纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英从改革一代到习近平一代何伟看到的中国

In 1996, when Peter Hessler taught at a small college in Sichuan Province, 90 percent of his students came from villages. Mr. Hessler, 5 feet 9 inches, towered over them by about half a head. They often had just one outfit to wear: a blue suit jacket, or maybe a knockoff Chicago Bulls jersey. One student told him decades later that he could afford only one meal a day.

1996年，当何伟(Peter Hessler)来到四川一所规模不大的高校任教时，他的学生九成来自农村。何伟身高一米七五，比他们高出约莫半个头的样子。他们通常只有一身衣服：有的是一件蓝色西装，有的是仿冒的芝加哥公牛队球衣。有个学生几年后告诉他，当年自己每天只吃得起一顿饭。

Mr. Hessler returned to China in 2019 to teach at Sichuan University-Pittsburgh Institute. This time, all his nonfiction writing students came from cities, and some of the women in his class were even taller than him. A couple of students wore retro Air Jordans that cost hundreds of dollars.

2019年，何伟回到中国，在四川大学匹兹堡学院任教。这一次，他的非虚构类写作班上的学生全部来自城市，班上甚至有些女生的个头都超过了他。有几个学生穿着一两千块的复刻版乔丹鞋。

The changes he observed reflected how, in a generation, China had transformed. The country’s population flipped from 70 percent villagers to two-thirds city dwellers. Economic output per person rose twentyfold, according to the World Bank. A 2020 study in The Lancet, a medical journal, reported that, out of 200 countries, boys in China had the largest increase in height from 1985 to 2019, while Chinese girls had the third largest.

借由他的观察可以看到中国在一代人的时间里发生了怎样的变化。这个国家的人口构成从七成农民变成了三分之二的城市居民。根据世界银行的数据，中国的人均经济产出增长了20倍。医学杂志《柳叶刀》2020年的一项研究报告称，从1985年到2019年，在200个国家中，中国男孩的身高增幅居首，女孩的身高增幅居第三位。

But the political system that defined society had not changed one bit, Mr. Hessler writes in his new book, “Other Rivers: A Chinese Education.”

然而，定义社会的政治体制却未有丝毫改变，何伟在他的新书《另一些河流：中式教育》（Other Rivers: A Chinese Education，暂译）中写道。

“I still taught next door to the College of Marxism, and the university still hosted old-school Communist rallies,” he writes. “How could a country experience so much social, economic and educational change, while the politics remained stagnant or even regressive?”

“我还是在马克思主义学院的隔壁教书，这所大学仍然举行过去那种共产主义集会，”他写道。“一个国家怎么可能在社会、经济和教育上经历了那么大的变化，而政治却停滞不前，甚至倒退了呢？”

That question also puzzles many Chinese people, foreign policymakers, academics and journalists, including me.

这个问题也困扰着许多中国人、外交政策制定者、学者和记者，包括我自己。

In “Other Rivers,” Mr. Hessler calls his students from the mid-1990s the “reform generation.” They believed in competition and were largely rewarded for their hard work. He calls his students from the 2020s the “Xi generation,” after Xi Jinping, the leader who has tightened the leash on all areas of Chinese society. They are willing to work hard, just like the students before them, but have few illusions about the system or their own future.

在《另一些河流》一书中，何伟称他上世纪90年代中期的学生为“改革一代”。他们相信竞争，他们的努力在很大程度上得到了回报。他称自己在本世纪20年代的学生为“习近平一代”。习近平上台后，全面收紧了对中国社会的控制。这一代学生愿意努力学习，就像他们的学长一样，但对制度或自己的未来几乎不抱幻想。

The Xi generation is risk-averse. Its members are more unhappy about their government, but are unwilling to resist. Mr. Hessler assigned “Animal Farm,” by George Orwell, to his students. The two characters they most identified with were the donkey, who is skeptical of the new farm but keeps his thoughts to himself, and the horse, who is hardworking but blindly loyal.

