译者 君麟
How the Nobel Prize winner is developing a new genre
David Gray/Reuters
诺贝尔奖得主是如何推动一个新的流派产生的路透社 大卫.格雷
Five years ago, book agent Toby Eady was giving a talk in Beijing when an audience member asked him why he consistently promoted books about the female Chinese experience — chronicles of Chinese Cinderellas, concubines’ daughters and the like. Was Eady promoting a one-sided picture of victimization to Western eyes? asked the audience member. What about the male side of the Chinese story?
五年前,书商托比.伊迪正在北京发表一个讲话，这时一名听众问他，“为什么你常倾向于出版有关中国女性经历的书籍——比如中国版灰姑娘的故事，情妇之女的故事等等。”他质疑道：“是你促使了西方读者只能片面而有欺骗性的一面吗?有关中国男性的故事都哪去了？“
Eady, who nursemaided best-sellers like Jung Chang’s Wild Swans — China’s Gone with the Wind — paused a beat before retorting, “Do you know who belongs to book clubs? Women.”
即使是成功的推广了像张戎的《野天鹅》（这本书被誉为中国版的《乱世佳人》）这样的畅销书的伊迪，也被问的一愣，随后答道，“你知道读书的都是哪些人吗?是女人。” （图为张戎）
The awarding of this year’s Nobel prize for literature to Chinese author Mo Yan marks a swing of the pendulum in how the West sees Chinese literature, highlighting the increasing number of male Chinese writers reaching a global audience.
今年，诺贝尔文学奖由中国作家莫言获得，这标志着西方看待中国文学的方式发生了变化,并使越来越多的中国男性作家得到全球读者的关注。
Male Chinese writers might not be as famous as female ones, but they present the other, much-needed perspective — one that is lustier, masculine-minded and befitting a nation facing a male surplus.
中国的男性作家可能不如一些女作家那么知名，但他们提供了更多的，更需要被关注的视角——包括好色心理，大男子主义以及在一个面临男性盈余国度中的适应方式。
To understand the significance of the masculine swing, imagine if the outside world’s perception of, say, America, were shaped primarily by reading writers like Edith Wharton, Emily Dickinson, Toni Morrison, and Betty Friedan. No Hemingway, no F. Scott Fitzgerald, no Louis L’Amour, no Raymond Chandler. What a strange America this would be.
想理解文学是怎样影响男子气概的，那就想象一下如果其他国家的人只能通过阅读像伊迪丝·华顿，艾米莉•狄金森，托尼·莫里森，贝蒂·弗里丹这些女作家的作品来了解美国，而不是海明威，F•斯科特•菲茨杰拉德， 路易斯.拉摩 ,雷蒙德·钱德勒这些男性作家来了解。那么美国男人在其他国家人的心目中将会变成什么样子。
Mo Yan and his cohorts write salacious stories. Graphic. Scatological. The obsessions are making money, having sex, with possessing rather than being possessed.
莫言以及他同年龄的作家们写的文章，抽象而又淫秽。文中人物的人生目的是赚钱,做爱,掌控别人，而非被他人掌控。
Take this passage from Mo Yan’s Red Sorghum, a full throttle yarn about a family’s struggles during the Japanese invasion. Granddad Yu is heartbroken after grandson Douguan’s testicle is bitten off by one of the packs of dogs made feral by starvation. Douguan’s childhood friend Beauty is encouraged to indulge in some sex play to see whether his parts are in working order:
莫言所著的《红高粱》中的一段，讲诉了一个家庭在日本侵略时的奋斗历程。“爷爷”余占鳌在儿子余豆官的一个睾丸被成群饿疯了的野狗咬掉后悲痛欲绝。于是便诱惑豆官儿时的玩伴美儿与自己的儿子做一些性游戏来看看他的那话儿是否还能正常工作。
“Timidly, she held it in her sweaty hand and felt it gradually get warmer and thicker. It began to throb, just like her heart.”
