器的碎片。点缀这些建筑的是修建时加上去的不协调的标志和符号，与真正的考古文物没有丝毫的联系，到处都是生育的图片，如用镶嵌技术制作的胸部高耸的女人。没有像《金枝》一样的耽于肉体的神话，谈不上对母系氏族社会的再现（《金枝》The Golden Bough是英国人类学家詹姆斯·乔治·弗雷泽的名著，是一部严肃的研究原始信仰和巫术活动的科学著作，是一部在世界范围内研究古老习俗及其有关信仰、观念的科学巨著和闻名遐迩的学术必读著作。由于该书搜集了丰富的人类学资料，被称为人类学的百科全书——译者注）

       Although the grounds offer excellent opportunities for those wishing to be photographed posing in “prehistoric” surroundings one cannot seem to escape the shadow of the adjacent apartment blocks for very long. The ornamental garden can boast one of the most impressive collections of peonies in the local area, making April or May the best time to inspect the outdoor portion.

        虽然想在“史前”环境中摆姿势照相的人有很好的机会，但却无法摆脱附近周围公寓大楼的影子。旁边的花园可以说是当地最显眼的牡丹园，所以四五月份是欣赏当地户外美景的最佳季节。

In spite of its relative obscurity outside of China, Banpo has played host to at least one notable tour by foreign visitors. In 1974 - two years before the death of Chairman Mao - the group of left-wing Paris-based scholars known as Tel Quel was allowed to sightsee at places of special interest across China. Tel Quel had recently created a sensation by refusing to toe the line of the French Communist Party, which had condemned Maoism as an aberration of Marxist ideas. One point of friction was the translation into French of the Italian politician Maria-Antoinetta Macciocchi’s De la Chine (originally entitled Dalla Cina: dopo la rivoluzione culturale)**** the French means "In China" and the Italian means "In China: During the Cultural Revolution"**** The title of the English language edition Daily Life in Revolutionary China better conveys the author’s intentions. There were hopes that this account would lift the lid on what was going on inside China with a seismic jolt as massive as that generated by Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China thirty-five years earlier. The French Communist Party, on the other hand, was not amused. Officials perceived Macciocchi’s reportage as being singularly unhelpful to the international class struggle, a one-and-a-half-pound chunk of pro-establishment propaganda which reproduced verbatim the optimistic oratories of local cadres, whilst whitewashing over the ideological excesses of the Cultural Revolution. They refused to endorse and disseminate the work, whereas Tel Quel found their interest so pricked that they devoted special editions of their journal to revolutionary aesthetics, and lobbied to be admitted on a fact-finding trip to Mao’s China at the earliest opportunity. 

当年除了在国外相对的无名之外，半坡的确至少接待过一个外国的名人团队。1974年，就是在毛泽东去世的前两年，法国巴黎 《原样》杂志的一群左翼学者按预先设定的路线来访问中国。《原样》当时由于拒绝顺从法国共产党和谴责毛泽东思想背离了马克思主义的初衷而引起了轰动。其中的摩擦之一就是把意大利政治家玛利亚﹒安东奈他﹒马可科奇Maria-Antoinetta Macciocchi的《中国的文化大革命》翻译成了法语（其法文题目为《在中国》 ，也许英文标题《革命中国的日常生活》更能表达作者的意思）。他们当初的希望是这本书能揭开当时中国国内所发生的一切的盖子，像三十五年前埃德加﹒斯诺的《西行漫记》那样引起一场地震似的轰动效应。然而法国共产党不买账，其官方认为马可科奇的报道非常不利于国际上的阶级斗争，有一大半的文字是在做预设的宣传，展现的都是当地干部的乐观言辞，是在粉饰文化大革命对意识形态的过分看重。法国共产党拒绝认可和宣传这部作品，而《原样》杂志则认为自己的兴趣很敏感，决心发行专刊来展示革命的美学。经过游说，于是很快就有了这次实际调查毛泽东领导下的中国的机会。（《原样》Tel Quel又译为《太凯尔》 《如是》 《泰勒》 ，是1960年由作家索莱尔斯创办的法国先锋派文学刊物，1983年停刊，并由《无限》Infini杂志取而代之——译者注）

      The itinerary chosen for them by the government happened to consist of attractions which had either been created for, or appropriated in, the cause of Red propaganda. For most in the group - which included the semiotician and literary critic Roland Barthes, the publisher François de Wahl, the Bulgarian-born psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva, her husband Philippe Sollers, and Marcelin Pleynet – the agenda of the trip was obvious from early on.

        中国政府为他（她）们选择的旅程，恰好都是新建的和顺路的红色宣传景点。对这个团的人大多数人来说，其中包括符号学家和文学评论家罗兰·巴特，出版商弗朗索瓦·瓦尔，保加利亚出生的心理学家朱丽娅·克里斯蒂娃，她的丈夫菲利普·索莱尔斯和马赛林·普雷纳特，这个行程的安排目的从一开始就是很清楚的。

From Roland Barthes’s terse and often downright grouchy jottings, which never gelled into his long-hoped-for critical work on Revolutionary China but were nonetheless printed as Carnets de Voyage en Chine (2009) in French and Travels in China (2013) in English translation, we can glean the strongly ideological flavour of the proceedings. At Hu County, to the southwest of Xi’an, the quintet was welcomed into a commune that had embraced the medium of “so-called peasant painting” to illustrate the class struggle. Ding Jitang, who still to this day sells his own pictures behind the Drum Tower in Xi’an, had come to the area in the 1950s and encouraged the locals to embark on this particular project. Prior to being allowed to view any artwork, the Tel Quel group was briefed about the changes to life brought about by the Liberation struggle, and the success of the Great Leap Forward was reiterated. The local leaders told them that the tried and tested collectivist model of production had ensured that famine and want were entirely eliminated in the commune.

          从 罗兰·巴特简要但却常常是明显不满的日记中，我们可以窥到强烈的意识形态说教氛围。其日记从未被收进他批评中国革命的作品中去，但2009年出版了法文的《中国行日记》，英文名为《中国行》 。在西安西南的户县，这五人被迎进了一个公社，那里在通过所谓的“农民画”演绎阶级斗争。画家丁济棠在二十世纪五十年代来到这里，鼓励当地人从事独特的农民画创作，他到现在还在西安鼓楼的后面出售他的作品。《原样》访华团在参观农民画前，有人简要介绍了解放后的生活变化，并不断提到“大跃进”的成功。当地的领导说，经过尝试和实践检验的集体生产模式，杜绝了公社里的饥荒与贫穷。

      Barthes notes some truly jaw-dropping statistics. 12 000 paintings by amateurs had been produced to illustrate life on the land; 8700 had already been churned out to criticize the revisionist line of the late Liu Shaoqi and the late Lin Biao. The content of the former varied, in his eyes, from the “realist” and “banal” to the downright “crazy.” Others romanticized the consequences of agricultural reform and collectivization, with depictions of villagers being overwhelmed yet not overly-surprised by bumper harvests, which flooded colour into the palette of blues, greys and browns which constituted country life. The information overload constituted by these visual aids made him wryly muse that the brigades which lacked amateur painters were probably “the lucky ones”!

           罗兰·巴特注意到了一些让人真的能笑掉下巴的数据。业余画家创作的12000副描述当地生活的作品，有8700副是在批判已故的刘少奇和林彪的修正主义路线。剩下的那些作品在他看来，是从“现实主义”的“平庸”直接蹦到了“疯狂”。有的作品是在赞扬农业改革和集体化的成果，描绘的是农民虽然不知所措但却自然的在庆祝大丰收，充斥画面的是构成乡下生活的蓝色、灰色和棕色。这些过分渲染的视觉刺激让他有点挖苦的觉得，那些没有农民画家的生产队也许是“很辛运”的。

      No such dogmatism is apparent in Hu County today, the home of the 75-kilometre long Lao River, one of the lesser of Chang’an’s eight waterways. Stepping into the main East Han Village, one may as well be visiting a middling-to-well-off community in California or on Australia’s Sunshine Coast. The residents mostly inhabit multi-storeyed villas, which have so many rooms that they have taken to renting them out on a nightly basis to tourists. Ornamental lotuses and topiary are the successors to the corn and sweet potatoes of old and what scant information boards there are proclaim tales of international friendship, involving eminent country artists like Pan Xiaoling, and not the triumphs of socialism. I suppose I was fortunate in that my lone trek to Hu County was not marred by Philippe Sollers rabbiting on about how Mao Zedong was the rightful heir to Qin Shihuang and how the People’s Republic held aloft the true destiny of the Chinese people. Instead the small county bus was full of dozing professionals feeling the snap of a winter Saturday. My friend Hongjie tried to rouse us by adopting a falsetto voice and translating the adverts for proctology procedures printed on the antimacassars on the seats. His classmate from primary school, the trainee surgeon Dr. Wang snorted back to consciousness, apologizing for his slovenliness. “Normally on a Friday we go to KTV or I listen to my grandfather sing Shaanxi opera, but last night we worked for hours on some experimental surgery – transforming a male goat into a female one. Soon I can advance to a human patient. My professor trained in South Korea, so with his help I think I can have a good career. You know in some ways China was ahead of the UK? A man who has gender reassignment can pay to have his identity card altered and from then on that person is legally a woman; can even marry a husband.” The “billy” must have had a shock when it awoke to find itself a “nanny.” No amount of straw and stroking could compensate for such an infringement of rights nor was it likely aspiring to find matrimony of the sort Dr. Wang described. The farmyard’s answer to Caitlyn Jenner probably had not been found. Crossing my legs tightly I noted how the locals still burnt wood in their kitchens and that the smell is so very distinct from coal smoke.

      今天的户县没有了这种教条的局面。这里是长安八水之一，七十五公里长的涝河源头。走进东韩村，仿佛就是在参观美国加利福尼亚州的一个中上社区，或者是来到了澳大利亚的阳光海岸。人们大多数住的是多层的别墅，房间很多，就把有些房子租给游客过夜。代替以前的包谷和土豆的是装饰性的莲花和灌木丛，不多的信息栏里展示的是与国际上的友好交往，包括对著名农民画家潘晓玲的介绍，而不是社会主义的伟大成果。我感到庆幸的是，我单调而艰难的户县之旅并没有受到菲利普·索莱尔斯不停的唠叨影响，他的书中一直在喋喋不休的说毛泽东是秦始皇最合适的接班人，中华民国代表中国人真正的命运。冬天周六前往农村的公交车上，坐满了打瞌睡的各种专业人士，我的朋友洪杰为了逗大家，便用一副假嗓子读座椅罩子上印的治疗痔疮的广告。他的小学同学，外科见习医生王大夫从打呼噜中醒了过来，为自己的邋遢连连抱歉：“通常在周末我是去歌厅唱歌，或是听我爷爷唱秦腔，但昨天晚上我们做了好几个小时的外科实验手术，是为一个公羊变性。不久，我就可以给人做这种手术了。我老师曾留学韩国，有他帮忙我想我的前途不错，你知道在这方面中国比英国强。一个男人要是想变性，就可以花钱改变身份，把自己变成女人，还可以嫁人。”那头“公羊”一觉醒来发觉自己变成了“母羊”肯定会大吃一惊。再多的抚摸也无法补偿对羊的权利践踏，羊也不可能有王大夫描述的那种渴望。农场也许还没有找到应对凯特琳﹒詹纳的方法（凯特琳﹒詹纳Caitlyn Jenner，是美国65岁的变性名人，他原名为布鲁斯﹒詹纳，曾经是奥运会十项全能冠军，2015年做变性手术，变得更加大红大紫——译者注）。我把两腿夹的紧紧的，我注意到当地的人在厨房里依旧烧柴火，炊烟的味道跟煤烟截然不同。

      I doubt that the French leftists of forty years earlier carried home rolled-up stencilled images of orchards at three-for-the price of two or were offered frames more expensive than the pictures themselves. It does not take a broad stretch of the imagination to see that they were being pushed to see Hu County and Banpo as being of a continuum. The psychologist Julia Kristeva was attracted by the notion that here in Banpo was a society in which women were the dominant sex and presumably were responsible for education and preserving the culture. Her study entitled About Chinese Women (1974) used Banpo to speculate upon how the female was gradually displaced as the centre of the primitive community. Going into some detail about the contents of the tour Kristeva relates her delight at listening to a certain Ms. Chang discoursing at length about the significance of Banpo to modern day Socialists. This self-taught tour-guide had thoroughly digested Engels’s On the Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State. She sought to portray the ruins as an almost idyllic commune which had not yet been torn apart by the rise of capitalism.

       我怀疑四十年前法国左派人士掏两幅画的钱，买三幅卷起来带回家的农家果园，做画框的钱比画本身还要贵。不难想象人家为什么要把户县和半坡做为一个整体让他（她）们看。吸引心理学家朱丽娅·克里斯蒂娃的是，在这儿的半坡人社会里，女性是主宰者，那么她们也可能负责教育和对文化的保护。在1974年出版的《中国妇女》中，她以半坡为例，推断了女性在原始部落的中心位置是怎样被渐渐取代的。在谈到这次旅行的细节时，克里斯蒂娃提到了她高兴的听一位常女士大谈半坡对现代社会主义的伟大意义。这位自学成才的导游对恩格斯《家庭、私有制和国家的起源》理解得很透彻，她将这里的遗址描绘成一个田园式的社区，还没有受到崛起的资本主义的腐蚀。

     Doubts of the same nature were recorded by the Sinologist Burton Watson not long afterwards. His 1983 tour around China, as recorded in China At Last, saw him tour the Middle Kingdom for the very first time more than twenty years after his translations of Records of the Grand Historian and Mozi were published. Notwithstanding, the Reform and Opening-up being in its vanguard, much public discourse had yet to shed its dogmatically Marxist trappings.

          美国汉学家伯顿﹒沃森也有同样的疑虑。在翻译了《史记》和《墨子》并出版二十年后，他才第一次在1983年来到了中国（他的游记《我的中国梦》中有记载）。当时虽然改革与开放势头正旺，但很多的公共话语依旧还没有摆脱教条的马克思主义思想。

      On hearing Ms. Chang’s talk alongside Kristeva, Roland Barthes was, by contrast, positively vitriolic. He noted the “muddled explanation of this society, given by the clearly incompetent foxy-faced girl, is unfortunately dominated by obvious prejudices: collectivism, platitudinous materialism, absence of symbolism.” Some of these points are perceptive. We can now laugh at the clumsy and anachronistic parallels drawn between the Yangshao and the twentieth-century Chinese peasantry. One of Barthes’s special bugbears was a painted frieze (now no longer on display) depicting a “gathering of primitive folk round a fire.” In this “a woman with her finger raised, domineering, is speaking; we are told: ‘discussion of problems by villagers!’” The reconstructed scene with its feminine village leader seems to perfectly capture Chairman Mao’s view of the Yangshao as proto-communists.

             在和克里斯蒂娃一起听常女士讲解时，罗兰·巴特相反倒是很刻薄。他注意到“这位显然不够格但却一脸聪慧的姑娘介绍这里时的胡拉乱扯，不幸带有很大的集体主义、陈腐的唯物论和象征主义的偏见。”有些话是对的，我们现在可以嘲笑当时那种笨拙的把仰韶文化和二十世纪的中国农民相提并论的时代错误，罗兰·巴特特反感的是一副彩图（现在已不展出了），描绘的是“原始的篝火聚会”。在这副图中，有一个女人正挥舞着手指、盛气凌人的讲话。有人解释说这是“村里人在讨论问题”。这副再造的女性为村里领导的情景，似乎完美的演绎了毛主席有关仰韶是原始共产主义的观点。

       It is a shame that Barthes’s bad mood caused him to sneer even at the curator’s final gesture of friendship. On their departure from Banpo, each foreign visitor was presented with a wooden fish, presumably a replica of the insignia on the Yangshao ceramic wares. With his scant knowledge of the Chinese language, the Frenchman would probably not have known the pun on the character yu (giving somebody a fish implying that you wish for them to enjoy an abundance of blessings). Within a Shaanxi context, this had an extra level of significance. In Tang Dynasty Chang’an, foreign dignitaries were customarily awarded a fish token.

        丢人的是，糟糕心态甚至让罗兰·巴特讥笑起了博物馆馆长最后的友好姿态。离开半坡的时候，每个外国游客都得到了一个木鱼，大概就是仰韶陶瓷上的标志复制品。由于不懂汉语，这个法国人也许不明白“鱼”这个汉字的双关寓意（授人以鱼意味着祝福多多）。在陕西，就又多了一层含义，唐代的时候，通常只有显赫的外国人才能有此殊荣。

                       汉语原文刊登于《美文》2016年第10期 （未完待续）

                                                                               本文作者 罗宾博士

Shaanxi Through Dr. Robin’s Eyes

罗宾博士看陕西(10) 

                                     The Eastern Aspect: Banpo and Lantian 

                   东方一瞥：半坡与蓝田 

                                                            （英）罗宾•吉尔班克

                                胡宗锋  译                 Nowadays, Banpo has worked its way into popular culture in a less contentious manner. A bestselling children’s book, which may seem a little macabre to foreign tastes, is entitled The Girl in the Jar and set in the Yangshao society. The narrator is one of the villagers who died in infancy and she tells the story of her short life to the modern day reader. Much more prominently, Banpo supplied part of the inspiration for the logo of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. As shop assistants at the museum are all too eager to point out, the multi-coloured children who flank the Olympic Rings had their facial features modelled on the Banpo mask. Thus, that most contemporary of events could be said to have brought to international attention one of the oldest and most elusive chapters in Chinese history.

     如今，半坡已经毫无争议的成了大众文化。一本畅销的童话书名为《陶罐里的女孩》，故事是以仰韶社会为背景，这对外国人来说有点恐怖。童话的主人公是半坡村里早夭的一个女孩，给现代的读者讲述自己短暂的一生。更显眼的是，半坡对2008年奥运会的标志也有启迪。博物馆里的售货员都会抢着对游客讲，奥运五环边上的彩色福娃，其面部特征就来自于半坡的面具。因而，可以说最现代的奥运会把中国历史上最古老和最难以捉摸的篇章呈现给了世界。

Blue Field: Lantian County and the White Deer Plain 

                     蓝田县与白鹿原

         In moonlit pearls see tears in mermaid’s eyes

        From sunburnt jade in Blue Field let smoke rise

                                   沧海月明珠有泪

        蓝田日暖玉生烟

                                         ——（唐）李商隐

       Li Shangyin’s (813-56 AD) description of Lantian County is, to my mind, one of the most piquant meters of poetry to have come out of Tang Dynasty Chang’an. His contemporaries concerned themselves with the revelry of the capital, military matters, and the longing for home. Not he. The bard Li’s muse was found among the mountains and he fancied that the rich mineralogical deposits of the area could enunciate their presence even through the coverage of terra firma. 

