新

more

年

more

快

more

乐

more

大满贯登顶好过年

这个春节过得最好的人非郑洁/晏紫莫数。实力本在雅典奥运冠军李婷/孙甜甜之上的郑洁和晏紫终尝所愿，于除夕前取得澳大利亚网球公开赛女双冠军。





对本届澳网来说这是个大冷门。郑洁/晏紫排名世界33位，各自的单打排名在50-80位之间，本届澳网也仅排第12号种子，得以在对手领先一盘，而惊险度过第二盘中两个赛点后，最终在第三盘击败上届美网冠军，本届头号种子，本地AUSSIE和强龙YANKEE的组合，惊人程度可想而知。



如果女子单打再加把劲，大有效俄罗斯红粉兵团崛起世界网坛之势。只可怜中国男网单打无人能入世界前百位，双打更没听说过。身为中国男，无比之惭愧，只好兴高采烈陪伴伟大的中国妇女过春节。

more

Happy Spring Festival (from appledaily.tw)

新春願望
2006年01月28日
今天除夕，明天就是狗年了。本報在此向各位讀者大人拜年：祝福大家：燈中有油，小屋溫暖，內心平安。 狗年我們有點卑微的願望。首先是經濟好轉，大家收入比去年多，千萬別被炒魷魚。其次呢，治安變好，燒殺擄掠、偷矇拐騙都銳減。強暴的、性騷擾的、劈腿出牆的都洗心革面上教堂。騙錢的也都加入慈濟功德會。再來是交通改善，走人行道平平順順，上馬路不會被車撞。最後是無恥之徒都良心發現，立委、媒體都重新做人，不再是社會亂源。 最重要的是：政客們請都放了我們一馬，過年時節千萬別演講文告，也不要搞事作秀。嘴巴請只吃喝，拜託不要發表高論或罵人捧人。如果要搞緋聞，倒是歡迎，讓大家新春娛樂一番嘛。 祝福政客們：狗嘴吐象牙，行善不疲乏，相忍為國家，福報多如麻。

more

朱建陵 20億人次大流動 春節變春劫

2006.01.29　 中國時報
「台胞」搭乘包機返鄉過年，大陸媒體炒得挺熱，眾多官員到場送行，「台胞」歡天喜地，航空公司不但派出精選美女空姐隨行服務，還致贈春節禮品，而搭乘包機的台胞，卻經常僅僅百餘人。這種場面，看在擠破頭卻仍買不到火車站票回家的大陸民工眼裡，不知作何感想？
在春節前後四十天的時間裡，大陸去年有十九億人次的的「大流動」，今年預計將超過二十億，再創歷史新高，而在這些冷漠數據的背後，則是無數的辛酸，不但買票累，搭車更累。由於「春運」（春節期間的交通運輸），大陸有人戲稱春節已經變成「春劫」了。
大陸許多排了兩三天買火車票者，最終仍無功而返，許多大陸民工在排隊買票的過程中突發性的出現精神失常現象，另一些大陸民工則紛紛到超市購買紙尿褲，以因應車上由於乘客實在太多，長時間搭車根本無法走進廁所的窘況。
即使如此，對多數一整年都在打拚的民工來說，春節回家一趟，看看父母臉上的微笑，感受鄰居的熱情，才能慰藉他們一年的辛勤，所以多數人還是擠破頭地想盡辦法回家。
但一些比較年輕的民工，則選擇了留在客居地繼續工作。北京某經營餐館的台商說，他的店只在除夕當天休息，其它時間一律照常營業。他說，餐廳裡的工作人員因為買票太累，多屬選擇留在北京。
對於留在工作地的「外來務工者」，同樣是外來客主要聚集地之一的廣州，日前有媒體刊出一篇感動眾多民工的文章。文章說，還有許多人因經濟拮据買不起車票而無法回家過年，還有人因為害怕丟掉工作而選擇加班，更有人因為賺不到足夠的錢而無顏見江東父老。
對這些人，文章祝願他們也能吃上一頓豐盛的年夜飯、滿足自己一個小小的願望、愉快地懷念故鄉人。文章末了還說，「廣東人怎麼過年？熱鬧著呢，一起來吧！」希望他們能忘記自己是一個異鄉人：春節且忘身是客，暫把他鄉作故鄉。
這是從農村到城市工作的民工，至於大陸城市居民對於春節，最多的一句反應，可能是「沒勁！」根據一項針對北京、上海、廣州等超過十個城市二千名居民的電話調查結果，六三％的受訪者認為：現在過年「越來越沒滋味」，四一％的受訪者選擇以手機短信拜年。
相對於農民工基於傳統而搶搭回鄉列車，大陸城市居民對「春節」這回事，正陷於「淡陌」與「回歸」的兩極化發展過程中。眼見聖誕節、西洋情人節大行其道，大陸早有衛道者在網上貼出一篇「保衛春節宣言」，呼籲大陸民眾向傳統回歸。
對北京來說，今年這種回歸傳統的最大體現，可能是鞭炮的開禁。北京今年取消了維持十三年的禁令，允許民眾從除夕開始到正月十五元宵節早上九點到午夜十二點，可以燃放煙火爆竹。但或許因為禁止已經，一旦開放的消息傳出，早在除夕前幾天，北京街頭已經處處聽聞鞭炮聲了。

