23 "The More Books You Read, the More Stupid You Become"
二十三 “书读得越多越蠢”
——I Work as a Peasant and a Barefoot Doctor (June 1969-1971)
——我当农民，也当赤脚医生(1969年6月—1971年)
Jin-ming and I sat on the bank of the Golden Sand River, waiting for a ferry. I rested my head on my hands and stared at the unruly river tumbling past me on its long journey from the Himalayas to the sea. It was to become the longest fiver in China the Yangtze, after joining the Min River at Yibin, 300 miles downstream.
我和京明坐在金沙江边等渡船。我双手托着头，凝视着野马般奔腾的江水翻滚着从我面前流过，急匆匆地要走完它漫长的旅程——从喜马拉雅山到大海。它在下游三百哩处的宜宾城，与岷江汇合，成为中国最长的江——长江。
Toward the end of its journey, the Yangtze spreads and meanders, irrigating vast areas of flat farmland. But here, in the mountains, it was too violent to build a bridge across it. Only ferries linked Sichuan province with Yunnan to the east. Every summer, when the torrent was high and fierce with the melted snow, the river claimed lives. Just a few days before, it had swallowed a ferry with three of my schoolmates in it.
长江在下游舒展开来，蜿蜒平缓，把周围大片的田园变成“鱼米之乡”。但是在上游的大山里，它却凶猛湍急，以致无法在江上架桥。只能靠渡船连接四川省和云南省东部。每到夏季，融化的雪水奔腾咆哮而下时，常会淹死人，就在几天前，它还吞没了一条渡船，上面有我三个同学。
Dusk was descending. I felt very ill. Jin-ming had spread his jacket on the ground for me so I would not have to sit on the damp grass. Our aim was to cross over to Yunnan and try to hitch a lift to Chengdu. The roads through Xichang were cut off by fighting between Rebel factions, so we had to try a roundabout route. Nana and Wen had offered to get my registration book and luggage, and those of Xiao-hong, to Chengdu.
黄昏隆临，我感到浑身难受。京明把自己的外套铺在地上，使我不必直接坐在被暮气润湿的草上。我们的目的是渡江到云南省去，设法搭便车返回成都。穿越西昌的公路已因造反派武斗而中断，我们只得绕路而行。南南和温去了我的生产队替我拿我和姐的户口簿，还将把我们的行李运回成都。
A dozen strong men rowed the ferry against the current, chanting a song in unison. When they reached the middle of the river, they stopped and let the ferry be carried downstream toward the Yunnan side. Huge waves broke over us several times. I had to hold on tight to the side while the boat listed helplessly. Normally I would have been terrified, but now I felt only numbness. I was too preoccupied with the death of my grandmother.
十几个健壮的男子划着渡船逆流而上，齐声唱着号子。划到江心，他们停了下来，任江水把船顺流而下冲到对岸。巨浪几次劈头盖脸扑过来，船孤弱无援地颠簸起来，我紧紧抓住船舷。要是在平时，我准会吓得要死，但现在我只有麻木的感觉，脑子里全是姥姥去世的消息。
A solitary truck stood on a basketball court in the town on the Yunnan bank, Qjaojia. The driver readily agreed to give us a lift in the back. All the time, I kept turning over in my head what I could have done to save my grandmother. As the truck jolted along, we passed banana groves at the back of mud houses in the embrace of cloud-capped mountains. Seeing the gigantic banana leaves, I remembered the small, potted, fruitless banana by the door of my grandmother's hospital ward in Chengdu. When Bing came to see me, I used to sit beside it with him, chatting deep into the night. My grandmother did not like him because of his cynical grin and the casualness with which he treated adults, which she considered disrespectful. Twice she came staggering downstairs to call me back.
一辆孤伶伶的卡车停在云南岸边巧家镇的篮球场上，司机乐意载我们一程。当卡车在凹凸不平的路面上下抖动行进时，我不停地苦思我当初该怎样做就可以救了姥姥。我们经过了云遮雾障的群山，在它们的怀抱里有许多泥巴房屋，背后总是一丛丛芭蕉树。看到那些颀长的芭蕉叶，我想起姥姥病房楼门口的那两盆小小的，不结果实的观赏芭蕉。当平来看我时，我总和他坐在这些芭蕉旁边，交谈到深夜。姥姥不喜欢他，见不得好玩世不恭的神态和目无尊长的样子。有两次，她蹒蹒跚跚走下楼来，生气地把我叫上去。
I had hated myself for making her anxious, but I could not help it. I could not control my desire to see Bing. Now how I wished I could start all over again!? I would not do anything to upset her. I would just make sure she got better although how I did not know.
虽然当时我也恨自己让她着急，但是却无法控制自己，忍不住想见平。现在我只希望一切能重新开始！我再也不会做任何惹她生气的事了。我会一心一意守护着她，使她恢复健康——可怎样做她才能活下来呢？我一点儿也不知道。
We passed through Yibin. The road wound down Emerald Screen Hill on the edge of the city. Staring at the elegant redwoods and bamboo groves, I thought back to April, when I had just returned home to Meteorite Street from Yibin. I was telling my grandmother how I had gone to sweep Dr. Xia's tomb, which was on the side of this hill, on a sunny spring day. Aunt Jun-ying had given me some special 'silver money' to burn at the tomb. God knows where she had got it from, as it had been condemned as 'feudal." I searched up and down for hours, but could not find the tomb. The hillside was a battered mess. The Red Guards had leveled the cemetery and smashed the tombstones, as they considered burial an 'old' practice. I can never forget the intense flame of hope in my grandmother's eyes when I mentioned the visit, and how it darkened almost immediately when I stupidly added that the tomb was lost. Her look of disappointment had been haunting me. Now I kicked myself for not telling her a white lie.
我们经过了宜宾，道路曲折地环绕着城边的翠屏山。看着山上优雅的红杉翠竹，我又想起了4月从宜宾回到支机石街家的一桩事。我告诉姥姥，在春光明媚的一天，我去过翠屏山山边为夏瑞堂扫墓，俊英娘娘还给了我一些纸钱到墓前去烧，天晓得她是从哪里搞来这些“封建东西”的。我在山上转来转去怎么也找不到坟，墓地已被摧残得七零八落。红卫兵说土葬是封建风俗，夷平了墓地，砸烂了墓碑。我忘不了当我开始提起这次扫墓时，姥姥眼睛里顿时燃起的激动火焰，忘不了那火焰陡然熄灭，因为我傻里傻气地又加上一句说没找到坟。她的失望神色一直紧揪着我的心，一想起就恨自己为什么不撒个谎。现在太迟了！
But it was too late.
When Jin-ming and I got home, after more than a week on the road, there was only her empty bed. I remembered seeing her stretched out on it, her hair loose but still tidy, biting her lips hard, her cheeks sunken. She had suffered her murderous pains in silence and composure, never screaming, never writhing. Because of her stoicism, I had failed to realize how serious her illness was.
在路上折腾了一个星期之后，我和京明到了家，家里只有姥姥的空床。我还记得她躺在上面的样子，浑身绷紧，头发蓬松但仍整洁，紧闭着嘴，脸颊凹陷下去。她总是静静地忍受无比的痛苦，从不哭叫，从不翻滚，只有忍。因为她的坚忍，我当时竟没有意识到她的病有多么严重。
My mother was in detention. What Xiao-her and Xiaohong told me about Grandmother's last days caused me such anguish that I had to ask them to stop. It was only years later that I learned what had happened after I left.
母亲仍在拘留中。小黑和姐姐对我讲述姥姥临终前的情形时，我痛苦得听不下去，只好叫他们不要讲了，几年后我才知道我走后发生的事。
She would do some housework, then go back to bed and lie there with her face taut, trying to fight back the pain.
每天姥姥做一阵家事后就在床上躺一阵，紧闭着眼睛忍痛。
She constantly murmured that she was anxious about my trip, and worried about my younger brothers.
也不断喃喃自语，为我的长途跋涉担忧，为弟弟们担忧。不时她叹着气说：
"What will become of the boys, with no schools?" she would sigh.
“这些孩子将来做什么好呀？书也没读上！”
Then one day she could not get out of bed. No doctor would come to the house, so my sister's boyfriend, Specs, carried her to the hospital on his back. My sister walked by his side, propping her up. After a couple of journeys, the doctors asked them not to come anymore. They said they could find nothing wrong with her and there was nothing they could do.
有一天她终于爬不起来了，没有医生会来我家。我姐姐的男朋友“眼镜”背她去医院，姐姐走在一边支撑着她。几次这样进医院后，医生叫他们不要再来了，说他们诊断不出她身体哪里出了毛病，一点儿办法也没有。
So she lay in bed, waiting for death. Her body became lifeless bit by bit. Her lips moved from time to time, but my sister and brothers could hear nothing. Many times they went to my mother's place of detention to beg for her to be permitted to come home. Each time, they were turned away without being able to see her.
就这样，姥姥只得躺在床上等死了。她的身子一点点变得僵硬，嘴唇时不时动着，显然在说话，但是我姐姐和弟弟什么也听不见。他们不断去母亲的拘留地，请求准许让她回家，但是每次都被拒绝了。
My grandmother's entire body seemed to be dead. But her eyes were still open, looking around expectantly. She would not close them until she had seen her daughter.
逐渐地，姥姥的整个身体似乎都已死去，只有她的眼睛仍然睁开着，像是在期待什么，她不肯闭上眼睛，因为她还没见到心爱的女儿。
At last my mother was allowed home. Over the next two days, she did not leave my grandmother's bedside. Every now and then, my grandmother would whisper something to her. Her last words were about how she had fallen into this pain.
终于我母亲获准回家了，之后的两天时间，她没有离开姥姥的床边，姥姥时时对她轻轻说话，告诉母亲她是怎么病的。
She said the neighbors belonging to Mrs. Shau's group had held a denunciation meeting against her in the courtyard. The receipt for the jewelry she had donated during the Korean War had been confiscated by some Rebels in a house raid. They said she was 'a stinking member of the exploiting class," otherwise how could she have acquired all that jewelry in the first place?
她说属于姚女士造反派的那些邻居在院子里开会斗她。她在朝鲜战争期间捐献珠宝得来的收条在抄家时被造反派发现了。他们说她是一个“大剥削阶级分子”，不然哪里会有这么多珠宝。
My grandmother said she had had to stand on a small table. The ground was uneven and the table wobbled, and she felt dizzy. The neighbors were yelling at her. The woman who had accused Xiao-fang of raping her daughter hit one leg of the table ferociously with a club. My grandmother could not keep her balance and fell backwards onto the hard ground. She said she had felt a sharp pain ever since.
姥姥说造反派令她站在一张小桌子上，地面高低不平，桌子摇摇晃晃，她头昏。邻居们围着她骂，那个指责小方强奸她女儿的女人用棍子敲桌腿。她没办法保持乎衡，从桌上背朝下跌到水泥地上。她说从此以后身子就痛起来了。
In fact, there had been no denunciation meeting. But that was the image that haunted my grandmother to her last breath.
实际上，院子里并没有开过斗争会。但就是这样的幻觉缠绕着她，直到她咽了气。
On the third day after my mother came home, my grandmother died. Two days later, immediately after my grandmother was cremated, my mother had to return to detention.
母亲回家第三天，姥姥去世了，两天后，一火化后，母亲马上得回拘留地去。
I have often dreamed of my grandmother since, and awakened sobbing. She was a great character vivacious, talented, and immensely capable. Yet she had no outlet for her abilities. The daughter of an ambitious small-town policeman, concubine to a warlord, stepmother to an extended but divided family, and mother and mother-inlaw to two Communist officials in all these circumstances she had little happiness. The days with Dr. Xia were lived under the shadow of their past, and together they endured poverty, Japanese occupation, and the civil war. She might have found happiness in looking after her grandchildren, but she was rarely free from anxiety about us. Most of her life she had lived in fear, and she faced death many times.