       李商隐诗中对蓝田的描述，在我看来是唐代长安最活泼的诗句。与他同时代的诗人描写的都是首都的欢宴、军事题材或思乡情，他不是这样。诗人李商隐的沉思在大山里，他想象着当地丰富的矿物资源甚至可以穿过地表的覆盖而昭示自己的存在。

        The hills of Lantian are not in fact haloed with the sheen of semi-precious stones. Tearing up the Hushan Expressway as it outpaces the sluggish Ba River, motorists are not spontaneously overpowered by a glare redolent of the alien landings in the Spielberg movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Nonetheless, in more senses than one, the fame of the county rests upon what lies beneath. In 1963, the unearthing of the remains of two female specimens of a subspecies of the Homo erectus at Chenjiaowo and Gongwangling, dating back at least half-a-million years, [1] wrested from Banpo the laurels of being the earliest settled region of Shaanxi. The Shaanxi History Museum houses the original mandible and cranium, but an inconspicuous local exhibition hall commemorates the Paleolithic ladies close to the spot where one of them was disinterred. Their hand tools and lithic fragments are clad in Perspex, and placards proclaim the significance of what is known as Homo erectus Lantianensis in Latin to the whole of mankind.

      蓝田的大山实际上并没有玉石的光环。踏上沪陕高速，超越缓缓的灞河水流，汽车司机并不会自然而然的像斯皮尔伯格导演的 《第三类接触》 中的场景一样，来到一个光怪陆离的外星人芳草地。但不管怎样，不论从哪方面讲，蓝田的声誉来自于地下。1963年，在陈家窝村和公王岭出土的两具蓝田猿人女性化石至少有50万年的历史，这夺走了半坡是陕西人类最早的定居区的桂冠。发现的蓝田猿人下颌骨和头盖骨保存在陕西历史博物馆里，但在靠近化石被发掘的地方，有一个不起眼的展厅，纪念这位旧石器时代的女人。她们用的工具和岩屑都被放在玻璃罩里，旁边的解释就是著名的被用拉丁文命名的“直立人蓝田亚种”对人类的意义。

       Li Shangyin had no means of knowing of the ape-like forebears whose remains were lying beneath those shimmering hills. He was aware, and proud, of the reputation of the county for producing semi-precious minerals. Relying on the public bus, one can swing into the heart of the jade district from the city within about ninety minutes. Every glazed-door shop stocks largely the same range of bracelets and bi (decorative pierced disks), so this is not exactly the place to haggle for whopping discounts on jewellery. Having said that, there are those for whom the experience of trekking to Shaanxi and being able to boast about frequenting the shimmering hills probably matters more than the business of shopping per se. The one occasion I visited there, our lunch was interrupted by the antics of a family from Jiangsu who chomped away noisily at their carp and insisted on scraping jade bangles against the glass on their lazy Susan to demonstrate its authenticity.

       李商隐无意去打听化石被埋在闪烁着光环的大山地下的猿人祖先，他知道且引以为豪的是蓝田产玉的美名。坐公交车，不到九十分钟，就可以从西安城赶到产蓝田玉的中心地带。每一家门面铮亮的店铺陈列的是大致相同的手镯和璧（装饰性的镂空盘），所以这里不是买首饰砍价的地方。既然如此，对于那些跋涉到陕西，吹嘘见过大山玉生烟的人来说，这件事本身就比买玉还重要。有一次我去那儿，午饭被一家江苏人打扰得没法吃。他们用牙咯吱咯吱的咬玉饰，并坚持用手镯划餐桌上的玻璃转盘，向人展示自己的买的玉是真的。

        How we choose to talk about jade forms one major area of cultural misunderstanding between Chinese people and folk from Western countries. In the West the category of “jade” is said to encompass just two minerals – nephrite (known in Chinese as “hard jade” and jadeite (known in Chinese as “soft jade”). The dozens of other different materials containing the Chinese character yu in their names are perceived to be “false jades” or stones, which while possessing characteristics of hardness and opacity, do not warrant that generic title. Lantian jade measures 2 to 6 on the Moh’s Scale. It is composed of around 50.75% calcite and 49.25% antigorite, together with trace elements of talc. The stone can be further subdivided into five categories: white marble, light beige marble serpentine, yellow ophicalcite, apple-coloured ophicalcite, and banded flash petrochemical ophicalcite. The toughness of the surface and its resistance to wear makes it suitable for use as drinking or eating vessels, massage balls and ink-stones as well as for being carved into decorative artefacts. The Shaanxi History Museum houses 125 jade articles of mostly utilitarian use ascribed to the Shenmu Shimao Longshan culture of c. 2000 BC.

      说到选玉和谈玉，中国人和西方人在这方面有很大的文化误读。在西方，据说玉只有两种，那就是软玉（而中国人叫硬玉），另一种就是硬玉（翡翠）（而中国人叫软玉）。其它十几种带有汉语“玉”字的矿石都被认为是“假玉”，虽然硬度和透明度有玉的特征，但还不能称之为玉。蓝田玉的摩氏硬度为2-6度，含有大约50.75% 方解石 和49.25% 叶蛇纹石以及云母一样的微量元素。蓝田玉细分为五类：第一种为白色大理岩；第二种为浅米黄色蛇纹石大理岩；第三种为黄色蛇纹石大理岩；第四种为苹果色蛇纹石大理岩；第五种为条带状透闪石化蛇纹大理岩。蓝田玉表面的韧度和经久耐磨使其成为制作吃喝用品、健身球、砚台以及雕刻其它艺术品的上等材料。陕西历史博物馆里收藏有125件蓝田玉器，大多为日常用品，属于2000多年前的 神木石峁龙山文化。

Legend has it that Lantian jade found favour with Yang Guifei the leading concubine of the Tang Emperor Xuanzong, a not unfeasible prospect since the couple spent much of their time at leisure in the vicinity of the nearby Huaqing Hot Springs. Ms. Yang would bathe her face in water that had been soaked in or come into contact with “ice lotus jade,” believing it to possess properties which would keep her complexion flawless and fresh. The main rationale behind this is that since the mineral has been inundated in situ by spring waters it may have anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory and skin whitening effects. Many women throughout history, and even to the present day, emulate her habits in the toilette. References to the mining of the stone long predate even this. The Book of Han: Dilizhi records Lantian jade being mined at Jingbei Lantian Mountain . It is purported that the legendary He Family Jade  featured in Classical works such as the sayings of Master Han Fei (Hanfeizi) in which it is used as a bargaining chip to negotiate the secession of fifteen cities, was an outstanding example of Lantian jade. Although more likely to be "ordinary jade" rather than something exceptional, current geological surveys estimate that 100 million cubic metres of the mineral are yet to be excavated locally, mainly around Yuchuan Township and Red Gate Temple Township.

      据说，唐玄宗最喜爱的妃子杨贵妃对蓝田玉爱有独钟，这不是没有可能，因为这二人的许多缠绵时光就是在附近的华清池消磨的。杨贵妃总是用玉泡的水洗脸，或者是佩戴“冰花芙蓉玉”，相信蓝田玉可以使她的肌肤娇嫩。但其原理在于蓝田玉是一种被温泉沁泡的矿石，有抗菌、消炎和美肤的作用。在历史上有很多女人，甚至在今天还有人在梳妆台前模仿她的这一习惯。有关蓝田玉的开采资料更早，在《汉书﹒地理志》中就有美玉“产自京北蓝田山”（京北就是今西安北）、“蓝田，山出美玉”的记载。据传说，古典作品如《韩非子》中提到的“和氏璧”，曾经是交换十五座城池的砝码，就是蓝田玉中的极品。虽然蓝田玉可能就是“普通的玉”，而非稀世宝贝，据现在的地质勘查当地蓝田玉的储量约为1100万立方米 ，主要分布在玉川镇和红门寺镇附近。

      On reflection, Lantian is not an eastern hinterland, but a region wrought with religious, topographical, geological and mythical significances. The Shuilu Nunnery houses lugubrious ranks of demons fashioned centuries ago from wire armature fleshed out in clay. As flash photography is forbidden the visitor has a doubly terrifying experience. The shrines are so dim that the attendants of the underworld lurk as goblins which gaze at our navels. Secondly, going home without photos forces us to reconstruct from memory what we have seen. Our heads are thus filled with the kind of dark images which normally only float out of the unconscious mind during nightmares.

      斟酌起来，蓝田并非东方的一个穷乡僻壤，而是一个把宗教、神话、地貌和地质特色糅合到了一起的地方。那里的水陆庵里，有几个世纪前的壁塑，通过佛祖的生死过程来教化人的思想，帮助人们摆脱苦难。由于禁止游客使用闪关灯拍照，里面就让人感到更加恐惧。神龛都比较暗，下届的侍从就好像是小妖怪望着我们。另外，回去后没有照片，我们只能靠记忆来回想所看到的一切，所以脑海里闪现的尽是噩梦中无意识出现的暗影。

       The scenery of the county is among the most lush to be encountered anywhere in Northwest China. This much was recognized by the Tang Dynasty poet Wang Wei, who chose to locate his villa here in Wang Chuan, producing paintings combining watercolour images of his surroundings with self-penned poems in his own distinctive hand. Spots such as the Whale Creek form the natural habitat for decidedly peculiar wildlife species. The giant salamander, with its outsized head, pinched shoulders and pelvis, and Shar Pei-like wrinkles is known to almost everyone in the Chinese countryside. In times of dearth its flesh has been harvested (illegally) as food, though the common name of the creature is what makes it especially intriguing. Wawa yu (literally “baby fish”) is utterly misleading when rendered into English. “Baby” refers not to its size, but the fact that rather like a toad it will emit an unearthly shriek when injured or subject to distress. A somewhat willful reading of Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian could potentially point to a now forgotten former usage for the giant salamander in China. Chapter 6 of that work refers to the tomb of the First Emperor being sealed, with the only source of illumination coming from lamps filled with the oil of the “man-faced fish.” The overwhelming likelihood is that this means “whale oil,” though there is a part of me which remains curious as to whether the Qin at some stage relied on the fat of this local eccentric beast as a fuel.

        蓝田县的景色在西北地区是最苍翠繁茂的，这得到了唐代诗人王维的认可。 他在这里的辋川建了别墅，在这里创作，把自己亲手创作的与周围环境相关的水彩画和诗融合在一起。而像 鲸鱼沟这样的景点则是珍稀野生动植物的自然栖息地。头部硕大的大鲵，身体前部扁平，尾部侧扁，身上有沙皮狗一样的皱纹乃中国乡下人都知道的东西。在不够吃的时候，人们会（违法）捕它充饥。让其神秘的是它的俗名，叫娃娃鱼。用英文讲有些误会，“娃娃”指的不是大小像娃娃，而是它在受伤或是有难的时候，就会像蟾蜍一样发出怪异的叫声。司马迁《史记》中的话潜在的说出了娃娃鱼在中国被人们忘记了的一种用法。在《史记》卷六的秦始皇本纪中说，在其墓被封上的时候墓内“以人鱼膏为烛”。那极有可能指的是用“鲸鱼油”，但我依旧好奇的是，当年的秦人用的燃料是不是当地这种怪兽的脂肪。

        Lantian is now synonymous with leisure and recreation, two things to be had in abundance in among its verdant hills. The Tangyu Spring and Spa are choked with Xi’anese pleasure-seekers on every holiday from May Day to the Golden Week in October. The various pools, some of which have been in use since the 1300s are fed by natural sources originating approximately 2000 metres or more below the Wei Basin. They reach the surface with a temperature of around 50 degrees Celsius, allowing those taking a dip to be warmed a little above normal blood temperature without being boiled. Further health enhancing effects can be sought from infusions or preparations of locally-grown ingredients, including ganoderma, key to the repertoire of traditional Chinese medicine.

      如今的蓝田是休闲和娱乐的同义词，其山里有两大丰富资源。从五一到十月的黄金周，每个假日汤峪温泉就挤满了来此休闲和水疗的西安人。汤池各式各样，有的早在1300年前就有了。其中的温泉水来自渭河盆地地下2000多米的深处，涌出地面的水温大约在50摄氏度，高出一般的血温，人泡进去有一点热，但却不会把人烫伤。要想更有利益健康，那就要加东西或当地生长的草药，如中药里贵重的灵芝。

                         《美文》主编贾平凹先生和本文作者与译者

Shaanxi Through Dr. Robin’s Eyes

罗宾博士看陕西(10) 

           The Eastern Aspect: Banpo and Lantian 

             东方一瞥：半坡与蓝田 

                                   （英）罗宾•吉尔班克

                                             胡宗锋  译 

      As is explored in the late Chen Zhongshi’s masterwork White Deer Plain, Lantian was not always so sedate, participating in the revolutionary ferment of the early twentieth century by being the first place in Shaanxi to establish a local branch of the Chinese Communist Party. Mr. Chen portrays that as a critical, if necessary break with the past for the county had two other claims to fame which tied it to the old order of the Qing Dynasty. First of all, Lantian was renowned as a breeding ground for cooks enlisted to serve in the imperial kitchen. Specifically, these gourmets had a reputation for being order to whip up the most exquisite delicacies employing humble or multifarious ingredients in a way which put cosmopolitan chefs to shame. Secondly, Lantian earned the Chinese epithet Juxianfang. On the one hand this alludes to the readiness with which the soils of the area nourish medicinal ganoderma. On the other means a “gathering of scholars,” this being the county of origin of numerous Neo-Confucianists who contributed to the development of Guanxue (the Guanzhong School of Philosophy)

在已故作家 陈忠实 的《白鹿原》里，  蓝田并不总是风平浪静的。这里的人参加了二十世纪初的革命，是陕西最早建立共产党地方支部的地方。陈忠实先生的描述是有批判性的，要是说与过去决裂，这个县还有两项与清代的旧俗相关而出名的事。首先，蓝田是出过宫廷大厨的“厨师之乡”，这里的美食家特别出名的是善于用普通的材料或多种佐料烹饪精致的菜肴，其技艺足以让世界名厨感到自愧不如。其次，蓝田有“聚仙坊”的美誉，这一方面指的是蓝田的土壤盛产药用灵芝；另一方面指“聚贤”。这个县出了许多对关学有贡献的新儒家学者。

Rather like Zhang Zai (1020-77) in Mei County, Baoji, it is not uncommon for even the lowliest of Lantian folk to have heard of, or speak with pride, of the illustrious Lü brothers who lived in the same century. One of them Lü Dalin, in fact married a niece of Master Zhang, strengthening the Shaanxi guanxi. Five of the six sons of that family passed the imperial entrance examination as jinshi and were known as the Lantian Lü, a monicker which bespeaks both the adulation in which they were held and the centrality of local identity in the application of their philosophy. In political terms Lü Dafang (1027-97) fared the best, rising to become assistant director of the right in the Department of State Affairs. To all intents and purposes, he was the prime minister of the Southern Song Empire. Another brother Lü Dajun is closely associated with the implementation of the concepts of xiangyue and xiangyi. Observing that magnates such as himself were often working within a broken system in which the national government cared little for order at a grassroots level, xiangyue sought to impose a social contract between villagers whereby they would aid their neighbours during times of want and respect mutual obligation at other times. Xiangyi touches upon the rites and rituals held upon special occasions, though also encompasses the etiquettes which citizens uphold in their everyday life.

       像宝鸡眉县的张载一样，和其生活在同一个世纪的蓝田“吕氏四贤”是人人皆知并应以为豪的人。实际上，“ 吕氏四贤”之一的吕大临娶得是张载的侄女，这就更加深了他们之间的关系。吕家六子五人通过科举成为进士，“蓝田吕氏”的美誉就证明了人们对其的赞扬和对其礼学思想在当地的推崇。从政治上讲，吕大防（1027年—1097年）最为有名，他官至尚书左仆射兼门下省侍郎，实际上他是北宋皇帝的宰辅。他的弟弟吕大钧则是和《吕氏乡约》与《乡义》的提出和笃行连在一起。吕大钧注意到自己所任职的政府制度有缺陷，对草根阶层少管教，他的《乡约》是中国历史上第一部成文的村规民约，提出同约人要“德业相劝”、“过失相规”、“礼俗相交”、“患难相恤”。 而《乡义》讲的是重大场合的礼仪，当然也包括人们日常生活中的规矩。

The broader philosophical context in which the Lüs operated cannot be sketched out judiciously in this short space. Suffice to say, those familiar with the cultural conservatism of Guanzhong should be able to discern the canniness with which Lü Dalin understood the values of those around him and was able to adapt them to political ends. He was regarded as the father of archaeology in China. The founder of Xi’an Forest of Stone Stele is Lü Da Zhong,who moved Stone-base Classics on Filial Piety, Kai Cheng Stone Classics, and the Thirteen  Stone Classics to the southern part within the city wall for protection during the time when he was the vice director of the department of transportation  in Shaanxi, hence  the embryo of the Xi’an Forest of Stele.

         “吕氏四贤”在哲学上的广泛研究这里无法简而述之。要说的是，那些熟悉关中保守文化的人能看清吕大临的精明，他能“随时识事”，并“论道于朝”，还被认为是“中国的考古之父”。 陕西碑林博物馆的创始人则是“吕氏四贤”的吕大忠，在任陕西转运副使期间，将《石台孝经》 《开成石经》 和《十三经》等碑石移至城墙内南侧，统一保管，这才形成了西安碑林的最早雏形。

Neo-Confucianism had a deep foothold in the intellectual life of Lantian. Arguably it reached its apotheosis in the figure of the educator Niu Zhaolian (1867-1937), who looms as an almost sufi-like presence over the period when the Old China and its values were at last being swept away. He was said to have been possessed of a close-to mystical insight, being able to divine where subterranean water was to be found and to predict when there would be a downpour of rain. His character has been portrayed in print by both Chen Zhongshi and Jia Pingwa, but I interviewed his great-grandson and the custodian of his legacy, Niu Rui, to gain a clearer impression of the man and his personal philosophy:-

          新儒家在蓝田的根基很深，不可争辩的是，这在教育家牛兆濂(1867-1937)的手里达到了极致。在旧中国及其价值观被扫除的时候，他像苏菲派的教徒一样隐居在蓝田（苏菲派为伊斯兰教神秘主义派别，是对伊斯兰教信仰赋予隐秘奥义、奉行苦行禁欲功修方式的诸多兄弟会组织的统称。也有说“苏菲”一词源自阿拉伯语“赛法”(Safa)，意为“心灵洁静和行为纯正”——译者注）。据说他有先知先觉之妙术，能掐算出何处有地下水，何时有雨。陈忠实和贾平凹对他的形象都有刻画，为了更加清楚的了解牛兆濂及其个性，我访问了他的遗产守护人，他的曾孙，芸阁书院院长、西安市牛兆濂文化研究会秘书长牛锐，（一下简称为问与答）

1.  Your ancestor Niu Zhaolian is just one of many scholars to have come out of Lantian County. Even today in the 21^st century people still speak with pride of the achievements of Lü brothers during the Northern Song Dynasty. Do you think there is any special quality or circumstance which makes Lantian a prime breeding ground for scholars?