“她害羞的把它握在她汗湿的手中，感觉它逐渐变暖变大。它开始颤动，像她的心一样颤动 。”
Granddad, elated to see a continuation of the family line, runs out, uttering perhaps the most memorable line in the book: “Single stalk garlic is the hottest!”
“爷爷”开心的看到家族血脉得以延传,于是跑出门去,大声叫出整本书中最让人影像深刻的一句话:“独苗的蒜头才最辣!”
These stories offer another perspective on Chinese obsessions — in this case, family lineage. (Anyone wondering whether this lineage business is just highly colored fiction need only scan last week’s news about Hong Kong billionaire Cecil Chao, who put out $65 million to a successful suitor for his lesbian daughter’s hand. Talk about Matrimony on A Bounty.)
这些故事展现中国人让人着迷的另一些观念——这本书中展现了家族血统观。(那些怀疑中国的血脉观点被过度渲染了的人，只需要参考上周的新闻，关于香港亿万富翁赵世曾，悬赏6500万美元给能够成功的追求到他的同性恋女儿，并与之结婚的男性。)
There is, of course, more to male Chinese writing than Rabelaisian humor and power-crazed protagonists. A particular favorite of mine is the Inspector Chen series, written by Anthony Award-winner Qiu Xialong. The books detail the adventures of Shanghai poet-policeman Chen Cao and are set in the early 1990s, when China is beginning its rapid economic climb.
当时,很多中国作家笔下的男性主角讲着黄色笑话、疯狂追逐权力。我特别喜欢安东尼奖获奖作者裘小龙的陈探长系列小说。这个系列的故事时间设置在1990年代早期，描述了当中国经济开始迅速攀升时，一个酷爱诗歌的上海警察陈超的故事。
These are gentle stories, filled with melancholy and mouth-wateringly good descriptions of food. Endemic government corruption means Chen rarely gets his man, even if he solves the case, and his peregrinations bring to mind Donna Leon’s Inspector Brunetti, or Alexander McCall Smith’s Precious Ramotswe.
这是一个轻松文雅的故事,文笔充满忧郁并口若悬河的描述各色美食。腐败的地方政府使得陈超即使破了案，也很难抓到犯人。他的经历让人联想起唐娜•利昂笔下的检查员布鲁内蒂，或亚历山大.考尔史密斯笔下的普雷舍丝.拉蒙特斯威。
For too long, Western perceptions of Chinese have been essentially a female one, brought about to a large extent by the hugely successful writings of writers ranging from Han Suyin to the two Amys, Tan and Chua, who, though American, draw hugely on their Chinese roots for their stories. They have offered vivid, touching, and loving portraits of dysfunctional families, of the immigrant experience, of female empowerment. Stories that need a woman’s touch.
长久以来,西方基本上是从中国的女性作家笔下来了解中国，这在很大程度上导致了从韩素英到两个“虎妈”谭恩美和蔡美儿等作家的大获成功,尽管她们是美国人,但她们的故事根在中国。他们为冲突不断的移民家庭描绘了一幅又一幅生动、有触感的爱的图画。描述女性的故事,需要女性的感官去体验。
In The Good Women of China, journalist Xinran Xue describes a visit to a remote part of China where women walk with a strange swagger. She discovers it is because the women live in a dry region with little forestation, and are forced to use sharp-edged leaves to staunch menstrual bleeding. I doubt a male writer would have spotted that telling detail.
在《中国的好女人》一书中，记者薛欣然描述到，在中国边远地区有些女性走路姿势奇怪。她发现,这是因为这些女性生活在没什么植被的干燥地区，并被迫使用边缘锋利的树叶来制止月经出血。我认为男性作家不会发现并描述这个细节。
Of course, these are stories that need to be told. But the surge of stories with tropes of infanticide, abortion and rape reinforce Western perceptions of the Chinese experience as being overwhelmingly feminine. As victims or objects of desire.
当然,这些都是需要被聆听的故事。但是,一大堆关于杀婴、堕胎和强奸的故事，加强了西方认为中国的女性处于被压迫的环境中，是欲望下的受害者和牺牲品。
Women’s stories, no matter how vital, don’t necessarily square with all that’s going on in China today, which is facing a surplus of males following three decades of a government-mandated population planning policy — popularly referred to as the one-child policy — that reinforced Chinese families’ cultural preference for sons. By some estimates, there are now roughly about 120 men for every 100 women now, and the numbers are much more skewed in rural areas.
