韓裔小說家筆下的未來中國環(huán)境移民.

　　從小說處女作《母語人士》(Native Speaker)開始，韓裔美國作家李昌來(Chang-rae Lee)寫了很多在美國的移民經(jīng)歷。在他的最新小說《在如此完滿的大海上》(On Such a Full Sea)中，主人公是一個名叫“范”(Fan)的中國女人，生活在一個名為B-Mor的城市，而B-Mor其實是未來的巴爾的摩。這部小說講述了一個反烏托邦的故事，設(shè)定各國處在鋪天蓋地的環(huán)境退化災(zāi)難之中。范來自霧霾嚴重的山西省，那里有數(shù)以萬計的中國人和她一樣，逃離環(huán)境毒化的家鄉(xiāng)，前往B-Mor當食品生產(chǎn)工人。詳細請看下面的雙語信息:

　　Mr. Lee, who also teaches creative writing at Princeton University, was in Beijing for the annualBookworm Literary Festival, which runs to March 29. Last Sunday, I hosted a conversationwith him that included questions from an audience at the Bookworm. Following are lightly editedexcerpts, transcribed by Becky Davis:

　　李昌來在普林斯頓大學(Princeton University)教授創(chuàng)意寫作課程，本次他前往北京參加一年一度的老書蟲國際文學節(jié)(Bookworm Literary Festival)期間，我主持了與他的對話，其中包括書蟲節(jié)聽眾的提問。書蟲節(jié)將于3月29日周日閉幕。以下是稍作編輯的對話摘要，由貝基·戴維斯(Becky Davis)從錄音轉(zhuǎn)錄為文字。

　　Q. Earlier today, I was at the Chinese prime minister’s press conference. He said China hadn’tdone enough on pollution and that he really needs to push forward in the war againstpollution. In your latest novel, “On Such a Full Sea,” the future that you envision is one inwhich China loses the war on pollution. Can you tell us why you see this being the future ofthe world?

　　問：今天早些時候，我參加了中國總理的記者招待會。他說，中國在防治污染方面做得不夠，他需要大力推動反污染的斗爭。在你的最新小說《在如此完滿的大海上》中，你設(shè)想中國未來在這場斗爭中失敗。你能講講為什么會設(shè)定這樣的未來世界嗎?

　　A. It’s not just China — it’s really everyone, in the book.

　　答：這不只是中國——在這本書里，其實所有國家都是這樣。

　　The book is set some vague number of years ahead, 150 to 200 years, I’m not that specificabout it. But I am very specific about the kinds of implications for the people of the society,which is that they all suffer from a certain kind of inevitable disease, which they call “sea,”which is something that’s sort of lurking out there mysteriously. They can’t really address it.And obviously that comes from the violation of the environment.

　　這本書設(shè)定了一個不太確切的未來時刻，是未來150到200年之間，我沒有把年份弄得很具體。但我非常具體地描述了那個社會的公眾所處的境況，即他們?nèi)蓟忌狭四撤N不可避免的疾病，他們稱這種疾病為“?！?，是一種潛伏在外面的神秘東西。他們沒法真正應(yīng)對這個問題。顯然，這種疾病來自環(huán)境污染。

　　They’re always talking about being carul about the things that you eat, the water that youdrink. One of the conceits of the book is that there is a production facility called B-Mor in thormer Baltimore, and this production facility is a facility that provides pristine fishes andvegetables for an elite class of people. And the very fact of its existence is that everythingoutside is too poisoned and too ruined to trust.

　　他們總是在談?wù)撘⌒淖⒁獬缘臇|西，喝的水。書中設(shè)定了一個生產(chǎn)基地，名為B-Mor，位于以前的巴爾的摩。這個生產(chǎn)基地為精英階層提供未受污染的魚類和蔬菜。它的存在表明，外面的一切東西都毒化了，受到了毀損，不能信任。

　　I don’t get into the environmental issues very much. There’s some guy who kept writing meevery week after the book came out and said, can you just come out and say that this is a “Cli-Fi” novel? I don’t know, he must have had a trademark [on the term] or something. There’sclimate anxiety [in the novel], but it’s not that geeky about it. It’s almost a psychic condition,of feeling beleaguered.

