River Town的笔记(15)

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  第115页

  Serena (做一个心中有爱的人)

  There were days when I stood on my balcony and felt a touch of sadness as I looked at the Yangtze, because I knew its days as a rushing river were numbered. (更多)

  There were days when I stood on my balcony and felt a touch of sadness as I looked at the Yangtze, because I knew its days as a rushing river were numbered.

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  2012-06-04 14:34:30   回应

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  2

  爬满青藤的木屋 (我学数学我可耻，我比宅男更废纸)

  As time went on it almost depressed me. The Chinese had spent years deliberately and diligently destroying every valuable aspect of their traditional culture, and yet with regard to enjoying poetry Americans had arguably done a much better job of finishing ours. How many Americans could recite a poem, or identify its rhythm? Every one of my Fuling students could recite at least a dozen Chinese c... (更多)

  As time went on it almost depressed me. The Chinese had spent years deliberately and diligently destroying every valuable aspect of their traditional culture, and yet with regard to enjoying poetry Americans had arguably done a much better job of finishing ours. How many Americans could recite a poem, or identify its rhythm? Every one of my Fuling students could recite at least a dozen Chinese classics by heart-The verses of Du Fu, of Li Bai, of Qu Yuan- and these were young men and women from the countryside of SiChuan Province, a backwater by Chinese standards. They still read books and they still read poetry; that was the difference.

  It is indeed the fact that sometimes you understand your country better through the lens of others. (收起)

  2012-03-05 12:35:45   回应

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  4

  伊伊来福 (度日如飞)

  The Third Line had always been a huge drain on the economy; in some years as much as 50 percent of China's capital budget was spent on the project. Never before had such a massive country reorganized its economy on such a scale----even Stalin's first Five-Year Plan couldn't compare----and according to some estimates, the Third Line did more damage to China's economy than the Cultural Revolution. (更多)

  The Third Line had always been a huge drain on the economy; in some years as much as 50 percent of China's capital budget was spent on the project. Never before had such a massive country reorganized its economy on such a scale----even Stalin's first Five-Year Plan couldn't compare----and according to some estimates, the Third Line did more damage to China's economy than the Cultural Revolution.

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  2012-03-02 02:34:46   回应

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  11 Spring Again

  伊伊来福 (度日如飞)

  Looking at a student's album was always a strange experience, because the Chinese saw no purpose in pictures that did not feature themselves. For a people known for modesty it always struck me as an odd chink in their armor, a sudden burst of narcissism -- a photo album might have more than fifty face shots of the owner. I never knew quite how to react: what do you say after looking at fifty photo... (更多)

  Looking at a student's album was always a strange experience, because the Chinese saw no purpose in pictures that did not feature themselves. For a people known for modesty it always struck me as an odd chink in their armor, a sudden burst of narcissism -- a photo album might have more than fifty face shots of the owner. I never knew quite how to react: what do you say after looking at fifty photographs of a young woman's face?

  还真是这样——记得初三还是高一那年夏天，我在北京逛故宫，整整一卷胶卷都照的是宫墙、殿堂、文物、花木，自己宝贝得不得了。回家之后给爹妈展示，我妈说：“真浪费，这么多照片连张人像都没有。你就不会请人给自己照张相吗？” (收起)

  2012-03-01 07:56:29   回应

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  老板

  伊伊来福 (度日如飞)

  Huang demonstrates how they shot him -- in the back of the neck -- and then he laughs. But it is the unsettling Chinese laugh that has nothing to do with humor. It simply takes the place of words that aren't there. (更多)

  Huang demonstrates how they shot him -- in the back of the neck -- and then he laughs. But it is the unsettling Chinese laugh that has nothing to do with humor. It simply takes the place of words that aren't there.

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  2012-02-29 03:51:56   回应

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  3

  伊伊来福 (度日如飞)

  It was the Chinese way. Success was expected and failure criticized and promptly corrected. You were right or you were budui; there was no middle ground. ...... I grew to hate budui: its sound mocked me. There was a harshness to it; the bu was a rising tone and the dui dropped abruptly, building like my confidence and then collapsing all at once. I also wanted to learn Chinese out of stubbor... (更多)

  It was the Chinese way. Success was expected and failure criticized and promptly corrected. You were right or you were budui; there was no middle ground. ...... I grew to hate budui: its sound mocked me. There was a harshness to it; the bu was a rising tone and the dui dropped abruptly, building like my confidence and then collapsing all at once.