多年来，我常常梦见姥姥，从睡梦中哭醒过来。她充满个性——生气勃勃，多才多艺，非常能干，但她从来没有机会发挥她的才华。无论是生活在她父亲那个野心勃勃的小城警员家里，还是给军阀做姨太太；无论是做一个满族大家庭的继母，还是一对共产党人的母亲。在她的一生里，幸福对她都是可望而不可及。就在跟夏医生一起的日子也笼罩在夏家破裂的阴影下，忍受着贫穷、日本人的占领和内战。她本来可以从照看外孙儿女中得到欢乐，但她又总在为我们操心。她的一生中大部分时间都在恐惧中度过，还多次面对死亡。
She was a strong woman, but in the end the disasters which hit my parents, the worries about her grandchildren, the tide of ugly human hostility all conspired to crush her.
她是个坚强的女人，挺过了一个又一个磨难。但是，最后她支持不住了，灾难降临到我父母身上，外孙儿女没有着落，周围充满罪恶与敌意。所有这些合在一起，终于压垮了她。
But the most unbearable thing for her was what happened to her daughter. It was as though she felt in her own body and soul every bit of the pain that my mother suffered, and she was finally killed by the accumulation of anguish.
对她来说，最无法忍受的还是女儿受罪，我母亲挨的每一次斗、每一次打，都痛在她心里，她是被这种累积起来的痛苦所杀。
There was another, more immediate factor in her death: she was denied proper medical care and could not be looked after, or even seen, by her daughter when she was fatally ill. Because of the Cultural Revolution. How could the revolution be good, I asked myself, when it brought such human destruction, for nothing? Over and over again, I told myself I hated the Cultural Revolution, and I felt even worse because there was nothing I could do.
还有一个更直接的因素导致了她的死亡：她没得到适当的治疗，在她病入膏肓之际，甚至不准女儿来照料。这都是文化大革命造成的，我问自己：这样的革命有哪点称得上好呢？平白无故给我们带来这么多苦难！我一遍又一遍地对自己说我恨文化大革命，使我无法解脱的是我无能为力。
I blamed myself for not looking after my grandmother as well as I might have. She was in the hospital at the time when I had come to know Bing and Wen. My friendships with them had cushioned and insulated me, and had blunted my awareness of her suffering. I told myself it was despicable to have had any happy feelings at all, by the side of what I now realized was my grandmother's deathbed. I resolved never to have a boyfriend again. Only by self denial I thought, could I expiate some of my guilt.
我也责备自己没能照顾好姥姥。当她在医院里时，我认识了平和温。他们的情谊好像是一堆软软的棉花把我包起来，使外界的悲惨和姥姥的痛苦对我刺激都不那么强烈。现在我告诉自己，当时的任何欢乐是多么不应该，特别是姥姥原来病已垂危！我决心不再交男朋友，我想只有这样才能为自己赎罪。
The next two months I stayed in Chengdu, desperately looking, with Nana and my sister, for a 'relative' nearby whose commune would accept us. We had to find one by the end of the autumn harvest when food was distributed, otherwise we would have nothing to eat for the following year our state supply ran out in January.
在以后的两个月时间里，我一直呆在成都、和南南、姐姐一起忙于寻找个家在成都附近公社的“亲戚”，以收容我们。我们必须在秋收结算分配粮食之前找到这个人，否则下一年我们就没饭吃了——国家只供应我们一年，下一年1月就到期停止了。
When Bing came to see me, I was very cold to him, and told him never to come again. He wrote me letters but I threw them into the stove without opening them- a gesture I had perhaps picked up from Russian novels. Wen came back from Ningnan with my registration book and luggage, but I refused to see him. Once I passed him on the street, and looked straight through him, catching only a glimpse of his eyes, in which I saw confusion and hurt.
平来看我，但我不理他，叫他不要再来了。他给我写了许多信，我拆也不拆开就扔进火炉里——这种方式我可能是从俄国小说里学来的。温从宁南回成都，带来了我的户口簿和行李，但我却拒绝见他。有一次，我在街上遇见他，摆出不认识的样子，我只看见他迷惘的一瞥，好像深深受到伤害。
Wen returned to Ningnan. One summer day in 1970, a forest fire broke out near his village. He and a friend rushed out with a couple of brooms to try to put it out. A gust of wind threw a ball of flames into his friend's face, leaving him permanently disfigured. The two of them left Ningnan and crossed into Laos, where there was a war going on between left-wing guerrillas and the United States. At the time a number of high officials' children were going to Laos and Vietnam to fight the Americans secretly, as it was forbidden by the government. These young people had become disillusioned with the Cultural Revolution, and hoped they could get back their youthful adrenaline by taking on the "US imperialists."
温回到了宁南。1970年夏季的某一天，他的村子附近发生林炎火灾。温和一个朋友拿起扫帚就冲出去救火。风卷起一团火向他朋友迎面扑来，使这个年轻人的脸部留下一道道疤痕。此后不久，这两个朋友离开了宁南。越过边界进入老挝，这里左翼游击队正在和美国人打仗。那段时间，虽然政府禁止，许多高干子弟，仍偷偷越过边界到越南、老挝去和美国作战。这些年轻人对文化大革命的幻想破灭了，希望从打“美帝”中重新找到自己的青春理想。
One day soon after they got to Laos, Wen heard the alarm which signaled that American planes were coming.
到老挝后不久，有一天，温听到警报声，美国飞机来了。
He was the first to leap up and charge out, but in his inexperience he stepped on a mine which his comrades had planted themselves. He was blown to smithereens. My last memory of him is his perplexed and wounded eyes watching me from a muddy street corner in Chengdu.
他第一个跳起来，拿枪向外冲。但是他没有战斗经验，又刚到不熟悉地形，一脚踏上自己人埋的地雷，顿时被炸得粉身碎骨。我对他最后的记忆是他在成都一条泥泞巷口望着我的那双困惑、受伤的眼睛。
* * *
Meanwhile, my family was scattered. On I7 October 1969 Lin Biao ordered the country into a state of war, using as a pretext clashes which had broken out earlier that year on the border with the Soviet Union. In the name of 'evacuation," he sent his opponents in the army and the disgraced top leaders out of the capital and placed them under house arrest or detention in different parts of China. The Revolutionary Committees used this opportunity to speed up the deportation of 'undesirables." The 500 members of my mother's Eastern District staff were ordered out of Chengdu to a place in the Xichang hinterland called Buffalo Boy Flatland. My mother was allowed ten days at home from detention to make arrangements. She put Xiao-her and Xiao-fang on a train to Yibin. Although Aunt Jun-ying was half-paralyzed, there were other aunts and uncles there who could look after them. Jin-ming had been sent by his school to a commune fifty miles northeast of Chengdu.
1969年10月17日，林彪以那年早些时间在中苏边界上发生武装冲突为借口，下令全国处于紧急战备状态。他以疏散为名，把军队里的反对者和那些被清洗的最高层领导人撵出北京，把他们软禁或关押在全国各处。各地的革命委员会也利用这个机会加速驱逐他们不要的人。东城区的五百多名干部被逐出成都，下放到西昌地区一个称为“牛郎坝”的偏远山乡。我母亲也在被赶之列，临行前允许她回家十天安排子女、收拾行李。她把小黑和小方送去宜宾，虽然俊英娘娘半身已瘫痪。但是宜宾还有别的伯父、娘娘可以照料他们。京明则被下放到成都东北方五十哩外的一个公社落户。
At the same time Nana, my sister, and I finally found a commune that would take us in a county called Deyang, not far from where Jin-ming was. Specs, my sister's boyfriend, had a colleague from the county who was prepared to claim we were his cousins. Some communes in the area needed more farmhands. Although we had no proof of kinship, no one asked any questions. The only thing that mattered was that we were or at least seemed to be extra labor.
南南、我姐和我终于找到了一个德阳县的公社愿意接纳我们，此地离京明落户的公社不太远。我姐姐男朋友“眼镜”的一位同事是这里的人，他乐意把我们算作他的侄女。虽然我们没有证明证实亲戚关系，但没有人想查个究竟，只要我们是劳动力就行。这个地区的一些公社缺人手。
We were allocated to two different production teams, because two extra people was the maximum any one team could accommodate. Nana and I went to one team and my sister to another, three miles away. The railway station was about five hours' walk away, much of it along eighteen inch-wide ridges between rice paddies.
因为每个队最多只能接纳两个，我们被分配到了两个生产队，我和南南同一个生产队，我姐姐独自去了三哩外的另一个队。这里还有火车，不过得在乡间田坎小路上步行约五小时才能到达火车站。
My family of seven was now dispersed in six different places. Xiao-her was happy to leave Chengdu, where the new Chinese-language textbook at his school, compiled by some teachers and members of the propaganda team there, contained a condemnation of my father by name, and Xiaohei was ostracized and bullied.
就这样，我家天南海北，七口人分散在六个地方。小黑倒很高兴离开成都，他正在读中学，用的语文教材是一些老师和工宣队员编的，里面有课文指名点姓谴责我父亲。小黑因此成了同学们歧视、欺侮的对象。
In the early summer of 1969, his school had been sent to the countryside on the outskirts of Chengdu to help with the harvest. The boys and girls camped separately in two large halls. In the evenings, under the starry vault of the sky, the paths between the paddy fields were frequented by young couples. Romance bloomed, not least in the heart of my fourteen-year-old brother, who started to fancy a girl in his group. After days of summoning up his courage, he nervously approached her one afternoon when they were cutting wheat, and invited her to go for a walk that evening. The girl bent her head and said nothing. Xiao-her thought this was a sign of silent consent "mo-xu".
1969年初夏，他的学校被派往成都郊区农村帮忙收割麦子。男孩和女孩们分别在两间大仓库里打地铺。一到晚上，满天繁星的苍穹下，田坎路上是一对对漫步的少年们。爱情的蓓蕾萌发了，我十四岁的弟弟爱上了同组的一位姑娘，几经踌躇后，他终于鼓足勇气，利用在田里割麦子的机会，紧张的接近那个女孩，约她晚上出来散步。她低着头，什么也没说，小黑以为她默许了。
He leaned on a haystack in the moonlight, and waited with all the anxieties and longings of first love. Suddenly, he heard a whistle. A gang of boys from his form appeared. They shoved him around and called him names, then they threw a jacket over his head and started to hit and kick him. He managed to break free, and staggered to the door of one of the teachers and shouted for help. The teacher opened the door, but pushed him away, saying, "I can't help you!? Don't you dare come back!"
那天夜晚，在迷人的月光下，小黑倚着干草堆，带着初恋的激动心情，焦急地等待意中人。突然一声口哨，一群班上的男孩子跳了出来，把他围在中央，像皮球似地推来攘去，用粗话骂他，然后把一件外衣蒙在他的头上，拳打脚踢。小黑好不容易才逃脱，踉踉跄跄跑去敲一个老师住处的门，大声喊救命。老师开了门，一掌把他推了出来，说他管不了，不许小黑再打搅他。
Xiao-her was too frightened to return to his camp, and spent the night hiding in a haystack. He realized it was his 'sweetheart' who had called in the bullies: she had felt insulted that the son of a 'counter revolutionary capitalist roader' should have the audacity to fancy her.
小黑不敢回住处。只好在干草堆里躲了一夜。这时他才明白是心上人叫来那些打手，她感到自己受了侮辱：一个“走资派”的儿子居然敢厚着脸皮向她求爱！
When they returned to Chengdu, Xiao-her went to his street gang for help. They appeared at his school with much flaunting of muscles, and a gigantic wolfhound, and hauled the leading bully out of the classroom. He was shaking, his face ashen. But before the gang set upon him, Xiao-her was overtaken by pity, and asked his helmsman to let the boy go.
