外国人笔下的“中国人物”

In a country of 1.3 billion the details of individual lives are often lost in the mix. In a new book, 'Chinese Characters: Profiles of Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land,' editors Angilee Shah and Jeffrey Wasserstrom try and put that to rights.

在一个人口13亿的国家，个人生活的细节往往湮没在浮生百态之中。在新书《中国人物：变迁之地的变迁生活剪影》（Chinese Characters: Profiles of Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land）中，编者安吉利·沙（Angilee Shah）和杰弗瑞·瓦瑟施特伦（Jeffrey Wasserstrom）试图对普通中国人的生活进行一番梳理。

In short biographical chapters penned by some of the foremost China hands, readers meet a cast of characters including Tibetan entrepreneur unlucky in love, a philosophical nationalist and China's leading heavy metal guitarist.

本书由短小的传记体章节组成，均由一些权威的中国通撰就。读者会在书中看到包括情场失意的藏族企业家、达观的民族主义者以及中国领军重金属吉他手在内的一系列人物。

China Real Time caught up with Mr. Wasserstrom to find out which character he liked best.

中国实时报（China Real Time）栏目对瓦瑟施特伦进行了采访，看看他最喜欢哪个人物。

The individuals profiled in this book seem to have crammed several lifetimes of activity into a few short years.

《华尔街日报》：这本书中收录的人物档案似乎都是把几辈子的人生经历压缩进了短短的几年之中。

We definitely wanted to convey a sense of China as a place where lives are in transition. This is something that comes across in other writings by some of our contributors as well, such as the wonderful books that Ian Johnson, Leslie T. Chang and Peter Hessler have done.

瓦瑟施特伦：我们的确是想传达一种生活处于变迁中的中国印象。这种感觉也贯穿在本书几位编着者的其他著作中，例如伊安·约翰逊（Ian Johnson）、张彤禾（Leslie T. Chang）和何伟（Peter Hessler）所着的一些很棒的书。

Foreigners tend to view China in terms of big questions about democracy, economic growth, international relations. The individuals in your book have more personal concerns.

《华尔街日报》：外国人常常从民主、经济增长和国际关系等大的方面观察中国。你们书中收录的人物则有着更加个人化的关注点。

Some of the individuals profiled in 'Chinese Characters,' such as legal reformer He Weifang, are concerned about very big questions. We were interested, though, in showing that daily life issues as well as broader concerns matter a lot to many people in China岸as indeed they do in any country.

瓦瑟施特伦：《中国人物》中收录的某些人物的确在关心国家大事，比如司法改革家贺卫方。但是我们也想说明，日常生活中的问题与受到更广泛关注的大事一样，对很多中国人来说非常重要──这在任何国家都一样。

Anti-Japanese protests have brought nationalism to the top of the news agenda. Is it fair to say China's flag wavers are a more sophisticated bunch than appears at first sight?

《华尔街日报》：反日抗议活动使民族主义成为最热门的资讯话题。中国的爱国者群体其实比乍看起来要成熟，这样说是否合适？

The complexity of Chinese nationalism is something Evan Osnos gets across very nicely in much of his writing, so one piece we knew we would want to include in this one was a New Yorker profile he did of an 'angry youth' who turned out to be surprisingly cosmopolitan and polite. We were delighted when Evan arranged for us to be able to reprint that piece. Jim Millward's profile of two very different sorts of guitar teachers, who each believe his kind of music is good for the nation, also breaks through some stereotypes about how patriotism works in China. It's pure coincidence that nationalist protests are again making headlines now, but it does give a timely feel to chapters such as those.

瓦瑟施特伦：欧逸文（Evan Osnos）在他的很多著作中十分恰当地阐释了中国民族主义的复杂性。他在《纽约客》（The New Yorker）一篇人物志中记录了一位“愤青，结果发现这位愤青出人意料地见多识广并且彬彬有礼。我们很想把这篇文章收录进来。在经过欧逸文的安排、我们得以转载这篇文章时，我们感到很高兴。米华健（Jim Millward）关于两位不同类型吉他教师的描写也打破了有关中国人如何爱国的固有印象，二人都坚信自己的音乐类型对国家有益。至于民族主义的抗议现在又成了资讯头条，这纯属巧合，但这的确让这几个章节有了一种应景的感觉。

The physical structure of China's cities is changing so fast 岸 what impact does that have on some of the lives in your book?

《华尔街日报》：中国城市的物理结构变化很快──这对您书中一些人的生活有什么影响？

Urban transformations are turning some people's lives upside down, while also offering others unusual opportunities. There are examples in the book of both these sorts of experiences. The profile of an elderly resident of Beijing alleyway neighborhood by Harriet Evans and Megan Shank's look at a 'rental car king,' whose business couldn't have existed in a China where bicycles and buses were the main modes of urban transportation, are two cases in point.

瓦瑟施特伦：城市化进程使一些人的生活状况发生剧变，同时也给另一些人提供了不同寻常的机遇。这两种经历在这本书中都有例子。艾华（Harriet Evans）记录的一位居住在北京胡同里的老人和单梅兰（Megan Shank）记述的“租车大王正是这两种情况的例证。如果是在以自行车和巴士为城市主要交通工具的中国，“租车大王的生意根本就不可能存在。

The stereotype of the industrious but downtrodden migrant worker seems to conceal as much as it reveals.