more

又想了想，觉得我错了

在中共封冰点的问题上，不应该太责怪袁伟时，否则就和他文章犯了同质性的错误。所谓欲加之罪，何患无辞？一百多年前的英法联军，八国联军如此，今天的中共也是如此。所以龙应台声讨“胡”作非为大体上还是对的。

more

大过年的，有这么馋人的吗？

王世襄王敦煌父子
http://www.sina.com.cn 2006年01月26日09:20 三联生活周刊
记者◎朱文轶
　　王敦煌:我出生时，祖父已经退休，母亲患肺病。两个旗人佣工玉爷和张奶奶照顾我们起居。玉爷负责杂事，张奶奶负责买菜做饭。说起吃，刚开始不是爱好，都是无意间不经意才学的，都是因为天天跟他们一块玩儿。
　　做饭现在讲饮食文化，都是瞎掰。比如说像以前，像我父亲，写很多文章，很多前辈也写过，那确实得懂，懂吃才能写。《红楼梦》里，饮食衬托当时的生活环境，借剧情发展说这事儿，那菜作为菜谱，能做得出来吗？比如那“茄鲞”，你琢磨去吧。凡能做菜的人，没人能做这菜的。吃主儿不是美食家。美食家，懂得多见得多，能引经据典写饮食。吃主儿则必须会点会买会做会吃。我算不上吃主儿，他(指王世襄)是。吃主儿认为，天下吃的，古今中外，只要我认为好吃，我就做，而且我可以爱怎么改怎么改。而且吃主儿，做的菜都不一个味，以我为主啊。
　　先单说点菜吧，首先，吃的东西物有所值，这东西贵要贵得有道理。还有，要花钱不多吃得好。吃主儿自己做饭，都得讲究什么东西做什么菜，料不能不好，也不能过好，这是讲究。就说海米拌芹菜，芹菜很便宜，可得选，什么芹菜能做，什么不能做。就要菜心里中间那一根，拿出跟海米拌。这跟餐馆不一样，餐馆不跟你拌芹菜，叫海米炒芹菜。海米要用3厘米以上的，跟个大弯钩一样，最高品级的，也叫大虾干，现在都没有了。芹菜根本不贵，但一捆只挑出那么一点就贵了吧。
　　以前经常自己去选料。我小时候，北京市场上也能见到鲜蘑菇，但是品种太少，其中野生的有两种，一种叫鸡腿蘑，一种叫柳蘑，外观和口感都差别很大。根据我父亲的经验，入馔时不能把它们混用。我是跟他学的采蘑菇，70年代，他从干校回北京，比较闲的时候，就琢磨起这口儿来了。他先是上菜市场找售货员打听，又按照售货员的指点骑车出永定门，在那儿的一所小学校传达室找到了以前往菜市场送蘑菇的张老汉。老人家告诉我父亲，他采蘑地点在永定河河沿，采必须会看“梢”，有“梢”的地方会一年年长出来。父亲取经回来的第一个工作日，就带我采蘑菇去了。从右安门出城，过第二传染病医院往南直奔中顶村。
　　那时候北京四季分明，各季节有各季节的菜。什么菜最好吃？时令鲜蔬。比如说“双冬”，这是普通菜，你现在到菜馆看，多着呢。不要说小餐馆，特级餐馆，也就卖十几块，就凭这个价，就不能买。当年，这个菜是春天，讲究用鲜冬笋和冬菇。不能用鲜香菇，因为鲜香菇的香味没有水发冬菇浓，鲜香菇爱出汤，你把汤倒了不好吃。冬笋买不到的时候，餐馆就不卖这菜了，挂一个牌子，说要吃等明年了。
　　再说葱烧海参，山东名菜，现在做这菜的非常多，真做好可麻烦了。这葱得点出来，你别瞧它是作料，可起着非常重要的作用。这葱有时令，春夏秋冬的葱不一样，葱烧海参用的是霜降之后挖出来的葱，又没霜冻，霜降之后的大葱最嫩。所以点这个菜，您就得在入冬之后，平常时候葱不好。