回成都后，小黑向他的兄弟伙求援。他们来到他的学校“走一转”，耀武杨威一番，还牵着一只大狼狗。他们把带头打小黑的那个学生从教室里拖了出来。那人浑身发抖，脸色死灰。但在兄弟伙要动手“教训”他时，小黑发了怜悯心，要他的舵爷饶了那人。
Pity had become an alien concept, and was seen as a sign of stupidity. Xiao-her was bullied even more than before. He made a feeble attempt at enlisting the help of his gang again, but they told him they would not help a 'shrimp."
怜悯已成了一种陌生的观念，被看作是愚蠢的表现。结果小黑受到变本加厉的欺负。他想再请他的兄弟伙帮忙，可是这此人对他说他们不会帮助一个“虾子”。
Xiao-her approached his new school in Yibin dreading more bullying. To his amazement, he received a warm, almost emotional welcome. The teachers, the propaganda team members who were running the school, the children all seemed to have heard of my father and referred to him with open admiration. Xiao-her immediately acquired a certain prestige. The prettiest girl in the school became his girlfriend. Even the most thuggish boys treated him with respect. It was clear to him that my father was a revered figure in Yibin, in spite of the fact that everyone knew he was in disgrace, and the Tings were in power.
到宜宾后，小黑对又要上学忧心忡忡，担心再受气。没料到，他甚至可以说是受到了热烈的欢迎。教师、管理学校的工宣队和学生们似乎都听说过我父亲，公开表示敬佩。小黑马上被另眼相看，学校里最漂亮的女孩子成了他的女朋友，最霸道的男孩子都让他三分。小黑看得出来，我父亲在宜宾是个传奇式的英雄人物。尽管人人都知道，他现在倒了楣。知道“二挺”大权在握。
The population of Yibin had suffered horribly under the Tings. Thousands had died or been injured in the factional fighting or under torture. One family friend escaped death because when his children went to collect his corpse in the morgue, they found he was still breathing.
在“二挺”统治下的宜宾，民众过着恐怖的生活，数以千计的人在武斗或私刑拷打下身残、死去。我家的一位朋友侥幸逃生：当他的孩子到停尸房为他收尸时，发现他还有一口气。
People in Yibin had developed a great yearning for the days of peace, for officials who did not abuse their power, for a government that was dedicated to getting things to work. The focus of this nostalgia was the early 1950s, when my father was the governor. It was then that the Communists were at their most popular just after they had replaced the Kuomintang, put an end to starvation, and established law and order, but before their incessant political campaigns (and their own, Mao-induced famine).
宜宾老百姓向往过安定的生活，渴望有不滥用权力的共产党干部，向往有致力于建设的政府，于是怀旧的情绪全集中在我父亲当专员的五十年代初期。那是共产党最得人心的时期——他们刚取代了国民党，结束了饥饿，建立了秩序，还没有发动一个接一个的政治运动也还没有发生人为的饥荒)。
My father became identified in the folk memory with the good old days. He was seen as the legendary good official, in stark contrast with the Tings.
在民间，我父亲和过去的美好时光等同起来了，成了与“二挺”鲜明对比的好官。
Because of him, Xiao-her enjoyed his stay in Yibin although he learned little at school. Teaching materials still consisted of Mao's works and People's Daily articles, and no one had any authority over the pupils since Mao had not retracted his blanket dismissal of formal learning.
由于我父亲的缘故，小黑在宜宾过得很惬意——虽然他从学校里什么也没学到。新编教材除了《毛泽东选集》就是《人民日报》社论。而且谁也管不了学生——毛泽东还没有收回他鄙视正规教育的“最高指示”。
The teachers and the workers' propaganda team tried to enlist Xiao-her's help to enforce discipline in his class. But here even my father's reputation failed, and Xiao-her was eventually ostracized by some of the boys for being the teacher's 'lackey." A whispering campaign began claiming that he had embraced his girlfriend under lampposts in the street, which was a 'bourgeois crime." Xiao-her lost his privileged position and was told to write self-criticisms and to pledge to carry out thought reform. The girl's mother turned up one day insisting on a surgical examination to prove her daughter's chastity. After a big scene, she took her daughter out of the school.
教师们和工宣队想要小黑帮忙维持秩序。但是在这里甚至我父亲的威望也无济于事。小黑渐渐被一些男孩子称为老师的“走狗”。有关他的流言蜚语传播开来，说他在街灯柱下搂抱他的女友——这在当时可是一种“资产阶级罪恶”。小黑失去了他的特殊地位，被责令写检讨，还发誓要思想改造。那姑娘的母亲到学校来大吵大闹，要学校送她女儿去做检查，证实女儿的贞操。在这幕闹剧后，她带着女儿退了学。
Xiao-her had one close friend in his class, a popular boy of seventeen who had one sensitive spot: his mother had never married, but had five children all with different and unknown fathers, which was extremely unusual in a society where 'illegitimacy' was heavily stigmatized, in spite of having been formally abolished. Now, in one of the witch-hunting tides, she was publicly humiliated as a 'bad element." The boy felt very ashamed of his mother, and told Xiao-her in private that he hated her. One day the school was awarding a best-swimmer prize (because Mao liked swimming), and Xiao-her's friend was unanimously nominated by the pupils; but when the award was announced, it was not to him. Apparently one young woman teacher had objected: "We can't give it to him: his mother is a "worn shoe."
小黑在班上有个好友，一个人人喜欢的十七岁少年。他有个很敏感的痛点：他母亲从未结过婚，但却生了五个孩子，每人有不同的、不知名的父亲。这种情况在当时的社会十分罕见，虽然官方说不应该歧视“私生子”，可这还是个不光彩的名声。如今，在一次政治运动浪潮中，这个少年的母亲被戴上“坏分子”的帽子批斗，男孩对有这样的母亲感到耻辱，他私下告诉小黑说他恨她。一天，学校颁发最佳游泳者奖(毛泽东喜欢游泳)。学生们一致选了这个少年，可是审定会后却没有他。原来一个青年女教师反对说：“我们怎么能选这种人，他妈妈是个‘破鞋’呀！”
When the boy heard this, he grabbed a kitchen chopper and stormed into the teacher's office. Someone stopped him while the teacher scuttled off and hid. Xiao-her knew how much this incident had hurt his friend: for the first time, the boy was seen weeping bitterly. That night, Xiaohei and some of the other boys sat up with him, trying to comfort him. The next day, he disappeared. His corpse was washed up on the bank of the Golden Sand River. He had tied his hands together before he jumped.
那位男孩一听说，抓起一把菜刀就冲进这个教师的办公室，要和她拼命。同学把他拉住了，那老师吓得躲了起来。小黑看得出这件事给他的朋友的伤害多么大：他第一次失声痛哭。晚上，小黑和一些同学来陪他。第二天，他不见了，直到后来尸体被冲上金沙江岸。投江之前，他先紧紧捆住了自己的双手。
The Cultural Revolution not only did nothing to modernize the medieval elements in China's culture, it actually gave them political respectability.
文化大革命不仅没有清除中国文化中的封建东西，相反地，它赋予这些东西政治上的尊严地位。
"Modern' dictatorship and ancient intolerance fed on each other. Any one who fell foul of the age-old conservative attitude, could now become a political victim.
现代专制和古代的偏狭互助互长，封建道德的罪人现在变成了政治上的牺牲品。
* * *
My new commune in Deyang was in an area of low hills dotted with shrubs and eucalyptus trees. Most of the farmland was good, producing two major harvests a year, one of wheat and one of rice. Vegetables, rapeseed, and sweet potatoes grew in abundance. After Ningnan, the biggest relief for me was that we did not have to do any climbing, and I could breathe normally instead of panting for breath all the time. I did not mind the fact that walking here meant staggering along narrow, muddy ridges between paddy fields. I often fell on my bottom, and sometimes in a grab for support I would push the person in front usually Nana into a rice paddy. Nor did I mind another peril of walking at night: the possibility of being bitten by dogs, quite a few of which had rabies.
我的德阳新公社是一片丘陵，小山上长着灌木丛和桉树。大部分的农田都是良田，一年两季收获：一季小麦，一季水稻。也大量栽种蔬菜、油菜籽、番薯。来此地对我最大的解脱是不必爬山了，可以正常呼吸，不必整天都气喘吁吁了。我一点不在乎在这里老得走狭窄泥泞的田坎小路。我总是走得摇摇晃晃的，不时一屁股滑坐在地上。有时在摔倒前，我本能一把去抓前面的人，结果总把南南一掌推倒在田里。我也不在意另一种危险：走夜中可能会被狗咬伤，有些狗还有狂犬病。
When we first arrived, we stayed next to a pigsty. At night, we fell asleep to a symphony of pigs grunting, mosquitoes whining, and dogs barking. The room smelled permanently of pig manure and anti-mosquito incense. After a while the production team built Nana and me a two-room cottage on a plot of land which had been used for cutting mud bricks. The land was lower than the rice paddy which lay just across a narrow footpath, and in spring and summer, when the paddy He Ids were filled with water, or after heavy rain, marshy water would ooze up from the mud floor. Nana and I had to take off our shoes, roll up our trouser legs, and wade into the cottage. Fortunately the double bed we shared had tall legs, so we slept about two feet above the muddy water. Getting into bed involved putting a bowl of clean water on a stool, climbing up onto the stool, and washing our feet. Living in these damp conditions, my bones and muscles ached all the time.
刚到时，我们住在猪圈旁边，晚上在猪的哼吱哼吱声、蚊的哀诉声和狗的叫声组成的交响乐中睡着。房间里总有股猪粪臭、蚊香味。不久，生产队为我和南南盖了一所房子，有两个房间，在一块过去取土造砖的泥地上。这块地比一埂之隔的稻田还低，春季和夏天，当稻田灌上水后，或一场大雨之后，房间里的泥巴地就变成沼泽。我和南南只得脱下鞋子，挽上裤脚，趟着泥水在房里走来走去。幸好我们两人合睡的双人床脚高，使我们可以在泥水的两尺之上睡觉。上床后，我们把一盆清水放在一个板凳上洗脚。生活在这样潮湿的环境中，我的骨头、肌肉老是疼痛。
But the cottage was also fun. When the flood receded, mushrooms would spring up under the bed and in the corners of the rooms. With a little imagination, the floor looked like something out of a fairy tale. Once I dropped a spoonful of peas on the ground. After the water had come and gone, a cluster of delicate petals unfolded from slender stems, as though they had just awakened to the rays of the sun, which brimmed through the wood-framed opening in the wall which was our window.
但是小屋子也好玩。水退下之后，床下和房屋角落处会长出蘑菇来，发挥点想象力，屋里就好似神话故事的场景。一次我不小心把一勺豌豆洒在地上，水退下后，一丛纤细的豆芽顶着瓣冒出来，阳光从带木框的墙洞——我们的窗户——照进来，豆瓣伸着腰张开，好像在阳光下刚刚醒过来。
The view was perpetually magical to me. Beyond our door lay the village pond, overgrown with water lilies and lotuses. The path in front of the cottage led up to a pass in the hill about 350 feet above us. The sun set behind it, framed by black rocks. Before darkness fell, silver mist would hang over the fields at the foot of the hills. Men, women, and children walked back to the village after their day's work in the evening haze, carrying baskets, hoes, and sickles, and were met by their dogs who yapped and leaped about them. They looked as though they were sailing in clouds. Smoke curved out from the thatched cottages. Wooden barrels clicked at the stone well, as people fetched water for the evening meal. Loud voices were heard as people chatted by the bamboo groves, the men squatting and puffing their long, slender pipes. Women neither smoked nor squatted: these were traditionally considered unbecoming for women, and no one in 'revolutionary' China had talked about changing these attitudes.