“习近平一代”求平稳。这一代人对政府更为不满，但不愿反抗。何伟布置学生阅读乔治·奥威尔的《动物庄园》。他们最认同的两个角色是对新农场持怀疑态度但不表露想法的驴，以及勤劳但愚忠的马。

In “Other Rivers,” Mr. Hessler doesn’t provide a resounding answer to his question. But he believes that now, more than any other time in his nearly three decades writing about China, something fundamental about the country’s political system must change. Young people are increasingly dissatisfied, he said, but they are not ready to try to initiate a change. They know the price people pay for defying the system, and the payoff for going along — even as the payoffs are becoming harder to come by.

在《另一些河流》一书中，何伟没有对他的疑问给出明确的答案。但他相信，在自己近三十年书写中国的写作生涯中，现在比以往任何时候都更需要从根本上改变中国的政治体制。他说，年轻人越来越不满，但他们还没有做好试着发动变革的准备。他们知道反抗体制所要付出的代价，也知道顺从可以获得的好处——即使回报变得越来越难获得。

In addition to two teaching stints in Sichuan, in southwest China, Mr. Hessler worked as the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker in the 2000s. He has written five books about China, three of which have been translated into Chinese. “Other Rivers” has little prospect of being published in China because of its criticism of the government, and Mr. Hessler said his previous books would not be published in China now.

除了在中国西南省份四川的两次任教经历外，何伟还在本世纪前十年担任《纽约客》驻北京记者。他写了五本关于中国的书，其中三本翻译成了中文。由于《另一些河流》一书中对中国政府的批评，在中国出版的可能性很小，何伟说，他以前的书若是在现在也不可能在中国出版。

Nevertheless, “Other Rivers” is one of the most anticipated new books in the country.

尽管如此，《另一些河流》仍然是中国最受期待的新书之一。

Mr. Hessler, practically a celebrity in China, is known for his perceptive observations and empathetic portrayal of ordinary people, whom he describes as diligent, tough, pragmatic and, for the most part, apolitical. “Compassion” is a word Chinese readers use to talk about his work. His writing “transcends the binary of yes or no, like or dislike,” a well-known Chinese writer commented on his debut book, “River Town.” That book, published in 2001, recounted his experience teaching English in small-town China as a Peace Corps volunteer.

何伟在中国可算作名人，他以敏锐的观察和对普通人充满同理心的刻画而闻名，在他的笔端，这些普普通通的中国人勤奋、坚韧、务实，而且基本不大关心政治。中国读者用“同情心”这个词来形容他的作品。一位著名的中国作家如此评论他的处女作《江城》：他的作品“超越了是或不是、喜欢或不喜欢的二元对立”。这本书出版于2001年，讲述了他作为和平队志愿者在一座中国小城教英语的经历。

But in an increasingly polarized world, Mr. Hessler and his writing face more criticism inside and outside China. He is labeled both pro-China and anti-China, for being too political and for dancing around politics.

但在一个日益两极分化的世界里，何伟和他的写作在中国和国外都遭到了许多批评。有人认为他太过政治，也有人认为他总是躲避政治，他也因此被贴上了“亲中”或者“反中”的标签。

Some nationalistic Chinese, known as “little pinks,” said he was reflexively critical in an article he wrote for The New Yorker about the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020. When he published another report five months later, about China’s effective control of the outbreak, some fellow Western journalists and China specialists branded him an apologist for the Chinese government.

一些在中国被称为“小粉红”的激进民族主义者称，他为《纽约客》2020年3月刊撰写的关于新冠疫情的文章存在一种条件反射式的批评。五个月后，他发表了另一篇报道，讨论中国对疫情的有效控制，一些西方记者和中国问题专家又认为他在帮中国政府说话。

Mr. Hessler and his family moved back to the United States in 2021 after his teaching contract was not renewed. He didn’t experience the brutal “zero Covid” restrictions that the Chinese government imposed in 2022: frequent testing, lockdowns, quarantines, food shortages and denial of medical treatment.

