Echo in the Dark

A radio station strives to keep the airwaves free.

by David Remnick September 22, 2008

In the land of the Soviets, the voice of the Kremlin was everywhere, an omnipresent reality-via-radio that long preceded Orwell’s dystopia. Lenin and Trotsky fomented revolution primarily in print—in the commanding editorials of Iskra and Pravda, in the frenzied leaflets passed around in St. Petersburg meeting halls and later reprinted in “Ten Days That Shook the World”—but the leading instrument of enculturation and inundation under Joseph Stalin was a broadcast technology called radio-tochka, literally “radio point,” a primitive receiver with no dial and no choice. These cheap wood-framed devices were installed in apartments and hallways, on factory floors, in train stations and bus depots; they played in hospitals, nursing homes, and military barracks; they were nailed to poles in the fields of collective farms and blared along the beaches from the Baltic to the Sea of Okhotsk.

他由母亲一手带大，而她却是父亲养育的。他母亲安排了他们的约会，她不知道他母亲是否已经把这件事告诉了他。

思玉38岁，而瀚峰，那个思玉将要见到的男人，已经44岁了。思 玉的父亲把思玉抚养到大学毕业，然后与一个小他30岁的女人结了婚。女人有一个从前婚带过来的儿子，思玉的父亲把他当作了自己的儿子。男孩今年高三，思玉 告诉父亲，他应该过上平和简单的生活，所以思玉客客气气与父亲的新家保持着距离。每年的除夕，还有其它一些节假日，思玉都是和瀚峰的母亲一起过的，她是学 院的动物学教授。老太太什么时候有兴致邀请思玉没有准头，所以思玉尽量让自己空出来，结果大多数节假日她都是孤身一人。

思玉和瀚峰互相打了招呼，思玉说，“这些天戴教授一定牵挂学生 了，”尽管她知道，他母亲牵挂的恐怕不是学生，而是她办公室里储物架上的那些哺乳动物和鸟类的白色头骨。她的抽屉里放着解剖刀、钳子、镊子，她总是小心地 把它们擦干净，保管好。她用对动物研究的热忱来遮掩她对人的冷漠。思玉与戴教授初次相遇是在学院开学的那一周，新生们被领着参观校园的时候。老太太正在昏 暗的走廊里追赶着一只大摇大摆走路的猫头鹰，一点也没有注意到眼前的一大群新生。她微微弓着腰，像是猫头鹰的妈妈保护着自己的孩子。有个男孩走前一步，想 仔细看看猫头鹰，她赶紧把猫头鹰抱在怀里，瞪了男孩一眼，然后大步走开了。

瀚峰说，“她肯定很不习惯退休生活。”他母亲看轻那些一有机会就 为别人做媒的女人，但是瀚峰回国还没有几天，她就提出她有一个以前的学生，瀚峰应该见见。母亲没有多说什么，但瀚峰感觉她想的是他的婚事。虽然离开母亲已 经有二十年，他的这一点并没有改变，他总是在母亲把话说出来之前就知道她心里想的是什么，他不知道母亲是否意识到这一点。

 

转自：东方早报

毛尖：《智取威虎山》中有句经典台词，“八年了，别提它了！”我想，碰到有人问长问短又问八年出鞘的《巫言》，你是不是也很想说这句台词？说老实 话，看了有关《巫言》的不少采访和文章，我也对自己说，不要再问“巫”是什么了，不要再问“当年”和“过程”了。但接着的问题是，我可以像所有的菜鸟粉丝 那样，问一些最傻气的问题吗？能告诉我们，你是不是也很在乎容貌？你迷信吗？谁是你在这个世界上最亲的人？当然，最好不要说你家里的人，也不要说你的流浪 猫。

朱天文：是不是在乎容貌，应该这么说，有我在乎的人在面前，我就很在乎。很久以前我写过一篇短文《女人与衣服》说，女为“己悦”而衣，不为给谁 看，而就是自己喜欢，像我很爱的王维那首诗：“木末芙蓉花，山中发红萼。涧户寂无人，纷纷开且落。”自开自落，是自证的，有一种喜悦。至于女为“己悦者” 衣，为自己喜欢的人穿衣，那是有了可以讲话的对方，不但开心，还刺激，有挑战性。而古来所谓士为“知己者”死，女为“悦己者”容，女为喜欢自己的人穿衣， 那是谦逊，敬重世情。像七月香港书展，有读者从东京、上海飞来的，从洛阳坐火车来的。我约他们四人在饭店咖啡厅见，便盛装盛容出现，为报答他们的远道而 来。