小小山村的景色永远对我充满魔力。门外正对着村子的水塘，满池的睡莲和茶花。房前小道向左爬上一座约三百五十尺高的小山，太阳在山背后，在黑色的岩石群中落下。天黑之前，银色的薄雾轻轻悬浮在山脚下的田野上。男人、女人和孩子们在一天劳动后乘着暮色回家，挑着筐，扛着锄，拿着镰刀，看上去就像在云中飘。他们的狗摇头摆尾地跑出来接他们，在主人的周围欢跳。炊烟从草屋顶上，冉冉上升，木水桶碰着石头井壁卡嗒卡嗒地响，人们在挑水点火做晚饭了。竹丛中是高声交谈的人群，男人们蹲着，一口口吸着细长的旱烟杆。女人们既不吸烟也不蹲着闲谈，因为传统认为女人这样做有失体统，而革命的中国没有人提出要改变这类风俗。
It was in Deyang that I came to know how China's peasants really lived. Each day started with the production team leader allocating jobs. All the peasants had to work, and they each earned a fixed number of' work points' gong fen for their day's work. The number of work points accumulated was an important element in the distribution at the end of the year. The peasants got food, fuel, and other daily necessities, plus a tiny sum of cash, from the production team. After the harvest, the production team paid part of it over as tax to the state. Then the rest was divided up. First, a basic quantity was meted out equally to every male, and about a quarter less to every female.
正是在德阳，我了解到中国农民是怎样生活的。每天一早，队长分配农活。所有农民都得干活，每人每天挣一份固定的“工分”。工分积累总和是决定年终分配的要素。农民从生产队分得粮食、燃料和其他日常生活用品，外加一点再款。收获后，生产队向国家上交公粮，剩下的大部分用来分配，每人先分基本口粮。每个男人都一样，女人则比男人少四分之一。
Children under three received a half portion. Since a child just over three obviously could not eat an adult's share, it was desirable to have more children. The system functioned as a positive disincentive to birth control.
三岁以下的孩子分男人基本口粮食的一半，三岁以上就算成人了，因为孩子显然吃不完一个成年人的口粮，所以孩子越多越好。这种分配法显然使人们不热衷计划生育。
The remainder of the crop was then distributed according to how many work points each person had earned.
分完基本口粮之后，剩下的收获按每人挣得的工分分配。
Twice a year, the peasants would all assemble to fix the daily work points for each person. No one missed these meetings. In the end, most young and middle-aged men would be allocated ten points a day, and women eight.
每年两次农民聚集在一起评定每人每天挣多少工分，没有会错过这种会。评来评去，大多数青年、中年男子最后都是一天十分，女人都是八分。
One or two whom the whole village acknowledged to be exceptionally strong got an extra point.
一两个村里公认最强壮的人则多一两分。
"Class enemies' like the former village landlord and his family got a couple of points less than the others, in spite of the fact that they worked no less hard and were usually given the toughest jobs. Nana and I, being inexperienced 'city youth," got four the same number as children barely in their teens; we were told this was 'to start with," though mine were never raised.
像以前的地主这种“阶级敌人”和他们的家属一般则比别人低两分，尽管他们并不比别人做得少，还常常做最重的活。南南和我算是没有经验的“知识青年”，只评了四分——和十来岁的孩子一样。他们说这只是“开始”，然而我的工分从来没有提高过。
Since there was little variation from individual to individual of the same gender in terms of daily points, the number of work points accumulated depended mainly on how many days one worked, rather than how one worked.
因为同样性别的人与人之间工分相差甚少，工分总值实际上取决于人出了多少天工，而不是这人怎么工作，卖不卖力，成果如何。
This was a constant source of resentment among the villagers in addition to being a massive discouragement to efficiency. Every day, the peasants would screw up their eyes to watch how the others were working in case they themselves were being taken advantage of. No one wanted to work harder than others who earned the same number of work points. Women felt bitter about men who sometimes did the same kind of job as they, but earned two points more. There were constant arguments.
于是不但劳动没有效率，还成了村里人彼此不满的原因。没有人想比别的挣相同工分的人多干活，大家两眼总盯着别人，生怕多做，被人占了便宜。女人们忿忿不平，认为有时男人和她们做同样的活，却多挣两分。争吵情事不时发生。
We frequently spent ten hours in the fields doing a job which could have been done in five. But we had to be out there for ten hours for it to be counted as a full day. We worked in slow motion, and I stared at the sun impatiently willing it to go down, and counted the minutes until the whistle blew, signaling an end to work. I soon discovered that boredom was as exhausting as back breaking labor.
我们经常在田里磨磨蹭蹭呆上十个小时，干五个小时就能完成的活，我们不得不磨够十个小时，因为这才算一个整天。我一到地里就两眼盯着太阳，一心指望它快点下山，度时如年地计算离收工哨还有多久。我很快就发现无聊与繁重的农活同样令人筋疲力尽。
Here, as in Ningnan, and much of Sichuan, there were no machines at all. Farming methods were more or less the same as 2,000 years ago, except for some chemical fertilizers, which the team received from the government in exchange for grain. There were practically no work animals except water buffaloes for plowing. Everything else, including the transport of water, manure, fuel, vegetables, and grain, was done entirely by hand, and shoulders, using bamboo baskets or wooden barrels on a shoulder pole. My biggest problem was carrying loads. My right shoulder was perpetually swollen and sore from having to carry water from the well to the house. Whenever a young man who fancied me came to visit I displayed such helplessness that he never failed to offer to fill the water tank for me. And not only the water tank jugs, bowls, and even cups too.
这里就像宁南和四川大部分地区，完全没有机械。作业情况和两千年前差不多，只是有了从政府那里用粮食换来的化肥。除了水牛拉犁外，也没有牲畜代劳。所有的东西，包括水、粪、柴、蔬菜、谷物、番薯等等，都得用肩挑。我对挑东西最感头痛，只挑水做饭这一桩事就使我的右肩终日红肿疼痛。一有喜欢我的小伙子来玩，我就显得可怜巴巴的，他们当然也就自告奋勇，把水缸给我装满。我还乘机把罐子、脸盆，甚至大碗统统拿出来让他们装。
The team leader considerately stopped assigning me to carry things, and sent me to do 'light' jobs with the children and the older and pregnant women. But they were not always light to me. Ladling out manure soon made my arms sore, not to mention churning up my stomach when I saw the fat maggots swimming on the surface. Picking cotton in a sea of brilliant whiteness might have made an idyllic picture, but I quickly realized how demanding it was directly under the relentless sun, in temperatures well over 85 F, with high humidity, among prickly branches that left scratches all over me.
生产队长好心不让我挑东西，派我去和孩子、老人、孕妇一起干“轻活”，可是这样的活对我来说并不轻。舀大粪很快使我双臂疼痛，更不用说看见肥大的蛆虫在粪上蠕动时所挑起的恶心感。在一片白得耀眼的棉海中采棉花似乎充满诗意，但是我很快发觉并不是那么惬意：无情的烈日，高达30摄氏度的湿热，更不用说东戳西捅的棉枝扎得我浑身是伤。
I preferred transplanting rice shoots. This was considered a hard job because one had to bend so much.
我宁愿插秧，这被看作是重活，因为得整天弯着腰。
Often at the end of the day, even the toughest men complained about not being able to stand up straight. But I loved the cool water on my legs in the otherwise unbearable heat, the sight of the neat rows of tender green, and the soft mud under my bare feet, which gave me a sensuous pleasure. The only thing that really bothered me was the leeches. My first encounter was when I felt something ticklish on my leg. I lifted it to scratch and saw a fat, slithery creature bending its head into my skin, busily trying to squeeze in. I let out a mighty scream. A peasant girl next to me giggled. She found my squeamishness funny. Nevertheless, she trudged over and slapped my leg just above the leech. It fell into the water with a plop.
一天下来，最能吃苦的人也在抱怨中伸不直腰。但是我喜欢在无法忍耐的炎热中把双脚浸在凉水里，看着面前一排排纤细、翠绿的秧苗，踩着软软的稀泥，实在舒服。我只怕蚂蟥。有一次我感到小腿肚痒痒的，抬起脚来正要搔，只见一条肥胖、滑溜溜的东西一头正扎在我的皮肤上，似乎拼命要钻进去。我尖叫了一声，旁边的农家姑娘吃吃地笑了起来，觉得我大惊小怪。尽管如此，她还是趟着水过来，冲着蚂蟥上方我的腿部就是一巴掌，蚂蟥扑通一声掉进水里。
On winter mornings, in the two-hour work period before breakfast, I climbed up the hills with the 'weaker' women to collect firewood. There were scarcely any trees on the hills, and even the bushes were few and far between. We often had to walk a long way. We cut with a sickle, grabbing the plants with our free hand. The shrubs were covered with thorns, quite a few of which would always manage to embed themselves in my left palm and wrist. At first I spent a long time trying to pick them out, but eventually I got used to leaving them to come out on their own, after the spots became inflamed.
在冬天，早饭前得干两小时的工。我和体弱的妇女们爬上山坡去砍柴。山上光秃秃的，几乎没有树木，甚至灌木丛也稀疏疏的。我们经常得走很远的路才会有点收获。我们一手抓，一手用镰刀割，多刺的灌木丛的每天都在我的手心和手腕里留下几根刺。开始时我花很多时间把它们挑出来，后来挑不胜挑，只好干脆让它们留在肉里，发炎化脓后，自己钻出来。
We gathered what the peasants called 'feather fuel." This was pretty useless, and burned up in no time. Once I voiced my regret about the lack of proper trees. The women with me said it had not always been like this. Before the Great Leap Forward, they told me, the hills had been covered with pine, eucalyptus, and cypress. They had all been felled to feed the 'backyard furnaces' to produce steel. The women told me this placidly, with no bitterness, as though it were not the cause of their daily battle for fuel. They seemed to treat it as something which life had thrust on them, like many other misfortunes. I was shocked to come face-to-face, for the first time, with the disastrous consequences of the Great Leap, which I had known only as a 'glorious success."
我们砍来的都是一些“毛毛柴”，意思是顶不了用，一下子就烧光了。有一次我禁不住说：这些山怎么连一点儿树也没有。和我一起的农妇们告诉我，以前不是这样，大跃进前，山上尽是松树、桉树和柏树。它们已统统被砍倒塞进土高炉炼钢去了。农妇们说着这番话时，显得无动于衷，好像速与他们每日为柴火拼命的悲剧毫不相干，好像生活本来就是如此，不是天灾，就是人祸，无可奈何。我吃惊极了，在此之前，我一直认为大跃进是“辉煌的胜利”。这是我第一次亲眼看到它的恶果。
I found out a lot of other things. A 'speak-bitterness' session was organized for the peasants to describe how they had suffered under the Kuomintang, and to generate gratitude to Mao, particularly among the younger generation. Some peasants talked about childhoods of unrelieved hunger, and lamented that their own children were so spoiled that they often had to be coaxed to finish their food.
我还发现了许多其他的事。农村经常召开“诉苦会”，让农民诉说国民党统治下的苦难，激发对毛泽东的爱戴，让年轻人“受教育”。农民们讲起挨饿的童年，感叹道：现在的孩子惯坏了，要小心哄着才肯把饭吃完。
Then their conversation turned to a particular famine.
They described having to eat sweet potato leaves and digging into the ridges between the fields in the hope of finding some roots. They mentioned the many deaths in the village. Their stories reduced me to tears. After saying how they hated the Kuomintang and how they loved Chairman Mao, the peasants referred to this famine as taking place at 'the time of forming the communes." Suddenly it struck me that the famine they were talking about was under the Communists. They had confused the two regimes.?