　　王世襄:我觉得现在的饮食，全变味了。最幸福的是孩子，他没吃过从前好的，吃什么都可以。我们吃过的，就觉得全不对了，吃饱肚子就完了。从一变之后，我也再不谈了，以前我也写过很多，现在完全绝望了，没什么可吃的——原料都没了，工艺没用，无米之炊。
　　他(王敦煌)会买会做，我也是会买会做。我以前每天早晨在朝阳市场，响铃就往里冲。20年前了。买完菜转地方，提一碗豆浆回家，跟买菜的人都熟。那买菜的人，有的是保姆，有的是名厨。比如从前给班禅做饭的刘文辉，也在那儿买菜。常买菜的人说出来都是行话，人家都以为我是大师傅。
　　我往里跑，占一个摊，就让别人在别的摊上给我带点别的，因为再去就没了。他需要买的我给他带，到时候交换。卖菜的每个人都认识，天天见。骑着自行车买菜是吃之前最有乐趣的一件事。
　　以前有种特殊宴会形式叫“拜三会”。一般由七八人以上，十来个人以内定期聚会，先定一个礼拜的某一天，轮流做东，做东的人主勺。定礼拜二就叫“拜二会”，选在礼拜三就叫“拜三会”。我父亲和居住在北京的福建同乡一共十二个人就设立了一个“拜三会”，按时间推算三个多月做一次东。我父亲做东时，几乎没有去过外面的馆子，都是请一位居住在北京的福建名厨陈依泗主勺在家开家宴。母亲去世后，家里发生了较大变故，抗战时期，父亲失业回到家中，家里的佣工少了很多，但“拜三会”还是延续着，就由我来主厨。福建菜以海鲜见长，但当年陈师傅烹制福建菜，北京市场上能见到海鲜已经很鲜见了，大概只有黄花鱼、比目鱼、海鳗这些，我觉得如果海鲜到了如此地步还不如用北京能轻易买到的新鲜河鲜取代。我做的大席就很少上福建菜了。每次菜单都由我草拟，通常要准备十几个菜，其中冷盘四个，压轴汤一个，其余以热炒为主，但也可能在这其中还有一款普通的汤菜。在全部菜肴之中，时令鲜蔬约占三分之一。“草拟”是因拟选的菜单还要以市场能买回的原料为准。
　　1983年，有个美食博览会。全国的品尝展览，三个品尝委员，一个是北大的王利器，一个是溥杰，一个是我。那时候真是饮食的高峰，全国大师傅都到北京来，原料也还没变呢，各地方最好的厨子来比赛。可做评委吃不抱，回家还喝粥呢。你只能用筷子尝一点，不能多吃，多吃吃饱了嘴就不灵了。有杯茶在那里搁着，吃一口还得漱口，这样嘴才灵。
　　我记得福建有二强，强木根和强曲曲两兄弟，已经死了一个了，福建当地的名厨。他们带一个菜来，就是“鸡汤海蚌”。海蚌在郑振铎的家乡，生长在淡水和咸水之间。为这个比赛是用飞机运来的，生蚌剥开之后搁在碗里边，盖上盖，然后把灌在壶里的烧开的鸡汤浇在上边，保持原来的味。现在海蚌还有，不过非常少了，没有特殊的贵宾来不会吃着。
　　我还记得石家庄有一个厨子，做一个鲤鱼，丝切成比牙签粗一点点，炸完了每根都不连着，而且不断没有折的，全炸酥了。这个厨子很出名，干炸鲤鱼，蘸一点面，炸完再浇上汁，就好像狮子头上的毛发那样。蛋清抽打，堆起如雪，用作奶油的代用品。那次比赛也反映出美食烹饪风气里一些不可取的地方，如“雪里藏蛟”是红烧鳝背放在盘心，四周堆起高高的蛋清。“鸳鸯戏水游飞龙”是上汤氽飞龙片，汤面上浮着蛋清做的鸳鸯。“雪花蟹斗”是蟹粉装入原壳，上面堆起一团蛋清。我如果在筵席上遇到这三道菜，前两道下筷时可以避开蛋清，后一道要先把蛋清拨了才能入口，可见这样用蛋清点缀对菜本身没什么帮助。那时候艺术拼盘之风也开始盛行，我也觉得费时费工，华而不实，不应该成为饮食风气的主流。
