- 牡丹和芍药同宗？ [2012/04]
- 从旧金山湾区到大峡谷四日游 [2012/04]
- “只因为在人群中多看了你一眼” [2012/06]
- 走近美洲土狼，coyote ugly [2012/02]
- 【现场报道】旧金山华人抗议日本强占我钓鱼岛（二） [2012/09]
- 后海夜色 -- Night Life in Beijing [2011/09]
- 【太平盛世】步行街 (Shopping Plaza) [2011/09]
- 体验城际高速 [2011/09]
- 安享晚年 [2012/07]
- 英译《我的祖国》 [2011/01]
- 惊涛拍岸 （Spindrifts of Big Sur） [2011/05]
- 【现场报道】旧金山华人抗议日本强占我钓鱼岛（一） [2012/09]
- 【酒足饭饱，信口评说】天津狗不理包子 [2012/05]
- 【北岳恒山】千年悬空寺 [2012/05]
- 内部特供酒 [2012/01]
- 天津俗文化 [2011/09]
- 苹果梨 Asian Pear [2011/10]
- 【太平盛世】父老乡亲 [2011/09]
- 精品二锅头 [2011/10]
- 香椿菜 [2011/10]
- 厦大校园，美尽东南 [2010/11]
- 春的四月，院内花开 [2012/04]
- 苍鹭多高，鹈鹕多大 [2011/07]
- 家乡西凤酒 [2011/11]
- 春天多美好 [2012/05]
- 登峰六部曲 [2012/01]
- 黄了银杏红了枫叶 [2011/12]
（最近回国走了一下长城，图片另发。想起了多年前的英文作文。咳咳，翻译还着实费了些功夫。配上几张照片，就算是文物出土吧。）
围墙文化深入到我的骨髓里了。大学有一段时间总觉得那校园有些别扭，究其原因不外乎因为地处闹市，学校围墙却一直没有完工。那种残缺实在扎眼。一个连围墙都不全的地方叫人咋住啊？没有围墙周身都不舒服，就像赤身走在闹市一般没有遮掩。也真是啊，没有围墙都如何显得我们是精英？怎么讲究的校门和高大的教学楼也因此失去了许多宏伟。去乡下瞧瞧吧，乡亲们都是先打造围墙再在里边盖房子的呢。
记得紫禁城的城墙吗？那一幕一辈子也忘不了，夏天的烈日硬是被皇城坚固的城墙遮蔽得有些暗淡了，可怜兮兮的。外面的世界俨然被城墙和城门隔绝了。围墙是用来保护人的，对吧？中国文化里面墙的功能不能纯粹用保护来简化。墙的意义大着哩，哎，可别问我，我也说不太清楚。中国人对围墙的着迷简直有些走火入魔，令人费解，其痴迷程度连远在天边的卡夫卡的智慧天线也接收到了呢。
"长城建造期间，直至今天，我把全部精力投入到思索世界民族史比较学方面的问题。这样的思考有助于把有些问题探究到骨子里，在骨髓里看实质。我发现我们中国的有些风俗和政体有其特有的清晰性，也有其特有的模糊性。我一直期望能够究根问底，特别是什么原因导致了那些模糊不清的习俗，因为这里边包含着建造长城的原始思维。"（卡夫卡：中国之长城，英译版，91页）
卡夫卡先生把自己当成中国的一分子来思考长城。可是卡夫卡先生好像从来没有在冬天游览长城。在八达岭刚下火车，迎面就有巨大的沉默将我笼罩。朔风啸叫，几个慕名而来的游客只有在狂风肆虐里挣扎的份了，千万只鞭子抽打，周身鞭笞。没有丝毫的舒适可言。
尽管如此，寒冬是我不二的选择。只有冬天的严酷才能给长城如此令人肃然起敬的形象，那令梦境颤抖夜晚飘摇的形象啊。和梦里一模一样，一条巨大的龙矗立在人面前，诚然是败落了，受狂风欺凌，那巨大和悲伤依然令人感动。沉默是彻底的，任何声音从这庞大的躯体上弹出都变成了微弱的呻吟，几乎无法察觉。啊，沉默是厚重的，亿万万赤裸裸的男人站在那里遥望冬天空落的天空。我是被这些沉静无畏的眼睛所震撼，感觉我的身体和灵魂被亿万次刺穿。脚踏这些催人泪下的肩膀和后背需要多大勇气和决心啊。火辣辣的感觉哦，我总不会眼巴巴地看到我的脚在朔风里被冷火融化吧？
这里的每块砖都有一个故事，所有的故事加起来才有了长城这憾人的力量。我长时间地看着那些悲哀依旧尊严依旧的眼睛；我不知道它们在看什么，天空，海洋，或者直接就是这个宇宙的混沌？在这里我感受了许多世纪在沉默里悄然而过，我接受这样的命运：我必须在沉默里忍耐几多世纪。我没有别的选择，因为他们逼视着我。每个眼睛是钢针般尖锐。我承受不了如此的责备。沉默在扩张，我不敢出声，不敢挪动。塑像一般站立，我知道我也要学会沉默。这就是命运。如果这些人可以在沉默里度过诸多世纪，难道我就不能沉默一天，或者短短的一生？
我还不至于愚钝到忘记父辈和祖辈们磨损了的肩膀和佝偻了的腰。一双双眼睛穿越高山，森林和海洋看着我，也穿透了我的心。不论我走到哪里，这些目光总是看着我。有一天我会长大，长成一个中国男子汉，也要能够像长城的一块青砖顶天立地。这就是命运。
荒凉是永恒的主题，游客稀少，群山巍峨，没有一丝儿绿意。那城墙古老，土气，子孙辈又让那城墙恢复了原形，凛然伫立，面对大风。上到山顶，可以看到那城墙延伸到黑暗处的地平线了。其实，长城就是人造战壕，地面工事，而不是地下掩体。如今这工事破败了。一片灰蒙蒙的天地依然能感觉当年的热血喷涌。几千年了，血液可能冷却了，战场可以泛绿，但是血流从来没有停止流淌，渗透。这大山曾经遭受炮轰，火烤，只是长城不曾倒下。是啊，没有了生息，只有裸露的青砖无畏的兀立。寒冷不能，大风不能，无情的岁月也不能让站立的勇士发抖。是啊，死了，死了千年了。只是，死亡在这里依然轰轰烈烈。