然后他们的话题转到一次大饥荒，说当时他们只有番薯叶吃，要不就在田坎上挖来挖去希望找到草根充饥。他们说，村里死了好多人，我为他们的故事难过得流泪，在说完他们多么仇恨国民党和多么热爱毛主席后，农民提到饥荒发生在“公社那年”。突然我醒悟了，原来这次饥荒是在共产党领导下！他们显然是把两个政权搞混了。
I asked: "Were there unprecedented natural calamities in this period? Wasn't that the cause of the problem?"
我问道：“那段时间是不是发生了空前的自然灾害？是不是自然灾害引起了饥荒？”
"Oh no," they said.
"The weather could not have been better and there was plenty of grain in the fields. But that man' they pointed to a cringing forty-year-old 'ordered the men away to make steel, and half the harvest was lost in the fields. But he told us: no matter, we were in the paradise of Communism now and did not have to worry about food. Before, we had always had to control our stomachs, but then we ate our fill in the commune canteen; we threw away the leftovers; we even fed the pigs with precious rice. Then the canteen had no more food, but he placed guards outside the store. The rest of the grain was to be shipped to Peking and Shanghai there were foreigners there."
“才不是这么回事！”他们异口同声答道，“天气好得不能再好了，田里的谷子很多很多，但是那个人——” 他们指着一个畏畏缩缩的四十来岁男子说：“他下令我们都得去炼钢，结果是到手的庄稼一半都烂在地里了。他却对我们说：‘没关系，我们已经进入共产主义天堂了，再也不用担心没粮食吃了’。以前我们总是控制着吃，但是那阵大家吃公社大食堂，敞开肚子，吃剩了就丢，大米也拿来喂猪，后来，食堂没有粮食了，他却命令民兵把守仓库，不准开仓，一说粮食要运到北京、上海去，那儿有外国人。”
Bit by bit, the full picture came out. The cringing man had been the leader of the production team during the Great Leap. He and his cronies had smashed the peasants' woks and stoves so they could not cook at home, and so the woks could be fed into the furnaces. He had reported vastly exaggerated harvests, with the result that the taxes were so high they took every morsel of grain the peasants had left. The villagers had died in scores. After the famine, he was blamed for all the wrongs in the village. The commune allowed the villagers to vote him out of office, and labeled him a 'class enemy."
就这样，一点一点地，真相显现出来了。那个灰头灰脑的人在大跃进时期是这个村子里的生产队队长，他带头砸了农民的锅灶，铁锅拿去炼钢，不准农民在家开伙。他又浮夸收成，结果国家收购粮食像天文数字，把农民倾其所有也交不够。村里饿死了几十个人。在大饥荒后，所有罪责都归他，公社让村民们把他选下台，戴上“阶级敌人”的帽子。
Like most class enemies, he was not put in prison but kept 'under surveillance' by his fellow villagers. This was Mao's way: to keep 'enemy' figures among the people so they always had someone visible and at hand to hate. Whenever a new campaign came along, this man would be one of the 'usual suspects' to be rounded up and attacked atYesh. He was always assigned the hardest jobs, and was allocated only seven work points a day, three fewer than most of the other men. I never saw anyone talking to him. Several times I spotted village children throwing stones at his sons.
就像大多数“阶级敌人”一样，他没有进监狱，而是由村民们监督，这是毛泽东的一个法子：使老百姓总有个近在眼前的仇恨对象。一有政治运动，这个人就和其他“阶级敌人”一起拉出来当靶子打。他分的最重的农活，得的只是一天七分工，比同等劳动要少三分。我从来没见过任何人和他交谈，只是看见过好几次村里的小孩子朝他的儿子扔石头。
The peasants thanked Chairman Mao for punishing him. No one questioned his guilt, or the degree of his responsibility. I sought him out, on my own, and asked him his story.
农民们感谢毛泽东惩办了他。没有人问他到底有没有罪，没有人怀疑细究，他应负多大的责任，一次，我找到机会单独向他问起往事。
He seemed pathetically grateful to be asked.
他显得受宠若惊，可怜巴巴地说：“我只是执行上级指示，我只是执行呀！…”
"I was carrying out orders," he kept saying.
"I had to carry out orders…" Then he sighed: "Of course, I didn't want to lose my post.Somebody else would have taken my place. Then what would have happened to me and my kids? We probably would have died of hunger. A production team leader is small, but at least he can die after everyone else in the village."
随后他又叹息着说开了。“当然我不想扔了官，我不当，别人就会当，我和我的孩子们怎么办？可能早就饿死了。生产队长官不大，但起码可以死在全村的最后。”
His words and the peasants' stories shook me to the core. It was the first time I had come across the ugly side of Communist China before the Cultural Revolution. The picture was vastly different from the rosy official version.
他的话和农民的故事，深深震撼了我。第一次我无意中发现在文革之前的阴暗面。事实和漂亮的官方说法相距太远！
In the hills and fields of Deyang my doubts about the Communist regime deepened.
就是在德阳的山野田间，我的怀疑加深了。
I have sometimes wondered whether Mao knew what he was doing putting the sheltered urban youth of China in touch with reality. But then he was confident that much of the population would not be able to make rational deductions with the fragmentary information available to them.
我有时在想，毛泽东把城里学生娃娃赶到乡下去，让他们接触现实，睁大眼睛，他到底知不知道这会产生什么后果呢！我又想，他也许十分有把握大多数人不可能根据支离破碎的信息来推断出合理的结论。
Indeed, at the age of eighteen I was still only capable of vague doubts, not explicit analysis of the regime. No matter how much I hated the Cultural Revolution, to doubt Mao still did not enter my mind.
确实如此，十八岁的我只有模模糊糊的怀疑并不能理性地分析。(此处删去两行)。
In Deyang, as in Ningnan, few peasants could read the simplest article in a newspaper or write a rudimentary letter. Many could not even write their own name. The Communists' early drive to tackle illiteracy had been pushed aside by incessant witch-hunts.
德阳县也像宁南一样，很少有农民能阅读报上最简单的文章，能写最起码的信，许多人连自己的名字也不会写。共产党早期致力于扫盲的激情已被接连不断的政治运动挤掉了。
There had once been an elementary school in the village, subsidized by the commune, but at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution the children abused the teacher to their hearts' content.
这个村子有所公社补贴办的小学，文革一开始，孩子们就尽情的折磨老师，把可怜的老师弄来斗争、游村、头上顶一个沉重的铁锅，脸用油烟涂得漆黑。有一次，他们差一点打裂了老师的头骨。从此之后，不管怎么劝，没有人敢当老师了。
They paraded him around the village with heavy cast-iron woks piled up on his head and his face blackened with soot. Once they almost fractured his skull. Since then, no one could be persuaded to teach.
Most peasants did not miss the school.
大多数农民也不关心学校教育。
"What's the point?" they would say.
"You pay fees and read for years, and in the end you are still a peasant, earning your food with your sweat. You don't get a grain of rice more for being able to read books. Why waste time and money? Might as well start earning your work points right away."
他们说：“上学有啥子用？你花钱读书，一读就是好几年，最后还是个农民，得靠出力吃饭。会读书也多挣不了一口，为啥要浪费钱、浪费时间呢？不如早早挣点工分。”
The virtual absence of any chance of a better future and the near total immobility for anyone born a peasant took the incentive out of the pursuit of knowledge. Children of school age would stay at home to help their families with their work or look after younger brothers and sisters. They would be out in the fields when they were barely in their teens. As for girls, the peasants considered it a complete waste of time for them to go to school.
一旦生为农民，就得一辈子当农民，几乎没有别的前途，这种政策使得农民丧失了受教育的动机。学龄儿童们呆在家帮忙做家事，照看年幼的弟妹，十岁出头就下田干活了。女孩子们呢，农民觉得上学更是彻头彻尾的浪费，他们说：
"They get married and belong to other people. It's like pouring water on the ground."
“出了嫁就是人家的人了，嫁出去的女儿，泼出去了水。”
The Cultural Revolution was trumpeted as having brought education to the peasants through 'evening classes." One day my production team announced it was starting evening classes and asked Nana and me to be the teachers. I was delighted. However, as soon as the first 'class' began, I realized that this was no education.
当时，“夜校”被鼓吹成是文化大革命的丰硕成果，“把教育带到乡村”。有一天，我们队里宣布要办夜校了，并要我和南南当老师。我很高兴，然而，上了头一堂课后，我便看出这里根本没有教育可言。
The classes invariably started with Nana and me being asked by the production team leader to read out articles by Mao or other items from the People's Daily. Then he would make an hour-long speech consisting of all the latest political jargon strung together in undigested and largely unintelligible hunks. Now and then he would give specific orders, all solemnly delivered in the name of Mao.
千篇一律，一上课，生产队长总要我和南南给大家读(毛泽东选集)或(人民日报)社论。然后他开始讲话了，一讲就是一个钟头，都是报上最新的政治术语，毫不连贯地串在一起，不知所云。不时地，他也发些具体的指示，而且都借毛泽东的名义：
"Chairman Mao says we must eat two meals of rice porridge and only one meal of solid rice a day."
“毛主席教导我们：一天要吃两顿稀的，一顿干的。”
"Chairman Mao says we mustn't waste sweet potatoes on pigs."
“毛主帮教导我们不要浪费番薯去喂猪。”如此等等。
After a hard day's work in the fields, the peasants' minds were on their household chores. Their evenings were valuable to them, but no one dared to skip the 'classes." They just sat there, and eventually dozed off. I was not sorry, to see this form of 'education," designed to stupefy rather than enlighten, gradually wither away.
经过一天地里筋疲力尽劳动后，农民们一心只盼回家做自己的事，夜晚的时间对他们来说很宝贵。但是没有人敢“逃学”，他们只是坐在这里打瞌睡。渐渐地，夜校不了了之。这种“教育”不是让人变聪明，而是变蠢。我一点儿也不惋惜它最后废除了。
Without education, the peasants' world was painfully narrow. Their conversations usually centered on minute details of daily living. One woman would spend a whole morning complaining that her sister-in-law had used ten bundles of feather fuel for cooking breakfast when she could have made do with nine (fuel, like everything else, was pooled). Another would grumble for hours that her mother-in-law put too many sweet potatoes in the rice (rice being more precious and desirable than sweet potatoes).
由于缺乏教育，农民的世界狭小得令人伤心。他们的谈话集中在极琐碎的日常小事上。一个农妇花了一上午时间抱怨她的小姑子用十把“毛毛柴”煮早饭。她说本来只要九把就够了(柴也是由生产队分配的)。另一个则喋喋不休地几个小时数落婆婆，说她在米饭里放了太多的番薯(米比番薯宝贵得多)。
I knew their restricted horizon was not their fault, but nonetheless I found their conversations unbearable.
我知道他们天地狭窄并不是她们的错，但仍觉得这类聊天令人难以忍受。
One unfailing topic of gossip was, of course, sex. A twenty-year-old woman called Mei from the Deyang county town had been assigned to the village next to mine.
另一个百谈不厌的话题是“性。有一个来自德阳县城的梅姑娘，落户在我们邻居队上。
She had allegedly slept with a lot of city youths as well as peasants, and every now and then in the fields someone would come up with a lewd story about her. It was rumored that she was pregnant, and had been binding her waist to hide it. In an effort to prove that she was not carrying a 'bastard," Mei deliberately did all the things a pregnant woman was not supposed to do, like carrying heavy loads.
风言风语说她与不少城市青年、农民都睡过觉。我在田里劳动时不时听到人们且粗话谈论她。不久传来消息说她怀孕了，但把肚子勒得紧紧的。为了证明自己没有怀“野种”，梅姑娘故意做所有孕妇不适合做的活，像挑担子等。
Eventually a dead baby was discovered in the bushes next to a stream in her village. People said it was hers. Nobody knew whether it had been born dead. Her production team leader ordered a hole dug and buried the baby. And that was that, apart from the gossip, which became even more virulent.