问：您的祖辈牛兆濂是蓝田众多的学者之一，甚至在二十一世纪的今天，人们依旧在自豪的谈论北宋时期吕家兄弟的杰出成就，您认为蓝田有何独特的地方成就了这些学者?

答：一方山水养一方人，每个地域都有自己独特的人文历史遗迹和杰出人物，不过像蓝田人文历史深厚、集中的区域，在关中地区并不多见。秦岭、白鹿原、灞河和毗邻长安独特的地理优势，孕育了蓝田这块神奇的土地：115万年前，我们的共同祖先“蓝田猿人”在这里栖息；8000年前，始母华胥氏，在这里将其部落治理成万民敬仰，八方归附的“华胥国”，华夏文明自此开始，一脉相承、延绵不绝。5000年前，黄帝昼寝而梦游华胥古国，而后天下大治，被誉为中华民族第一梦；3000年以来，这里业已成为中国传统文化重要的传承地；中国第一部相约——吕氏乡约、第二敦煌——水陆庵、佛门净土、艺术殿堂、历代文人墨客的膜拜之地——诗佛王维的辋川别业，特别是关学自张载开创以来，其文脉在蓝田始终延续，关学人物辈出，如北宋的蓝田三吕、明代的秦关王之士先生到清末民初的关中大儒牛兆濂等。

2.  Niu is not only spoken of as a teacher and a philosopher, but as a demigod  for his reputed powers of divination and prophecy. Do you think that such a title is deserved?

 答：曾祖既是理学家、教育家和社会活动家，又是民间老百姓口口相传的牛才子、牛圣人、牛半仙。这本身在历史上的关中学者身上并不多见。牛兆濂思想是站在学术思想范畴上而言。比如2015年10月《关学文库》（“十二五”国家重点图书出版规划项目）中《牛兆濂集》的整理和出版，并被确立为“传统关学最后一位大儒”。不过，民间流传，带有传奇和神秘色彩的牛才子文化也同样不容忽视。“牛才子活在人们心中”应该是全社会对曾祖最朴素，也是最高的评价。一次，电视剧《白鹿原》制片人赵安先生问：“”牛才子为什么这么有名？看似不经意的一句话，但让我很是震撼。其实，曾祖一生都坚持述而不作，在他平实的文字中，处处体现他不慕名利、关注现实、贴近民生和国家情怀的思想和观念，而且用其行动积极践行着自己的所学、所知和所悟。因此，正是因为他能为当时的社会、为老百姓自觉、自愿地做了很多事，老百姓才会通过各种传奇故事来纪念和传承他和他的精神。所以，牛才子文化是老百姓心中的文化，是和牛兆濂思想遥相呼应的。

3. Niu has been portrayed in several fictionalized forms in the works of Shaanxi writers. In Feidu (1993) by Jia Pingwa he is shown as the ancestor of the protagonist’s wife and the author highlights his powers of divination as used to help vanquish the Henan warlord Liu who besieged Xi’an City in 1926. What are your feelings about this depiction?The late Chen Zhongshi also refers to Niu in Bailuyuan, albeit indirectly through the figure of Mr. Zhu, the Neo-Confucianist scholar. Chen goes into far more detail than Jia, even at one stage presenting a striking description of the scholar through the eyes of Bai Jiaxuan。What are your feelings about his depiction in the novel?

      问：已故的作家陈忠实在《白鹿原》中，通过新儒家学者朱先生的形象，间接的提到了牛才子，陈忠实比贾平凹刻画的更具体，甚至是以白佳轩的眼光对其进行了描述：“才子的模样普普通通，走路的姿势也普普通通，似乎与传说中那个神乎其神的神童才子无法统一起来.”您怎样看待小说中的这种演绎？

答：小说《白鹿原》中的朱先生，其生活原型就是牛兆濂，白鹿书院的原型就是芸阁书院。陈忠实先生家住在灞桥西蒋村，和牛才子故居隔了一条灞河。陈先生给我说，他是听牛才子的故事长大的。他家中挂的是牛才子写的中堂，天气好的时候，还能遥遥望见牛才子住的地方，这些都深深的刻印在他的心中，融入他的血管中。所以，在创作《白鹿原》时，牛才子是他第一个想到的生活原型，朱先生顺理成章就是第一个人物形象。陈先生坦言，在创作朱先生时，他的压力最大，因为这个人物有生活原型，而且每个老百姓心目中都有一个牛才子、牛圣人和牛半仙。如果写不好，会让老百姓骂的。而且朱先生这个人物是陈先生注入的很大的心血和期望。朱先生虽然着墨不多，但是在小说中他是白嘉轩之外的一条暗线，小说中的高潮梦，都会出现朱先生，而且是带有“寓言”的，是对传统文化的思考和呐喊。有时，我看着曾父的照片，也很是感动。就是这样一个看似普普通通、简简单单的关中学人，其透出中国传统文化所给予的力量和智慧，体现着关学打断骨头连着筋的硬骨头精神，时刻透露着关心百姓疾苦和民族危亡的家国情怀。陈忠实先生有次谈到曾祖不顾高龄要上前线抗日时，很感慨地说如果今天再有侵略者进来，自己都不知道有没有先生的那种勇气赶赴前线。曾祖在《教子语》中留下这样的家训：“第一，先要认得自家是个人。第二，须要认得自家是个中国人。更要认得天生我身不是单为享福，是要做顶天立地的事业呢”。这也是曾祖一辈子的追求吧。

4. Briefly, how would you summarize the essence of Niu Zhaolian’s teaching?

问： 简而言之，您怎样来概括牛兆濂思想的精髓？

答：曾祖既是理学家、教育家和社会活动家，又是民间老百姓口口相传的牛才子、牛圣人、牛半仙。这本身在历史上的关中学者身上并不多见。牛兆濂思想是站在学术思想范畴上而言。比如2015年10月《关学文库》（“十二五”国家重点图书出版规划项目）中《牛兆濂集》的整理和出版，并被确立为“传统关学最后一位大儒”。不过，民间流传，带有传奇和神秘色彩的牛才子文化也同样不容忽视。“牛才子活在人们心中”应该是全社会对曾祖最朴素，也是最高的评价。一次，电视剧《白鹿原》制片人赵安先生问：“”牛才子为什么这么有名？看似不经意的一句话，但让我很是震撼。其实，曾祖一生都坚持述而不作，在他平实的文字中，处处体现他不慕名利、关注现实、贴近民生和国家情怀的思想和观念，而且用其行动积极践行着自己的所学、所知和所悟。因此，正是因为他能为当时的社会、为老百姓自觉、自愿地做了很多事，老百姓才会通过各种传奇故事来纪念和传承他和他的精神。所以，牛才子文化是老百姓心中的文化，是和牛兆濂思想遥相呼应的。如果要我总结牛兆濂思想的精髓，那就是“学为好人”的教育思想，“质朴务实”的实践精神，“不慕名利”的赤手节操以及“家国情怀”士大夫精神。

5.In your opinion do you think that Neoconfucianism has continued relevance to modern society?

问：在您看来，新儒家思想依旧在影响现代社会吗？

答：新儒家思想起源于民国时期，是梁漱溟、熊十力、钱穆、冯友兰等先生倡导的，经牟宗三、徐复观等诸先生的推动，直至今天，依然还有余英时、杜维明等一批学者活跃在思想界。我看过先生们的一些书，给我最大的感动是，他们独立思考的精神和关注现实并力图解决问题的躬行实践之精神。在我去山东泗水县尼山书院交流之际，泗水县就有一个新儒家文化广场，这些大师们的塑像，生平、故事非常传神，有力的传播着历代知识分子的人格魅力和学术精神。现代社会中的家庭教育、学校教育、社会教育以及学术研究精神、走向等，都会受到新儒家思想的影响，更且作用会越来越大。

                        （全文完）

2016年10月14日，一级作家、影视编剧、深圳市文联副主席杨争光先生做客西北大学“侯外庐学术讲座”第八十四讲，作题为“我眼中的外国文学”的学术讲座。《美文》杂志常务副主编、著名作家、鲁迅文学奖获得者穆涛先生，西北大学图书馆馆长、著名评论家杨乐生教授，外国语学院和文学院近500名师生听取讲座。

杨争光在讲座中认为，早年外国文学作品的阅读对其文学创作产生了重要影响，所阅读的大量小说、诗歌及戏剧构建了他对外国文学的基本认识。他指出，在世界文学版图中，中国文学的地位处于弱势。尤其在叙事文学方面，中国文学缺乏传统。中国早期不乏有像《史记》这样的优秀叙事作品，但学者对此的研究却一直停留在史学阶段。西方发达的自然科学推动了社会科学和哲学思想的发展，在原典基础上不断注释，不断发展，各个时代都涌现出了一批伟大思想家，为叙事文学提供了良好的发展土壤和阳光。此外，杨先生引证了大量关于战争、暴力、饥饿、贫穷题材的作品，让大家感受到这些重大主题在中西方文学作品中所展现出的差异化人文情怀和价值观。

讲座的第二部分是杨争光先生先生就《杨争光诗集》和《杨争光中短篇小说选》英文翻译向胡宗锋教授和罗宾博士授权。

讲座结束后，穆涛和杨乐生对讲座内容进行了点评。杨争光与师生进行了互动交流，回答了大家提出的关于文学创作等方面的问题。

                                  本文作者罗宾博士

Shaanxi Through Dr. Robin’s Eyes

罗宾博士看陕西(11)

Two Dynasties in Miniature

   两个王朝的缩影

                                                           （英）罗宾•吉尔班克

                                                                胡宗锋  译

Great Qin Reverie

（一）大秦帝国

Smoke of classics gone up with the empire’s fall,

Fortresses and rivers could not guard the capital.

Before the pit turned cold, eastern rebellions spread;

The leaders of the revolts were not scholars well read.

(Zhang Jie, 826-905 AD).

竹帛烟销帝业虚，

关河空锁祖龙居。

坑灰未冷山东乱，

刘项原来不读书。

                          ——（唐）章碣

      My sole visit to the Caotang (“Grass Roof”) Temple to date brought on an odd frisson. On entering the broad stone concourse shaded by Chinese scholar trees a faintly acrid scent hung upon the breeze, overpowering the incense from the brazier. The origins of this smell were not immediately evident. Then, all of a sudden, a streak of grey darted past the corner of my eye. At first it seemed as though the young shaven-headed nun was wheeling briquettes about in her handcart – fuel for the refectory or the furnace. As she lifted out some of the contents from the barrow it became apparent that the sister was handling charred paper remains and nothing else. The story of what had happened was murmured around from visitor to visitor. An importune electrical fault, currently attributed to poor wiring, had set light to the temple bookstore. This calamity having struck in the middle of the night miles away from the nearest town, the holy sisters were forced to waddle down from their dormitories bearing pails and blankets doused in water.

Now in the light of day the community was caught in a tricky bind, having to decide what to do with several tons of sutras which although partially incinerated nonetheless held a sacred value to their faith. It was hard not to feel pity as those charred volumes with still intact spines were laid out on benches beneath the midday sun. The flapping covers revealed designs metamorphosed by intense heat. On some, the lotus flower insignia had been burnt out like a spent Catherine wheel. The symbol of an outstretched hand with elongated fingers had withered into sad tuber. On glossier editions, the grinning face of the Zen Master was now irrevocably crackled and bruised owing to the melting of the cellophane overlay.

             我只去过一次草堂寺，经历到现在都让我觉得无比奇特。一踏进槐树荫下宽阔的石砌广场，微风中就夹杂着一股淡淡的刺鼻香味，胜过了火炉里的香味。味道的来源不祥，接下来忽然一道灰光划过我的眼角。起初，好像是因为年轻的光头尼姑在用手推车搬煤球——就是食堂与火炉用的燃料。当她把东西从推车里取出来的时候，一切才清楚了。这位尼姑处理的是烧焦了的纸张，其它什么也没有。游客们在窃窃私语发生的事，原来是电线质量差，引发电源短路，烧着了寺里的书架。这场不幸发生在半夜，而这儿离城最少也有几里路。神圣的尼姑们不得不披着湿毛毯，提着水桶从卧室里跌跌撞撞往下跑。眼下天一亮，大家开始为难了，面对几吨虽然部分被烧毁，但却依旧对自己的信仰有神圣价值的经书不知所措。那些被烧残的经书，书脊依旧完整，被凉在正午日头下的条凳上，让人感到很惋惜。合着的经书封面上展现的是在酷暑下变了型的图案，有些经书上的莲花标志被烧得像用过了的烟花筒。手指细长，伸出去的手化成了凄惨的骨节。在比较光洁的版本上，禅宗大师的笑脸因表面玻璃纸的熔化而变得伤痕累累。

          Dating back to the fourth century AD, the illustrious Caotang Temple is about as old as Buddhist temples in China get. Even so, its predicament on that day turned my mind to think of events of still more distant redoubt. Six hundred years before this religious house was consecrated the Great Qin Empire issued the Edict of Book Burning and demanded that scholars, chief of them Confucians, be sentenced to be buried alive. No tragic accident, but a wholly willed act, Jia Yi (200-169 BC) in his On the Cause of the Ruin of the Qin Empire bemoaned the awful sacrilege of it. Directing his ire at Qin Shihuang, he wrote about how:-

          上溯到公元四世纪，著名的草堂寺和佛教寺庙在中国的发展历史一样悠久。即便如此，当天的尴尬让我想起了更加遥远的往事。在这所寺庙被供奉的六百年前，大秦帝国下令“焚书”，把以孔子为首的学者“坑儒”。此举并非悲惨的意外，而是彻头彻尾的意志行为。贾谊在他的《过秦论》中对此可怕的悖理逆天之行哀叹不已，其矛头直指秦始皇，他写道：

Afterwards, he abolished the ways of his predecessors and burnt up the writings of the multifarious schools so as to dupe the common people. Moreover, he demolished the celebrated towns, slaughtered the elite of the people and collected all the weapons of the country at Xianyang for the purpose of melting the sword blades and arrow heads and casting the metal into twelve brass human models so as to weaken the people’s strength. […] the Emperor was convinced that his invulnerable Guanzhong region as well as his impregnable and huge domain would ensure the devolution of his regal power upon the endless generations of his progeny.

             ┄┄于是废先王之道，焚百家之言，以愚黔首；隳名城，杀豪杰，收天下之兵，聚之咸阳，销锋镝，铸以为金人十二，以弱天下之民 ┄┄始皇之心，自以为关中之固，金城千里，子孙帝王万世之业也。

        The First Emperor is here lambasted as a wastrel and a tyrant. Nowadays, when people all over the world study him in school or gain a précis through museum exhibits and cable TV documentaries, they may be encouraged to have no illusions about his single-mindedly authoritarian bent. Nevertheless, his achievements in standardizing weights and measures, cart gauges, and above all, elevating the Qin from being one state among seven to the dynasty which commanded the first unified Chinese empire are generally held to trump these negative attributes. Shaanxi Province is, not un-fortuitously, known as San Qin (“three Qin”) in reference to him and he gifted to the world the still-used name of “China” in English or “La Chine” in French.

  秦始皇在此被斥责为暴君和败家子。现在，当全球的人都在学校里研读他，或者是通过博物馆和电视纪录片对他有所了解时，人们也许想不到他那坚定的独裁嗜好。尽管如此，他统一度量衡和车同轨的成就使秦国在七国中脱颖而出，缔造了第一个统一的中华帝国，这一切都掩盖了他的负面影响。陕西省称之为“三秦”（San Qin）不是偶然与其有关，英语把中国叫China和法语把中国叫La Chine都有秦始皇对世界的贡献。

         The Western Han historian Jia was in effect casting the die for chroniclers who came afterwards. That is to say, he wrote with the implicit purpose of defaming or questioning the legitimacy of the preceding regime as a means of bolstering the dynasty which he presently served. That this has been a pattern replicated throughout the world and throughout different eras is not so hard to prove. Why do British people look so dimly upon King Richard III (reigned 1483-5) as wicked despot, physically deformed, and the murderer of his two young nephews? Well, a century or so after he perished in battle William Shakespeare’s play centred on his life scorned him as a “poisonous bunchback’d (hunchbacked) toad” and depicted him as ruthless in his pursuit of power. This flies in the face of the probable facts. When Richard’s skeletal remains were uncovered by archaeologists in 2012, they suggested a man of decent stature and in generally fine fettle. Could it be that the playwright took that monarch as his scapegoat in order to praise his own sovereign, Elizabeth I. She was after all the granddaughter of, Henry Tudor (later King Henry VII), the man who overthrew Richard and seized his crown? Very likely.

         西汉的贾谊实际上是为后来的年代史编者树立了一个典范。也就是说，他写史的目的就是为了支持自己效力的朝廷，对前朝的朝政给予质询和批判。此模式的翻版在世界各地和不同年代很容易找到例证。英国人为什么会模模糊糊的认为身有残疾的查理三世是位独裁的暴君，谋害了自己的两位侄子呢？那是因为在他战死一百多年后， 莎士比亚有个剧本阐述他的一生，嘲笑他是一个“喷毒液的驼背蟾”，在追逐权力的时候残酷无情。这与事实不符，查理的尸骨遗骸2012年被考古学家发现，他是个和普通人一样身体完好的男人。剧作家是否为了赞美当朝的伊丽莎白一世而让查理三世成为替罪羊呢？毕竟伊丽莎白一世是亨利﹒都铎（后来的亨利七）的孙女，就是亨利推翻了理查，篡夺了王位。何其相似乎！

        Whenever we approach works which deal with history, be they presented as non-fiction scholarly studies or take the form of representations in the media or movies, we ought to have an eye to the standpoint of the purveyor. Who is telling us to believe such and such a thing about a personage or dynasty from the past and what is their vested interest in trying to convince us of that view? Grappling with the rights and wrongs of the regimes of yore is an onerous task. In Shaanxi, history piles up in thick sediments which are hard to slice up into digestible chunks. We should remember that this was not only the crucible in which history was forged thanks to the likes of Qin Shihuang and Li Zicheng, but it was also where it was smithied into historical record by the hands and intellects of men such as Sima Qian and Ban Gu. In taking time to look at three of the dynasties – the Qin, the Han and the Tang – that were rooted in the Guanzhong area, I have no aspiration to being a Grand Historian let alone a scribe. The chapter which follows has one concrete purpose, namely to examine how in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries these past periods have been repackaged for public consumption. Whereas Sima Qian wrote for posterity, much of what now passes for historical entertainment is transitory and diluted to suit the tastes of the masses. We live, whether we like it or disdain it, in the epoch of the television commercial and the theme park so should probably hold onto some swingeing gratitude that national history has not been forgotten altogether.

