【中英文独家连载】罗宾博士看陕西之： 东方一瞥——半坡与蓝田
中国出版集团、中译出版社“外国人写作中国计划”丛书之中、英文版《罗宾博士看陕西》
胡宗锋和（英）罗宾·吉尔班克中、英文版《罗宾博士看陕西》在第二十四届国际图书博览会上发布
Shaanxi Through Dr. Robin’s Eyes
罗宾博士看陕西
The Eastern Aspect: Banpo andLantian
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’anpossessed 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-fedstreams, with courses stretching for fewer than one hundred kilometres. The Weiand Jing rivers, meanwhile, irrigated the 800 li Qin Plain, being vital arteries for agriculture and waterbornetransport. It is reported that the Wei formerly teemed with fish, so much sothat when the adventurer Arthur Sowerby (1885-1959) accompanied the Singer sewing-machine heir RobertSterling Clark (1877-1956) across Guanzhong in 1909, they actually witnessedthe practice of cormorant fishing from rafts (Clark and Sowerby, ThroughShên-kan: the account of the Clark expedition in north China, 1908-9, Chapter 5; also shown inphotographic plate 20). Now seldom seen outside the karst beauty spots of Guangxi,Shaanxi fishermen would launch the birds from bamboo rafts, their gulletstethered with twine so they would have to cough up their catch. Should thefeathered slaves protest and refuse to dive, they would temporarily be untiedand fed a few sprats. For George Hogg, who rode through the Tongguan Passduring the anti-Japanese War, this was an “ancient corroded countryside,”rescued from famine only by the timely inundations of the Wei. In his mind “theroads have been worn down by the wheels of centuries, so that only the tops ofthe carts passing along them are visible, and whole villages modeled in mud arescarcely 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）
Thatoff-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 thenecessity to stoop to the level of a mule. Reclamation and greening are theorder 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 Exposeven years later, a new administrative unit, the Chanba Ecological Zone, wasdesignated. The exhibition itself was staged on a 418-hectare formerbrown-field site (45% of which was wetlands), which had undergone rigorousdecontamination. Upon its closure the expo site, as had been planned all along,was converted over to parkland. After the bedding plants have withered and beenuprooted and the trellises discarded a few solid structures serve as a reminderof what went on there before. By night the Chang’an Tower glows in differentcolours, its segmented thorax blinking at motorists who wend their way back tothe 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。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。
Theauthorities hope that through investing 15.7 billion yuan in creating theChanba Zone, a green corridor can be cleaved between the industrialized easternsuburbs and the verdigris slopes of the White Deer Plain and Lantian County.That Zone, which extends to 581 square kilometres, currently conserves 180kinds of plant species belonging to 48 families, and 150 species of wetlandcreature falling into 27 orders and 50 families. The drive towards greaterenvironmental protection and building a sustainable future forms a compellingand ongoing narrative in itself, but on closer inspection these districts arealready a kind of cultural palimpsest, written and overwritten with countlesslayers 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 QinShihuang consolidated his imperial state, the plains to the east of Xi’an weresettled by the prehistoric Yangshao people. Evidence of their existence layhidden until 1953 when local labourers working on the foundations to a powerplant began to uncover artefacts of obviously great antiquity. The subsequentarchaeological dig advanced at what now seems like a breakneck speed. Barelythree years after the first barrows of earth had been shifted, the Banpo Museumwas ready for opening and Shaanxi people could appreciate the lifestyle led bytheir distant ancestors. The authorities were determined that this event beseen as the triumphant culmination of a modern, highly-efficient operation.Photographs taken at the time depict popular merriment and a clamour notnormally 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 Banpois mentioned is “quirky.” It sits nine kilometres to the east of the citycentre in Baqiao District (the name literally means “Bridge over the RiverBa”), an up-and-coming area which is still semi-rural. Prior to the completionof the East-West line of the Metro in the winter of 2013-14, “eastenders” weresomething of a people apart. Perceived by city folks as odd birds, new stylepaternalism in infrastructure projects has sought to lift them from theirslough of insularity. The minutes it now takes to reach the suburb via subwayhad hitherto been unimaginable. Travelling on the city bus via Changying EastRoad or the parallel roadway stretching beyond the Chaoyang Gate, quarter hourscould give way to half hours and more. The former route might be described as aconcrete rat-run