后来在她村子里的溪边上的一丛灌木里发现了一具死婴，大家都说是她的，但没有人知道是不是一生下来就是死的。她的生产队长命令挖个坑把孩子埋了，就此了事，可是有关她的流言蜚语传得更起劲了。
The whole story appalled me, but there were other shocks. One of my neighbors had four daughters four dark-skinned, round-eyed beauties. But the villagers did not think they were pretty. Too dark, they said. Pale skin was the main criterion for beauty in much of the Chinese countryside. When it was time for the eldest daughter to get married, the father decided to look for a son-in-law who would come and live in their house. That way, he would not only keep his daughter's work points, but would also get an extra pair of hands. Normally, women married into men's families, and it was considered a great humiliation for a man to marry into a woman's family. But our neighbor eventually found a young man from a very poor mountain area who was desperate to get out and could never do so except through marriage. The young man thus had a very low status. I often heard his father-in-law shouting abuse at him at the top of his voice. To torment the young man, he made his daughter sleep alone when the whim took him. She did not dare to refuse because 'filial piety," which was deep-rooted in Confucian ethics, enjoined that children must obey their parents and because she must not be seen as being keen to sleep with a man, even her husband: for a woman to enjoy sex was considered shameful. I was awakened one morning by a commotion outside my window. The young man had somehow got hold of a few bottles of alcohol made with sweet potatoes and had poured them down his throat. His father in-law had been kicking his bedroom door to get him to start working. When he finally broke the door down, the son-in-law was dead.
梅姑娘的故事使我寒心，但还有别的事更可怕。我的邻居有四个女孩，全是黑皮肤、圆眼睛的美人。不过村民们觉得她们不美，说她们太黑了，在大多数中国农村，白皮肤是美的标准“一白掩百丑”。当这家大女儿到了该出嫁的年龄时，她父亲决定招个女婿上门。这样他不仅能保住他女儿的工分，而且还能多个劳力。农村风俗是女人嫁进男人家，上门女婿对男人是一大羞耻。这个邻居总算从穷山区找到了一个青年，这人拼命要摆脱山区，眼前只有结婚一途可帮他了。新女婿于是在人前地位很低，成了岳父的出气包。我经常听见他岳父高声骂他，时不时禁止女儿跟他同房。女儿不敢违抗，怕被说成是不孝，又怕别人讥笑她太想和男人睡觉。女人要求享受性生活，甚至和自己的丈夫做爱都被认为是件可耻的事。一天早上，我被窗外的喧闹声惊醒，原来这个青年头天晚上灌了好几瓶酒精浓度很高的番薯酒，第二天一早，他的岳父使劲踢他的房门，要他下田干活，等破门而入时，才发现女婿已死在床上了。
One day my production team was making pea noodles, and borrowed my enamel wash bowl to carry water. That day, the noodles collapsed into a shapeless mess. The crowd that had gathered excitedly and expectantly around the noodle-making barrel started muttering loudly when they saw me approaching, and glared at me with disgust.
一天，我们生产队做豌豆面，借我的搪瓷盆装水，那天，面没做成，变成一滩稀糊。围在制面大桶周围焦急地等着分面的人群变了脸色，当他们看见我走过来时，都大声抱怨起来，恨恨地瞧着我。
I was scared. Later I was told by some women that the villagers blamed the sagging noodles on me. They said I must have used the bowl to wash when I was menstruating. The women told me I was lucky to be a 'city youth." If it had been one of them, their menfolk would have given them 'a really good hiding."
我感到很害怕。后来，一些女人告诉我，村民们把制面失败归罪到我头上，说我必定是在来月经时用过脸盆，害得他们“倒了灶”。女人还说，因为我是城市来的，所以还算运气。要是换上她们，家里的男人一定把她们痛打一顿。
On another occasion, a group of young men passing through our village carrying baskets of sweet potatoes were taking a break on a narrow road. Their shoulder poles were lying on the ground, blocking the way. I stepped over one of them. All of a sudden, one of the young men jumped to his feet, picked up his pole, and stood in front of me, with fiery eyes. He looked as though he was going to strike me. From the other peasants, I learned that he believed he would develop shoulder sores if a woman stepped over his pole. I was made to cross back over it 'to undo the poison."
另一次，一群小伙子担着番薯经过我们村子，在狭窄的路边休息。他们的扁担放在地上，挡住了路。我没有留意，抬脚跨过了一根。忽地一声，一个小伙子跳了起来，一把抓起扁担，冲到我面前，两眼冒火地瞪着我，就像要一扁担打过来似的。从别的农民议论中，我才明白女人跨过男人的扁担，男人肩上要长扁疮。我只得又跨回来，以示“清毒”。
During the whole time I was in the countryside, I never saw any attempt to tackle such warped thinking in fact, it was never even mentioned.
我在农村全部时间里，从来没有看过扫除这类迷信的努力。人人习以为常，提也不提。
The most educated person in my production team was the former landlord. I had been conditioned to regard landlords as evil, and now, to my initial uneasiness, I found that I got on best with this family. They bore no resemblance to the stereotypes that had been drilled into my mind. The husband did not have cruel, vicious eyes, and his wife did not wiggle her bottom, or make her voice sugary, to appear seductive.
我们生产队里受到最高教育的人是从前的地主。由于宣传的结果，我以为地主就是恶人。现在我才发现，我其实和这家地主最合得来，尽管一开始我有些局促不安。他们和那些深深印在我脑中的宣传机器所铸造的形象没有任何相似之处。丈夫没有一双残忍、贪婪的眼精，妻子也不扭动屁股，甜言蜜语地勾引干部。
Sometimes, when we were alone, he would talk about his grievances.
有时，我们单独在一起，他会开始诉苦。
"Chang Jung," he once said, "I know you are a kind person. You must be a reasonable person as well, since you have read books. You can judge whether this is fair." Then he told me why he had been classified as a landlord. He had been a waiter in Chengdu in 1948, and had saved up some money by watching every penny. At the time, some farsighted landlords were selling their land cheap, as they could see land reform coming if the Communists reached Sichuan. The waiter was not politically astute, and bought some land, thinking he had got a bargain. He not only soon lost most of it in the land reform, but became a class enemy to boot.
“张戎，”他有一次说，“我知道你是个好人，你看了这么多书，知书识礼。你来评评这个理，这事公道不公道！”他讲起他怎么会弄上一顶地主帽子。40年代后期，他在成都一家餐馆当跑堂的，千辛万苦攒下点钱。那年一些有远见的地主已意识到共产党将会到四川了，到了会搞土改，所以他们贱价卖地。跑堂先生没有政治眼光，买了些地，还满心欢喜，以为占了便宜。他不仅很快就在土改中丧失了这些土地，而且还一下子成了“阶级敌人”。
"Alas," he said, with resignation, quoting a classic line, 'one single slip has caused a thousand years of sorrow."
说到这里，他长叹一声：“一失足成千古恨呵！”
The villagers seemed to feel no hostility toward the landlord and his family, although they kept their distance. But, like all 'class enemies," they were always given the jobs no one else wanted. And the two sons got one work point less than other men, in spite of the fact that they were the hardest-working men in the village. They seemed to me to be highly intelligent, and also the most refined young men around. Their gentleness and gracefulness set them apart, and I found that I felt closer to them than to any other young people in the village. However, in spite of their qualities, no girls wanted to marry them. Their mother told me how much money she had spent buying presents for the few gifts whom the go-betweens had introduced. The gifts would accept the clothes and money and then walk off. Other peasants could have demanded the presents back, but a landlord's family could do nothing. She would sigh long and loud about the fact that her sons had little prospect of decent marriages. But, she told me, they bore their misfortune lightly: after each disappointment, they would try to cheer her up. They would offer to work on market days to earn back the cost of her lost presents.
村民们似乎对这家地主没什么仇恨，只是保持距离。但是，像所有“阶级敌人”一样，这家人总被分派没人愿干的活。他家的两个儿子尽管是村子里干活最卖劲的人，但比其他男人每天少挣一个工分。在我看来，他俩又聪明、又能干，是远近最温文尔雅的人，看上去与众不同。在村里所有的年轻人中，我本能地跟他俩最接近。然而，尽管他们有种种美德，也没有姑娘愿意嫁给他们。他们的母亲唠唠叨叨地告诉我，说她为少数几个好不容易由媒婆引见来的姑娘不知花了多少钱买礼物。这些姑娘总是接下衣服和钱后就不来往了。换上别的农民，会把礼物要回来，但这位地主只好自认倒楣，当母亲的常叹道，儿子们没有希望结上一门好亲事，又感叹道他们倒处之泰然，每次失望之余，总尽力使她开心，说要放弃赶集来挣工分，把失去的礼物钱挣回来。
All these misfortunes were told to me without much drama or emotion. Here it seemed that even shocking deaths were like a stone being dropped into a pond where the splash and the ripple closed over into stillness in no time.
所有这些不幸都是以平淡的口气叙述的，没有多少戏剧情节，也不怎么动感情。在这乡野，甚至死亡消息也只像石头投进了水池，溅起一阵浪花后，波纹很快散成了平静的水面。
In the placidity of the village, in the hushed depth of the nights in my damp home, I did a lot of reading and thinking. When I first came to Deyang, Jin-ming gave me several big cases of his black-market books, which he had been able to accumulate because the house raiders had now mostly been packed off to the 'cadres' school' at Miyi, together with my father. All day while I was out in the fields, I itched to get back to them.
就在这沉静的小村子里，在无数个万籁俱寂的深夜。我在那间潮湿的小茅屋中看了很多书，想了很多事。刚到德阳时，京明给了我几大箱子他在黑市上买来的书。那时他敢在家里藏书了，因为被抄家的人和抄家的人都一块儿被赶到米易干校去了。每天我一下田干活，心里就巴望能早点收工回房看书。
I devoured what had survived the burning of my father's library. There were the complete works of Lu Xun, the great Chinese writer of the 1920s and 1930s. Because he died in 1936, before the Communists came to power, he escaped being persecuted by Mao, and even became a great hero of his whereas Lu Xun's favorite pupil and closest associate, Hu Feng, was personally named by Mao as a counter revolutionary, and was imprisoned for decades. It was the persecution of Hu Feng that led to the witch-hunt in which my mother was detained in 1955.
我也贪婪地阅读父亲收藏的还没有被烧掉的书，包括一套《鲁迅全集》。鲁迅是中国二三十年代最伟大的作家，他早在1936年就去了世，远在共产党掌权之前，所以他逃脱了政治迫害的劫难，甚至变成了毛泽东所推崇的英雄。而鲁迅最得意的门生、最亲密的同事胡风，却被毛泽东亲自点名为“反革命分子”，并押了几十年。迫害胡风导致了1955年的“肃反运动”，我母亲就是在那次运动中被隔离。
Lu Xun had been my father's great favorite. When I was a child, he often read us essays by Lu. I had not understood them at the time, even with my father's explanations, but now I was engrossed. I found that their satirical edge could be applied to the Communists as well as to the Kuomintang. Lu Xun had no ideology, only enlightened humanitarianism. His skeptical genius challenged all assumptions.
《鲁迅全集》一直是父亲最心爱的藏书，当我还是个孩子时，他便常常给我们读鲁迅杂文了。那时，即便有我父亲解释我也似懂非懂。而现在我完全被迷住了，我发现这些杂文笔锋锐利，(此处删去一行)。没有党派的语言，只有强烈的人道主义。他以怀疑的天才向所有被奉若神明的观念挑战，他是另一位用他自由的才智把我从教条主义的桎梏中解放出来的人。
He was another whose free intelligence helped liberate me from my indoctrination.
My father's collection of Marxist classics was also useful to me. I read randomly, following the obscure words with my finger, and wondering what on earth those nineteenth century German controversies had to do with Mao's China. But I was attracted by something I had rarely come across in China the logic that ran through an argument.