说到迷信，我只怕是理性过了头点。世上最亲的人，排除掉家人和流浪猫，那当然是侯孝贤导演。我认识他快三十年，参加过他的电影剧本工作至少十七部。

毛尖：我读大学的时候，看到了你的照片，当时真的是惊为天人。我反反复复看你的照片，你们三姊妹的照片，你们全家的照片，羡慕死了。后来，我看 你的小说，比如《世纪末的华丽》；看你编剧的电影，比如《恋恋风尘》，常常会因为小说或电影而想到美丽的作者；反而，在你这本颇多个人性东西出场的《巫 言》中，我倒觉得不那么朱天文了。还是，通过这本新著，你分花拂柳旁逸斜出地就是要让人“迷失巫界”？当然，“迷失巫界”，换一个说法，也就是对读者当头 棒喝，揭露出眼下世界的淫淫乱乱。不过，我很想知道，这怪力乱的世界对你，是不是亦有它的迷人处？

朱天文：是的，我永远迷恋现世。为了把迷恋整理出一个头绪，所以我写小说。

米兰•昆德拉
The unbearable weight of history
历史不能承受之重

2008年10月16日
据《经济学人》印刷版

翻译： zhs204

一段尘封已久的丑闻或将玷污一代巨擘的声名。

米兰•昆德拉的悲情之作概述了中欧地区同其他欧陆国家的分离之痛。其作品如《生命中不能承受之轻》讲述了笼罩在极权主义的阴影之下或被其毁灭的生活。

德弗拉契克的故事非常适合写成一部昆德拉的小说。德弗拉契克曾是一名效命于西方的捷克间谍。1950年他在前往布拉格执行一项秘密任务时遭捷克秘密警察逮 捕。随后他受到拷打，并在劳改营内劳教14年。幸运的是他没有被判处极刑。六十年来，他始终认为是他儿时的一位朋友Iva Militka背叛了他；在一次秘密行程中，他曾很不明智地同她有所接触。同样，她也时常自责，认为自己在学生朋友面前讲了太多关于前来拜访自己的人的情 况。现在，布拉格一家极权主义统治研究机构的一名历史学家Adam Hradilek找到了一份警局记录，上面表明年轻的昆德拉正是这些学生朋友中的告密者。

 转自《南方周末》

作者: 南方周末记者 柴会群 发自绵阳 

在绵阳永安安置点，在地震中失去女婿的王明洁一家5口人生活在一间板房里。失去亲人和生活压力积聚，是大多数北川家庭震后共同的阴影。 本报记者翁洹/摄

THE HOME TEAM
How the Chinese experienced the Olympics.
by Peter Hessler

The Chinese take big events in stride; this was how they survived Mao, and weathered disasters like the Sichuan earthquake.

The night before the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics, Wei Ziqi joined two of his neighbors on the local barricade. It consisted of a rope stretched taut across the road, and the attendants had been given wooden paddles that read “Stop!” in both Chinese and English. Two of the neighbors wore blue-and-white polo shirts with the “Beijing 2008” logo across the chest. Sancha, their village, is a ninety-minute drive from the capital, and marks a point where the Great Wall winds through the mountains of northern China. At the barricade there was also a piece of paper with a message in English: “Please help us to protect the Great Wall. This section of the Great Wall is not open to the public.”

According to the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, or BOCOG, there were more than 1.7 million citizen volunteers in the region. The most visible ones were stationed at Olympic events and at places like the airport and downtown intersections, which were usually staffed by high-school and college students who spoke some English. These urban volunteers had been outfitted by Adidas, an official Olympic sponsor; the company provided gray trousers, new running shoes, and bright-blue shirts made of a high-tech material called ClimaLite. But the ClimaLite and the corporate sponsorship disappeared in the countryside. That was one way to gauge distance—north of the capital, the urban development thinned out, and along the way the volunteers’ gear became more ragged. The ClimaLite was replaced by cheap cotton; the running shoes were no longer standard issue; the Adidas logo was nowhere to be seen. Many peasants wore only a red armband, because they were saving the new shirt for something more important than the Olympics.