令人生畏的寒冷也没有能够阻止我匍匐在地，噢，冰冷的砖头散发着尸体的味道。心里明白每块方砖都有一双尖锐的眼睛，但是我不再畏缩，年幼的我已经经历了太多的死亡了。这里的每块砖头就是一个生命，这不再是什么秘密。几百万男人死在这里，埋在了这里。
上到高处，开始感觉头痛欲裂。那里能够看到北方，没有保护的大地啊。回头也能看到南边，曾经受“保护”的地方。可是我愣是没有看到差别，都是一般的土色，都在凄厉的寒风里哆嗦。保护这个词开始困惑我，这到底是保护什么，保护谁呀？保卫黄河？保护黄土地？还是保护紫禁城？我咋从来没有想到过，这墙也是用来保护那些建墙的人们的呀！普通平民的生民贫贱哪，这个才是我的亲身经历。
保护也罢，不保护也好，黄河依然泥沙俱下。接受保护，人们的眼泪也得流入特定的支流。几千年了，我们被统治到了细细节节。谁能告诉我这保护的意义，如果我们在墙内互相残杀？慢慢我读懂了舒婷：我无法反抗墙，只有反抗的愿望。
The culture of wall rooted deeply inside me. When I went to university, I did not get along with the campus for quite some time. It was located right in the middle of the downtown and yet the campus wall was not quite complete. It didn't look right. How could we live in a wall-less place? It felt funny without wall, as if we were naked in the middle of a busy street. Indeed, what was the use to build a gorgeous gate and mammoth buildings inside if there was not a wall to outline our prestigious presence? Even back in the villages, folks build wall first before they build house inside, for crying out loud.
Does any body remember the walls of the Forbidden City? I can never forget the sight that the mighty summer sun dimmed quite a bit the inside of those well-constructed Forbidden City walls. The outside world was, indeed, being forbidden by the walls and gates. But walls are supposed to protect us, right? And yet protection is too simplistic a function for walls in Chinese culture. There is more to the wall than that. Hey, don't ask me why. The Chinese obsession with wall has grown almost out of proportion and has become intellectually complicated, so much so that the intellectual antenna of Franz Kafka has caught it from afar.
Does any body remember the walls of the Forbidden City? I can never forget the sight that the mighty summer sun dimmed quite a bit the inside of those well-constructed Forbidden City walls. The outside world was, indeed, being forbidden by the walls and gates. But walls are supposed to protect us, right? And yet protection is too simplistic a function for walls in Chinese culture. There is more to the wall than that. Hey, don't ask me why. The Chinese obsession with wall has grown almost out of proportion and has become intellectually complicated, so much so that the intellectual antenna of Franz Kafka has caught it from afar.