which gave way to flatlands broken up by nucleated groves ofskyscrapers. The latter brings passengers by the tailors and clothes malls ofKangfulu, where bespoke suits can still be assembled and cut to order, not tomention 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 aregreeted by a colossal, unexpected gateway. The great arch mimics thecrisscrossing beam structure of Yangshao houses. The same feature appearselsewhere in the precinct, even inspiring the design of the concrete publictoilet block. Contrary to the illusions of primitivism, the Banpo latrinesglister 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 remainsof the prehistoric community have been excavated; that is to say an area ofapproximately 50 000 square metres. As the site is surrounded by a horseshoe ofmodern high-rise developments, with yet more construction work promised theremainder is unlikely to see the light of day. The visitor experience isdivided into three discrete sections – a museum offering displays of dioramasand 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) loomslarge in the foyer to the museum: “One knows his mother, not knowing hisfather/ Setting to work at sunrise and resting at sunset” . This coupletretrospectively encapsulates what was thought to be the guiding principle ofthe Banpo civilization. In the 1950s, archaeologists, working according to thethen prevalent Marxist paradigm of history, claimed that this was an earlymatriarchal society. The mother was acknowledged as the head of the family andas 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 viewof the Yangshao peoples. His 1964 speech ‘Discourse on Philosophical Problems’compared the unequal situation of present-day women with the dominance achievedby these forebears. In his rhetoric he said, social development has different stages, and the primitivesociety was divided into several stages. Women was buried alive
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，他说：…….社会发展也是有阶段的，原始社会又分好多阶段。女人殉葬 那时还没有，但要服从男人。先是男人服从女人，走到反面，女人服从男人…….
The resourcefulness of the Yangshao is certainlyevident throughout the exhibition. They benefited from the rich soils of theGuanzhong Plain, which were well-suited to growing vegetables, and could huntwild deer or fish as well. One mannequin display depicts a hunting scene inwhich it is the women, and not the men, who form the front phalanx, wieldingspears 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 forcraftwork. As the potter’s wheel had not yet been invented Banpo residentscreated ceramics using the ring-building method. Sausage-like rolls of wet slipwere coiled around and around in a spiral until a stable vessel developed. Thecontours were smoothed out with a moistened hand. These pots were then fired inthe nearby kiln, which, it is estimated, could have reached temperatures ashigh as 1000 degrees Celsius. Banpo pots are a deep shade of red with severaldistinctive designs painted over the surface, including what must be one of theearliest examples of a vase fashioned after the form of a gourd. Inexpensive replicasare 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 decorationsupon the surface of the clay which present the greatest conundrum. A number ofceramic items bear an ambiguous symbol that appears to combine a naïve fishdrawing with a spiky human face. The exhibition offers five versions of whatthe symbol potentially represents:-
1) That this is a totemwhich formed part of the Banpo people’s superstitions;
2) That the Yangshaorevered their ancestors and this is a representation of what they were believedto have looked like;
3) That the fish’s hornsand caps symbolize power;
4) That it is a shaman’smask which was used in a ritual.
The fifth, less probable, explanation posits that itis an image of an alien face, and that the Yangshao had contact withextraterrestrial 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. Thisis indicated in a rather quaint way to visitors. Where a single vertebra from aChan River fish was retrieved among the domestic refuse at Banpo, curators havethought to have it mounted upon a custom-made wooden template. Contemporaneoushooks 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。
Furtherspecial features vivify our sense of Banpo as a living community. A miniaturediorama provides a twenty-first century twist on “Pepper’s ghost,” an oldVictorian illusion practiced by stage magicians in Britain. In the originaltrick, an assistant would stand concealed under a trapdoor beneath the stagelevel. A strong light from the rear allowed his or her reflection to appear inan angled pane of glass placed directly above. It seemed as if a ghostlyspectre were floating upon the stage. At Banpo the trick is done using anonstop film of actors performing everyday activities in Yangshao dress. Theirimages are projected upwards so that to the viewer they are apparentlyinteracting in amongst a miniature village consisting of plastic huts andtrees.