父亲的马克思主义经典文献对我也不无帮助。我是挑着读的，用手指跟着那些晦涩的语句一字字啃，心里纳闷：究竟19世纪德国的论战与当代中国有什么关系？但是有一个东西吸引了我，是我很少在中国见到的，那就是论证的逻辑。
Reading Marx helped me to think rationally and analytically.
读马克思帮助我理性地分析问题。
I enjoyed these new ways of organizing my thoughts. At other times I would let my mind slip into more nebulous moods and wrote poetry, in classical styles. While I was working in the fields I was often absorbed in composing poems, which made working bearable, at times even agree able. Because of this, I preferred solitude, and positively discouraged conversation.
第一次用新方法组织我的思维，使我不胜快乐！其他时间，我则让思维滑到朦胧的意境里，写我的古体诗。在田里劳动时，我也往往沉浸在诗的构思中，繁重的劳动变得可以忍受了，甚至还有了乐趣。因为写诗，我喜欢孤独，不愿和别人闲扯。
One day I had been working all morning, cutting cane with a sickle and eating the juiciest parts near the roots.
有一天，我整整忙了一个早上，用镰刀砍甘蔗。一边砍一边吃靠近根部最甜的那段。
The cane went to the commune sugar factory, in exchange for sugar. We had to fill a quota in quantity, but not in quality, so we ate the best parts. When lunch break came, and someone had to stay in the field to keep watch for thieves, I offered my services so I would have some time alone. I would go for my lunch when the peasants came back and so have even more time to myself.
甘蔗要送到公社糖厂去换糖。我们得交出一定数量，但不管质量如何，所以我们总把最好的部分先自己吃了。大家回家吃午饭时，得留个人在田里看守以防偷窃。我主动要求留下来，这样我就有些自己独处的时间，农民回来了，我再加吃饭，于是又可以有更多的时间。
I lay on my back on a stack of canes, a straw hat partly shading my face. Through the hat I could see the vast turquoise sky. A leaf protruded from the stack above my head, looking disproportionately enormous against the sky.
我仰面躺在甘蔗堆上，一顶草帽半遮着脸，透过草帽是一望无涯的深蓝天空。一片叶子从甘蔗堆上伸出来，伸到我的头上，看上去和天不成比例的大。
I half-closed my eyes, feeling soothed by the cool greenness.
我半闭上眼，感到沐浴在凉悠悠的绿中。
The leaf reminded me of the swaying leaves of a grove of bamboo on a similar hot summer afternoon many years before. Sitting in its shade fishing, my father had written a forlorn poem. In the same ge-lu pattern of tones, rhymes, and types of words as his poem, I began to compose one of my own. The universe seemed to be standing still, apart from the light rustle of the refreshing breeze in the cane leaves. Life felt beautiful to me at that moment.
这片叶子使我想起多年前的一丛绿竹，也是这样一个夏季中午，天气也是这么炎热，父亲坐在阴影里垂钓，作了一首带几分惆怅的词。如今和着他的格律，我开始写自己的词。天地一切好像都不复存在，只有微风吹过甘蔗叶子发出沙沙声。那一刻，生活也似乎变得美好。
In this period, I snatched at the chance for solitude, and ostentatiously showed that I wanted nothing to do with the world around me, which must have made me seem rather arrogant. And because the peasants were the model I was meant to emulate, I reacted by concentrating on their negative qualities. I did not try to get to know them, or to get on with them.
那时，我抓住每一个机会独处，明显地表现出不想和外界有任何关系，这必定使我看上去显得清高。又由于官方命令以农民为榜样，我老是看到他们的缺点，不想努力去结交他们。这一切都使我在村子里不大讨人喜欢，虽然农民也没有管我。
I was not very popular in the village, although the peasants largely left me alone. They disapproved of me for failing to work as hard as they thought I should. Work was their whole life, and the major criterion by which they judged anyone. Their eye for hard work was both uncompromising and fair, and it was clear to them that I hated physical labor and took every opportunity to stay at home and read my books. The stomach trouble and skin rash I had suffered in Ningnan hit me again as soon as I came to Deyang. Virtually every day I had some sort of diarrhea, and my legs broke out in infected sores. I constantly felt weak and dizzy, but it was no good complaining to the peasants; their harsh life had made them regard all non fatal illnesses as trivial.
农民们还不满意我做事不卖力。劳动是他们整个生命，也是他们判断其他人的主要标准。他们对哪个人劳动努不努力，看得一清二楚。他们看得出我讨厌体力劳动，一有机会就躲到屋里看自己的书。其实，我在宁南患上的肠胃病和皮疹一到达德阳就立即复发了，几乎每天都拉肚子，腿也因搔破皮肤感染而流脓发炎。我时常虚弱头晕，但是向农民诉苦也没有用，他们的艰辛生活使他们把所有死不了人的病痛都看得微不足道。
The thing that made me most unpopular, though, was that I was often away. I spent about two-thirds of the time that I should have been in Deyang visiting my parents in their camps, or looking after Aunt Jun-ying in Yibin. Each trip lasted several months, and there was no law forbidding it. But although I did not work nearly enough to earn my keep, I still took food from the village. The peasants were stuck with their egalitarian distribution system, and they were stuck with me they could not throw me out. Naturally, they blamed me, and I felt sorry for them. But I was stuck with them, too. I could not get out.
农民最不高兴的事就是我经常不在村里干活。三分之二的时间我都在父母干校陪他们或在宜宾照料俊英娘娘，每次一走就是好几个月，没有规定不准走。我显然没有挣够我基本口粮的工分，但我却照样在村里分粮食。农民们摆脱不了这种平均分配的分粮制度，也摆脱不了我，他们无法把我赶出生产队，他们很自然怪罪于我，我也觉得对不起他们。但我也摆脱不了他们，我想走也走不了。
In spite of their resentment, my production team allowed me to come and go as I liked, which was partly because I had kept my distance from them. I learned that the best way to get by was to be regarded as an unobtrusively aloof outsider. Once you became 'one of the masses," you immediately let yourself in for intrusion and control.
生产队怨声不断，农民却仍让我来去自由，部分原因是我和他们保持了距离。我学会了最好的处事办法是当一个略显高傲的外人，一旦你变成了“群众的一员”，马就会被别人干涉控制。
Meanwhile, my sister Xiao-hong was doing well in the neighboring village. Although, like me, she was perpetually bitten by He as and poisoned by manure so that her legs were sometimes so swollen she got fever, she continued to work hard, and was awarded eight work points a day. Specs often came from Chengdu to help her. His factory, like most others, was at a virtual standstill. The management had been 'smashed," and the new Revolutionary Committee was only concerned with getting the workers to take part in the revolution rather than in production, and most just came and went as they pleased. Sometimes Specs worked in the fields in my sister's place to give her a break.
这时，我姐姐小鸿在邻村做得很好。虽然她和我一样，也被跳蚤咬得浑身是伤，两腿被病毒感染得红肿，还经常发烧，但是她仍然坚持卖力干活，评上了一天八个工分——女人的最高级别。“眼镜”经常从成都来看望她，帮她出工。他的工厂像大多数其他工厂一样停了产。因为旧的行政管理被“砸碎”，而革命委员会又只关心让工人闹革命，而不是搞生产，结果大多数工人想来就来，想走就走。“眼镜”于是常到田里帮我姐姐干活，让她能休息一会儿。
At other times, he worked with her, which delighted the villagers, who said: "This is a bargain. We took in one young girl, but we've ended up with two pairs of hands!"
有时，他也和她一起做。村民们喜笑颜开地说：“好划得来，我们收了一个女子，结果得了两个劳力。”
Nana, my sister, and I used to go to the country market together on market day, which was once a week. I loved the boisterous alleys lined with baskets and shoulder poles.
南南、姐姐和我常在一周一次的逢场天去赶集。我喜爱喧喧嚷嚷的小巷，挤满了背篓、扁担，摩肩接踵，热闹非凡。
The peasants would walk for hours to sell a single chicken or a dozen eggs, or a bundle of bamboo. Most moneymaking activities, such as growing cash crops, making baskets, or raising pigs for sale, were banned for individual households, on the grounds that they were 'capitalist." As a result, peasants had very little to exchange for cash. Without money, it was impossible for them to travel to cities, and market day was almost their only source of entertainment. They would meet up with their relatives and friends, the men squatting on the muddy pavements puffing on their pipes.
农民们会走上好几个小时去卖一只鸡或十几个鸡蛋，要么一捆竹子。绝大多数赚钱的营生，如像种经济作物、编竹筐，养猪卖钱等，都被禁止个体搞，说是资本主义。这样，农民们只有很少东西可以卖钱，没有钱，他们不可能进城去，所以赶场几乎是他们唯一的消遣。他们利用这个日子探望亲戚、看朋友，男人们一群群地蹲在泥泞的道路边上一口口抽旱烟。
In spring 1970 my sister and Specs were married. There was no ceremony. In the atmosphere of the day, it did not cross their minds to have one. They just collected their marriage certificate from the commune headquarters and then went back to my sister's village with sweets and cigarettes with which to entertain the villagers. The peasants were thrilled: they could rarely afford these precious treats.
1970年春季，我姐姐和“眼镜”结婚了。在那种气氛里，他们没有心思举办婚礼。他们只是一同到公社办结婚证书，然后走回我姐姐的村子请村民们吃喜糖、抽喜烟，农民们都很兴奋：糖烟可是难得的款待。
For the peasants, a wedding was a big thing. As soon as the news broke, they crowded into my sister's thatched cottage to offer their congratulations. They brought presents like a handful of dried noodles, a pound of soybeans, and a few eggs, wrapped carefully in red straw paper and fled with straw in a fancy knot. These were no ordinary gifts. The peasants had deprived themselves of valuable items. My sister and Specs were very touched. When Nana and I went to see the new couple, they were teaching the village children how to do 'loyalty dances' for fun.
对于农民来说，婚礼是一大事。一旦得知结婚的消息，他们就纷纷拥进我姐姐的茅草屋，向新婚夫妇祝福。他们也带来礼物：一把干面、一斤大豆、几个鸡蛋，仔仔细细地包在红草纸里面，用草绳在上面扎成花结。这些礼物份量可不轻，是农民们自己舍不得吃舍不得用省下的。我姐姐和“眼镜”深受感动。当我和南南来看这对新人时，他们正在教村里的孩子们跳“忠字舞”，逗大象开心。
Marriage did not get my sister out of the countryside, as couples were not automatically granted residence together. Of course, if Specs had been willing to relinquish his city registration, he could easily have set fled with my sister, but she could not move to Chengdu with him because she had a country registration. Like tens of millions of couples in China, they lived separately, entitled by regulation to twelve days a year together. Luckily for them, Specs's factory was not working normally, so he could spend a lot of time in Deyang.
结婚没能使我姐姐脱离农村，她不能回成都与“眼镜”住在一起。当然，“眼镜”如果愿意放弃他的城市户口，就很容易到农村和我姐住，我姐的农村户口却去不了成都。就像几千万中国夫妇一样，他们两地分居，一年享受十二天法定的探亲假，幸运的是，“眼镜”的工厂停了产，他有很多时间呆在乡下。
After a year in Deyang there was a change in my life: I entered the medical profession. The production brigade to which my team belonged ran a clinic which dealt with simple illnesses. It was funded by all the production teams under the brigade, and treatment was free, but very limited.
到德阳一年之后，我的生活发生了变化：我加入了医生行列。我们生产队隶属的生产大队有一个医疗站，医疗小伤小病。它的经费由大队下属的所有生产队共同分担，免费提供有限的医疗服务。
There were two doctors. One of them, a young man with a fine, intelligent face, had graduated from the medical school of Deyang County in the fifties, and had come back to work in his native village. The other was middle-aged with a goatee. He had started out as an apprentice to an old country doctor practicing Chinese medicine, and in 1964 he had been sent by the commune to attend a crash course in Western medicine.