"During the building of the wall and ever since to this very day I have occupied myself almost exclusively with the comparative history of races--there are certain questions which one can probe to the marrow, as it were, only by this method--and I have discovered that we Chinese possess certain folk and political institutions that are unique in their clarity, others again unique in their obscurity. The desire to trace the cause of these phenomena, especially the latter, has always intrigued me and intrigues me still, and the building of the wall is itself essentially involved with these problems." (Franz, Kafka, The Great Wall of China. Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir. New York: Schocken Books, 1970. p.91).
Mr. Kafka took himself as a member of the Chinese race but I bet he never visited the Great Wall during winter time. Immediately I felt a tremendous silence coming onto me as I descended the train at the foot of Bada Mountain. The winter wind was howling and choking us a few courageous tourists with its bitter and unruly temperament. It was like a thousand whips showering our bodies from head to toe. Life was not allowed to be comfortable there.
Still winter was my choice. My heart told me that only winter with its harshness could give the Great Wall its due dignified and respectable looks that haunted my dreams, and haunt my nights still. As expected, when I saw a gigantic dragon standing before me though looking defeated and still being attacked by the relentless wind from all directions, I was deeply affected by the sheer size and the grief it held to itself. It was ultimate silence, any sound bouncing off that tremendous body turned into a low-pitch moan, hardly audible. It was a powerful silence because it was the silence of thousands or millions of naked men standing and staring into the empty winter sky. I was shaken by these calm and fearless eyes, as if my body and soul were pierced through thousands or millions of times. In fact, it took a great deal of courage to step on those miserable shoulders and backs. They might be too hot and my feet might melt right in front of my eyes in the harsh winter wind.
Power accumulated with each every story buried in the bricks of the wall. Looking at those sorrowful but dignified eyes, though I did not know what they were looking at, The earth? The sky? The ocean? Or simply our universe of great chaos? I seemed to understand how many centuries had passed in utter silence, and started to accept the fact that there would be many centuries of silence ahead for me to endure on. I had no choice, for they were all staring at me. Every eye was like a sharp needle made of steel. I could not stand up to so much blame. The silence only grew, for I dared not to make any noise, nor move a step. Frozen like a statue, I felt that I should embrace the silence. That was my fate. That was our fate. If they could be silent for many centuries, why couldn't I be silent for a day, or a pitiful short life?
Yet I did not want to appear stupid. I could not help telling the story about the torn shoulders and crooked backs of my parents and grandparents. When their eyes cut through mountains, forests and the ocean, they also pierced through my heart. No matter how far I'm away from home, those eyes find me and follow me everywhere. I would be a man some day, a Chinese man. I must stand up to anything just like a gray brick on the wall. This is my fate.
Barrenness was the main theme forever, visitors scarce, not a trace of green in sight on an enormous stretch of mountainous land. The Wall, earthy and ancient, restored by the contemporary children to its former glory, stood up dangerously on the mountains, facing up to the gusty wind. Once on top of a hill, I could see the wall snake into the dark horizon. By essence the Wall was nothing but a man-made battle trench up ground, as opposed to underground. It was a trench broken. Still under the vast grayness one could see or sense boiling blood once raging here. Gradually, hot blood cooled down and may have become green during the the course of millennia but still hasn't stop running and spreading. The mountains was pounced upon by cannon balls and burned by raging fires. But the Wall had not disappeared. Lifeless, yes, but the naked bricks were forever fearless. Nothing, the cold, the wind, the brutality of time, could really defeat that mighty stance. Dead, yes. Has been so for centuries. But even death has become spectacular there.
The cold was murderous but it did not stop me from throwing myself to the Wall, on all fours, those damp bricks smelt like, well, dead bodies. I knew that each of the over-sized bricks had a pair of penetrating eyes but I was not frightened any more, for I had seen enough deaths in my young life already. It was not a secret that every brick on the wall counts for the life of a man. Millions of Chinese men had died for and been buried in the Wall.
At one of the high points an unbearable heartache assaulted me. From there I could see the north, once outside of the protected world, and also look back to see the south, the once "protected" world. I could not tell the difference. They were all earthy gray and trembling in the howling wind. I was puzzled by the word "protected." What or whom was supposed to be protected here? The Yellow River? Or the Yellow Earth? Or the Forbidden City? And it never crossed my mind that the Wall was built to protect those who built it. The life of the ordinary meant nothing but misery, I knew that from first hand experience.