           看历史作品，不论是非杜撰的学术著作，还是媒介和电影里的演绎，我们都要考虑到赞助商的立场。是谁在告诉我们要相信前朝的何事何人，他们让我们相信其观点的目的何在？判断以前的是是非非实属不易。陕西的历史积淀深厚，很难切割成易消化的大块。吾辈当铭记锻造历史的熔炉里不仅有秦始皇和李自成，也有  文人司马迁和班固记录历史的手笔。探究植根于关中大地的这三个王朝：秦、汉和唐，我没有做《史记》的豪情，更谈不上书写历史了。我写下面的文字。只有一个目的，那就是探究在在二十世纪和二十一世纪，为了大众消费，这些过去的历史是怎样被重新包装的。司马迁留给后世的文字，现在大多成了昙花一现、迎合大众口味的历史娱乐。不管喜欢还是鄙视，我们是生活在一个电视商业化和主题公园的时代，值得庆幸的是历史还没有被完全遗忘。

         Personally, I managed to “go full term” with the Terracotta Army. I had lived in China for the equivalent length of time to a human pregnancy before hopping on the tourist bus to Lintong County. My colleagues, the Millers from Missouri, could not even manage to get through the induction week without making that particular excursion. They cooed and congratulated themselves through our first formal meeting about how they had not only encountered a wonder of the ancient world, but had found the right coach off their own bat and done without a tour guide. What is for many a quasi-mystical experience left me feeling lukewarm. By the Spring of 2009 most of the figurines had a uniform complexion across their skin and hair and arms and armour. Whatever pigment had been picked out and photo-shopped for heightened contrast when the last batch of picture postcards was manufactured had been wholly oxidized into extinction. In my own mind I could not avoided making a desultory comparison with one of the recent pieces of homage paid to this site. The controversial British sculptor Anthony Gormley has been responsible for a series of artworks he calls his “Fields.” Particular communities are invited to fashion a clod of potter’s clay into their own likeness and then the resultant thousands of figurines are assembled tightly-packed across a gallery floor. One such “Field” was the handiwork of a Guangdong village. At that moment in Lintong I recalled how the faces of the peasants leapt out at me all lumpen and ruddy-hued, possessing a vitality distinctly lacking in the First Emperor’s troops. While one could sense active livers and blood coursing through the veins of those men from the South, these soldiers from the past seemed to want to play the melancholy chameleon, taking on the monochrome pallor of the nearby provincial capital.

        从个人来说，我尽量想把“兵马俑”的“月份”做足。我在中国住了相当于“十月怀胎”的时间后，才跳上了去临潼县的公共汽车。 而我的同事，来自密苏里的米勒斯一家开学的第一周就迫不及待的去了。在我们第一次正式会面的时候，他们就喋喋不休的炫耀自己不但看到了古老的世界奇迹，而且还是在没有导游的情况下自己找到了去那里的车。对于很多人来说有些神秘的经历我倒不怎么着急，到了2009年春，大多数兵马俑的皮肤、头发、武器和盔甲的颜色都成了一样的，不论用什么色彩，怎样的提高商店里的对比度，最后一批制作的美术明信片全部被氧化和消失了。在我心里，我不可避免的把最近看到的一幅让人充满敬意的作品和这儿做不连贯的比较。 颇有争议的英国雕塑家安东尼·葛姆雷（Anthony Gormley）创作了一系列艺术作品，他称之为《土地》 。部分人受邀用泥捏一个自己的形象，再把这几千个不情愿的泥人挤在一起，排列在美术馆的走廊里。他的另一个《土地》是广东农村人的手工。在临潼的那一瞬间，我想起了那些农民的面孔，个个红彤彤的，衣衫不整跳到了我跟前，但却带着兵马俑明显缺乏的活力。人可以感受到这些来自南方的人有活的肝脏，血管里流淌着血液。而来自过去的兵马俑似乎想当忧郁的变色龙，单调的色彩和附近的省会相当。

This nonplussed attitude towards the attendants of Qin Shihuang turned out to be a tough nut to crack. Crack it did, though under a random set of circumstances. One day I happened to tune my television into Qinyong Love (also titled Ancient Terracotta War Situation in the DVD release); truly one of the most meretricious drama series ever to be screened. The grainy production opened with a security guard’s flashlight darting between the Terracotta Warriors, though missing the rolling eyes of the soldier who had been somehow left in suspended animation for two millennia. Stories of this sort are old hat for as teenagers my parents watched Adam Adamant Lives! a campy serial about a dandy from Victorian London who was uncovered and revived in the 1960s, only to resume his career as a swashbuckling crime-fighter. Qinyong Love, however, took a different course. The warrior, Meng Tianfe, who for whatever reason was wearing bifocal glasses, veered off the road in a purloined jeep, and this was the point of entry for recounting his timeless romance with Han Donger. Ms. Han, as the daughter of a Confucian scholar, faced death together with her father and the rest of their family. The fugitive caught the attention of Qin Shihaung as she gathered fragments of extraterrestrial rocks following a meteor shower which almost laid waste to the site of the First Emperor’s mausoleum. This love triangle experienced twists and turns, touching on famous details preserved from the Records of the Grand Historian, not least the ruler’s quest for the elixir of immortality. Shortly before Qin Shihuang embarked on his last, fatal trip to try and find everlasting life at Penglai Island, he uncovered Han Donger’s lack of fidelity and offered her and Meng the chance to escape through tossing a coin. The toss going against them Han was sentenced to being thrust into a furnace, while a devastated Meng Tianfeng pleaded to be encased in clay alongside the Terracotta Army, so that he could stand guard forever over his monarch.

           对于秦始皇兵马俑这种让人尴尬的态度是个不好打破的坚果，但却在无意中被打破了。有天，我刚好把电视调到了电视剧《秦俑情》(电影片名也叫《古今大战秦俑情》) ，这真是播出的最俗的一部电视剧。故事的开始是一个保安的手电筒在兵马俑里照来照去，但却没有照到那个不知怎么是假死了两千年的兵俑忽闪的眼睛。这类故事都老掉牙了，我小的时候父母看的是《急冻游侠》（Adam Adamant Live），说的是维多利亚时代伦敦的一个花花公子，在二十世纪六十年代被人发现并且复活了，成了一个有名的除暴安良者。《古今大战秦俑情》的剧情有所不同。秦俑蒙天放不知何故戴着眼镜，驾着一辆偷来的吉普车开到了路边，这就开始了他和韩冬儿的旷世之恋。韩冬儿是一个大儒的女儿，她和父亲以及全家面临死亡。这个逃亡的女子在捡流星雨带来的在秦陵无用的殒石时，引起了秦始皇的注意。这场三角恋迂回曲折，涉及到了《史记》中保留的细节，尤其是秦始皇寻找长生不老药。就在秦始皇最后踏上不归路，要到蓬莱岛去永生时，他发现了韩冬儿的不忠，便用抛硬币的方法来决定韩冬儿和蒙天放的死活。抛硬币遭厄运，韩冬儿蹈火自焚，被吓坏了的蒙天放祈求把自己在兵马俑旁用泥土裹起来，变成活人俑，这样他就可以永远守护皇帝了。

        The story sheds any semblance of plausibility when it emerges that Han has slipped her lover a refined version of Xufu’s immortality pill. During the Republic of China period the soldier is briefly revived again and tussles with the pirate Bai Yunfei over an actress by name of Zhu Lili who happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to Han Donger. Having fought off his adversary though lost his love in the process, Meng voluntarily consigns himself back to the tomb. The third act shows how in the present day the tale of the ancient paramour becomes known by means of excavated bamboo slips and helps contemporary figures to realize their romantic aspirations. From the simpering portrayal of the villainous eunuch Zhao Gao to the Salome-like gyrations of the dancer Meijiang, the whole production amounts to a decidedly low-brow affair. On the other hand, by allowing myself to sit through all the tawdry set-pieces I came to wonder if the Qin Dynasty is not in reality some great Rorschach diagram which Chinese folk who are so inclined can peer into as a means of justifying and centring their own way of thinking about themselves and their nation. What was for Chairman Mao and other leaders a period of political order and stability (albeit a regrettably feudal one) imposed upon the forces of chaos, represents for the more romantically-minded a window into the possibility of everlasting love, catalyzed by forgotten potions.   

          故事编的似乎可信的一点是，韩冬儿把徐福炼成的长生不老药偷偷给了她的情人。在民国的时候，蒙天放曾经一度复活，并和海盗白云飞为一个有点神秘、像韩冬儿的女人朱莉莉大打出手。虽然打败了情敌，但却失去了情人，蒙天放就自愿回到了秦陵里。第三幕讲的是随着竹简的出土，现代人知道了这段古代的爱情故事，并帮助他（她）们实现了浪漫的愿望。该剧从对奸人和宦官赵高皮笑肉不笑的刻画，到对妹姜宛如莎乐美般舞姿的描述简直是俗不可耐。而另一方面，通过耐着性子看完这部俗剧，我不仅诧异大秦帝国实际上是不是像罗夏（墨迹）测验图那样，让中国人观看，从而反思自己和这个国家。（罗夏（墨迹）测验图Rorschach diagram国外让人解释墨水点绘的图形以判断其性格——译者注）。对于毛主席和其他领导人来说的这段在纷乱中建立的政治有序和稳定局面（虽然很遗憾带有封建性），对于浪漫的人来说，受被人遗忘的不死金丹的催化，打开了一扇可能是爱情不朽的窗户。

                                                       本文作者和译者在陕西汉中黎坪森林公园

Shaanxi Through Dr. Robin’s Eyes

罗宾博士看陕西(11)

Two Dynasties in Miniature

   两个王朝的缩影

                                                           （英）罗宾•吉尔班克

                                                                胡宗锋  译

  Sima Qian, himself a Shaanxi person, being born and buried in the vicinity of Hancheng city, issued his own disclaimer as to how unequal he felt to the task of summarizing Chinese history to date. Scarred by the ordeal of being imprisoned and facing the death penalty for his refusal to condemn Li Ling in 99 BC over his part in a military defeat at the hands of the Huns, his sentence was commuted. Unable to pay a monetary fine he opted for the only alternative – castration. The court eunuch covered himself with a cloak of protective humility, claiming he only wanted to live in order to complete his history:-

   司马迁本身就是陕西人，出生并葬在韩城附近。对汇总当时中国历史的重任他有不同的看法。由于拒绝谴责李陵在公元前99年抗击匈奴的失败，他被监禁，备受迫害，面临伏法受诛。虽然后来被缓刑，但由于交不起罚金，不得不选择接受腐刑之辱。这位宫廷太监给自己披上了一件保护性的谦卑外衣，宣称自己受此辱就是为了完成《史记》 ：

My father never earned tally and patent of nobility; as an annalist and astrologer I was not far removed from the diviners and invokers, truly the plaything of the emperor, kept like any singing girl or jester, and despised by the world. Had I chosen to submit to the law and let myself be put to death, it would have been no more important than the loss of a single hair from nine oxen, no different from the crushing of an ant. [1]

仆之先非有剖符丹书之功，文史星历，近乎卜祝之间，固主上所戏弄，倡优所畜，流俗之所轻也。假令仆伏法受诛，若九牛亡一毛，与蝼蚁何以异？

——引自司马迁《报任安书》 

       His words, written to Ren An, are a sly rhetorical performance. Were his masterwork to be completed it would stand as the most comprehensive treatise of its kind and the sheer volume of his research would make it a formidable document for future generations to emulate and surpass.

  他的《报任安书》言辞狡黠，称：

仆诚以著此书，藏之名山，传之其人，通邑大都，则仆偿前辱之责，虽万被戮，岂有悔哉！然此可为智者道，难为俗人言也！

    Most dramas opt to take the sentiments of Sima Qian and other Han historians at face value, accepting the basic premise that Qin Shihuang was a tyrant and that it was resentment towards his oppressive regime, which doomed his successor to a short reign and brought about the end of the empire. By comparison the founder of the Han Dynasty Liu Bang (later Emperor Gaozu) was much more the classic “man of the people” ruler, a soldier who rose from minor officialdom and tempered his iron rule with strokes of mercy aimed at helping the poor, such as remitting taxes and corvée service. The former view has been substantially challenged by the Sanyuan-born author Sun Haohui, whose dozen-volume masterpiece The Great Qin Empire has been lapped up by lovers of serious literature and followers of the television serial based upon it. At the age of forty-three, Sun was a professor of Law at Northwest University, specializing in the ancient legal systems of China. After receiving a positive reaction to his first manuscript which shaped the history of the Qin into novel form, he was granted a sabbatical to write a sequel which turned into three books and eventually came to occupy sixteen years of his life. He latterly dwelt in the balmier climes of Hainan Island, with two phrases from ancient texts becoming firmly embedded in his mind. The first was the description from Han Feizi of how we live in a “big, eventful world”  and the second was from Yanzi: “Where there is flesh and blood, there is a fight for the heart” . Sun realized that the great lesson that can be drawn from this empire was that for any regime to grasp tightly the reins of power it must captivate and mobilize the populace. Also, contrary to the idea of Qin Shihuang being a violent dictator, his rule demonstrates the importance of wresting control of the mainstream. The former professor of Law upholds the Reform of Shang Yang, which installed Legalism as the central principle for civil society, as an advent borne of war which aimed to foment peace and stability.

            大多数剧作都采用的是司马迁和其它汉代历史学家的表面价值观，认为秦始皇是个暴君，对其政权的愤恨导致了秦二世的短命和大秦帝国的灭亡。相形之下，大汉的开国者刘邦（就是后来的 汉高祖）是更经典的从小官做起的“平民”皇帝，他用减轻田租、免其徭役等体恤民情的方法巩固自己的铁腕统治。对秦始皇的这种看法在三原出生的作家孙皓辉这里遇到了挑战，他长达十几本的《大秦帝国》不仅备受严肃文学作品的读者青睐，也是观众喜爱的小说改编的电视剧。在四十三岁的时候，孙皓辉是西北大学从事中国古代法制研究的的法学教授。在第一部将秦的历史转化为小说形式的手稿得到肯定以后，他得到了撰写后续三本的学术假期，最终，他为此耗费了十六年的心血。后来，他居住在气候温和的海南岛，心里萦绕的是两句古训。一是出自韩非子的“多事之时，大争之世”，二是晏子的“凡有血气，皆有争心”。 孙皓辉意识到大秦帝国给人的伟大启示在于：任何一个政权要想牢牢地掌握政权，就要抓住和动员民心。他和谴责秦始皇是暴君的人见解不同，认为秦始皇的统治展示了对主流控制的重要性。这位前大学法学教授推崇商鞅的变法，认为商鞅变法为民间社会铸就了法律意识，而战争的实质在于营造和平与稳定。

      In person Professor Sun is a man of disarming charm. He decided a few years ago (perhaps apropos Wu Yi and Zhu Rongji) to let the last few streaks of black fade from his hair and now opts for a wardrobe of self-coloured un-patterned garments. While taking dinner he prefers to sit back and let others gabble. He pinches at a chubby cigar or foreign cigarettes, permitting the plumes of smoke to curlicue through his nose and mouth like some ancient dragon presiding over a mountain. As I noticed that he was not averse to the odd off-colour joke and would occasionally chortle deeply at pigan behaviour, on our first meeting I hazarded to ask him a question about the TV adaptation of his novel. “Have you found anybody yet who can play Lao Ai, the lover of Qin Shinhuang’s mother? Or do you think you will have to rely on CGI?” “I am a creative consultant,” he replied. “The casting doesn’t come down to me, of course. If you feel you have something special to offer us, I can always arrange an audition.” That answer was enough to make me blush, but it impressed him that I had at least read some Sima Qian and he always refers to that joke whenever we meet subsequently.

           就其人来讲， 孙皓辉教授是一个有魅力的男人。几年前，（也许像吴仪和朱镕基一样）他决意让头上的最后几根黑发消失，选择了单色无装饰的行头。用餐的时候，他喜欢放松，听别人说话。他会夹一根大雪茄或外国烟，像古时盘踞在山上的龙一样，任烟雾从嘴和鼻孔里飘出。我发现他不在意人们讲带色的笑话，偶尔对一些过分的行为也是呵呵一笑。我们第一次见面的时候，我冒昧的问起了他的小说被改编为电视剧时的一个问题。“你找到了扮演秦始皇母亲的情人嫪毐的人吗？是不是得靠三维动画？” “我是创作顾问，演员的事不归我管。当然要是你觉得你能干，我可以按派你试镜。”他的回答让我脸红，但这让他知道我至少读过司马迁的作品，后来再见面，他常以此开我的玩笑。

        Emboldened by Wuliangye, on another occasion I asked him to sit down for an interview. The more jovial atmosphere notwithstanding, by the end of proceedings I felt rather like Somerset Maugham when he had the temerity to badger Gu Hongming for an interview, only to discover that his subject felt him not up to comprehending the profound matters he held at his fingertips:-

                  有一次，在五粮液的作用下，  我曾请他坐下并采访他。虽然气氛很好，但到了最后，我的感觉有点像萨默塞特﹒ 毛姆很冒昧的缠着要采访辜鸿铭。结果发现自己对手头深刻的东西缺乏全面的了解。

I: The idea of The Great Qin Empire is truly breathtaking. Only fifteen years of Chinese history, yet it shaped the next two millennia. How do you compress all of that into a single work?

    罗：    《大秦帝国》确实让人激动，只有十五年的历史影响了后世两千年。您是怎样将这一切压缩在一部作品里的？

Sun: You call five million Chinese characters compressed?

孙：你能说五百万字是压缩吗？

I: Not exactly. I understand that you have contracted your work out to be translated into English.

罗：也不尽然。我知道你把你的作品压缩准备翻译为英文。

Sun: Yes. I sorted all that out about a year ago.

孙：对，一年前就做完了。

I: But, to be honest, there are very few literary works of that length in English. Foreigners have different expectations of literature to the Chinese. We consider a quarter of a million words to be an epic when if a famous Chinese writer published something that size his or her readers might feel shortchanged.