站里有两个医生，一个是青年人，有张文雅、聪明的面孔。他五十年代从德阳县卫生学校毕业，回到家乡工作。另一个是中年人，长着山羊胡子，最初从师于中医，1964年，公社送他去读了一个西医速成班。
At the beginning of 1971, the commune authorities ordered the clinic to take on a 'barefoot doctor." The name came about because the 'doctor' was supposed to live like the peasants, who treasured their shoes too much to wear them in the muddy fields. At the time, there was a big propaganda campaign hailing barefoot doctors as an invention of the Cultural Revolution. My production team jumped at this opportunity to get rid of me: if I worked in the clinic, the brigade, rather than my team, would be responsible for my food and other income.
1971年初，公社下达命令要医疗站设一名“赤脚医生”。这个新鲜名称的意思是：医生要和农民打成一片，像珍惜鞋子的农民一样打赤脚。当时“赤脚医生”被捧为文化大革命的新生事物。我们生产队赶紧抓住这个机会来摆脱我。到了医疗站，我的口粮食和其他收入就由大队而不是生产队供给了。
I had always wanted to be a doctor. The illnesses in my family, particularly the death of my grandmother, had driven home to me how important doctors were. Before I went to Deyang, I had started learning acupuncture from a friend, and I had been studying a book called A Barefoot Doctor's Manual, one of the few printed items allowed in those days.
我一直想当医生，家人的病，姥姥的死，都使我痛感医生的重要性。来德阳之前，我已向一个朋友学针灸，也读过一本本叫《赤脚医生手册》的书，这是很少的几本官方批准出版的书之一。
The propaganda about barefoot doctors was one of Mao's political maneuvers. He had condemned the pre Cultural Revolution Health Ministry for not looking after peasants and concerning itself only with city dwellers, especially Party officials. He also condemned doctors for not wanting to work in the countryside, particularly in the remote areas. But Mao took no responsibility as head of the regime, nor did he order any practical steps to remedy the situation, such as giving instructions to build more hospitals or train more proper doctors, and during the Cultural Revolution the medical situation got worse. The propaganda line about peasants having no doctors was really intended to generate hatred against the pre-Cultural Revolution Party system, and against intellectuals (this category included doctors and nurses).
宣传赤脚医生是毛泽东的政治策略，他指责文化大革命以前的卫生部是“城市老爷卫生部”，说它不去照顾农民，只关心城里人，特别是只关心共产党干部。他还谴责医生不愿意到农村去工作，尤其是不愿意去偏远的山区。毛泽东身为这个政权的头号人物并没有为这种局面承担责任，也没有下令建医院和培训更多的合格医生。在文化大革命中，医疗状况变得更糟。毛的指责只为增加人们对文革前共产党体系和医生护士这样的知识分子的不满情绪。
Mao offered a magic cure to the peasants: 'doctors' who could be turned out en masse, barefoot doctors.
毛泽东为农民想出个“高招”，大量制造医生——“赤脚医生”。
"It is not at all necessary to have so much formal training," he said.
又说：“书可以读一点，但读多了害人，的确害人。”
"They should mainly learn and raise their standard in practice." On 26 June 1965 he made the remark which became a guideline for health and education: "The more books you read, the more stupid you become." I went to work with absolutely no training.
这些话是1965年6月26日说的。同一天，他还讲了句名言，变成了卫生、教育领域的指导方针：“书读得越多越蠢。”我于是没有半点培训就走马上任当医生了。
The clinic was in a large hall on top of a hill about an hour's walk from my cottage. Next door was a shop selling matches, salt, and soy sauce which were all rationed. One of the surgery rooms became my bedroom. My professional duties were left vague.
医疗站在一座小山顶上，离我的茅屋有一个小时路程。隔壁是大队小卖部，卖火柴、食盐和豆油，全凭票供应。医疗站有一间大屋，另有一间小屋是我的住处。
The only medical book I had ever set eyes on was A Barefoot Doctor's Manual. I studied it avidly. There was no theory in it, just a summary of symptoms, followed by suggested prescriptions. When I sat at my desk, with the other two doctors behind me, all wearing our dusty everyday clothes, it was clear that the sick peasants who came in very sensibly wanted nothing to do with me, an inexperienced eighteen-year-old with some sort of book they could not read, and which was not even very thick. They went straight past me to the other two desks. I felt more relieved than offended. It was not my idea of being a doctor to have to consult a book every time patients described their symptoms, and then to copy down the recommended prescription. Sometimes, in an ironic mood, I would contemplate whether our new leaders Chairman Mao was still beyond questioning would want me as their personal doctor, barefoot or not. But then, I told myself, of course not: barefoot doctors were supposed to 'serve the people, not the officials' in the first place. I settled happily for just being a nurse, doling out medicines on prescription and giving injections, which I had learned to give to my mother for her hemorrhage.
我的医疗职责不清不楚。迄今为止，我摸过的医书只有那本《赤脚医生手册》，现在我一头钻了进去，这本书没有什么医疗理论，只是罗列症状和开处方。每天我和那两个医生都穿着日常服装坐在诊断室里，我的桌子在最前面。患病的农民一个个绕过我的桌子，去见后面两个医生，显然对我这个十八岁的不时翻书的姑娘放心不下。我与其说被得罪了，毋宁说感到松了口气。我要是病人，也不想看这种医生：我给他讲病状，他翻书，再抄处方！有时，在一种讽刺的情绪里，我想：是否我们推崇赤脚医生的新领导——不包括毛泽东，我仍然不敢怀疑他——会请我当他们的医生呢？当然他们不要。赤脚医生本来就是为“人民”服务，而不是为“当官的”服务。我很高兴只当了一名护士：按处方单发药、打针。我早就因治母亲的子宫出血学会了打针。
The young doctor who had been to medical school was the one everybody wanted. His prescriptions of Chinese herbs cured many ailments. He was very conscientious, too, visiting patients in their villages and collecting and growing herbs in his spare time. The other doctor, with the goatee, terrified me with his medical nonchalance. He would use the same needle to inject several different patients without any sterilization. And he injected penicillin without testing whether the person was allergic to it, which was extremely dangerous because Chinese penicillin was not pure and could cause serious reactions, even death.
人人都要找的医生是那个读过卫生学校的年轻人，他的中药处方治好了许多人。他也勤勤恳恳，不时东村来西村去地看病，就是种草药。另外那位有山羊胡子的医生，他那种漫不经心的态度把我吓坏了，他用同一根针对若干病人注射而不消毒，打青霉索也不做皮试——这很危险，中国的青霉索不纯，会引起严重的过敏，甚至死亡。
Politely, I offered to do it for him. He smiled, not offended by my interference, and said there had never been any accidents: "The peasants are not like delicate city folk."
当我客气地接管了他的消毒和皮试工作时，他笑了，没有被我的干涉所得罪，又宽慰我说，从来没有发生过医疗事故：“农民不像你们城里人那么娇气。”
I liked the doctors, and they were very kind to me, always helpful when I asked questions. Not surprisingly, they did not see me as a threat. Out in the countryside, it was one's professional skills, rather than political rhetoric, that counted.
我喜欢这两个医生，他们对我很好，对我的问题有问必答，不厌其烦。他们自然不把我看作一个潜在的对手。在农村，大家看重的职业技能，而不是政治口号。
I enjoyed living on that hilltop, far away from any village.
我爱这山巅远离村落的生活。
Every morning I got up early, strolled along the edge of the hill, and to the rising sun recited lines from an ancient book of verse about acupuncture. Beneath my feet, the fields and cottages began to wake up to the cocks' crowing.
每天早上，我早早起身，蹁到山边，迎接初升的太阳，背诵讲解针灸的古诗。脚下，田野和茅屋在雄鸡的啼鸣中苏醒，一颗孤单单的太白星静静地放着微光，天空每分钟都变得更加明亮。我享受晨风中冬的芳香，爱天仙子大花瓣拌落一串串珍珠般的露水。小鸟在四处叽叽喳喳的欢叫，使我从吟诵中分心。我徘徊再三，才回去点燃炉灶做早饭。
A lonely Venus watched with a pale glow from a sky that was getting brighter every minute. I loved the fragrance of the honeysuckle in the morning breeze, and the big petals of nightshade shaking off pearls of dew. Birds chirped all around, distracting me from my recitations. I would linger for a bit, and then walk back to light my stove for breakfast.
With the help of an anatomical chart and my acupuncture verses, I had a fairly clear idea where on the body I should stick my needles to cure what. I was eager for patients. And I had some enthusiastic volunteers boys from Chengdu who were now living in other villages and who were keen on me. They would walk for hours for an acupuncture session. One young man, rolling up his sleeve to expose an acupuncture point near his elbow, declared with a brave face, "What are men friends for?"
靠一张人体解剖图和针灸诗歌的帮助，我大致知道了身上哪个地方可以插根针进去，治什么病。我急切切地盼望有病人给我治，也有一些同样急切切的病人来找我——从成都下乡到附近村子里的喜欢我的男孩子们。他们常常走几小时来让我扎上几针。一个小伙子卷起衣袖露出肘部的针灸穴位时，摆出勇敢的面孔说：“来扎吧！不然要男孩子当朋友干什么！”
I did not fall in love with any of them, although my resolution to deny myself a boyfriend in order to dedicate myself to my parents and appease my guilt over my grandmother's death was weakening. But I found it difficult to let my heart go, and my upbringing prevented me from having any physical relationship without surrendering my heart. All around me, other boys and girls from the city were leading rather freer lives. But I sat, lonely, on a pedestal. Word got out that I wrote poetry, and that helped keep me there.
我没有爱上他们当中的任何人。姥姥去世后，我曾下决心不交男朋友，以全心全意照顾父母。现在这个决心正在减弱，但是我发现很难倾心于谁，而我从小受的教育使我不倾心就不会以身相许。周围城里来的很多小伙子和女孩子过着相当随便的生活，但是我却孤独地坐在一个可望而不可及的位子上。大家还传说我会写诗，这就使我显得更加“神圣”了。
The young men all behaved most chivalrously. One gave me a musical instrument called a san-xian, made of a snakeskin bowl with a long handle and three silk strings, which were plucked, and spent days teaching me how to play it. The permitted tunes were all in praise of Mao, and were very limited. But that did not make much difference to me: my ability was even more limited.
所有的男孩子们都表现得像十全十美的骑士，有一个送了我一把三弦，还花了好几天教我弹。获准可唱的曲调都是歌颂毛泽东的，而且少得可怜。但是对我没什么关系，我的演奏技能更加有限。
In the warm evenings, I sat by the fragrant medicinal garden encircled by Chinese trumpet creepers, and thrummed to myself. Once the shop next door closed for the night, I was entirely alone. It was dark except for the gently shining moon and the twinkling of lights from distant cottages. Sometimes fireflies glowed and floated by like torches carried by tiny, invisible flying men. The scents from the garden made me dizzy with pleasure. My music hardly matched the enthusiastic chorus of the thundering frogs and the wistful croon of the crickets. But I found solace in it.
在那些温暖的夜晚里的，坐在小小的药用植物园爬满喇叭花的竹篱笆旁，弹我的三弦。一旦隔壁的小卖部关了门，我便孑然一身。夜色茫茫，只有柔和的月亮和远处茅舍透出的眨眼的灯火。萤火虫一闪一闪的，好像是无数小隐身人举着火烛追逐嬉戏。植物园的花香使我沉醉，虽然我的音乐完全不能和高歌的青蛙与低吟的蟋蟀组成的乡间合唱队比美，但我从乐声中寻得了慰藉。