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, visitorspass through a roomy, aircraft hangar-like space, not dissimilar in feel to thehall which houses the Terracotta Army in Lintong. The building, which wascompleted in large-scale renovations carried out between 2003 and 2006, isaesthetically-satisfying, complimenting perfectly the contents. A muted amountof sunlight is admitted via apertures in the roof. These elongated “eyes” areshaped 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 thisextensive plot, we can appreciate two chief peculiarities. First of all, theBanpo people inhabited homes with spacious underground cellars. Secondly, theirburial rites seem indicative of their own special cultural values. Whilst menand women were interred alongside each other in the village cemetery, thebodies of children were placed in shallow graves but a short distance from theinhabited houses. Their exclusion from the main burial ground perhaps signifiesthat they were not accepted as full members of the adult community. Arguably,the bereaved mothers still wanted to keep them close by. Furthermore, theyhoped that should their souls wish to migrate they should not be imprisonedwithin an ordinary casket. Hence, jars with holes bored in the sides formed thereceptacle 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 fullquirkiness of Banpo comes into its own. The rear of the site is given over to aseries of contemporary huts meant to recreate the environment of the originalvillage. Perhaps a few years ago these were studios forming part of alive-action performance involving pottery-making and other arts. The thatchedroofs have by now grown threadbare and shards of bowls and jars wait to beswept up. Interspersed with these structures are a few incongruous signs andsymbols added when the grounds were restyled. These appear to bear norelationship to the authentic archaeological remains. Fertility images, such astessellations of matrons with heaving bosoms, abound. Not so much matriarchalclan society brought to life as the fleshliest mythologizing of The Golden Bough solidified intoconcrete.
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 forthose wishing to be photographed posing in “prehistoric” surroundings onecannot seem to escape the shadow of the adjacent apartment blocks for verylong. The ornamental garden can boast one of the most impressive collections ofpeonies in the local area, making April or May the best time to inspect theoutdoor 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-wingParis-based scholars known as Tel Quelwas allowed to sightsee at places of special interest across China. Tel Quel had recently created asensation by refusing to toe the line of the French Communist Party, which hadcondemned Maoism as an aberration of Marxist ideas. One point of friction wasthe translation into French of the Italian politician Maria-AntoinettaMacciocchi’s De la Chine (originallyentitled Dalla Cina: dopo la rivoluzioneculturale)**** the French means "In China" and the Italian means"In China: During the Cultural Revolution"**** The title of theEnglish language edition Daily Life inRevolutionary China better conveys the author’s intentions. There werehopes that this account would lift the lid on what was going on inside Chinawith a seismic jolt as massive as that generated by Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China thirty-five yearsearlier. The French Communist Party, on the other hand, was not amused.Officials perceived Macciocchi’s reportage as being singularly unhelpful to theinternational class struggle, a one-and-a-half-pound chunk of pro-establishmentpropaganda 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 specialeditions of their journal to revolutionary aesthetics, and lobbied to beadmitted on a fact-finding trip to Mao’s China at the earliestopportunity.
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-AntoinettaMacciocchi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 governmenthappened to consist of attractions which had either been created for, orappropriated in, the cause of Red propaganda. For most in the group - which includedthe semiotician and literary critic Roland Barthes, the publisher François deWahl, the Bulgarian-born psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva, her husband PhilippeSollers, and Marcelin Pleynet – the agenda of the trip was obvious from earlyon.
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’sterse and often downright grouchy jottings, which never gelled into hislong-hoped-for critical work on Revolutionary China but were nonethelessprinted as Carnets de Voyage en Chine(2009) in French and Travels in China(2013) in English translation, we can glean the strongly ideological flavour ofthe proceedings. At Hu County, to the southwest of Xi’an, the quintet waswelcomed into a commune that had embraced the medium of “so-called peasantpainting” to illustrate the class struggle. Ding Jitang, who still to this daysells his own pictures behind the Drum Tower in Xi’an, had come to the area inthe 1950s and encouraged the locals to embark on this particular project. Priorto being allowed to view any artwork, the TelQuel group was briefed about the changes to life brought about by theLiberation struggle, and the success of the Great Leap Forward was reiterated.The local leaders told them that the tried and tested collectivist model ofproduction had ensured that famine and want were entirely eliminated in thecommune.