　　我还尝了几个家常菜，我比较注重家常菜。因为你不能光去注重高级菜，家常菜做好了也不容易，所以我就专门去尝了尝家常菜。比如山西有几道。我写一篇文章，就专门写这个事。
　　这次美食盛会后来编了套书，中国名菜谱，编了北京和福建两本。食谱越早出的越好，越晚出的越坏。最早的，黄皮的小本，都是真招。现在这已经不行了，后来就是大画片，都是彩色的，话都没说到点子上，真到关键地方，不详细写了。比如一个菜，您得预备些什么，这上面都有，好做;但材料上哪里买去，买什么样的，他没说。什么叫新鲜，他没说。
　　王敦煌:吃主儿当然首先自己要喜欢吃。以前，人家过生日啊，请客啊，我都去看他们做。北京的饭馆都认识我，我都可以进去，跟他们聊，看他们做。我到四川，四川的饭馆，前面打通的，一边是灶用钩子挂着肉一边是桌子，我去吃的时候就看大师傅怎么做。我家里头，亲戚家里也有好厨子，我也跟他聊，看他怎么做。写《吃主儿》这本书的时候，中午我爸休息，我就骑车出去，一趟去二三十个饭馆，哪家都不点菜，就跟他聊天。聊着一会儿经理就出来了，跟我说干我们这行可不容易，以为我是他同行。
　　我一直强调的就是行家，什么是行家，除了辨认是否鲜嫩外，还得知道某种原料它适合制作哪几款菜，或者说要制作某种好菜，要选取哪一种原料。这种原料在一年四季里什么时候品质最好，应选取什么地方出产的，它的规格有什么讲究，在市场上怎样去选购，它还需要用什么配料，什么作料，什么调味品，它的配料，作料同样存在品质产地的一系列问题。买回来之后，怎么洗，怎么切，怎么做，按什么方法做，才能达到最好效果。制作过程中是煮是蒸，是炒还是炸，它要求什么火候，然后再到吃。
　　你说冬笋，崇文菜市场卖十至十五块钱一斤。还是桶货，不全是好的，今天新鲜也这个价，明天不新鲜也这个价。你在自由市场，七八块钱一斤，随便挑。您要到了南菜摊，六块，随便挑选。要到南菜供应中心，批发市场，随便挑，五块五钱一斤。这学问从哪里长，这得小时候慢慢熏陶，一通百通。你还得经常跟菜贩子聊去，我都有他们的电话，经常打电话问一下，你那里现在有什么菜啊。吃从买开始，先得会买，会吃就会买;你会吃，才知道这东西用什么料，你得上哪里买去。这是相辅相成的。
　　吃主儿还讲究不糟践东西。现在年根底下，按北京的习俗要做不少年菜，其中就有“肉皮冻”和“豆酱”。这两款菜都是凉菜，离不开猪肉皮。每天做饭时若有蹬下来的肉皮，剔下来的骨头，剁下来的鸡爪子、鸭翅尖，剥出来的鸡内金，吃西瓜、南瓜时留下的瓜子以及剥下来的橘子皮我都没有一扔了事的习惯，一定要想办法把它用上。猪肉皮平时都存着，攒出来的干肉皮，用温水泡泡，到年头就能用。
　　我和我爸在吃上面很多观点不一样，有一点是肯定一致的。就是从做，到菜，菜占90%，做占10%，原料是最重要的。
　　王世襄:现在的确挺绝望的。什么都变了。也不知道是年纪大了，口味就不行了。(王敦煌插话说，最大的失望是不能自己骑车出去买菜了。)
　　每一个菜都有习惯做法，爆羊肉就是葱跟羊肉，当然有姜之类的作料，但整个一定是有规定的。北京菜的口味，一般比南方菜偏咸，但每个菜有每个菜的味。反正我觉得现在的菜不是味了。最近我吃芹菜，一点味都没有，跟吃草一样。原料不如从前，这好像是世界性的问题，还不只是中国的问题。
　　以前我们下乡，在咸宁干校。刚去时候不让我进厨房，怕我下毒，后来第三年把我解放了，我在那儿成头把刀了。刚到咸宁很苦，天天吃南瓜，
