纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英这不是我记忆中那个中国

In 1979 my mother pulled out a Band-Aid in a Nanjing hospital. The nurses clustered around it, amazed. “The West has everything!” they said.

1979年，我母亲在南京的一家医院里拿出了一张创可贴。护士们围着它，赞叹不已。她们说：“西方什么都有！”

We were on a family visit to China, where my Shanghai relatives were similarly wowed by our excellent teeth and ample body fat, not to mention our descriptions of American dishwashers, refrigerators and air-conditioning. And with the general awe came V.I.P. treatment. Hosts broke out bottles of expensive orange soda that they freely mixed with expensive warm beer. We could not escape drinking this any more than we could escape our government-assigned “guide,” whose job was to strictly monitor visitors like us. Relatives or not, we were foreigners.

我们当时正在中国探亲，我的上海亲戚们同样惊叹于我们的一口好牙和丰腴的身材，更不用说我们对美国洗碗机、冰箱和空调的描述了。伴随着人们普遍的敬畏，我们也受到了贵宾级的待遇。主人们拿出一瓶瓶昂贵的橘子汽水，随意与昂贵的温啤酒混合在一起。我们不能不喝，就像我们不能不接受政府指派的“向导”一样，他们的工作就是严格监控像我们这样的游客。不管是不是亲戚，我们都是外国人。

I returned to teach English at the Shandong Mining Institute in 1981. My students were coal mining engineers preparing to study abroad, so that they might bring back safer mining techniques. I was their “foreign expert.” As such, I had not only a sit-down toilet in the apartment provided to me, but also running hot water, an unheard-of luxury. My ayi, or housekeeper, would make a fire under a vat of water on the roof and, when it was ready, turn the faucet handle in my bathtub.

1981年，我再次回到中国，在山东矿业学院教英语。我的学生都是煤矿工程师，他们准备出国留学，希望带回更安全的采矿技术。我是他们的“外国专家”。因此，我的公寓里不仅有坐式马桶，还有自来水，这是闻所未闻的奢侈品。我的打扫阿姨会在屋顶上生火加热一大桶水，等水烧好了，就转开我浴缸里的水龙头把手。

After class, my students would bring stools out to the basketball court where, each facing a different direction, they would sit and study for hours on end. Loving their country and wanting to make it strong, they were grateful for Westerners like me. Foreign as we were, we were a help.

下课后，我的学生们会把凳子搬到篮球场上，各自面向不同的方向坐下来学习，一学就是几个小时。他们热爱祖国，希望国家强大，对我这样的西方人心存感激。虽然我们是外国人，但我们是来帮忙的。

Fast forward a few decades to a booming China. In my many visits over the years — as a teacher, as a visiting artist and as a tourist — Shanghai hotel staff had always returned my credit card to me with two hands, a bow of the head, and a smile. But with a quarter of the world’s construction cranes said to be in the city during China’s boom years, raising skyscrapers from what had been rice paddies, attitudes had changed. My credit card was returned with one hand; the receptionist barely looked up. My relatives no longer asked that I bring American goods for them, either. “China has everything,” they said then. As many proudly proclaimed, the 20th century was America’s; the 21st was China’s.

转眼几十年过去了，中国正蓬勃发展。多年来，我曾以教师、访问艺术家和游客的身份多次造访上海，上海酒店的工作人员总是低头、微笑、用两只手来归还我的信用卡。但在中国经济繁荣时期，据说世界上四分之一的建筑塔吊都在上海，摩天大楼从原来的稻田里拔地而起，这些让人们的态度发生了变化。我的信用卡被单手奉还，接待员几乎没有抬起头来。我的亲戚们也不再要求我给他们带美国货了。他们说：“中国什么都有。”许多人自豪地宣称，20世纪是美国的，21世纪是中国的。

One seldom hears that triumphalist tone today. Instead, the talk is of a loss of confidence and trust in the Chinese government. People remain proud of their city, which now boasts excellent, cosmopolitan food and spotless streets. There are huge new sports centers featuring tennis and paddle-boarding, there is an artificial beach with pink sand. The city is far greener than in years past, too. Magnolia and cherry trees bloom everywhere and even the strips under the freeways have been landscaped. And thanks to the ubiquitous security cameras, Shanghai is spectacularly safe.

如今，很少再听到这种胜利者的语气。相反，人们谈论的是对中国政府失去信心和信任。人们仍然为自己的城市感到自豪，因为它现在拥有一流的国际化美食和一尘不染的街道。这里有许多新的大型体育中心，提供网球和桨板运动，还有粉色砂子铺成的人工沙滩。城市的绿化也比过去好得多。白玉兰和樱花树随处可见，就连高速公路下的隔离带也进行了绿化。得益于无处不在的监控摄像头，上海的治安非常好。

Yet below the surface lurks a sense of malaise. In this famously cosmopolitan city, there are weirdly few foreigners compared to before, many having left due to the stifling policies during the pandemic or because international companies have pulled out staff, or other reasons. Clothing shops are empty and many other stores have closed. The Nanjing West Road shopping district, previously a sea of humans, is strangely underpopulated.