罗：但说实话，英文很少有这样长的巨著。外国人对中国文学的期望不同，我们觉得二十多万字就是史诗性的作品了，要是一个有名的中国作家出版这样一部大作，读者可能会觉得是上当了。

Sun: Is that so?

孙：真的是这样吗？

I: If you wrote a shorter novel or a simplified introduction to the Qin Dynasty we could translate that into English and publish it bilingually. If it were only sold at Lintong it would still be a huge success.

罗：要是你写一部短一些的小说，或是介绍秦朝的一个简写本，我们可以将这翻译成英文，出英汉对照本，就只在临潼买也会很吃香的。

Sun: I’ve nothing more to write about that period in history. You think I’d spend a decade and a half of my life on a project if I could achieve the same effect with a pamphlet.

孙：对于那段历史我没有什么可写的了。你觉得我花一生中十五年的功夫可以取得和一本小册子同样的效果吗？

I: I guess not. What prose are you writing now?

罗：我想不是。您眼下在写什么散文？

Sun: No more prose. I am writing only about ancient philosophy and law. Few people and certainly no foreigners ever really understand the essence of Chinese civilization. That’s probably the rest of my life as it’s shaping up.

孙：不写散文了，只写中国古代哲学和法律。没有几个人，外国人当然就更没有了，真正的理解中国文明的精髓，这也许是我余生的使命了。

I: But are there any foreign Sinologists you would recommend? I find John Fairbank extremely adept at writing general histories which mix in much philosophy and religion. His student Jonathan Spence is very influential right now. Friends of mine who don’t necessarily know much about China glean a lot from him.

罗：没有你欣赏的外国汉学家吗？我觉得费正清（John Fairbank）就擅长把哲学和宗教揉在一起来写历史。他的学生史景迁（Jonathan Spence）现在很有影响，我那些不了解中国的朋友从他那里学到了不少东西。

Sun: Hah. I can see your point. But the truth is they can only tell anecdotes. A snapshot may reveal something about Chinese culture, though it is nothing more than a snapshot. The true historian is capable of separating the essence from the trash.

孙：哈哈，我知道你的意思。但事实在于这些人只是在讲轶事。快照就是快了，能反映一点中国文化，然而真正的历史学家能分清精华和糟粕。

I: What is the trash? Bo Xilai’s nostalgia? Confucianism?

罗：什么是糟粕？薄熙来的怀旧？儒家思想？

Sun: Maybe the Qin was correct to burn Confucius, but make a point of not destroying the very last manuscript. He reemerged anyway – Gaozu made sure of that - and we are stuck with him anyway.

孙：也许秦“焚书坑儒”是对的，但却没有毁掉最后的版本。孔子又复活了，汉高祖的肯定迫使我们接受。

I: Trash then?

罗：那就是糟粕了？

Sun: I didn’t say that ….

孙：我没那样说….

I: You are not the easiest of interviewees. I’d like to write this up as an article, but really need some more concrete answers for my readers. How does one go about understanding the true essence of Chinese culture?

罗：采访你实属不易，我要写篇文章，真的需要一些更加具体的答案。一个人该怎样理解真正的中国文化精髓呢？

Sun: You are British? You received a PhD in medieval literature in you middle twenties?

孙：你是英国人？你在二十几岁就拿到来中世纪文学的博士学位？

I: Yes on both counts.

罗：两个都对。

Sun: Well, what is the essence of British culture?

孙：那么，英国文化的精髓是什么？

I: Judeo-Christianity with notions of democracy and civic culture from Ancient Greece and Rome. Some elements of indigenous folklore, Celtic and other influences.

罗：源自古希腊罗马、带有民主和市民文化的犹太基督教，还有本土的民间传说、凯尔特和其它影响。

Sun: That’s a lifetime’s study in itself. Maybe if you dedicate yourself to that you will be lucky enough to be reborn a Chinese in the next life. Then you will truly have time to understand China ….

孙：那本身就够人学一辈子了。要是你要献身于此，下辈子最好托生成一个中国人，只有这样你才能真正的理解中国。

Sun will soon have a research centre named after him, and dedicated to studying the Qin Dynasty. Its bright red gables and classical lanterns stand out among the concrete architecture of the campus where I live. It remains to be seen how much time he will choose to spend studying here rather than pursuing his own interests in Hainan. Who can blame him?

             孙皓辉有一个自己的研究中心，主要是研究大秦。在我居住的校园里，研究中心大红的墙壁和古典的灯笼在水泥建筑中很显眼。他到底在此会花多少时间来搞研究，而不是在海南追逐自己的梦想还有待以观后效。谁能责怪他呢？

                                    本文作者和译者在路遥文学馆

Shaanxi Through Dr. Robin’s Eyes

罗宾博士看陕西(11)

                                  Two Dynasties in Miniature

                                      两个王朝的缩影

                                                                                   （英）罗宾•吉尔班克                                                胡宗锋  译

Waterside: the Serenity of the Han and Segalen’s Chinese Dream

在水一方：汉代的静谧与 谢阁兰（1）的中国梦

      In Central Shaanxi it is held as improper to speak of urban sprawl or of real estate guzzling up the greenbelt. The planned growth of Xixian and other new districts will ensure that in a decade or so Xi’an is knit together with its satellite city of Xianyang. The provincial government cites Ebenezer Howard’s concept of the “garden city” as providing the inspiration for a new style of urbanism, combining excellent infrastructures with ample parkland and open spaces that the population do not feel trapped in some experiment in high density living. Already in Xianyang itself there are the telltale signs of property developers capitalizing on the existing assets of the smaller city. Riverside condos have a noticeably high mark-up, making it easy for the casual observer to spy where the elite neighbourhoods of the 2020s are sure to be located.

 在陕西的中部，说城市在扩张或房地产在吞噬绿化带是不恰当的。计划中的西咸和其它几个新区将保证在十几年后，西安将和其卫星城咸阳联结在一起。陕西省人民政府开发新都市的灵感出自埃比尼泽·霍华德的“花园城市”概念。将会把优良的基础设施和大片的园区和空地结合起来，从而降低人口居住的稠密度。在咸阳，已经有迹象显示地产开发商在投资小城市的现有资产了。河边的连栋别墅明显在涨价，明眼人一看就清楚到2020年后，高档社区将会在那里。

（1）（维克多·谢阁兰Victor Segalen (1878-1919) 法国著名诗人、作家、汉学家和考古学家，也是一名医生和民族志学者。其一生与中国结下深厚渊源，也因书写中国而负有盛名——译者注）

Lest we should judge on modern-day appearances alone and pigeonhole Xianyang as some maiden aunt to Xi’an, it ought to be remembered that this was the true capital of the Qin Empire. Upon seizing power, the First Emperor moved all of the imperial families from the six former kingdoms over here and placed them under house arrest, as well as forcibly relocating 20 000 rich and blue-blooded clans to Xianyang to swell the population to one million. In those days of feudal demagogy, he could in one fowl swoop enhance the demographics of the city in a manner that contemporary real estate developers could never hope to achieve in a lifetime!

         且不说现代的咸阳面貌以及是西安姊妹城的身份，我们当记得咸阳才是大秦帝国真正的国都。在夺取政权后，秦始皇把以前六国的皇室家族集中软禁在这里，并强迫两万多户上流家族移居咸阳，使首都的人口达到了一百万。在封建时代，秦始皇一下子就可以把城市的人口扩大，其做法现代的地产商一辈子也无法企及。

Nowadays, Xianyang is known more for its mausoleums and burial grounds, the implication being that what glory days there are were long past. The Bell Tower is of the same architectural style as that of Xi’an, albeit being decidedly smaller in stature. What is more, when compared with the subterranean army of Qin Shihuang, the terracotta figures unearthed at Han Yangling look like a set of child’s dolls. Indeed, what efforts there have been to construct cultural heritage sites to rival those of Xi’an never exactly triumph in the execution. The Qingwei Building , a recreation of a tower originally built by the Magistrate Huang Xiaoxian during the Northern Song Dynasty, was completed in 2014 to house an art museum. Welcome as it is to have somewhere to survey genuine works by the “Four Great Wits of Jiangnan” and the “Four Wangs of the Early Qing Dynasty,” the building is vastly out of scale with the structures and razed building plots all around it. For me, spying it for the first time was akin to realizing that a giant magpie had grabbed the Potala Palace from Lhasa, flown a few hundred kilometres and deposited it in Guanzhong.  

       咸阳现在以陵园和坟墓而著名，其寓意就是当年该是多么辉煌。 这里的钟楼除了小一点外，和西安的建筑风格一模一样。另外，和秦始皇的地下兵马俑兵团相比，从 汉阳陵出土的兵马俑就像是儿童玩具。的确，怎样发力来建设咸阳这些可和西安媲美的文化遗产遗址成果不大。“秦渭楼”最初是由知县黄孝先在北宋时修的，2014年重建为一家艺术博物馆。可喜的是里面可以看到“江南四大才子” 和 “清初四王”的真迹，但建筑和周围的结构以及楼房被推倒后的空地很不协调。在我看来，第一次见到的影像仿佛是一只巨大的喜鹊把拉萨的布达拉宫叼起，飞了几千里路，然后丢在了关中。

        The true charm of Xianyang has little to do with ostentatious display. We must avoid the modern cosmetic flourishes of the downtown and grapple with the tangible remains that are to be encountered in this adjacent county and that. The best place to begin is at the Xianyang Museum, a converted Confucian Temple from the Ming Dynasty. That this should have been given over to alternative use is ironic, for the Emperor Wu of Han (reigned 140-87 AD) heeded Dong Zhongshu’s advice and implemented the official policy that the state should give priority to Confucianism at the expense of the other so-called “One Hundred Schools of Thought.” Of particular interest therein is the Third Exhibition Hall which displays items gathered from the site of Xianyang Palace No. 3. Fragments of coloured tile once constituted what are thought to be the earliest extant frescoes ever found in China, with some bearing smoke damage no doubt inflicted when the rebel warlord Xiang Yu torched the building and allowed it to smolder for several weeks. Also prominent in the designs of tile-ends are words like changle (“luck”) and weiyang (“peace”), names given to two of the imperial palaces, and the four gods of direction: the Blue Dragon, the White Tiger, the Scarlet Bird, and the Tortoise.

       咸阳真正的魅力用不着特意展示。我们要避过现代市中心的繁华装饰，也无需纠缠于附近这个县或那个县能遇到的有形遗址。最佳起点就是由明朝的一座孔庙而改建的咸阳博物馆，这种变通用法颇具讽刺意味，因为汉武帝当年采纳的是董仲舒的建议，实行“罢黜百家，独尊儒术”。这里的第三展厅很有特色，展示的是从咸阳宫3号遗址收集来的彩色瓦当碎片，就是这些瓦当组成了中国现存最早的壁画。有的瓦当还带有烟熏的痕迹，毫无疑问是当年霸王项羽火烧咸阳宫，大火连绵几月的结果。瓦当的设计中有诸如“长乐”和“未央”等字，这是两处皇宫的名字。瓦当中也有代表方向的四相：青龙白虎和朱雀玄武。

       No foreigner has attached greater value to the aesthetic mastery of the Han than the French archaeologist, writer and polymath Victor Segalen (1878-1919). Now remembered chiefly for his novel René Leys (1922), set in Beijing in the dying days of the Qing Dynasty, his two sojourns in China (1909-14 and 1917) bore fruits both literary and humanistic. He was the first individual to accurately estimate the elevation of the mausoleum of the First Emperor, being an acolyte of Edouard Chavannes (沙畹) (1865-1918), who translated the bulk of the Records of the Grand Historian into French, half a century before Burton Watson published his English version. Segalen found a world of martial pride and steadfast devotion in the inscriptions to be found on the stone monuments of ancient China. These he used as a point of departure for his own two volume set of poems in French entitled Steles – not a verbatim translation of actual epitaphs, but a re-imagining of the spirit of the hallowed imperial past.

        最推崇汉代美学价值的外国人是法国考古学家、作家和博学家维克多·谢阁兰，人们现在记得他的是以清朝末年的北京为背景的小说 《勒内· 莱斯》 。 他两次旅居中国（1909至1914,和1917年），在文学创作和人文研究上都有建树。作为爱德华·沙畹的助手，他是第一个准确估算秦始皇陵高度的人（爱德华·沙畹Edouard Chavannes，简称沙畹，是学术界公认的19世纪末20世纪初世界上最有成就的中国学大师，公认的“欧洲汉学泰斗”。同时他也是世界上最早整理研究敦煌与新疆文物的学者之一，被视为法国敦煌学研究的先驱者——译者注）。在伯顿﹒沃森出版英文版的五十年前，沙畹就将《史记》的大部分译成了法语。在古代中国石碑的铭文上，谢阁兰发现了一个在军事上自豪并热衷于奉献的世界。以此为起点，他出版了自己两卷名为《碑》的法语诗集。他不是在逐字翻译碑文，而是在想象这个神圣帝国的辉煌的过去。

When writing descriptions of the topography and contents of burial sites, Segalen cannot help drifting into a tenor of near-ecstatic enthusiasm. Lifeless lumps of stone are charged with an immortal power which surpasses their weatherworn or defaced condition. At one favourite site, the Maoling Mausoleum, he works himself into a state of frenzy over the memorial to Huo Qubing. He does not proffer to recount the chief legends about this gentleman – how as a small child he was embraced by the Emperor Wu and apparently miraculously healed him or how as a general in Gansu he emptied his flask of liquor into a fountain so that his troops could all partake of it. Instead the contours of the statuary are allowed to speak:-

        在描述陵墓的地形和其中的内容时，维克多·谢阁兰的热情不知不觉的陷入到了一种狂喜的高度。那些没有生命的石块被他赋予了不朽的力量，超越了日晒雨淋、面目全非的表象。在其中他最爱的茂陵，在霍去病的纪念碑前，他把自己融入了故事中去：

     From the strictly sculptural point of view, this is a very instructive work. It is not so much the statue of a horse and a man as it is a composite volume organized to give the impression of power .... Above that crease, in this case, rise three curved grooves, which must represent the ribs, the visible ribs of a somewhat lean animal, a long-distance runner. The shoulder joint is similarly emphasized by another simple anatomical line, which it is wise not to take for the attachment of a wing (as we will see, that attribute occurred frequently under the second Han). The mane, which is straight and cut short, is separated from the neck by a groove. The head, which two thousand years of rain and weather has ground down, worn away, deprived of its ears, forms a disagreeable, flat-nosed hood. The head is too large for the overall mass, and heavy, with its bumpy nose and round mouth with the too-thick lips. But the equine likeness is remarkable, a stunning specimen of the sturdy Mongolian pony of north China. Despite his petrified coarseness, this horse of the Han of long ago was indeed brother of the horse I had come riding in to discover him, and which was grazing a few paces away from him. Only the chest of the statue took some liberties with the living model, proudly arched, imperious, decorative. The rigorously symmetrical, well-muscled legs on well-drawn hooves stand squarely on both sides of the mass and form one with the pedestal. It is inaccurate to say, as I too hastily said, that this animal is in the process of "trampling." Neither with the sole of his hooves nor with his weight does this horse touch what we see overthrown beneath him: a man. But he surrounds, stands over, encloses, and holds him. He dominates.

                                                                   (The Statuary of China, …)

      从严格的雕塑角度讲，这是一件很有启迪的作品。它不仅仅是一匹马和一个人的雕塑，而是一个让人感到有分量的组合┄┄在皱痕的上面，有三道阴线，肯定代表的是肋骨，是一种善于长跑，可以可以看得见肋骨、体形廋的动物。它的肩关节同样也有简单的解剖线，其明智之处在于不是为了装翅膀(我们将会看到，在后汉的作品里常常出现这种造型)。它的鬃毛短直，与脖子之间有一道阴线。其头历经两千年的风雨，疲惫的耷拉着，失去了耳朵，成了一个不雅的塌鼻梁罩子。就整体而言头太大，过重；鼻子隆起，圆嘴厚唇。但很明显像马，就是中国北部那种出色的、有耐力的蒙古马。虽然惊人的粗糙，这头很久以前的汉代马，确实是我骑着来发现它，并在几步之外吃草的这匹马的兄弟。只是雕塑的胸部有随意的发挥，高傲的拱着，不可一世，富有装饰性。肌肉强健的马腿均匀对称，造型完美的马蹄端正的扣在两边，与底座浑然一体。虽然我也有些言之过急，这匹马无疑是在“践踏”，这匹马既没有用它的双蹄，也没有用它的重量，正如我们看到的那样在踏着身下的一个人。它环视周围、形态轩昂、 将那人完全踏在蹄下。它主宰一切。

                                               ——引自维克多·谢阁兰著《伟大的中国雕塑》

          Admittedly, even though the details are strongly characteristic of Western Han stonework, to place statues of this nature in front of a tomb was not the standard convention in this era. Personally, I am struck by Segalen’s humane empathy. The image is part of the landscape around Xingping and hatches in him no feelings of avarice. He wrote these words at precisely the same time that American collectors pilfered two of the Six Steeds from the Zhaoling Mausoleum (in 1914) and a short while after the Danish explorer Frits Holm made a concerted attempt to obtain the Nestorian Stele from Xi’an (in 1914) and have it shipped back to London to go on display at the British Museum. The Dane changed his plan and paid local stonemasons to carve a replica which he instead sent to New York City. Hui Qubing and his ilk survived fast in Guanzhong. Could it be that there is something so magisterial about Han art that it stops the would-be acquisitive in their very tracks?  

       老实讲，虽然这件雕塑的细节极具西汉石雕的特征，但将这样的石雕安置在陵墓前却非当今的标准方法。就个人来讲，我和维克多·谢阁兰有共鸣。这种东西在兴平周围比比皆是，但却没有引发他的贪欲。就在他写下这些文字的时候，美国收藏家偷走了“ 昭陵六骏”中的两骏。 而此后不久， 丹麦探险家何乐模（Frits Holm）试图得到西安的景教碑，把它运到伦敦在大英博物馆展出。这个丹麦人后来改变了主意，花钱让当地的石匠打造了一件复制品，送给纽约市。霍去病和他的同类得以在关中永存，难道是因为汉代的艺术如此威严，震撼住了那些贪婪之徒的勾当。

       汉语原文刊发《美文》2016年11期   (本文完)

Shaanxi Through Dr. Robin’s Eyes

     罗宾博士看陕西(12)

Rich Pickings from the Yellow Earth: Guanzhong Writers

                             黄土地上的硕果：陕西作家

                （英）罗宾•吉尔班克

                胡宗锋  译

 English classmate: So do you know any famous people or celebrities in China?