咸菜是北京带去的，都长红霉了。后来就逍遥了，干校人都调回去了，就没人管了，油和糖都整缸的。整个就是逍遥时代，一个连就剩十来个人，猪还剩十几头，油攒了一大缸。宰完一头猪，头两天熘肝尖啊，炒腰花啊，什么糖醋里脊，都我做;然后第二步就是吃红烧肉，最后一步就是吃馅，吃饺子了。
　　晚上还跟着当地人出去打鱼去，前阵子他们一家子还从湖北来看过我，现在湖都荒废了，都买大挖土车，给人挖坑，放水养鱼。职业整个都变了。
　　1972、1973年时候，干校走一个人像来一个宴会似的。大家吃得很凶。我当年做过的一个菜，现在任何饭馆也做不出来。也是我做过的一次最得意的香糟菜，就是“糟溜鳜鱼白加蒲菜”。我刚到干校时候，鲜鳜鱼和野生鳜鱼，四毛钱一斤，等到我走的时候就涨到快一块了。我到湖边去买14条鳜鱼，全要公的，一条母的也不要。母的肚子大，可以区分公母的。14条鱼白，也就是公鱼的生殖器官，非常嫩，跟豆腐一样。蒲菜就是湖里头拿的，喂牛的，叫茭白草，挖一大捆，剥出嫩心就成为蒲菜，每根两寸来长，比济南大明湖产的毫不逊色。香糟酒是我从北京带去的。三者合一，做成后鱼白柔软鲜美，腴而不腻，蒲菜脆嫩清香，加上香糟，奇妙无比。当时吃的人都大叫好吃。现在一个饭馆哪里找出14条活鳜鱼来做一个菜？不可能啊。然后这一桌都是鳜鱼，炒鳜鱼片啊，炸鳜鱼排啊，糖醋鳜鱼啊，还有干烧鳜鱼、清蒸鳜鱼和清汤鱼丸。那天就吃14条鳜鱼。我们叫它“鳜鱼宴”。
　　那日子是很逍遥，可是岁月蹉跎啊，所以我就是写写诗，真是把时光都耽误了。
　　从干校回来后还买，后来朝阳市场就关了，变成超市。现在去东四，朝阳市场味都变了。老不做，手也会生疏。所以我现在不买不做也不谈，谈也没有意思了。出去吃没有一次满意的。有的地方觉得一两个菜还可以，吃一两回也就觉得腻了。
　　后来朋友间也相互交流，我在好多人家里都做过菜。我还想起抗战胜利前，我去美国、加拿大考察博物馆的机会，在纽约逗留了一段时间，当时在那里住的燕京学长有瞿同祖、赵曾玖夫妇。我是走到哪里都想找地方做菜的，他们两位又欢迎我去，所以不用事先约好，早晨买到东西就提着包进了瞿家厨房。那天老舍也在那儿，他吃的就是我做的菜。
　　我记得那天做的两个菜是面包虾和鸡片炒龙须菜。美国面包品种繁多，只要买切薄片的无糖白面包，切掉边，改成四小块就可以往上堆虾泥了。虾用小包的冻虾仁，调入打好的鸡蛋清和玉米粉，加入葱、姜末和佐料，往上撒些洋火腿末粘一些外国香菜叶。这菜以前在上海就流行过叫“虾仁吐司”。
　　那时国外买鸡可以按需要的部位选购，剔好的鸡脯只需去膜片薄就可上浆过油。鸡骨架也单买，煮后就可以当高汤用。成捆的龙须菜又肥又白，斜刀切片，根部不用。龙须菜炒后还有点脆，和鸡味很调和，但微苦。爱吃的人认为好就好在这微苦上。
　　吃饭时候，我和老舍先生谈起龙须菜。我说龙须菜是北方名称，南方叫芦笋。当年天坛杂草丛生，却以产益母草和龙须菜著名。其实不只是天坛才有，在四郊有松柏树的坟圈子内都能采到。老舍先生有点惊讶，问我的知识是从哪里得到的。我说这是因为当年我喜欢八旗子弟的老玩意儿，用狗到坟圈子去咬獾的缘故。咬獾在夜里，但白天必须把獾窝和周围的地形都看好才行，要一连去几天才能把獾的行踪摸清，所以就找到了龙须菜。这一下子老舍先生可来了劲儿了，一顿饭时间和我聊的都是关于养狗捉獾的事。-