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. 12000 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 lateLiu Shaoqi and the late Lin Biao. The content of the former varied, in hiseyes, from the “realist” and “banal” to the downright “crazy.” Othersromanticized the consequences of agricultural reform and collectivization, withdepictions of villagers being overwhelmed yet not overly-surprised by bumperharvests, which flooded colour into the palette of blues, greys and brownswhich constituted country life. The information overload constituted by thesevisual aids made him wryly muse that the brigades which lacked amateur painterswere 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。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, thehome of the 75-kilometre long Lao River, one of the lesser of Chang’an’s eightwaterways. Stepping into the main East Han Village, one may as well be visitinga middling-to-well-off community in California or on Australia’s SunshineCoast. The residents mostly inhabit multi-storeyed villas, which have so manyrooms 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 sweetpotatoes of old and what scant information boards there are proclaim tales ofinternational friendship, involving eminent country artists like Pan Xiaoling,and not the triumphs of socialism. I suppose I was fortunate in that my lonetrek to Hu County was not marred by Philippe Sollers rabbiting on about how MaoZedong was the rightful heir to Qin Shihuang and how the People’s Republic heldaloft the true destiny of the Chinese people. Instead the small county bus wasfull of dozing professionals feeling the snap of a winter Saturday. My friendHongjie tried to rouse us by adopting a falsetto voice and translating theadverts for proctology procedures printed on the antimacassars on the seats.His classmate from primary school, the trainee surgeon Dr. Wang snorted back toconsciousness, apologizing for his slovenliness. “Normally on a Friday we go toKTV or I listen to my grandfather sing Shaanxi opera, but last night we workedfor hours on some experimental surgery – transforming a male goat into a femaleone. Soon I can advance to a human patient. My professor trained in SouthKorea, so with his help I think I can have a good career. You know in some waysChina was ahead of the UK? A man who has gender reassignment can pay to havehis identity card altered and from then on that person is legally a woman; caneven marry a husband.” The “billy” must have had a shock when it awoke to finditself a “nanny.” No amount of straw and stroking could compensate for such aninfringement of rights nor was it likely aspiring to find matrimony of the sortDr. Wang described. The farmyard’s answer to Caitlyn Jenner probablyhad not been found. Crossing my legs tightly I noted how the locals still burntwood 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 yearsearlier carried home rolled-up stencilled images of orchards at three-for-theprice of two or were offered frames more expensive than the picturesthemselves. It does not take a broad stretch of the imagination to see thatthey were being pushed to see Hu County and Banpo as being of a continuum. Thepsychologist Julia Kristeva was attracted by the notion that here in Banpo wasa society in which women were the dominant sex and presumably were responsiblefor education and preserving the culture. Her study entitled About Chinese Women (1974) used Banpo tospeculate upon how the female was gradually displaced as the centre of theprimitive community. Going into some detail about the contents of the tourKristeva relates her delight at listening to a certain Ms. Chang discoursing atlength about the significance of Banpo to modern day Socialists. Thisself-taught tour-guide had thoroughly digested Engels’s On the Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State. Shesought to portray the ruins as an almost idyllic commune which had not yet beentorn 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 theSinologist Burton Watson not long afterwards. His 1983 tour around China, asrecorded in China At Last, saw himtour the Middle Kingdom for the very first time more than twenty years afterhis translations of Records of the GrandHistorian and Mozi werepublished. 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, RolandBarthes was, by contrast, positively vitriolic. He noted the “muddledexplanation of this society, given by the clearly incompetent foxy-faced girl,is unfortunately dominated by obvious prejudices: collectivism, platitudinousmaterialism, absence of symbolism.” Some of these points are perceptive. We cannow laugh at the clumsy and anachronistic parallels drawn between the Yangshaoand the twentieth-century Chinese peasantry. One of Barthes’s special bugbearswas apainted frieze (now no longer on display) depicting a “gathering ofprimitive 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 perfectlycapture 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 tosneer even at the curator’s final gesture of friendship. On their departurefrom Banpo, each foreign visitor was presented with a wooden fish, presumably areplica of the insignia on the Yangshao ceramic wares. With his scant knowledgeof the Chinese language, the Frenchman would probably not have known the pun onthe character yu (giving somebody afish implying that you wish for them to enjoy an abundance of blessings).Within a Shaanxi context, this had an extra level of significance. In TangDynasty 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。
Nowadays, Banpo has worked its way into popularculture in a less contentious manner. A bestselling children’s book, which mayseem a little macabre to foreign tastes, is entitled The Girl in the Jar and set in the Yangshao society. Thenarrator is one of the villagers who died in infancy and she tells the story ofher short life to the modern day reader. Much more prominently, Banpo suppliedpart of the inspiration for the logo of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. As shopassistants at the museum are all too eager to point out, the multi-colouredchildren who flank the Olympic Rings had their facial features modelled on theBanpo mask. Thus, that most contemporary of events could be said to havebrought to international attention one of the oldest and most elusive chaptersin 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。