　　我沒有非常深入地闡釋環(huán)保問題。這本書出版之后，有個人每周都寫信給我，希望我能站出來說這是一本“氣候變化小說”。我不清楚，他肯定有個和這個詞有關(guān)的商標什么的。這本書中涉及了關(guān)于氣候的焦慮感，但沒有達到那種怪咖程度。它差不多算是一種焦頭爛額的心理狀態(tài)。

　　Today, we were just walking around. I bought my first mask here, which I kind of liked. Butthen I noticed that the mask itself smelled sort of chemically. So I was thinking, maybe themask is actually worse for you than the air.

　　今天，我們只是到處閑逛了逛。我在這里買了第一個口罩，我還有點喜歡它。但后來我發(fā)現(xiàn)，口罩本身就散發(fā)出某種化學味道。所以我想，也許對你來說，在這里戴口罩其實比直接呼吸空氣更糟糕。

　　Q. You were originally going to write a novel about China but then you took the train pastBaltimore, and decided to set it there. In your original conception of the novel, why did youwant to set a book in China? You came to China on one or two trips to do some research —could you tell us about that?

　　問：你本來打算寫一本關(guān)于中國的小說，但你在有一次乘火車路過巴爾的摩之后，決定把背景設(shè)置在那里。在你最初的小說構(gòu)思中，為什么要把一本書的背景設(shè)置在中國呢?你來了中國一兩趟，做了一些調(diào)研，能介紹一下這方面的情況嗎?

　　A. My original idea was to write a kind of social fabric novel about Chinese factory workers. Soin about 2011 or so, I went to Shenzhen. My sister lives in Hong Kong, so it was an easy trip. Isort of finagled my way into a factory. It was a really fascinating visit for me. I hadn’t been to afactory and had all these preconceptions about what I would see. It actually wasn’t so horrible. Idon’t know if people have gone to that area — that’s where you know all the factories are, youknow. They’re not really factories so much as they are settlements. And this particularsettlement, this factory that I went to was a facility that produced tiny electrical motors, thekind that drive a DVD tray or a side-view mirror. So it wasn’t a big, huge industrial complex. Itwas really more like a campus, but a really grubby one — kind of rundown. There was nothingaesthetically pleasing about it.

　　答：我最初的想法是寫一部關(guān)于中國工廠工人的社會結(jié)構(gòu)小說。因此，大約在2011年，我去了深圳。我姐姐住在香港，所以去那里很方便。我差不多連哄帶騙地進入了一家工廠。對我來說，這次訪問真正的很有意義。我之前從沒有去過工廠，對于將會在那里看到什么存在各種成見。實際上那里并不是那么可怕。我不知道大家是否去過那里——所有工廠都在那兒。說那是工廠，還不如說是他們的定居點。我去的這家工廠，這個具體的定居點，生產(chǎn)的是驅(qū)動DVD拖盤或側(cè)視鏡的微型電機。所以，這不是一個非常龐大的工業(yè)園區(qū)。它看起來更像一個校園，但真的很寒磣，感覺有些破敗。毫無美感可言。

　　Q. It wasn’t like Princeton.

　　問：它和普林斯頓不像。

　　A. No, no. At Princeton, every blade of grass is accounted for. It’s a little creepy.

　　答：不，不。在普林斯頓，每根草都被解讀過。這有點讓人起雞皮疙瘩。

　　Q. That’s a dystopian novel!

　　問：那才是一部反烏托邦小說!

　　A. Well, dystopias are always about utopias, of course. But this particular place was … it wasexactly what I needed for the book I wanted to write. It had a little health center. It had abasketball hoop that was rusty. It had the dining hall. It had the dormitories of course, whichhoused eight people in one little room, in bunks, with a little hot plate and a plant there. Peoplewere trying to make a life out of it, obviously, and choosing to be there. And of course most ofthe workers were young women.

　　答：實際上，反烏托邦作品的關(guān)鍵總是烏托邦。但是，這個地方是......正是我想寫的這本書所需要的素材。它有一個小型醫(yī)療中心。有個銹跡斑斑的籃球架。有食堂。當然還有宿舍，一個小房間住八個人，上下鋪，有一些輕便電熱爐，還有一株綠植。人們試圖在這種狀況下過點像樣的日子，很明顯，他們是自愿待在那里的。當然，大部分工人都是年輕女性。

　　And I was all set to write that novel. I went back to my desk in Princeton and started to write.But I felt as if … and this I’ve got to blame on you guys, journalists who have done such agreat job in doing my initial research about all the things that were going on in China. I guess Ihad always been someone in the last five to seven years who had a lot of interest in China,about all the awesome things that were happening, but also this kind of dread about China,about its power, about its environment. All the things that make China special and noticeable.