I: Plenty in the culture field, but I’m not sure they are so well-known over here.

English classmate: Care to run some names by me?

I: Chen Zhongshi

English classmate: Never heard of her.

I: Fang Yingwen

English classmate: The President of Taiwan?

I: No! How about Sun Haohui … Wu Kejing … Ye Guangqin …?

English classmate: Still no joy.

I: An Li.

English classmate: What? I can’t believe it. You really know him?

I:   Indeed. Why ever not? What’s your favourite work of his - The Underdogs? Convulsions? You know he can get a little blue at times ….

English classmate: Haven’t seen either of those, but I lovedCrouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the ending of Brokeback Mountain made my girlfriend cry.

(Note: in the English-speaking world the Taiwanese film director 李安 is known by the name Ang Lee).

    英国同学：那你知道中国的一些名人和大家吗？

                我：知道好多文化界的，但我不清楚是否在这里也有名。

英国同学：介意说几位的大名吗？

            我 ：陈忠实。

英国同学：没听说过她。

            我：方英文。

英国同学：你是说台湾的领导人吗？

           我：不是。那你知道孙皓辉、吴克敬和叶广芩吗？

英国同学：也没有印象。

           我：安黎

   英国同学：什么？我不相信，你真的认识他？

              我：确实认识。怎么会不认识呢？你最喜欢他的那部作品，是《小人物》还是《痉挛》，你知道他的作品有时有点灰色……

     英国同学：这两部作品都不知道，但我喜欢他的《卧虎藏龙》，他的《断背山》的结尾都把我女朋友看哭了。

          （在英语世界，台湾籍电影导演李安的英文名是Ang Lee，和陕西作家安黎的汉语发音一样）

       An entirely imagined conversation, I must confess, but where Shaanxi culture and literature are concerned, a huge knowledge gap does persist between my adopted homeland and English-speaking countries. These days so much is said, broadcast and written about the significance of “soft power” to China’s rise in global prominence. Questioning why China has not been able to replicate its present spectacular reach in economics in the field of the arts continues to spawn endless conferences and meetings, almost to the extent that this represents a new sub-sector of the economy. Many has been the time when I have sat behind a round table in the panelled seminar room of a not insalubrious hotel drinking green tea from a lidded mug and being asked why more Shaanxi literature is not read abroad. I cite the length of novels, pointing out that Western readers’ concept of what constitutes a novel may only be one-third of the size of what a Chinese audience expects, and also refer to the vagaries of cultural differences. Personally, I adore The Earthen Gate by Jia Pingwa, but in the light of more than one million foreign signatories on the petition calling for the Yulin Dog Meat Festival to be outlawed, one can only imagine the backlash there might be over the opening scene of that novel in which spectators queue to see stray and unlicensed canines lynched by the police.

          我承认这是一个完全虚拟的对话， 但就陕西文化和文学而言，在英语国家和我所旅居的陕西之间的确是有一道巨大的知识缺口。眼下，有关“软实力”在中国崛起并屹立在世界的意义谈论很多，大作也不少。没完没了的论坛和会议都在质疑，为什么中国在文化艺术领域没有获得像经济发展上的辉煌成就，其发展态势几乎成了经济领域的一项新兴副业。有很多次，我坐在豪华宾馆的圆桌后面参加论坛，一边喝着有盖子的茶杯里的绿茶，一边接受咨询：为什么陕西文学在国外的读者不多？我提起过小说的篇幅，说西方读者对一本小说的观念可能是中国读者的三分之一，我也提到了文化上的各种差异。就我个人而言，我喜欢贾平凹的《土门》。但当有近百万外国人签名请愿，呼吁认定 玉林狗肉节违法时，我们可以想象一下，读者对这本小说开篇的强烈反应：人们排队去看警察处死流浪和没有登记的狗。

        On reflection, one indeed cannot help feeling that literature (and regional literature even more so) lags behind cinema and the visual arts in creating an impact on foreign countries. If Zhang Yimou is not exactly a household name back home, plenty of my compatriots have enjoyed The House of Flying Daggers as a superlative example of the martial arts genre. “Shaanxi” may be reputed as a “province of writers at home,” but it is not a brand that sells itself overseas. I can do no better in the essay which follows than to offer a survey of some of the literary highlights of this area, indicating wherever appropriate which material should be earmarked for translation into English.

      细想起来，我们不禁感到中国文学（特别是地方色彩的文学）在国外的造势上落后于电影和视觉艺术。即便张艺谋在英国不是家喻户晓，但我的很多同胞都喜欢他的  《十面埋伏》，认为其是武打片里的经典。陕西被誉为是“中国的文学大省”，但这张名片没有打到国外去。在本文，我也只能是对这个地方的一些文学亮点浮光掠影的一谈，说一下究竟哪些作品适合被英译。

Towards Huangpucun and Toad Flats and back: as it was in the beginning

      Yan’an is upheld as the incubator of modern post-1949 literature and who can say with any exactitude how many authors have spied the citadel of Bao’an out of the corner of their eye before lifting a brush or a pen to write. When Sidney Shapiro died late in 2014 aged almost ninety-nine, few English language obituaries of him mentioned his creative connections to that place (he strenuously eschewed the physical locale during the Revolutionary period only visiting there as a guest of the state much later on). Shapiro’s translations of Liu Qing’s Mask of Bronze and Du Pengcheng’s Defend Yenan were undertaken when the ideology of those novels still felt fresh and immediate and the state publishing house prioritized the dissemination of such books into other tongues. At least as far as the Western media was concerned, Shapiro deserved to be remembered as an at times inspired renderer of Classics like Outlaws of the Marsh, who stooped as the political climate dictated into executing some hack work. The titles of his translations from Shaanxi did not even warrant the most sneering of mentions.

         发轫之初：走向皇甫村与蛤蟆滩

延安是1949年以后中国现代文学的孵化地，但谁能正确无误的说出有多少作家在拿起笔以前，曾经仔细打量过保安根据地呢？当沙博里（Sidney Shapiro）九十九岁在2014年末去世时，英文讣告没有提到他与这个地方的有建设性的联系（在文化大革命期间，他尽量回避那里，只是后来作为国宾访问过一次）。沙博里

翻译柳青的《铜墙铁壁》 和杜鹏程的《保卫延安》 时，这些小说的思想意识是很鲜活的，接地气的，所以国家出版社为了宣传率先将这些作品译成了外文。至少就西方媒介而言，人们记得沙博里是下工夫翻译古典名著《水浒传》的人，他翻译陕西作家的小说甚至无人提起。

In the days following Shapiro’s passing, I at lost last picked those two volumes down from my top shelf. Mr. Du’s book was one of half-a-dozen copies of that title owned by my college library and nobody seemed to have noticed that mine was three years overdue. The Mask of Bronze was ordered online in the UK and the owner of the bookshop thought to slip a note to me under the cover stating “hope you enjoy this. We don’t get much call for this type of thing!” I could not, in all honesty, say that the scales fell from my eyes. The effect of having seen too many Civil War and Anti-Japanese War movies on the big screen, not to mention teaching visceral texts like Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage and Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, had dulled my sensitivity towards the frenzy of battle. However, almost in spite of the martial theme of the book it was the lyricism of the descriptions of the countryside which rang out to me. When looking for a place for the militia to go to ground, we are told:-

        在沙博里去世后几天，我终于从书架的顶部取出了这两本书。杜鹏程先生的大作我们学校的图书馆有十几本，但似乎没有人注意到我借的已超期三年了。柳青的《铜墙铁壁》是我从网上在英国买的，书店的老板在封面下给我夹了张便条，说“希望你喜欢这本书，我们很少有这类书的订单”。说实话，我眼里的标准不一样。在大屏幕上看的有关内战和抗日的电影太多了，更不要说还要教克莱恩的《红色英勇勋章》 和 海明威 的《永别了武器》等东西 ，其结果使我对疯狂的战争都麻木了。然而，这部小说除了是军事题材外，在我耳边回响的是乡村的抒情描写。当要为民兵们找一个

Some of the cadres from the neighbouring villages were not too enthusiastic about repairing the caves. These hide-outs were prepared during the Mohammedan Revolt in the Manchu Dynasty. The paths leading to them, twisting like a sheep’s intestine, had long since been washed out and were over-grown with wild date trees and brambles. The caves themselves were weakened by the burrowing of rabbits and squirrels; pheasants and ravens had littered the interiors with their droppings. No doubt the caves were in a terrible mess. It would hardly be worth the trouble, they said. When the enemy came, why not simply hide in some ravines until they had gone.

(Liu Qing, The Mask of Bronze, p. 104).

各村来开罢会的干部有些人张一言李一语，谈论着同治年“回乱”时藏反挖下的崖窑，已经多年没用了，下雷雨时山水冲坏的羊肠肠路，已经给崖上的酸枣和柠条长满了，而崖窑里野兔和松鼠打洞，野鸡和乌鸦在里头拉屎，不知弄成甚样子了。这些人意意思思，不想费功夫去整拾它；他们说敌人来了去藏一下，敌人一走就各回各家。

——引自柳青《铜墙铁壁》第104页

Has the landscape ever been sketched with such acuity since then? In the early chapters of his novella The Champion Scholar Sheep (2006) Wu Kejing creates something approaching Liu’s naturalism when describing the shelters around Dragon Tail Ditch, used by the peasants to escape avaricious cadres. As with any predominantly rural area, the rhythms and textures of the physical landscape are an easy point of access for foreign eyes.

                                                      本文作者和译者

Shaanxi Through Dr. Robin’s Eyes

     罗宾博士看陕西(12)

                     Rich Pickings from the Yellow Earth: Guanzhong Writers

                             黄土地上的硕果：陕西作家

                                                                    （英）罗宾•吉尔班克                                                                                      胡宗锋  译

       Has the landscape ever been sketched with such acuity since then? In the early chapters of his novella The Champion Scholar Sheep (2006) Wu Kejing creates something approaching Liu’s naturalism when describing the shelters around Dragon Tail Ditch, used by the peasants to escape avaricious cadres. As with any predominantly rural area, the rhythms and textures of the physical landscape are an easy point of access for foreign eyes.

Shaanxi Through Dr. Robin’s Eyes

     罗宾博士看陕西(12)

              Rich Pickings from the Yellow Earth: Guanzhong Writers

                                   黄土地上的硕果：陕西作家

                                                                    （英）罗宾•吉尔班克                                                    胡宗锋  译

     Forty-odd years on, we read not to be converted to a cause but to gain a snapshot of a former generation and how it tackled the inequity of society. Thanks in part to his acknowledged influence on the creation of newer epics such as White Deer Plain Liu Qing has escaped the mire of neglect into which he slid in the 1970s. The books status as a Classic, at least locally, is assured, though it is not without shortcomings.

      整整四十年后，我们读此书书不是为了改变思想，而是为了了解前辈人怎样解决社会中的不公。多亏人们已经承认他对新的史诗性作品，如对《白鹿原》产生的一定影响，柳青从二十世纪七十年代被忽视的泥淖中给解脱了出来。虽然他的作品不是没有瑕疵，但作为经典的地位（至少在当地）是被确立了。

         One of the widely-recognized deficiencies of The Builders is Mr. Liu’s resolute focus on the men-folk of Hsiapao village. Where female figures do appear, in the form of goodly wives or the young maidens anxiously waiting to see if they can pass the admission to work in a textile mill in Xi’an, they are scarcely dynamic agents of revolution. Worse still, the heroic status of Liang Shengpao is blunted by his direct admission that he does not wish to make it his business to liberate women as yet. His reticence may be a reflection of the ingrained chauvinism of the countryside which worried that filling female heads with too many highfaluting ideas might cause chaos or distraction, at its most disastrous even derailing the drive towards collectivism. Or else it may encode something more psychological. The female antagonist of The Builders (not that she is endowed with anything approaching that gravitas) is Su Fang, a girl who is made pregnant at sixteen by an itinerant who promptly decamps and who is then forced to marry Shuan-shuan, a man twice her age. Her name becomes virtually a byword for slovenliness, so much so that young boys who are too young to understand conjugal rites think that they would rather die alone than be forced to take a wife like her. Through the third person narrative, we learn that she has internalized the prejudices of the former China and can imagine no prospect of reform:

          《创业史》的一个业已公认的最大不足是，柳青决意把焦点放在了下坡村。当女性人物出现的时候，要么是贤妻，要么是渴望通过考试，到西安的纺织厂去工作的年轻女子，她们很少是革命的动力因素。更为糟糕的是，梁生宝的光辉形象有瑕疵，他还没有把解放女人纳入到他的事业中去。他的沉默也许反映出了乡下人根深蒂固的大男子主义，害怕女人头脑里的东西以多就会带来混乱，让人分心。《创业史》里的一个女主人公是素芳，素芳十六岁的时候和一个跑生意的私通怀孕，很快又比那个人抛弃，最后不得不嫁给一个大她一半，名叫栓娃的男人。她的名字实际上是邋遢的代名词，以至于那些太年轻、不谙婚姻世事的年轻人觉得宁愿单身死，也不愿娶像她那样的媳妇。通过第三人称的叙述，我们知道旧中国的偏见深埋在她心里，使她想象不到改革的前景：

           Poor Su-fang’s concepts and ideas were still those of the old society. To this day, she hadn’t been entirely liberated at all. Su-fang was not allowed to come into contact with any man. […] [she] could only visit the compound of bald old Liang the Eldest, because her blind father-in-law considered the rich to be of higher moral calibre than the poor. How could Su-fang possibly gain any new ideas or understanding?

                                        (The Builders, Chapter 21, p. 372).

            可怜的素芳的思想、意识仍然停留在旧社会。至今没彻底解放或根本没解放哩。素芳不能和男人接近……素芳只被允许到秃顶梁大老汉家去串门，因为瞎眼公公认定富户比穷户的德性高。素芳哪里来的新思想新认识呢？

                      ——引自柳青《创业史》第21章 第372页

       The narrator’s tone is curiously redolent of George Eliot’s (1819-80) description of Hetty Sorrel in the novel Adam Bede (1859). That girl was also an undereducated country-dweller, driven by a mixture of selfishness and petty greed, so that she rejected the honest simplicity of potential husbands. Both she and Su Fang fall pregnant outside of marriage, albeit in different circumstances. Hetty was impregnated by the squire, having aspired to entrap him into marriage that way. She subsequently committed infanticide when she abandoned her illegitimate baby in the forest, perceiving it to be an impediment to her future employment or matrimony with somebody else. Su Fang’s vulgar attachment to material things is enunciated through her postnatal liaison with Mr. Yao, the husband of her aunt. As a rich peasant, he inhabits a neatly-paved and scrubbed courtyard house which bedazzles his niece-by-marriage. While his pregnant wife sleeps he takes full advantage of the pitiful girl, coercing her into sex. As if to compound his wickedness, in the final chapters Yao ultimately resists Liang Shengpao’s reforms, wishing to retain his surplus of grain, and is exposed as a class enemy.

         作者的口吻很像乔治﹒艾略特在小说《亚当﹒比德》中对海蒂﹒索雷尔的描述。海蒂也是一个缺少教育的乡下女孩，自私自利，爱沾小便宜。因此，她拒绝未来丈夫的诚实和朴素。虽然环境不同，但她和素芳都是未婚先孕。让海蒂怀孕的是一个乡绅，她希望以此来骗人家与自己结婚。她后来承认把自己的私生子杀死在了树林里，因为她意识到这是她以后的工作和婚姻的障碍。素芳对物质上的粗俗依赖通过她在护理产后的堂姑期间与其堂姑父的交往中显示了出来。她的堂姑父姚士杰是个富农，住的是干净、整齐的砖铺院子，这让其侄女着迷。在老婆睡着后，他乘机沾这位可怜姑娘的便宜，胁迫她与他发生了性关系。好像是为了加重他的邪恶，在小说的最后几章里，他基本上反对梁生宝的改革，想保住自己的余粮，被揭发后成了阶级敌人。

         Su Fang’s portrayal comes across as all too two-dimensional. She is someone who, manifestly deprived of agency and liberty, rides along with circumstances. Her plight has caught the attention of one contemporary Shaanxi novelist, born after the publication of The Builders. Kou Hui (born Chunhua County, 1964) narrates his two-part novella In the Depth of Night, A Child’s Soul (first published in Yanhe journal 2008?) first of all from the perspective of Su Fang’s deceased baby (her husband beats her at the behest of his blind father until a miscarriage is induced) and then from the young mother several years hence when she pursues the encounter with Yao. This is an especially heavy-going piece of meta-fiction and whereas Liu Qing strove for the kind of sunny optimism derided by Professor Hsia, Mr. Kou describes Shuan-shuan’s house at Toad Flats as a penitential den of suffering. Far from being whorish, Su Fang relishes the intimacy with Yao as being the one time in her life when a man has paid attention to her physical pleasure and fulfillment. Indeed, she hopes to turn her body – the entity which caused her so much trouble in the first place – into a site of resistance. Her best means of doing this is to hope that she can conceive another bastard with Yao, thereby covertly transforming her hated father-in-law into “the emperor of the turtles.” That is wishful thinking as the internal injuries she sustained in the beating on the muddy floor when aged not even sixteen have likely robbed her of her reproductive capacity. Alternatively, perhaps depriving Shuan-shuan and his father of any offspring whatsoever, thereby terminating the Wang line, is a far graver assault upon their family. She can become a millstone of a wife, cold and unwieldy, just as Shan-shan has been a dolt and a brute of husband. Only, her passivity will wreak more havoc.