more

In Chinatowns, All Sojourners Can Feel Hua

In Chinatowns, All Sojourners Can Feel Hua
By JENNIFER 8. LEE



From New York Times
Published: January 27, 2006
There is no consistent name for "Chinatown" in Chinese. Newspapers use one name, popular speech uses others. At the Canal Street subway station on Broadway the chosen translation is delicately pixeled together from colorful tiles: "huabu." Hua means "Chinese," but with a sense that transcends geography, independent of the nation of China. Bu means "place" or "town."

Flushing, Queens, has a bright and contemporary Chinatown. On Saturdays, Main Street is crowded with shoppers and diners.
The characters were not there when I was growing up on the amorphous border between Harlem and Columbia University, when my family made regular pilgrimages to Chinatown by subway, later replaced by weekly trips to Flushing, Queens, by car. At the Kam Man grocery store on Canal Street, my parents would treat us to Haw Flakes, sweet tangy disks that tasted like bits of hard Fruit Rollups. The ingredients were listed as "haw" and "sugar," which left a generation of Chinese-American children wondering what exactly haw was. (It is the fruit of the hawthorne.)

On Mott Street's open storefronts, my parents would pick through the bins of live crabs, sluggish but still menacing to a wide-eyed girl. And Chinatown was our source for paraphernalia for the Lunar New Year, which always arrived in a frenzy of smoky firecracker pops and chiming gongs. The firecrackers planned for this Sunday, celebrating the Year of the Dog, have been centralized by the city government to a controlled ceremony.

For all our trips down there, I never knew Chinatown was known as huabu until I saw the characters appear after the station renovation. Hua is the distilled essence of being Chinese, free of fissures caused by wars and colonization. You can be hua even if you hold a passport from Singapore, the United States or Peru. You can be hua even if you have never set foot in China and don't speak a word of Chinese.

Like many Asian professionals who came after the 1965 immigration reforms, my parents were liberated from the confines of working-class, Cantonese-speaking Chinatown by education and English. My family, like other Chinese who live abroad, are often called huaqiao, Chinese sojourners. The label sticks, as though one day we all might return, even generations later: pulled back by the tentacles of Chineseness.

In the meantime, huaqiaos seek and create Chinatowns. Manhattan's Chinatown might not have been classy, but we got satisfaction in knowing we found better deals by braving the cramped streets. Haircuts were cheaper. The restaurants were yummier. Seamstresses were quicker. Chinatown was a bargain hunter's dream, a word-of-mouth economy before online ratings guides democratized shoppers' secrets. We went there for things you could get nowhere else in the city (like a white silk Chinese dress made for my sixth-grade graduation) as well as services that had no cultural basis, like film developing. My mom would hoard rolls of film and take them to a photo store at the base of Confucius Tower. Often spring or summer arrived before we saw pictures from Christmas.