And yet the rural volunteers were diligent. Sancha’s population is less than two hundred, but the village had enlisted thirty residents to staff the barrier around the clock. Earlier that afternoon, when Wei Ziqi drove me through the countryside to the village, we were stopped at two other checkpoints. We also passed a crumbling Ming-dynasty tower manned by a lonely sentinel wearing a green armband that read “Great Wall Grounds-keeper.” In Bohai township, six miles from the village, I registered with the police. For the Olympic period, the authorities had banned foreigners from spending a night in this part of the countryside, but they made an exception because I had rented a house in Sancha since 2001. “Just don’t hike up to the Great Wall,” the cop warned me. He said that the big tourist sites were open, but everything else was off limits. On his desk was a stack of police manuals entitled “The Terrorist Prevention Handbook.” While we chatted, I opened one to a random chapter: “What to Do if There’s a Terrorist Attack in a Karaoke Parlor.”

For China, 2008 had been the most traumatic year since 1989, when the Tiananmen Square massacre occurred. In March, there had been riots in Tibet, followed by a brutal crackdown by the authorities. Overseas, human-rights demonstrators disrupted the Olympic-torch relay, leading to an angry nationalist backlash in China. In May, a powerful earthquake in Sichuan province killed more than sixty thousand people. Recently, there had been a fatal attack on Chinese military police in Xinjiang, a region in the far west where much of the native Muslim population resents China’s rule. All these events had contributed to the stress of the Olympic year, but I didn’t understand the concern about the Great Wall. “They’re worried about foreigners, people who might want Tibet independence,” Wei Ziqi told me. “They don’t want them to go up to the Great Wall with a sign or something.”

It was fear of a photo op—that somebody would unfurl a political banner and take a picture atop China’s most distinctive structure. The government also worried that a foreigner might hike in a remote area and get injured, creating bad press. For this, the authorities had mobilized more than five thousand people in the region, but labor is plentiful in rural China. And these volunteers were getting paid—another difference from the city, where patriotic students were willing to donate their time to the Motherland’s Olympic effort. Peasants were too practical for that; in addition to the free shirt, each rural volunteer received five hundred yuan a month, about seventy-three dollars. In Sancha, where the average resident earned about a thousand dollars per year, it was good money.

For Wei Ziqi, though, the Olympics didn’t represent a windfall. He and his wife ran one of the few businesses in the village, a small restaurant and guesthouse, and they missed the Chinese city dwellers who usually drove out on weekends. Since July 20th, the government had restricted the use of private cars, in an attempt to improve the capital’s notorious air pollution. The system was regulated through license-plate numbers: cars with plates ending in even digits could be used only on even-numbered days, and the odds were limited to odd days. This effectively ended overnight trips—if anybody drove to the village and stayed past midnight, he was stuck there for another day.

I never heard Wei Ziqi complain about the Olympics; nor did he show any animosity toward the hordes of “Free Tibet” protesters who were supposedly threatening the Great Wall. For a middle- or upper-class Beijing resident, the reaction would have been more emotional—such people were proud of hosting the Games, and many Chinese had been upset by the disruptions of the torch relay. But rural folks knew the limits of what they could control, and there was a distinct detachment from outside affairs, even those which affected the village. No adults in Sancha planned to attend any Olympic festivities. When I asked Wei Ziqi if he and his family would accompany me to some events, he said, “I don’t want to go.”
“Why not?”
“We’re not supposed to go into the city,” he said. “They don’t want a lot of people there right now.”
I assured him that spectators with tickets were welcome at the Games.
“It’s not necessary,” he said. “We can watch it on television.”

The night before the opening ceremonies, I joined him at the barricade with the other villagers. Wei Ziqi’s shift was 9 P.M. to 6 A.M. Only two cars passed through, both of them dropping off locals. Afterward, the vehicles turned around to hustle back to the city, because they had odd-numbered plates. It was like “Cinderella”—nobody lingered on the road after the clock struck midnight.

One barricade volunteer was a middle-aged man named Gao Yongfu. “President Bush just arrived,” he announced, fiddling with a small radio. “He’s in Beijing now. Putin is coming, too.” He continued, “An American company has the rights for Olympics television. They have the rights for the whole world! Even if China wants to broadcast the Games, it has to go through that American company.”