           对素芳的刻画有点过度的二维化，她是一个被剥夺了自由的人,只能随波逐流

。她的命运引起了一位陕西当代作家的注意，那就是出生在《创业史》出版后的 寇辉（他1964年出生在淳化县）。在其分为两部分的中篇小说《黑夜孩魂》中，他先是从素芳死掉的孩子的视角（她丈夫在瞎子老爹的怂恿下打她，把她打流产了），然后从年轻妈妈几年前追求姚士杰的视角讲起。这是一个特别沉重的元小说，在夏志清批判柳青追求阳光一面的地方，寇辉把栓栓在蛤蟆滩的家描写成了一个受罪的魔窟。素芳不是妓女，他和一个男人好，这是她一生中第一次有男人关切她的生理感受和满足感。的确，她想用自己的身子——这个给她带来很多麻烦的身子——来抵抗。最好的办法是在怀一次姚士杰的野种，这样就能把让她愤恨的公公成为“王八皇帝”。但这只能是幻想，她在泥地上被打时受了内伤，虽然不到十六岁，但已经被剥夺了生育能力。换一种办法，也许不让栓栓和他老爹没有后人，断了王家的香火，是对这个家更严厉的打击。 正如栓栓是一个野蛮、愚笨的丈夫一样，她成了一个冷酷、铁石心肠的女人。只不过她的被动带来的是更大的蹂躏。

          The denouement answers two problems posed in The Builders. What are the contents of the “cloth-wrapped bundle” (p. 352) Su Fang carries to her aunt’s home? Could it be clothing, provisions or something else? Also, is this really a significant detail? Kou Hui reveals that it is the bones of her first baby, which she lovingly retrieved from the filthy temporary grave in the cow-byre of their old home and which she tries to bury decently now that Shuan-shuan is away cutting bamboos in the mountains with Liang Sheng-pao’s team. On the river bank a solemn benediction rises in her mind:-

         这个结局回答了《创业史》中提出的两个问题。素芳到她堂姑家来的时候提的那个“布兜”里装的是什么呢？是衣服、日用品或其它什么吗？另外，这真的是一个很重要的细节吗？寇辉解密说那里面包着的是她孩子的遗骨，那是她从老家肮脏的牛圈里的坟地挖出来的。当栓栓跟着梁生宝到山里去割竹子的时候，她要把孩子好好的埋起来。在河岸上，她心里升起的是郑重的祝福。

         My child that smell will not afflict you any more. You will not have to sleep in that byre any more. How clean the river is. You will not feel lonely. The Wei River will accompany you. The wind will also still blow. A low howl floats over from afar. Is it a fox? No, it is a wolf. Wolves howl like this. The riverbank is so desolate, but where else have I to lay my baby to rest? What’s that? Is it that my eyes have become blurred? A child is running on the opposite bank of the river. It is a girl. She is wearing nothing, not even broken shoes or socks. There is not a single thread anywhere on her body. Even so, her body appears to be covered with some substance. She opens her mouth wide as she runs. It is as if she is calling for something. I cannot hear any sound. Alas, her body is coated in dung. She is the girl who frequents my dreams.

                                                         (Kou Hui, In the Depth of Night, A Child’s Soul).

            孩子，以后那种脏气味再也不会侵害你了。你再也不会睡在牛圈里了。这河流是多么清明。你不会感到孤独的，渭河会一直陪伴你的。风还在吹着。远处飘过来一种低沉的嚎叫声。是狐狸吧。不像。是狼。狼就是这样嚎的。河滩非常荒凉。可我又能把孩子安置到哪儿呢？那是什么？我的眼睛花了吗？一个孩子在河对岸奔跑着。是个女孩。头发长长地披散在肩上。她赤条条的，皙白的身体放射着雪一样的光芒，浑身上下什么都没穿，连一只破烂的鞋或一只褴褛的袜子都没有。整个身体上一根线儿都没有。可她身体上糊了一种东西。她一边跑一边大张着嘴，好像在呼唤着什么。可听不见一丝儿声音。唉呀，她身体上糊的是牛粪！她就是常常在我梦里出现的那个女孩儿呀！

                                                                 ——引自寇辉“黑夜孩魂”

         Entrapped by the cage of the patriarchal society, which holds her to blame for having fallen pregnant outside of marriage, sleep becomes another space in which she ought to be able to find a measure of respite. However, rather than giving her the latitude to indulge in fantasies about an alternative existence, she is instead assailed by the phantom of the child rising up again and again spectrally from her unconscious. Reality is heightened and intensified here and the one who was too small and weak to protect her premature child is mentally punished for her prior inaction. Placing the corpse in a decent grave well away from the house at Toad Flats will at least rid the mother of the unnerving thought that her murdered kid lies beneath her very feet. Whether this is sufficient to fully exorcise her longstanding torments is not made clear in the end.

          囚禁在男权社会的笼子里，她由于未婚先孕而受到人们的责难。睡眠成了另一个空间，在睡眠里她找到了一种解脱的方法。尽管如此，她虽然在幻想另一种活法，她的无意识里常常出现的是孩子那幽灵般的影子。现实在这里被拔高和强化了，一个太小、太弱无法保护自己在娘胎里的孩子的人，正在心灵上接受对自己早起不轨行为的惩罚。把孩子的遗骨安置在远离蛤蟆滩的一个像样的坟地里，至少让这位母亲没有了精神上的折磨，不会让她觉得被谋杀的孩子就躺在她的脚下。这是否足以驱邪，消除对她永远的折磨，故事的结尾没有说。

        Kou Hui’s vision is a profoundly unsettling one, and yet he stands out as being one of the most original and underrated voices in current Shaanxi literature. He purposefully does not over-write his text and through creating an ambiguous ending the reader’s abiding impression remains one of rawness.

         寇辉的想象力深刻得让人不安，但他是陕西文学界最新锐的作家之一，其声音不可低估。他的作品不是很长，而是通过营造一个有歧义的结尾，让读者的印象也停留在半梦半醒之中。

           Slightly older peers such as Wu Kejing and An Li have found both misery and humour in the farming communities of the Guanzhong Plain. An Li presents an extreme of bawdiness which can cause the reader to wince, but then dissolve into hilarity. On one level, his novel Convulsions retreads similar territory to The Builders. The character Silver Coin Li (contemporary in age to Liang the Elder) was tortured by landlords under the Old China and the local Communist Party wishes him to tour the surrounding villages bearing testimony at rallies to the improved condition of his life following the liberation. He is not some transformative leader, apropos Li Sheng-bao, but rather a common guy, physically stunted and inarticulate in speech. The leaders fear he will be overcome by nerves and struck by diarrhea as soon as he takes to the stage. What they do not know is that his reticence largely stems from the fact that his former ordeals included an assault upon his nether regions with a rough piece of metal slag which rendered him functionally impotent. When the leaders laud his return to dignity as a valued citizen of the countryside they are unaware that the object of their enthusiasm is one whose manhood has been brutally chafed, destroying his confidence in amatory affairs. Again, as a younger author Mr. An is able to knowingly invoke from afar what Professor Hsia snippily called the “joyous note” of revolutionary discourse. Being under no duress to toe the Party line of that era as Liu Qing was, he can juxtapose the farmer’s private misery with the public fervor around him to burlesque effect. This, as much as anything else in the novel, confirms An Li as a comedic master.

            比他年长的同时代作家吴克敬和安黎在关中平原的农村发现了苦难，但也看到了生活幽默的一面。安黎呈现的是一种过分的阴暗，让读者都能感到面部的抽搐，但最后却化为欢喜。从某种层面上讲，他的《痉挛》的发生地和《创业史》很相似。小说中的人物李银元（当时的年龄和梁老汉的一样）在旧中国备受地主的折磨，当地政府希望他到周围的村子，用现身说法证明现在的生活是多么美好。他不是个像梁生宝那样的人，只是一个普通的农民，嘴笨，个子也不高。领导们害怕他一上台就紧张，就拉稀。他们不知道的是，他的沉默源于早年的痛苦折磨，包括用一把火钳折磨自己，使自己成了阳痿。当领导们表扬他作为一个乡下有价值的人，恢复了他的尊严时，他们没有意识到，自己所关心的这个人的男子汉气概被野蛮的夺走了，毁掉了他在婚姻生活中的自信。作为一个较为年轻的作家，安黎知道远离夏志清教授所说的革命语言中的“资料写实”。由于不像柳青那个时代一样要紧跟党的路线，他可以把身边农民的个人苦难与大众的狂热并置在一起，达到一种滑稽可笑的效果。这些东西和小说里的其它成份一起奠定了安黎是一位喜剧大师。

                                 汉语原文刊登在《美文》2016年第12期 （未完待续）

                                     本文作者与贾平凹先生在一起

Shaanxi Through Dr. Robin’s Eyes

     罗宾博士看陕西(12)

           Rich Pickings from the Yellow Earth: Guanzhong Writers

                        黄土地上的硕果：陕西作家

                                            （英）罗宾•吉尔班克                                                                          胡宗锋  译

    Jia Pingwa in person: a glimpse inside the studio of the master 

      Approaching the studio of the novelist and calligrapher Jia Pingwa is a little like going to some top secret government archive. Occupying the upper storeys of a high-rise development, visitors are confronted with an implausibly large chocolate brown front door. This iron portal is secured by a series of bolts. I am put in mind of one of the author’s poems. His verse has never been as acclaimed as his prose, though he put down some pithy specimens in the 1980s:-

       贾平凹其人：大师的书房一瞥

 走近贾平凹的工作室有点像走近某个绝密的政府档案室， 而结果却只是发现了一位在此居住的东方宿儒。拜访者们来到一座大楼的最顶层首先面对的是一个巧克力样的棕色大铁门， 铁门由一串门闩把守。我想起了他的一首诗，在二十世纪八十年代，虽然贾平凹写过不少诗，但他的诗歌从来也不像他的散文那样有名.

Cities harbor the largest population

One hundred extra people are but a drop;

The door of every household bears a lock

The only thing that can restrain a gentleman

城市里人最多

多一百个人也不见多

家家门上都有锁

锁了君子

The deep mountains harbor the fewest folk

The loss of one person is widely noticed;

Tree branches form the door of every household

The latch being a switch of bamboo

深山里人最少

少一个人就分外少

门都是树枝编的

栓门的是一个竹棍

In the deep mountains there are no locks

In cities no counterweight for the steelyard.

深山里没有铁锁

城市里没有秤锤

On the day of my appointment it was late February. Also as it happens my thirtieth birthday, and, lacking any alternative we had just eaten braised pork sandwiches (rou jia mo) for breakfast washed down with Ice Peak orangeade (bingfeng). Signs of the recent New Year festivities were still plain to be seen. By the left architrave of the doorway a mass-produced diamond-shaped poster bore the character 福(“happiness”) at its centre. Further down the page were the logo of a major banking corporation and the signature of the designer, Mr. Jia Pingwa. No doubt this signified yet another mutually beneficial collaboration between him and the world of business. In the arts circle in Shaanxi there is a saying, which I have never been sure if it is tongue-in-cheek or not: “Chen (Zhongshi) wants fame, Jia (Pingwa) wants money, and Gao (Jianqun) wants to make friends.”

      首次与贾平凹见面是在一个二月底，也刚好是我的三十岁生日。早饭我吃的是肉夹馍，喝的是“冰峰”汽水。户外中国春节的迹象仍很明晰。 贾的内门框左边贴有巨大的“福”字菱形海报。 “福”字在中间， 意思是“好运”。再下面是家大银行的标识和设计者的签名。 毫无疑问， 这表明又一个双赢的合作已经在该设计者和商界间达成。

       Although virtually unheard of in the Western world, Jia Pingwa is regarded as one of China’s true Renaissance men. He belongs to the generation of creative individuals who grew up during the years of Mao Zedong’s rule and flourished following the so-called “Opening Up” begun in 1978. His handwriting is sought after by art connoisseurs. Also, he perpetually features in lists of the top-selling Chinese writers.

    虽然西方世界对贾平凹知之甚少，但其被普遍认为是中国真正的文艺复兴者之一。 他属于成长在毛泽东当政时期， 活跃于1978年“开放”之后有独创力的那一代人。除了字画受艺术鉴赏家苦苦追求外，他一直都被列在最畅销的中国作家榜。

         Jia’s studio in the urban heart of Xi’an, not far from the inner ring-road, has become the nerve centre of a one-man cultural industry. The upper of the two floors, with its bright aspect provides an ideal space for practicing his brushwork. The lower level, meanwhile, doubles up as both an office and a personal gallery.

贾平凹的工作室在西安市的中心， 已成为其个人文化产业的中枢。工作室有两层， 第二层最明显的特点是练习书画的理想之地。第一层， 是办公室兼私人收藏室。

Long before he realized his ambition to become a full-time writer, Jia appreciated the cultural riches of his surroundings. Resident in the city from the 1970s, he set about scouring the building sites of Xi’an picking out centuries-old tiles left exposed wherever foundations were being dug. These days he rewards his many successes by purchasing Buddhist artefacts and ceramic pieces.

早在意识到自己要成为一名全职作家之前，贾平凹就很看好自己周围丰富的文化底蕴。从20世纪70年代到这后， 贾平凹就开始在西安的一些建筑工地搜寻，挑选人们挖地基时扔在外面具有悠久历史的瓦当。那些年月里，让他为自己的成功感到欣慰的就是购买佛教手工艺品和陶片。

         The inveterate collector obviously rues the fact that the antiques market has impinged upon his pastime. Some choicer specimens escaped his grasp in earlier days. He very nearly acquired a piece of calligraphy by the Qing Dynasty master Zheng Xie Bangqiao (1693-1765), which would surely have become the centrepiece of his collection.

这位积习成癖的收藏家显然对古董市场在过去对他产生的影响感到悲伤。早些年， 他曾漏识过一些不错的藏品。他曾几乎获得过一件清代大师郑板桥（1693-1765）的书法。如果当时成功拥有了的话，那肯定会成为他所有收藏品中最重要的一件。

        Upon first meeting him, two traits are immediately striking about Jia Pingwa. For one thing, his countenance is almost as immovable as the Buddha statue upon his desk. Like so many Chinese of his generation, he seldom lets any emotion well up into his face. Secondly, his right hand never seems to be without one of three articles: a brush, a pen, or a cigarette. Amid the multitude of antique bowls in his study are ashtrays stuffed to the brim with spent butts. In the curtained dimness of the room, probably only he is able to stub a fag-end into the correct receptacle.

        首次与贾平凹见面，他的两个特点立即映入我的眼帘。其一， 他的面部表情几乎像他桌子上的佛像一样一动不动。如他那一代的许多中国人一样， 他很少把感情完全流露在脸上。其二，他的右手似乎从来没有离开过三件物品中的一件：  毛笔，钢笔，或香烟。在他书房的众多古碗中有一个盛满烟头的烟灰缸。在这个带帘子的昏暗的房间里，也许只有他能够准确的把一个烟头插入到那个烟灰缸里吧。

        I had the fortune that day to witness Jia Pingwa at work – a rare privilege indeed for a foreigner. A couple of my companions, both local government officials, had travelled all the way from the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region to purchase a single personalized scroll. They came bearing gifts – yet more tinned tobacco together with sachets of medicinal Goji berries. After several cigarettes and an impromptu book-signing session, we were summoned up the stairs to find a sheet of rice paper being smoothed across the bench.

我有幸那天目睹了工作中的贾平凹——对于一个外国人来说的确是个罕见的殊荣。同我一同前往的有几个人，两名是政府官员， 他们从宁夏回族自治区来此就是为了一幅贾的字。他们也带来了礼物——有罐装的香烟和小袋干制的药用枸杞。抽了几支烟，开了个即席的签书会后，我们来到了楼上， 一张宣纸已经平平地铺在了工作台上。

        In less than fifteen minutes, the page had been filled with precisely laid-out characters. It progressed steadily into the couplet 春风大雅能容物，秋水文章不染尘, which can be translated as “Elegant is the spring breeze is that withstands everything, Articles like autumn waters are unsullied by dust”. Once completed, each new figure was swiftly dried-off with a blotter made of a wad of the same high-grade paper. The finishing touches came with a thumb-print from the creator in red ink and the addition of the authenticating impress of his monograph stamp.

不到15分钟的时间， 这张纸上已经布满了精湛的笔墨横姿的汉字。对于像我这样只懂一点点中国话的人来说，汉字书法的繁体更是高深莫测。 那是一幅对联“春风大雅能容物， 秋水文章不染尘”。译为英文大意是“Elegant is the spring breeze is that withstands everything, Articles like autumn waters are unsullied by dust”.每写完一个字，每个新字体都要用一团吸墨纸迅速吸干。吸墨纸是一团同样高质量的宣纸。收尾的一笔是，作者用红印尼按上一个指印，再盖上他的专有权威印章。

        These congenial surroundings are a far cry from Jia’s origins in an obscure rural corner of eastern Shaanxi province. When he was born in Dihua Village, Danfeng County, Shangluo in February 1952 the Chinese countryside was becoming crisscrossed with collective farms. Not all villages realized the bumper harvests boasted by Dazhai across the Yellow River. The education system emphasized the nobility of the worker’s struggle and the importance of resisting the allure of money. With the Communist state still in its foundational stages few could envisage the kind of middle class individualism now embodied by Jia Pingwa himself.

           这样舒适的环境与贾的出身大相径庭。他出生在陕西省一个偏僻的农村。 1952年二月当他出生在商洛丹凤县的棣花镇时，中国的乡下正紧锣密鼓的搞集体农业，并非所有的村民都理解黄河对岸大寨的大丰收。教育强调的是劳动光荣和抵制金钱诱惑。由于这个共产党国家仍然处于基础阶段， 没有人能预测到贾平凹本人现在就过着的中产阶级个人生活。

      As a boy, the future writer believed himself to be an outsider among the “peasantry” class. His diminutive stature made him an unpromising manual worker. Pursuing academic achievement appeared to be his only ticket out of his hometown. The road ahead was far from gentle. Jia’s father, a schoolteacher, suffered false accusation after accusation during the tumultuous Cultural Revolution (1966-76), before finally succumbing to the effects of alcoholism. The son prospered in earnest, gaining a degree in Chinese Literature from Northwest University in Xi’an and then went onto find employment in the state-run publishing sector.

   从孩提时起，这位未来的作家就相信自己会成为农民阶级以外的人。他并不伟岸的身材使他无法成为一个有前途的体力劳动者。追求学业显然就成了他走出家乡的唯一门票。但前进的道路并不平坦。贾的父亲，一名中学教师，在文化大革命（1966-76）的动乱中蒙冤，受尽磨难。后来。老实讲，他的儿子发达了。儿子在西北大学获得了中国文学学位，之后又在国营出版社找到了工作。

       Mr. Jia has often commented that even after living in Xi’an for more than thirty years it has never felt like home. The Shangzhou region continues to crop up in his work, sometimes as the main setting, at others enigmatically as the memory of a former habitation which his characters carry around in their heads. Fans claim that his novels provide an unparalleled record of Chinese rural life. More importantly, he has - however unwittingly - given a voice to the millions of people who every year quit the countryside in search of employment in China’s sprawling cities.

贾先生经常说，尽管在西安已经生活了三十多年却从没有家的感觉。商州时不时地出现在他的作品里面，有时是以其为背景，有时是其小说中主人公萦绕在其脑海挥之不去、让人捉摸不透的对家园的回忆。 贾迷们称其小说对中国乡村生活的描述无与伦比。更重要的是， 他不经意地道出了成千上万的人们的心声，每年这些人都会背井离乡到发展中的大城市里来谋生。

        After completing a sequence of books revolving around a fictionalized Shangzhuo, Jia brought his adopted Xi’an squarely into focus. He renders the name of the metropolis as “Xijing” (“the Western capital”), a cipher which points to Xi’an’s regional preeminence and also hearkens back to historical fact. During the Tang Dynasty, Xijing was one of the names recorded for Chang’an in the first year of the reign of the Emperor Tianbao (742 AD) and in the second year of the reign of Shangu Yuan (761 AD).