　　我當時全都準備好了，就要展開寫作。我回到普林斯頓的書桌前，開始寫小說。但我覺得好像……這得怪你們記者了，為我對中國發(fā)生的各種事情做了非常出色的初步調(diào)研。我想，在過去五到七年時間里，我一直對中國非常感興趣，不僅是對中國發(fā)生的各種好事，而且也對中國、中國的力量，以及中國的環(huán)境懷有一種畏懼。所有這一切讓中國顯得與眾不同，值得注目。

　　So I got back to my desk again and I felt as if I was writing. … You know, the writing was fine.But I think I was writing just basically what you guys [journalists] were writing. I wasn’t addinganything to that story, in my view. I didn’t want to just report on it, because you know, whenyou’re writing a novel, it’s not just about representation. Of course, when you’re writing a greatjournalistic piece it’s not just about that either. But the novel, especially as something thatneeds to be sustained for that many pages, really needs other kinds of angles. You need otherkinds of approaches to the material to make it come alive in a way that’s unlikely but is stillobviously truthful, and maybe beautiful.

　　所以，我再次回到書桌前，我感覺好像寫得……其實寫得還行。但我覺得基本上只是在寫你們記者寫的東西。在我看來，我沒有添加任何新東西進去。我不想寫出來的只是一個報道，因為，當你寫一本小說時，它不僅僅是陳述。當然，當你寫一篇出色的新聞文章時，也不能只是進行陳述。但小說，尤其是需要能寫很長篇幅的小說，確實需要采用不同類型的角度。你需要不同類型的方法來處理材料，讓它看似不可能，但仍然顯得很真實，甚至可能還很美妙。

　　I guess I had to admit to myself that that wasn’t happening. For whatever reason. Maybe I justwasn’t imagining the characters right. … You know, I had been so inspired by certain novelslike Zola’s “Germinal.” It’s a great novel about coal miners in a town in 19th-century France andtheir struggles — their battle against the owners and the degradation that they suffered. And Iwas going to do all that, but I guess I just didn’t have that special, fresh angle on my material.So I put it away, kind of depressed, because I’d done all this work, and I was still excited aboutit.

　　我想當時我不得不向自己承認，我沒有做到這一點。無論原因是什么。也許我只是沒有想象出恰當?shù)慕巧?.....你知道，某些小說一直給了我很大的啟發(fā)，比如左拉(Zola)的名著《萌芽》(Germinal)，講的是19世紀法國一個鎮(zhèn)上的煤礦工人以及他們的斗爭——他們和礦主做斗爭，和他們所處的惡化境況做斗爭。我想要寫這樣一本小說，但我覺得自己還沒有找到一個特殊、新鮮的視角來處理素材。所以我停下來，感覺有點郁悶，因為我已經(jīng)做了這么多工作，不過我還是對這件事勁頭十足。

　　That’s when I took this train ride from New York to D.C. For those of you who have not beenon that train — it’s the regular train that goes every day, many times a day. Because I’d grownup in the New York area, I’d been on that train for probably 45 years of my life, going back andforth periodically. And for 45 years, I’d always seen, as you roll into Baltimore Penn Station, theeast side of Baltimore that’s always been, as I can remember since I was a little kid, aneighborhood that’s forlorn. A classic American ghetto. The reasons for it are myriad and verycomplicated. Race, racism, economic decline, post-industrial stuff, all that kind of stuff.Anyway, that’s the kind of neighborhood it was.