  I also wanted to learn Chinese out of stubbornness, because as a waiguoren you weren't expected to do that. Such low expectations had a long tradition; even as late as the early 1800s it had been illegal for a Chinese to teach the language to foreigners, and a number of Chinese were imprisoned and even executed for tutoring your Englishmen. This bit of history fascinated me: how many languages had been sacred and forbidden to outsiders?

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  2012-02-28 13:51:00   回应

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  7

  伊伊来福 (度日如飞)

  everything I had learned about the Chinese suggested that they would be particularly bad colonists. They tended to have strong ideas about race, they rarely respected religion, and they had trouble considering a non-Chinese point of view. One of the best characteristics of the people I knew in Fuling was that they had a powerful pride in their own culture ---- I had never lived in a place where th... (更多)

  everything I had learned about the Chinese suggested that they would be particularly bad colonists. They tended to have strong ideas about race, they rarely respected religion, and they had trouble considering a non-Chinese point of view. One of the best characteristics of the people I knew in Fuling was that they had a powerful pride in their own culture ---- I had never lived in a place where the people had such a strong sense of their unique cultural identity. Despite the self-destruction of the Cultural Revolution and the subsequent rush to open to the outside world, there was still a definite sense of what was Chinese, and I believed that this would help them survive modernization. But there was also a narrowness to this concept, and it seemed nearly impossible for a Chinese to go to a place like Xinjiang, learn the language, and make friends with the locals. In the five thousand years of their history it was striking how little interest the Chinese had had in exploration, and today that same characteristic limited them, even within their own borders. They seemed completely content in being Chinese, and they assumed that this feeling was shared by everybody else.

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  2012-02-28 09:43:23   回应

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  2

  伊伊来福 (度日如飞)

  And they understood the form of the poem; just as they had put it together, they could take it apart. They could scan its rhythm ---- they knew where the stresses were in each line, and they could find the inconsistencies. They read the poem to themselves and softly beat time on their desks. They heard the sonnet. This was something that few American students could do, at least in my experience. W... (更多)

  And they understood the form of the poem; just as they had put it together, they could take it apart. They could scan its rhythm ---- they knew where the stresses were in each line, and they could find the inconsistencies. They read the poem to themselves and softly beat time on their desks. They heard the sonnet. This was something that few American students could do, at least in my experience. We didn't read enough poetry to recognize its music, a skill that educated people lost long ago. But my students in Fuling still had it ---- nothing had touched that ability, not the advent of television or even the pointed devastation of the Cultural Resolution.

  书里记述的一切发生到1994到1996年。18年之后，今天的学生们怎样了呢？ (收起)

  2012-02-18 07:32:41   回应

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  1

  伊伊来福 (度日如飞)

  "But sometimes the people there have bad tempers," she warned. "That's because it's so hot, and because they have mountains there." I often heard remarks like this, and they suggested that the Chinese saw their landscapes differently than outsiders did. I looked at the terraced hills and noticed how the people had changed the earth, taming it into dizzying staircases of rice pa... (更多)

  "But sometimes the people there have bad tempers," she warned. "That's because it's so hot, and because they have mountains there." I often heard remarks like this, and they suggested that the Chinese saw their landscapes differently than outsiders did. I looked at the terraced hills and noticed how the people had changed the earth, taming it into dizzying staircases of rice paddies; but the Chinese looked at the people and saw how they had been shaped by the land.

  The city is different from the land in that, apart from the small old district, there is no sense of the past. To travel through the Sichuan countryside is to feel the history, the years of work that have shaped the land, the sheer weight of humanity on patches of earth that have been worked in the same way for centuries. But Sichuanese cities are often timeless. They look too dirty to be new, and too uniform and ugly to be old.

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  2012-02-17 06:17:27   回应

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  第156页

  Tao

  For peasants, the threshing platform is the center of home life---this is where grain is threshed, spices are dried, vegetables are cut, grandchildren are raised, visitors are served tea. 至少在重庆的农村，以及很多非平原地区的农村里，这个描述是非常准确的。让我想起外公在乡下房子外的坝坝，晒谷子苞谷辣椒，小孩子乱跑，老猫趴着晒太阳。 (更多)

  For peasants, the threshing platform is the center of home life---this is where grain is threshed, spices are dried, vegetables are cut, grandchildren are raised, visitors are served tea.

  至少在重庆的农村，以及很多非平原地区的农村里，这个描述是非常准确的。让我想起外公在乡下房子外的坝坝，晒谷子苞谷辣椒，小孩子乱跑，老猫趴着晒太阳。 (收起)

  2011-07-16 11:03:45   回应

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