Protected or not, the Yellow River would flow with mud. But protected, our tears had to drop into the proper branches as we had been ruled in every detail of our behavior for thousands of years. And, what's the meaning of protection, tell me, if we kill each other inside the wall? Slowly I start to understand why Shu Ting writes: I have no way to fight the wall except my desire to fight it.
Mr. Kafka took himself as a member of the Chinese race but I bet he never visited the Great Wall during winter time. Immediately I felt a tremendous silence coming onto me as I descended the train at the foot of Bada Mountain. The winter wind was howling and choking us a few courageous tourists with its bitter and unruly temperament. It was like a thousand whips showering our bodies from head to toe. Life was not allowed to be comfortable there.
Still winter was my choice. My heart told me that only winter with its harshness could give the Great Wall its due dignified and respectable looks that haunted my dreams, and haunt my nights still. As expected, when I saw a gigantic dragon standing before me though looking defeated and still being attacked by the relentless wind from all directions, I was deeply affected by the sheer size and the grief it held to itself. It was ultimate silence, any sound bouncing off that tremendous body turned into a low-pitch moan, hardly audible. It was a powerful silence because it was the silence of thousands or millions of naked men standing and staring into the empty winter sky. I was shaken by these calm and fearless eyes, as if my body and soul were pierced through thousands or millions of times. In fact, it took a great deal of courage to step on those miserable shoulders and backs. They might be too hot and my feet might melt right in front of my eyes in the harsh winter wind.
Power accumulated with each every story buried in the bricks of the wall. Looking at those sorrowful but dignified eyes, though I did not know what they were looking at, The earth? The sky? The ocean? Or simply our universe of great chaos? I seemed to understand how many centuries had passed in utter silence, and started to accept the fact that there would be many centuries of silence ahead for me to endure on. I had no choice, for they were all staring at me. Every eye was like a sharp needle made of steel. I could not stand up to so much blame. The silence only grew, for I dared not to make any noise, nor move a step. Frozen like a statue, I felt that I should embrace the silence. That was my fate. That was our fate. If they could be silent for many centuries, why couldn't I be silent for a day, or a pitiful short life?
Yet I did not want to appear stupid. I could not help telling the story about the torn shoulders and crooked backs of my parents and grandparents. When their eyes cut through mountains, forests and the ocean, they also pierced through my heart. No matter how far I'm away from home, those eyes find me and follow me everywhere. I would be a man some day, a Chinese man. I must stand up to anything just like a gray brick on the wall. This is my fate.
Barrenness was the main theme forever, visitors scarce, not a trace of green in sight on an enormous stretch of mountainous land. The Wall, earthy and ancient, restored by the contemporary children to its former glory, stood up dangerously on the mountains, facing up to the gusty wind. Once on top of a hill, I could see the wall snake into the dark horizon. By essence the Wall was nothing but a man-made battle trench up ground, as opposed to underground. It was a trench broken. Still under the vast grayness one could see or sense boiling blood once raging here. Gradually, hot blood cooled down and may have become green during the the course of millennia but still hasn't stop running and spreading. The mountains was pounced upon by cannon balls and burned by raging fires. But the Wall had not disappeared. Lifeless, yes, but the naked bricks were forever fearless. Nothing, the cold, the wind, the brutality of time, could really defeat that mighty stance. Dead, yes. Has been so for centuries. But even death has become spectacular there.
The cold was murderous but it did not stop me from throwing myself to the Wall, on all fours, those damp bricks smelt like, well, dead bodies. I knew that each of the over-sized bricks had a pair of penetrating eyes but I was not frightened any more, for I had seen enough deaths in my young life already. It was not a secret that every brick on the wall counts for the life of a man. Millions of Chinese men had died for and been buried in the Wall.
At one of the high points an unbearable heartache assaulted me. From there I could see the north, once outside of the protected world, and also look back to see the south, the once "protected" world. I could not tell the difference. They were all earthy gray and trembling in the howling wind. I was puzzled by the word "protected." What or whom was supposed to be protected here? The Yellow River? Or the Yellow Earth? Or the Forbidden City? And it never crossed my mind that the Wall was built to protect those who built it. The life of the ordinary meant nothing but misery, I knew that from first hand experience.
Protected or not, the Yellow River would flow with mud. But protected, our tears had to drop into the proper branches as we had been ruled in every detail of our behavior for thousands of years. And, what's the meaning of protection, tell me, if we kill each other inside the wall? Slowly I start to understand why Shu Ting writes: I have no way to fight the wall except my desire to fight it.