The third volunteer, a woman named Xue Jinlian, didn’t think that that sounded right. “They can’t control what China broadcasts,” she said.
“Yes, they can.”
“I don’t think so. Not in China’s own country!” Xue was silent for a while, and then said, “Chinese people are naturally smart. Their problem is they don’t have enough money. You look at America, and a lot of the top scientists are Chinese. There’s a lot of smart people here, but if there’s not enough money they leave.”

Village conversations had a way of veering off suddenly, like a hawk that catches some invisible air current, but inevitably they returned to settle on certain topics: food, weather, money. Gao brought us back to the weather—the air was heavy, but he said that the government wouldn’t let it rain the following night. “They can make it rain somewhere else instead,” he said. “I don’t know how it works, but it uses high technology.”

The villagers were still discussing the weather a little before midnight, when I walked back to my house and went to bed. Later, I heard that the first car of August 8th had come through the barricade at around 2 A.M. The license ended with the number two—a Beijing motorist determined to make the most of his twenty-four hours. That same day, the government would fire more than a thousand silver-iodide-laced rockets into the sky, insuring perfect dryness for the opening ceremonies. At 5 A.M., jet lag woke me up, and I wandered back down the road. Behind the barricade, Wei Ziqi dozed in the passenger seat of his car, and morning light shone on the Jundu Mountains, and nothing about the peaceful scene suggested that this day was different from any other.

  转自徕卡中文摄影杂志

“To See Life，To See the World”—— 这是《Life》杂志创始人Henry Luce在1936年11月19日创刊号上的第一句话，第一期《Life》，创下了当日销量42万5000份的记录，也是从这一天开始，摄影成为一种主流 新闻载体，进入人们的世界。

《Life》见证了摄影史上最辉煌的一段时光，即便在停刊后，也依然不减当年的风采——时代华纳集团与Getty Images宣布，将让《LIFE》在互联网上重新亮相：

“LIFE.com 将向人们免费开放《Life》杂志数以千万计的图片存档及尚未发布的作品，用户不仅可以自由定制、购买《LIFE》照片的画册，同时可以与朋友分享自己的 图片收藏，玩有趣的Life图片拼图，除此之外，Getty Images还将定期在Life.com上发布全球摄影师最新的摄影作品，其中包括每日新闻、娱乐、体育、名流、旅行、动物等分类。”

“在Life.com上，任何图片搜索与浏览都是免费的，人们可以自由沉浸于图片的世界，看到生活，看到世界”。

新版Life.com将在2009年初上线。

 

 

中国昨天为中国改革30年前重要的标志性人物华国锋举行了高规格的葬礼。现任九位常委，悉数到场为他们的前辈送行。***和朱镕基、李瑞环等退休高官，也前往道别。

87岁的华国锋，在北京奥运会开幕后第12天悄然离去。28年前，在他任上，中国曾因苏联对阿富汗的入侵，与西方阵营一道抵制了莫斯科奥运 会。今天，苏联早已消失，驻在阿富汗的，是美国及盟国的军队，而中国则已不再似30年前的黑白分明，小心地在格鲁吉亚事件中，与东西方维持着谨慎的平衡。

上世纪70年代末，华国锋的头像，曾与***的画像并列，在中国各地的政府、学校、家庭以及各类活动中出现。今天，在官方举办的遗体告别会上，似乎没有选到一张更清晰的近照——年迈的他面向左前方，微露笑意，穿着中国政坛今天早已少见的中山装。

中国的现任领导者，在华国锋当政时代，或正在基层的单位中，默默无闻，还未等到擢升机会；或刚进入重新招生的高校读书；或离开学校不久，正从杂务做起——那时，他们距离中国的最高权力中心，还有遥远得难以想象的距离。

无论从哪个方面看，华国锋都应是标志性的人物。他是中国1949年后第二任最高领导者，也是***指认的第三个接班人，他指挥的抓捕激进左派的行 动，不止让4个当时中国权力核心圈的热门人物突然下狱，也让中国最终舍弃革命式的原教旨主义，走向市场和开放消除了障碍。不过，这位按当时中国政治气候具 备合法接班地位的领导人，在1978年其后几年的关键转型时刻中，黯然离任。那个时代的中国人，经常可在电视上，看到前党中央主席的凝重表情，他的身份已 然换成了党的副主席，到后来则只是中央委员。

 

Fun and Games

Week Two at the Olympics.

by Anthony Lane September 1, 2008

原文链接：http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/09/01/080901fa_fact_lane