然而，在表面之下却潜藏着一种萎靡不振的感觉。在这座闻名遐迩的国际大都市里，外国人的数量与以前相比少得离谱，许多人因为大流行期间令人窒息的政策、跨国企业撤离员工或其他原因离开了这里。服装店空空荡荡，还有许多商店已经关门。以前人山人海的南京西路商业区，现在人流却出奇的稀疏。

Shanghainese are still outraged at having been locked down for two months in the spring of 2022 to stem a surge in Covid-19 cases with little time to prepare. Such were the shortages of essentials that Tylenol was for sale by the pill. And so heavy-handed were even the post-lockdown policies that residents took to the streets in protest.

2022年春天，在没有给出多少时间准备的情况下，为遏制新冠病例激增，当局把上海人在家关了两个月，他们对此仍然感到愤怒不已。由于当时必需品短缺，泰诺甚至是按颗出售的。封城结束后的政策严格到民众走上街头抗议。

But for many, the pandemic debacle only capped a series of governmental blunders starting with Premier Li Keqiang urging young people to open their own businesses in 2014. This and other missteps cost wave after wave of people their life savings and many Chinese now blame government ineptitude and erraticism for bringing the economy to a standstill. As a Shanghainese friend put it, the government has turned China around and around until, like spinning cars, people’s engines have stalled and their wheels have locked up.

但对许多人来说，这场大流行灾祸只是一系列政府失误的高潮，这些问题始于2014年李克强总理鼓励年轻人创业。这一失误和其他失误让一波又一波的人损失了毕生积蓄，许多中国人现在指责政府无能，朝令夕改，导致经济陷入停滞。 正如一位上海朋友所说，政府让中国来回转，直到人们像不断打圈的汽车一样，引擎熄火、车轮抱死。

The result has been so steep and unrelenting a fall in real estate prices that elderly people, like my friend’s parents, can’t sell their apartments to pay for nursing or assisted living. And they are hardly the only ones affected by the downturn. Doctors find themselves squeezed — many patients don’t have money for operations — while businesspeople sit on their hands, unwilling to make investments in so unpredictable an environment. Many college graduates, faced with a grim job market, are essentially dropping out, or “lying flat,” as it’s called in China. Not even schoolchildren, it seems, have been spared the general despondency. As one teacher I spoke to observed, when the society is sick, the children pay the price. Too many parents know a child who has had to leave school because of depression.

结果是房地产价格持续暴跌，以至于像我朋友的父母这样的老年人无法出售他们的公寓来支付护理或看护费用。他们并不是唯一受到经济衰退影响的人。医生们备受压力——许多病人没有钱做手术；而生意人无动于衷，不愿在如此不可预测的环境中进行投资。面对严峻的就业市场，许多大学毕业生干脆放弃，或者用中国的说法是“躺平”。看来连小学生也未能幸免于普遍的沮丧情绪。正如我采访过的一位老师所说，当社会生病时，孩子们就会付出代价。许多家长都认识因抑郁症而被迫离开学校的孩子。

Of course, for all of this the West is scapegoated — having opposed, people say, China’s rise — as is China’s other favorite enemy, Japan, whose brutal 1930s invasion and ensuing occupation of China still rankles. (One sequence of a CGI video shown in my recent Shanghai spin class featured huge coronaviruses studded with Japanese temples.)

当然，对于所有这一切，西方都成了替罪羊——人们说西方反对中国的崛起——还有中国最喜欢的另一个敌人日本，人们对日本在1930年代对中国的残酷入侵和随后对中国的占领仍然耿耿于怀。（最近在我上海动感单车课上播放的一段特效视频中，巨大的冠状病毒上面饰满了日本的寺庙。）

Whoever is to blame, emigration is on the rise. According to U.N. figures, more than 310,000 Chinese left the country in each of the past two years, a 62 percent increase from the earlier average of around 191,000 per year over the decade through 2019. Those in Shanghai with the means to do so talk endlessly about “running away,” even to officially reviled countries like the United States.

无论将矛头指向谁，移民人数都在增加。根据联合国的数据，过去两年中，每年有超过31万中国人离开这个国家，比之前截至2019年的十年中，平均每年约19.1万人增加了62%。上海有能力离开的人一直在讨论关于“润”的话题，甚至是“润”到像美国这样受到官方谩骂的国家。

This is not always an answer. One friend of mine has come back to China to stay, having spent six years attending graduate school in Boston, saying she missed the warmth of Chinese family life. And no one has illusions about the difficulty of getting established in another country. People in China speak of a whole new class of emigrants, women who have left high-powered careers to accompany their children to the United States early enough for them to assimilate — ideally, in middle or high school. As for the fruits of their sacrifice, it’s too early to say. Can the children really become Westerners? Will they — like me decades earlier — become the foreigners?

但“润”并不能解决所有的问题。我的一位朋友在波士顿读了六年研究生，现在回国定居，她说她想念中国家庭生活的温暖。没有人对在另一个国家立足的困难心存幻想。在中国，人们谈论着一个全新的移民阶层，也就是那些为了让孩子更好地融入美国社会——最好是在初中或高中阶段，而放弃高薪工作尽早陪读的女性。至于她们作出牺牲所换来的成果，现在说还为时过早。这些孩子们真的能成为西方人吗？他们会像几十年前的我一样成为外国人吗？

Things in China could change. Those “lying flat” are not asleep. They are watching and could someday rise up. But in the meantime, people in Shanghai are simply, as they put it, “xin lei”: Their hearts are tired.

中国的情况可能会改变。那些“躺平”的人并没有沉睡。他们正在观察，并且有一天可能会起来。但与此同时，用他们的话来说，上海人“心累”了。