　　這時候，我乘火車從紐約前往華盛頓特區(qū)，可能你沒有坐過那班火車——它是普通列車，每天都會發(fā)很多班。我是在紐約地區(qū)長大的，所以我坐那班火車可能有45年了，過段時間就往返一次。這45年來，每次進入巴爾的摩賓州車站，我都會看到巴爾的摩東側(cè)那片社區(qū)。我記得，從我孩提時代開始，那就一直是個絕望孤獨的社區(qū)。那是個典型的美國貧民窟，形成的原因有很多，非常復(fù)雜。族裔、種族主義、經(jīng)濟衰退、后工業(yè)化問題，如此種種。無論如何，那個社區(qū)就是那樣的。

　　I was looking at this neighborhood, and not thinking at all of writing about it, and I just gotangry and frustrated as a citizen. I said, I can’t believe I’ve been seeing this neighborhood forprobably four decades in various states of neglect, disrepair, maybe hope, a little bit. Thecurrent iteration that I saw was that it was all boarded up, these very modest 2oth-centurymodest row houses. They’d be just boarded up with plywood so that the street wascompletely cleared of anything, so that no one was supposed to live there anymore. It wasabsolutely cleared out of people. It was like a neutron bomb went off. The buildings were stillstanding, but the people were all gone.

　　我看著這個社區(qū)，完全沒有要寫它的念頭，我只是從公民的角度感到很生氣，很失望。我說，我簡直不敢相信，在大約40年的時間里，我看著這片社區(qū)總體上就處在無人理睬、破敗失修，也許還有一絲絲希望的狀態(tài)。當時我看到的最新狀況是，所有房子都用木板封起來了，它們是20世紀那種不起眼的排式房屋。它們被膠合板封起來，這樣街上就徹底沒有了任何東西，所以應(yīng)該是沒人住在那里了。絕對空無一人。就好像一顆中子彈爆炸過，建筑物仍然矗立，但人都不在了。

　　And I thought to myself — what a waste! We need so much affordable housing in our cities,and in Baltimore especially. I thought, why don’t we just invite an environmentally ruined villagein China over? People can’t live there. Fifty thousand people — bring them over here, let themhave it. Right? Let’s see what they do with it! They’ve got to do something good with it. Whoknows what they’ll do?

　　我心想——這太浪費了!我們的城市需要大量廉價住房，尤其是巴爾的摩。我想，何不去中國找一個環(huán)境被毀壞殆盡的鄉(xiāng)村，請那里的人到這里來住呢?在那里是沒法生活的。5萬人——請他們過來，給他們住?？纯此麄儠趺磳Υ@些!他們肯定會帶來一些好的東西。誰知道他們能做出什么事來?

　　And I kept sort of tossing that idea about, and I said, gee, that would be kind of a fun idea.Kind of an immigration story en masse. You know, usually an immigration story is like, myfamily, this community. But to bring everyone over at once in an engineered way, with a realpurpose, a mission to revitalize. And I said of course that’s not going to work. No one’s goingto allow that, even if people needed it.

　　這個想法我一直在琢磨著，我心想，嘿，這倒是個挺好玩的點子。有點移民眾生相的意思。你知道一個移民故事通常就是講我的家庭之類，這個社區(qū)的事。但這是奔著一個切實的目標，一種復(fù)興的使命，有計劃地把所有人一次性搬遷過來。我心想那當然是不可能實現(xiàn)的。就算人真的有這個需求，也不可能得到許可。

　　But then I just kept rolling about the idea, and I thought, well maybe in the future, in a verydifferent future, America might need a certain kind of assistance, a certain kind ofrevitalization. Maybe all these forlorn urban areas — in 100 years, 200 years, that’s still aproblem, still something that needs to be addressed, and maybe that would happen. So I said,O.K., I’ll set the book in the future. But of course once you do that, you have to talk about therest of the future, the rest of the context. So that’s how this book happened.

　　但想法在我腦子里還是一直轉(zhuǎn)著，我想，也許在未來，一個跟現(xiàn)在很不一樣的未來里，美國會需要某種特定的協(xié)助，某種振興。這些荒涼的城區(qū)——未來100、200年里，也許仍然是個問題，仍然需要去面對，那么到時也許就能實現(xiàn)這個想法。于是我就說，好吧，我把這本書設(shè)定在未來。但當然，一旦你要這么做，未來的其余部分，語境的其余部分，你也得說說。這本書就是這么來的。

　　I still took a lot of the research that I did on my Shenzhen trip. Not the details of that visit, butI guess the feeling, the ethos of those workers, the sense of community that they had. Andreally, this novel started out as a novel about community, but a certain kind of community.But then it became larger.