2021年，由于校方没有与他续签合同，何伟和家人搬回美国。他没有经历中国政府在2022年实施的残酷的“清零”政策：频繁的检测、封锁、隔离、食物短缺和医院拒诊。

In an article on the website China File late last month, he responded to criticism, writing that he was unfairly judged, especially by other China experts who had left the country. After many American journalists were expelled in March 2020, he became part of a smaller press corps. He felt that he was still in the game, he told me in an interview on my podcast last month, “while the rest of the former players became sports commentators, nit-picking.”

上月底，他在“中参馆”网站发文，对批评做出了回应。他称自己受到了不公正的评价，尤其是那些已经离开中国的中国问题专家。在2020年3月许多美国记者遭到驱逐后，他成为了少数仍然留在中国的记者。上个月，他在我的播客节目中接受采访时告诉我，他当时觉得自己还在球场上，“其他的球员都变成了体育评论员，在吹毛求疵。”

Some of Mr. Hessler’s Chinese critics said his meticulous descriptions of average citizens in “River Town” and other early works faithfully reflected the pulse of that time, when China was more open and people were trying to adapt to fast-paced changes. But in the Xi era, they said, they wished he would address politics more directly. In China today, politics has caught up with nearly everyone.

何伟在中国的一些批评者说，他在《江城》和其他早期作品中对普通人的细致描绘忠实地反映了那个时代的脉搏，当时中国更加开放，人们正努力适应快速发展的变化。他们说，但是在习近平时代，他们希望他能更直接地谈论政治。在今天的中国，几乎每个人都与政治紧密相连。

That’s not how Mr. Hessler sees his role. Trained as a fiction writer, he told me, he was more interested in the people and places than in the issues. “The politics is part of it,” he said. “But I almost never start with an issue.”

对于自己的角色，何伟并不这么看。他告诉我，作为一名接受虚构写作训练的作家，他对人物和地点比对事件更感兴趣。“政治是其中的一部分，”他说。“但我几乎从来不会从一个问题入手。”

I wondered if his approach in “Other Rivers” might have been different if he had stayed in China until the winter of 2022. Protesters came out in Chinese cities, including in Chengdu, where he had lived, to demand that the government stop its “zero Covid” policy. Some angry demonstrators called for Mr. Xi to step down.

让我好奇的是，如果他在中国一直呆到2022年冬天，《另一些河流》是否会以不同的方式呈现。当时，抗议者在中国各城市走上街头，包括他曾居住过的成都，要求政府停止“清零”政策。一些愤怒的示威者要求习近平下台。

In “Other Rivers,” Mr. Hessler writes that his young students, whom he kept up with through email and surveys, were angry about the lockdowns, which they often described as having fundamentally altered their perspectives.

在《另一些河流》一书中，何伟写道，通过电子邮件和各种调查问卷，他与他的年轻学生保持着联系，他们对封锁感到愤怒，常说封锁从根本上改变了他们的看法。

A young man wrote to him from Europe: “Most significantly, it has changed my opinions about ‘revolt’ and ‘demonstration.’ I think Chinese should more often seek their rights through demonstrations, even though demonstrations in China have been equated with ‘revolt.’”

一个年轻人从欧洲写信给他：“最重要的是，这改变了我对‘反抗’和‘示威’的看法。我认为中国人应该更多地通过示威来争取自己的权利，尽管示威在中国被等同于‘造反’。”

Most of his younger former students were focused on personal concerns like job opportunities, not politics or climate change, Mr. Hessler reports in “Other Rivers.”

何伟在《另一些河流》中写道，他之前教过的那些年轻学生更多关注的是个人问题，比如就业机会，而不是政治或气候变化。

“You often hear that a lot of people say: ‘We don’t need to have democracy. We just need to have a little more space and not so much pressure.’ But maybe it doesn’t work like that,” he told me. “Once you break that and you don’t know what’s coming next, or when it’s going to come, then you’re going to create instability.”

“你常常听到很多人说：‘我们不需要民主。我们只需要稍微多一点空间，不那么大的压力。’但也许事情并非如此，”他告诉我说。“一旦你打破了这一点，而你不知道接下来会发生什么，或何时会发生，那么你就会制造不稳定。”