贾平凹在完成了一系列以商州为题材的作品之后， 断然的把西安作为了他的焦点。他把这座大都市的名字定为“西京”，这既指现代的西安，又有历史渊源。在唐代，长安在天宝元年就被称为西京。

      Xijing formed the setting for Jia’s best-known work Fei Du (“Abandoned Capital”), which upon its publication in 1993 raised eyebrows across the country. It tells the story of the lust-filled hack writer Zhuang Zhidie, who takes up residence in the city, where he is allured by a series of elicit sexual encounters described with a frankness that had not been seen before in contemporary China. Promptly banned by the authorities it attained notoriety akin to that of Lady Chatterley’s Lover eighty years earlier.

贾平凹最有名的小说《废都》就是以西京为背景的。1993年《废都》出版之后震惊全国。《废都》讲述的是住在西京城的一个风流捉刀作家庄之蝶的故事。讲述的是其一个个的艳遇。作者的直白表述在当代中国前所未闻。于是很快遭当局封杀。其声名及其遭遇与80年前英国的《查特莱夫人的情人》相似。

      It even receives passing mention in the memoir of Justin Hill, then a twenty-one year old foreign teacher at a college in Yuncheng. A Chinese colleague

甚至连 贾斯廷·希尔在《黄河湾》中也提到了这一点。他当时只有二十一岁，是运城一所大学的外籍教师，他的一位中国同事告诉他:

‘Tell me … have you heard of this book? It’s called Deserted Capital. It’s a new release and has caused quite a sensation. It’s written by an author from Xian and it’s supposedly about Xian, and the fact that it is no longer the capital of the country. But really, it is a criticism against the Chinese arrogance about their past greatnesses. It says we must modernize our attitudes and ways. The authorities wanted to censor it, but instead of removing the censored material the author has just left large parts of his book blank […] The story is centred on an artist in Xian who is having an affair with three women at the same time. He cannot decide which one he needs. The censored bits are sexually graphic. I thought I would translate this book into English. Would you like to help me? We will have to act quickly or someone in Hong Kong or Taiwan will have done it before us.’

           (Justin Hill, A Bend in the Yellow River. 1997. Pp. 171-2)

告诉我……，你听说过这本书吗? 名叫《废都》，新出版的，很轰动，是西安的一个作家写的，写的是西安，但实际上那里已不再是国都了。但这确实是对中国人以伟大的过去为荣的批评。小说讲我们当使自己的思想和行为现代化，当局要审查作品，作者没有册掉被审查的文字，而是留下了很多方框……故事讲的是西安的一个作家同时和三个女人有染，拿不定主意到底需要哪一个。被审掉的部分是“性描写”，我想把这本书译成英语，你能帮我吗？我们要快，要不香港或台湾的人就会赶在我们前面。

                        ——引自贾斯廷·希尔著《黄河湾》第171-172页

(贾斯廷·希尔Justin Hill,英国当代作家，凭借中国题材的三部曲《黄河湾》A Bend in the Yellow River《品梦茶馆》The Drink and Dream和《天堂过客》Passing Under Heaven享誉西方世界——译者注)

        The city ersus country dilemma is taken up even more movingly in another Xijing-set novel Gaoxing (“Happy”) (2007). In this, a group of friends leave the arid loess plateau of Shaanxi hoping for a better existence in the provincial capital. Instead they come to inhabit a squalid tenement and are forced to scrape a subsistence living from collecting refuse left on the streets. A typical day finds them amassing bales of polystyrene or some other waste material which they can cash in for a pittance.

  城市与乡村的二难选择在以西京为题材的小说《高兴》（2007）里更是被描述得活灵活现入木三分。在这部小说里，一群朋友为了在省会寻求更好的生活离开了不毛之地的陕西黄土高原。然而他们却住进了肮脏的临租房里， 被迫在街上收垃圾勉强度日。普通的一天对于他们来说，就是收集大捆的聚乙烯废品和其他一些垃圾去换微薄的收入。

       Gaoxing was also adapted for the big screen by the director A Gan. It was amongst the largest grossing domestically-produced movies in Mainland China in 2009. Audiences warmed to its mixture of magic realism and scatological humour. Towards the end the two protagonists soar over the cityscape of Xi’an in a homemade biplane. The vista is awesome, but after one loop-the-loop too many, the co-pilot regurgitates his lunch. A well-dressed passerby below is left drenched in a blizzard of half-digested noodles.

   而且《高兴》被导演阿甘搬上了银幕。成了2009年中国大陆创收较高的众多国产影片之一。观众们非常喜欢这部电影里魔幻现实主义与市井幽默相结合的效果。电影结束的时候，两个主人公坐在自制的双翼飞机里在西安城上空盘旋。这个场景太精彩了。但是飞机翻了几个筋斗以后， 副驾驶员吐出了自己的午饭。下面一位精心打扮的路人被淋在了未消化的面雨之中。

      Purists were less than flattering about comedic license taken by the films director. Jia’s friend and translator Professor Hu Zongfeng remarks that “it was a travesty. The original novel Gaoxing gives really serious insight into the troubles faced by migrants from the countryside. That was simply absent here”.

      纯粹主义者是不会迎合电影导演的喜剧处理的。贾的朋友翻译家胡宗锋教授说“这是滑稽模仿， 原版小说《高兴》真正严肃的洞察到了乡下农民进城所面对的许多困境。”

                本文作者和译者与著名作家吴克敬在汉中黎坪

Shaanxi Through Dr. Robin’s Eyes

     罗宾博士看陕西(12)

           Rich Pickings from the Yellow Earth: Guanzhong Writers

                        黄土地上的硕果：陕西作家

                                            （英）罗宾•吉尔班克                                                                          胡宗锋  译

Newer Voices, Wider Resonances

      Whereas the likes of An Li and Wu Kejing draw their materials from the familiar agricultural heartland of Guanzhong, other writers have pushed at the creative envelope by probing into the fringes of human society in Shaanxi. The background of Ye Guangqin (born 1948) could scarcely be in starker contrast with the local subjects upon which she has chosen to focus her attentions. Born into the Royal Manchu clan of Yehenara, her father was a kinsman of the Dowager Empress Cixi. As is recounted in such articles as ‘The Return of the Phoenix’and ‘Moonlight Gate’ , Ms. Ye was at the age of twenty forced to board the train to Xi’an where she should find employment as a nurse.  

新声音，大回响

 当吴克敬和安黎在熟悉的关中农村寻找自己的创作素材时，其他一些作家开始从另一个方面探索陕西的人文社会。叶广芩所选择的题材就和其他人形成了鲜明的对比。她出身于满清的皇族，其父亲是慈禧太后的亲属。正如在“凤还巢”和“月亮门”中所言，她在二十岁的时候，就被迫踏上来西安的火车，在当地做护士。

      Her novel Qingmuchuan, tracing the afterlife of the executed bandit Wei Futang, has already been translated into English as Greenwood Riverside, and was filmed as a television miniseries in which, bizarrely, the Republic of China setting was retained but the action was moved to Shanghai.  

          她的小说 《青木川》追溯的是被处决的土匪魏福堂的人生，现在已经被翻译成了英文，也被拍成电视剧。奇怪的是故事的背景还是中华民国，但活动场所却被移到了上海。

       the short story ‘On Camera' details the problems which crop up when decisions are to be made within a sparsely-populated mountain outpost. The perplexity is deepened by the dipsomaniac tendencies of the villagers who comprise the so-called “committee.” 

她的小说“上镜”描述过在一个地广人稀的山区，被人们称之为是“村委员会”的人是怎么开会的：

      According to their customary rules, when a meeting is held at a committee member’s home, the host – no matter who he is – should take charge of the prerequisite spirits and tea. There isn’t a great deal of expenditure, save for the cost of several mugfuls of corn-distilled spirits. Every household at Leopard Terrace distills spirits from corn, and this should last one winter and one spring until the new corn is harvested the following year. The spirits is drunk without any accompaniment. People sit around the fire pit and a large enamel mug is passed around perpetually. This one takes a mouthful and that one takes a mouthful. After one mugful has been exhausted, another serving will be ladled out and the mug passed around again. The authorities have criticized this kind of meeting many times and enjoined them to rectify their working style because the final decisions made at such village meetings always turn out to be nonsensical. In the end nobody remembers what the original intention of the meeting was. Whereas city cadres ride home from a meeting in their Santanas many has been the time that the children of these village cadres have had to carry their fathers back home.

                                                           (‘A Panda Called “Little Mite”’)

    豹子坪家家都酿包谷酒，这酒要喝一个冬天、一个春天，一直喝到来年的新包谷下来。喝酒也是干喝，大家围着火塘，一个大号搪瓷缸，你一口，我一口，无止境地往下传，一缸子喝光了再舀一缸，再接着传。上边对这种会议方式多次给予批评，让他们整顿会议作风，因为这样开的村委会，决议往往都成了瞎扯淡，到最后谁也搞不清开会的初衷是什么了。很多的情况是村委会以后，村干部们的子女要将他们的干部父亲架回自己家中，就像城里的干部，会议完毕以后要坐“桑塔纳”回家一样。

                                  ——引自叶广芩“熊猫碎货”

        The brilliance of Ye Guangqin’s narrative style lies in the fact that she does not judge the villagers based on their ignorance of conservation practice or, indeed, the modern world in general. A caveat to the story points to the likely fate of this mountain community when a professor from the city brings his supervisees to inspect the demography of the place:- 

        叶广芩的精湛叙事风格在于她不从村民无知的保护方法来判断时局，她关注的是山区人将来的命运。 当一个教授带着自己的研究生来调查这儿的人口状况时：

          Several more years pass by. The population in all the other places is surging. On the other hand, the population at Leopard Terrace merely dwindles – down from ninety-four souls five years ago to eighty-one now; the young people have mostly gone out, leaving behind only the elderly, the weak, the diseased and the disabled. According to the expert in demographics who comes along to conduct investigations, within forty years, Leopard Terrace Village will perish naturally. Each of the expert’s students is overcome with excitement at this prediction. They declare, “Returning the mountain forests to Mother Nature and to the wild animals. This is the progress of society. This is the great achievement brought about by the improvement of the natural ecological environment.”

又是几年过去，别处的人口都在急剧上升，只有豹子坪的人口在下降，从五年前的九十四人降到了八十一人。年轻人基本都出去了，豹子坪只剩下了老弱病残。依来调查的人口专家的观点，用不了四十年，豹子坪村就会自然消亡。专家的学生为这个推测而兴奋，他们说，将山林还给大自然，还给野生动物，这是社会的进步，是自然生态环境改善的伟大成果。

                                      ——引自叶广芩“熊猫碎货”

        Ye Guangqin insists that she is a Chinese woman of traditional virtues first and a Manchu from a Royal line only second. Her bicultural awareness certainly informs the manifold viewpoints she is able to take and has nourished in her a sympathy for marginal peoples. Parallels may be drawn with certain Han writers who have tried to cultivate the literary profile of China’s “Great Northwest,” pushing beyond the confines of Shaanxi Province to make informative comparisons with the minorities of the borders regions. Gao Jianqun as, to date, attracted the lion’s share of attention within this sub-genre. However, close on his heels is the Mao Dun-shortlisted novelist Hong Ke (born Qishan County, Baoji, 1962). As much a philosopher as an author of prose, his magic realism pulls the reader around the veldts and mountains of Xinjiang and through the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, capturing the vivacity of local rites and dances. For the uninitiated, the best place to begin with Hong is his novella Hometown (Guxiang). The protagonist Yang tries to ease himself out of his quarter-life crisis with the aid of his mother’s sister-in-law, a Mongol teacher renowned for her savoir faire. Where lesser writers might have sunk into politically-correct platitudes about the charm of minority cultures, Hong Ke presents as his climax, an arresting tutorial in the earthy plainspoken ways of Western Guanzhong. When a cousin of the family has been plunged into financial turmoil, Auntie Golden Flower summons up the pluck to address her in the most direct of tones:-

    叶广芩坚持说自己首先是一个具有传统伦理观念的中国妇女，其次才是有皇室血统的满洲人。她的双重文化背景当然让她具有多视角，而且培养了她对边缘民族的同情。高建群至今在这类文学作品中当然有其地位，但紧随其后的是两次入围“茅盾文学奖”的红柯(他1962年出生在宝鸡的岐山)。他既是一个作家，也是一个哲学家。他的魔幻现实主义把读者带到了新疆的大山和草原，穿过内蒙古的草原让人感受到了当地欢快的舞蹈和礼仪。对于不熟悉他的人来说，值得一提的是他的中篇《故乡》，其中的主人公的老师是一位蒙古人，当家庭中的一位成员遭到经济上的困难时，金华姑姑的勇气表达的淋漓尽致：

The mother-in-law continued to try and persuade the woman. She even said something she shouldn’t have done: “Child, the one who will be with you until you are old is your man, not your mother’s family. You should weigh the words your mother’s family tells you. Listening to everything they say can make you eat but never shit.” The woman countered with: “My mother’s family never caused him hurt. Did my mother’s family block his way to eating shit?” The words of her nephew’s wife stabbed her in the heart and seized her by the throat. She clutched her chest and was mute. Auntie Golden Flower charged forward and grabbed the woman’s collar, her voice as loud as the thunder in the sky: “Your man’s body has one more piece of meat than you do. Without this piece of meat you are just a lump of stone. If a man loses his dignity you, his wife, are no better than a dog. Even if you became a whore nobody would make a move on you.” Golden Flower held onto her mother-in-law and walked through the crowd with a brave look. There was no need to think about the outcome. The famous words of Auntie Golden Flower were spread all over the Zhou Plateau. The people in uncle and auntie’s work unit in Weibei City all knew about this. How great it is that man has one more piece of meat than a woman. The words struck like an exploding atom bomb.    

      Somebody made the joke: “Women who are willing to protect a man’s dignity like this have almost become an extinct species.” 

婆婆又呱呱呱劝这个女人,不该说的话都说出来啦:“娃呀,陪你到老的是你男人不是娘家人,娘家人的话要掂量掂量,说啥听啥吃了屙不哈(下)。”这个女人就反戈一击:“我娘家人又没害他,我娘家把他吃屎的路挡住啦?啊!”老太太被侄媳妇直杵杵戳在心窝窝里,噎住了,抓挠心口说不出话。金花婶婶就冲上去揪住这个女人的领子嗓门大得像天上打雷:“你男人身上比你多一块肉,没有这块肉你就是一块石头,丢了男人的尊严,你这个妻子连一条狗都不如,当婊子都没人上。”金花扶着婆婆昂昂气壮从人群中穿过。结局不用多想,金花婶婶的那句名言传遍了整个周原,渭北市叔叔和婶婶单位的人都知道了。好家伙,男人比女人多一块肉,等于原子弹爆炸嘛。

有人就开玩笑:这么维护男人的女人快要濒临灭绝了。

      Few writers can simultaneously stun and amuse in so few sentences. From this moment in time it feels that he and Madame Ye may yet find a breakthrough outside their homeland.

没有几个作家在短短的几句话里，既让人感到震惊，又让人觉得有趣。从现在起，红柯和叶广芩都有可能在家乡以外有新的突破。

       原文刊发《美文》2016年第12期   （本文完）

                                                    胡宗锋、杨争光（中）罗宾博士

                     Yang Zhengguang, How Old Dan Became a Tree and Other Stories

                                 杨争光作品选《老旦是一棵树》英文简介

            The fiction of Yang Zhengguang (born 1957) is notable for its filmic vividness and black humour. Typically, choosing historical settings he painstakingly dissects the passions and sexual mores of the past in a manner that would previously have been unthinkable.

           Increasingly recognized as one of the dark horses of contemporary Chinese literature, Yang Zhengguang (born 1957) was born in Qian County, Shaanxi and began his writing career as a poet in his twenties. Later, a hugely successful scriptwriter, his 1998 adaptation of the classic epic The Outlaws of the Marsh is regarded by some as the finest. Yang founded and served as CEO of the Chang’an Film & Television Production Company, also becoming the Chairman of the Shenzhen Writers Association upon relocating to the South.

         Although little of his work has been published in English, unusually the Serbian auteur Goran Paskaljevic adapted How Old Dan Became a Tree into a film entitled How Harry Became a Tree (alternatively known as Bitter Harvest) (2001). The drama was relocated to 1920s Ireland and starred Colm Meaney as the protagonist.

                                  Keywords: Banditry, Feuds, Sexual Awakening, Murder

                                           Synopses of Featured Stories

        The Red Heat (2500 words) – In 1958, Chairman Mao decreed that everyone should kill sparrows, these being one of the so-called Four Pests, which he felt hampered agricultural production and thus economic progress. For the adolescent Yellow Plum this would prove the unlikely triggering for her sexual awakening. Only much later, and with tragic consequences, would she learn the truth behind what she called her “red heat.”

       How Old Dan Became a Tree (20 000 words) – Being widowed early and supporting a bachelor son has done little to soften Old Dan’s already cantankerous disposition. Reasoning that life lacks “flavour and colour” without somebody to despise he singles out the village bride-finder Zhao Zhen as his personal enemy. His vendetta exasperates his neighbours in Double-Ditch village, extending as it does to slander, sexual humiliation, grave-robbing, and murder.

       Blue Fish (4000 words) – Blue Fish’s husband has long been fascinated by his wife’s dexterous hands. He likes being tickled and caressed by them in private. However, when the Four Cleanups Movement comes to their area and confessions of corruption need to be found, he thinks of how her digits can be put to more sinister use.

      Dark Scenery (20 000 words) – The Guanzhong Plain in the early twentieth century. Bandits are a law unto themselves and when one of them is inadvertently slain, they demand reparation from the villagers. Sprouting Rice, though barely a teenager, finds herself offered up as chattel. Will she and a coffer full of silver dollars prove enough to avert further reprisals? 

         Dry Ditch (2500 words) – Locals give Dry Ditch a wide berth. Some who are unafraid by phantoms and chills choose it as a place for courting. The virgin Lanfeng sneaks off there with her suitor from the mountains, but how will her brother react to the prospect of her no longer sleeping on the kang they have shared for years?

      Wife-buying (22 000 words) – Matrimony is virtually obligatory on the Guanzhong Plain. In past generations, trading in women was a felony that was seldom punished, though whether the women were willing to be traded was quite a different matter.