《华尔街日报》：辛勤劳动但备受压迫的典型农民工形象似乎有披露也有保留。

Only one chapter in 'Chinese Characters' is reprinted from another book. This is an elegant portrait of a recycler by Michelle Dammon Loyalka that is adapted from a chapter in her Eating Bitterness, which is made up of profiles of migrant works who have moved from the countryside into a single distract in Xi'an. Her book is a beautiful one that shows us migrants being exploited and carving out interesting lives for themselves, occasionally even making enough money to help transform the villages of their birth. It's great to have a sample of that stereotype-busting book included in ours.

瓦瑟施特伦：《中国人物》中只有一个章节转载自另一本书，节选自戴梦(Michelle Dammon Loyalka)所着的《吃苦》（Eating Bitterness），用优美的笔触描写了一位拾荒者的形象。她的这本书记录了从农村搬到西安某个区域的农民工。她的书写得很美，展示了受到剥削的农民工如何为自己创造有趣的生活，有时甚至能赚到足够的钱帮助改造自己所出生的村子。这本书打破了农民工的固有形象，在我们的书里节选这样一个章节很不错。

One of the themes that emerges is individuals probing the limits to freedom set by authority.

《华尔街日报》：其中一个主题是人们探索权威制定的对自由的限制。

We see this sort of probing in many chapters, as well as instances in which individuals find their choices very constrained, as in the story of a Tibetan youth that Alec Ash tells. Overall, I hope the book encourages readers to think of the issue of freedom in China as a multifaceted one.

瓦瑟施特伦：在很多章节里都能看到这种探索，还有人们发现自己的选择受到很大约束的例子，比如亚力克·阿修（Alec Ash）讲述的西藏青年的故事。整体来说，我希望这本书能鼓励读者从多角度看待中国的自由问题。

But those limits are often ill defined, it's like the characters are testing to find an invisible boundary.

《华尔街日报》：但这些限制通常定义得都很模糊，就像是这些人在试探着寻找一个有形的界限。

The vagueness of boundaries is both an attractive part of life in China these days and something that can serve the government nicely. Journalists and scholars writing about China also have to deal with this vagueness, never knowing if something we write will or won't be allowed to be translated, if something we do or say will lead to us being denied a visa.

瓦瑟施特伦：界限的模糊性既是当今中国人生活极具吸引力的一部分，同时对政府也很有用。写中国的记者和学者也需要应对这种模糊性，永远不知道我们写的东西会不会被允许翻译，也不知道我们所做的事或所说的话会不会导致签证被拒。

Most of the authors of 'Chinese Characters' are foreign, what perspectives do outsiders bring to understanding Chinese lives, and what do they miss?

《华尔街日报》：《中国人物》的作者大都是外国人，局外人的身份会为理解中国人的生活带来哪些观点？他们又会漏掉哪些东西？

Throughout my career I've had some people, Chinese and non-Chinese alike, question whether an outsider can really understand China. One of my standard responses is simply that many people now think that an outsider, the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, wrote one of the best books on nineteenth century America, a country that, like today's China, was undergoing a variety of rapid changes and that people living inside the U.S. and in other parts of the world found hard to understand.

瓦瑟施特伦：在我整个职业生涯中，很多中国人和外国人都问过我局外人能不能真正地了解中国。我的一个标准回答是，法国人亚历克斯·德·托克维尔（Alexis de Tocqueville）是一个局外人，但如今很多人认为他写出了最好的一本有关19世纪美国的书。当时的美国和现在的中国一样，经历着各种各样快速的变迁，生活在美国及其他地方的人们都难以理解这些变化。

It's also worth noting that we'd love to see 'Chinese Characters' end up being paired, in the leisure reading of those interested in China or simply fans of compelling narratives as well as in classrooms, with any number of books by Chinese writers that view the country from the inside out. Works that would complement it nicely include Lijia Zhang's memoir, the interview-based 'China Candid' by Sang Ye, the forthcoming book made up of translations of Han Han's blog posts 'This Generation,' Yu Hua's 'China in Ten Words' or a variety of novels. Reading our book and then watching a Jia Zhangke film could also work well, as many of his movies, like 'Chinese Characters,' try to convey the varied experiences of people living through excited and confusing times.

还有值得一提的一点是，我们希望《中国人物》最后能和由内而外观察的中国作家的书配对，可以作为对中国有兴趣的读者或者喜欢引人入胜的故事的人的休闲读物，也可以用在学生课堂上。能和这本书很好地互补的作品包括张丽佳的回忆录，桑晔的以访谈为基础的《真实中国》（China Candid），以韩寒博客作品翻译为内容的即将出版的文集《这一代人》（This Generation），余华的《十个词汇里的中国》(China in Ten Words)以及多部小说。看完我们的书再看贾樟柯的电影效果也不错，因为他的很多电影都和《中国人物》一样，试图展现经历过激动人心而又充满困惑时代的人们的不同人生经历。