这些女性问题尽管真实存在，但不一定符合中国现在的情况，中国现在面对的是三十年的政府人口规划政策后产生的男性过剩——这个政策通常被称为独生子女政策——加强了中国家庭的重男轻女的文化观念。据估计，现在中国男女比例大约为12：10，如今男多女少的情况在农村地区更为严重。
In 2009, I visited such a gender-imbalanced village in central China while reporting for the Wall Street Journal. Three of the village men had been the target of bridal scams. Due to female scarcity, bridal prices — like a male dowry and called cai li in Chinese — had shot up to as much as several years’ farming income. These men and their families had borrowed heavily to pay the bride prices, only to see the women decamp with the money.
2009年，我为《华尔街日报》工作时访问了一个位于中国中部的性别不平衡的村庄。三个村里的男人被新娘诈骗。由于女性的稀缺，新娘的价格——就像是男性的嫁妆，在中国被称为彩礼——已经飙升至高达数年的农业收入。这些男人和他们的家庭为了支付彩礼而负债累累，得到的新娘却带着钱逃走了。
The story had potential tragicomic overtones. I had visions of women sprinting across rice fields, veils rippling in the wind. Villages filled with horny, dejected men.
这个故事具有潜在的悲喜剧色彩。我想象到，女人们穿越稻田，头巾在风中飘荡。村庄里却站满了好色，沮丧的男人们。
But the reality was a bit more grim, The village, called Xin ‘An, or New Peace, is mostly filled with old people and children. Few people can make a living farming the family plot, so the youth leave for city jobs. The few remaining men intend to marry only to dump their wives back in the village, as caretakers and bearers of children. However, many women — having tasted the delights of financial independence and city living — weren’t biting. I could see why. Xin’ An’s bucolic charms were few. The village had just one shop, and it sold things like detergent and fertilizer. No lipstick, no face cream.
但现实是更严峻,一个叫做新安的村庄,大部分居民是老人和孩子。很少人可以以种地为家庭谋生,所以年轻人离开农村去城市工作。剩下为数不多的的男人打算结婚后丢下他们村子里的妻子,看家并照顾孩子。但是，许多女性——在尝到了经济独立和城市生活带来的愉悦后——便不愿留下。我能明白为什么。新安村没什么田园风光。村里只有一个商店,出售诸如洗涤剂和肥料等物品。这里买不到口红，也没有面霜。
New Peace Village was undergoing a subtle shift in its way of thinking. One of the duped grooms’ fathers worried about scraping together enough cai li for his other, still unmarried sons. “Wish I had daughters,” he said ruefully, upending centuries of ingrained teaching.
新安村村民的思维方式正经历一个微妙的转变。有一个被骗婚新郎的父亲，担心不能为自己仍然未婚的其他儿子凑出足够的彩礼。伤感地说“真希望我养的是女儿。”这颠覆了几个世纪的根深蒂固的传统思想。
Mo is not the first Chinese author to get the Nobel nod. Gao Xingjian (currently a French national, but born in China) won in 2000 for his travelogue Soul Mountain, a far less accessible piece of work. Mo’s win is yet another small step that helps direct the world’s attention to the writings of Chinese men. Their kind of sinewy prose reflects the more aggressive aspirations of today’s China, increasingly intent on promoting its worldview and place in the world.
莫言不是第一个获得诺贝尔的中国作家。高行健(目前是法国国家,但在中国出生的)在2000年，以他的一篇难以被超越的旅行传记《灵山》赢得过诺贝尔。莫言的胜利是有助于使世界关注中国男性作品的另一小步。他们种那强劲有力的散文反映了今天的中国人所拥有的更强烈的愿望,越来越专注于宣扬自己的世界观和确立在世界上的地位。
本文由自动聚合程序取自网络，内容和观点不代表数字时代立场