　　在深圳的那次調(diào)研至今還是能帶給我很多東西。我想重要的不是那段經(jīng)歷的細節(jié)，而是感受，那些工人的氣質(zhì)，那種擁有一個社區(qū)的感覺。實際上，這部小說在一開始就是一部講社區(qū)的小說，只不過是某種特定的社區(qū)。然后才開始擴展開來。

　　[During the question-and-answer session, a young man asked Mr. Lee about his understandingof Chinese culture, citing a scene in “On Such a Full Sea.” There is a plot spoiler here for thosewho have not yet read the novel.]

　　[在問答環(huán)節(jié)，一個年輕人援引了《在如此完滿的大海上》中的一個片段，請李昌來談?wù)剬χ袊幕睦斫?。這里有對書中情節(jié)的透露，望尚未閱讀這部小說的讀者知悉。]

　　Q. When I was reading the book, there was a point for me when the story really turned and Ibecame invested. And that was when the Joseph character, the boy, drowns and then there’sthe funeral scene, because that just rang so true for me in my experience of Chinese funerals.It got me really curious how much of, is it a question of how much you really know aboutChinese culture or is it like overlap with your understanding of Korean culture? What is it aboutChinese culture that stands out from Korean culture or American culture, that’s distinctive foryou? What is something inherent besides the obvious differences?

　　問：在看這本書的時候，對我來說有一個轉(zhuǎn)折點，讓我開始投入進去了。就是那個叫約瑟夫的男孩溺死后的葬禮，因為它顯得很真實，喚起了我自己參加中式葬禮的經(jīng)歷。這讓我很想知道，你對中國文化實際上有多少了解，或者說這種文化是不是跟你對韓國文化的理解有重合?對你來說，中國文化跟韓國文化或美國文化相比，有什么格外不一樣的地方?除了那些明顯的差異以外，它們有什么內(nèi)在的不同點?

　　A. I don’t know that there is. There is a little bit that it just bleeds over from Korean funerals, Isuppose. I’d seen Chinese ones on film. [laughs] I think my editor was like, oh, you’re reallygoing into all this business about … Why are you going into this scene? I had a hard timeexplaining it to her. Because I felt like that scene — and I’m really glad you brought it up —that scene, it was important to me because it’s when the community comes together andreally taps into a feeling. It’s the first time that Fan really notices that and feels like there’s beena real bonding, even with all these disparate people that don’t really care about each other.That this one moment is sort of crystallizing a feeling.

　　答：我不知道。我認為，有些地方和韓式葬禮類似。我通過電影看過中式葬禮。[笑] 我覺得我編輯的反應(yīng)是這樣的，哦，你真的要深入到所有這些東西里去……你為什么要寫這一幕?我艱難地就此對她作了解釋。因為我感覺那一幕——我真的很高興你提了出來——那一幕，它之所以對我很重要，是因為整個社區(qū)在此刻團結(jié)在了一起，而且它真實地挖掘了一種感受。這是范第一次真正注意到這一點，而且感覺人們之間存在一種真實的聯(lián)系，即使是與這些各不相同并且對彼此漠不關(guān)心的人。這一刻在某種程度上使一種感覺變得清清楚楚。

　　And part of my anxiety about this community that I was writing about was that they’d gottena little bit soft, a little bit comfortable, a little bit in some ways detached from one another,because the bonds of their community were so structurally sound and structurally kind ofprescribed, that they’d forgotten about them. When everyone’s a cousin, everyone’s a cousin.No one’s like, right there. And so that was something that I felt that she would see or feel. Andnot just her — the “we.” They begin to feel something, that there’s this final burst, for the firsttime in a long time, this rush, this drug of feeling. And I guess that’s why that scene exists.

　　對于我所書寫的這個社區(qū)，我的一部分焦慮原因就是人們會變得有些軟弱、有些舒適，在某些方面有些彼此疏遠了，因為他們社區(qū)的聯(lián)系在結(jié)構(gòu)上如此牢固，而且結(jié)構(gòu)上早就固定下來，所以他們會忘掉這些。如果所有人都是親戚，也就沒什么感覺了。好像沒人在那里。所以，那就是我覺得她會看到或感受到的東西。而且不僅是她——是“我們”。他們開始感受到了一些東西，于是后來出現(xiàn)這個最后時刻的迸發(fā)，這是長期以來第一次，這種強烈的感覺，這種熾烈的感情。我認為這就是那一幕存在的原因。