American Chinatowns have been beacons since waves of anti-Chinese violence in the late 19th century drove Chinese workers out of California and into self-protective pockets across the country. Then, Chinatowns promised physical safety. Today they offer comfort for those who long for home. Fujianese restaurant workers who take on tens of thousands of dollars of debt to be smuggled to workplaces east of the Rocky Mountains flock to East Broadway on their days off. Suburban Chinese drive into Flushing for groceries. Homesick graduate students rent DVD's by the boxful.

I knew it was only a matter of time before my Chinese friend, Charlene, who had begun studies at Syracuse University in the fall, would come. Charlene is originally from the Chinese city of Xian. We had been students together at Beijing University, where I decided that "Beryl" (she was given this English name by a middle-school teacher) was out of date, and renamed her.

She called to say a group of Chinese Syracuse students were coming to New York City in January. Her roommate wanted to get a haircut at a salon on Mott Street. The officers of the Chinese student association wanted to go to Flushing to buy food for the Lunar New Year banquet. One classmate wanted preserved plum and dried cuttlefish snacks, which she could buy at Aji Ichiban, the Hong Kong chain. Charlene wanted to eat real Chinese food, not General Tso's chicken.

She was fixated on hotpot, a festive Chinese dining ritual where food is tossed into a pot of boiling water.

When we arrived at Canal Street, Charlene noticed the huabu markers on the station walls. I realized they were written in the traditional Chinese characters used in China before the Communists took over. New York's Chinatown predates the Communist government, and even the one before that. When Chinese first settled in the crooked intersection of Doyers, Pell and Mott Streets, an emperor still ruled.

We browsed the cluttered vendors stalls on Canal Street. I found a hairclip I liked. "How much?" I asked. "Three dollars," the vendor replied. As I reached for my money, Charlene smoothly stepped in. "Can't you do a little better?" she asked. I blushed. When I lived in China, I would put up fervent fights over half a yuan, 6 cents. Here, I had grown soft. He offered two for $5. I took it.

Bargain hunters of all sorts still come to Chinatown: women looking for imitation designer handbags, lawyers and jurors from the nearby courthouses in search of a cheap, filling meal. One man asked us where he could get an ID. He had heard that this was the place to buy one.

Chinatown exudes density. It not only rivals Times Square as the most crowded pedestrian area in the city, but also is one of the most visually cluttered, greeting you with a jumble of fire escapes, colorful store signs and streams of tattered flags. Like many crowded Asian cities, Chinatown has mastered the art of the vertical, inspired by languages that can be written up and down, not just side to side.

"Why do Chinese like America?" Charlene asked, rhetorically, as we were swept along by the crowds on Canal. "Because you can drive and have a big house. But not in New York City. Here, it's just like in China. Why bother living here?"

Chinatowns, she said, had a bad reputation in China: dirty. They are not the face that a rising China wants to present to the world. Having explored many Chinatowns, I am amused to report that perhaps only Japan, in Yokohama, had the discipline to create one that is both clean and expensive.

But I take pride in the vibrancy of New York City's immigrant communities. You can spot a dying Chinatown: vestigial restaurants, but no doctors' offices, no barbershops, no funeral parlors, no businesses required by daily living. Outside New York and San Francisco, many urban Chinatowns have dwindled to Chinastreets, or even Chinablocks, as the population centers have shifted to the suburbs. Washington's Chinatown is superficially preserved: the storefronts, including Starbucks and Subway, must display Chinese names. The Hooters sign says "Owl Restaurant" in Chinese.

In contrast, New York now has three Chinatowns — one each for Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, though only the original can claim the name. In 1946, a small group of United Nations delegation members from the Nationalist Chinese government settled in Flushing, in what was then a largely white middle-class community. Since the 1980's, the neighborhood has flourished as the Chinatown for Mandarin speakers from Taiwan, Shanghai and northern China. More recently, Manhattan's working-class Chinese population has been squeezed down the N subway line, emerging on Eighth Avenue in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and in other satellite clusters farther out.

Manhattan's Chinatown has fought off the forces of urban decline. It has even grown, with a churn of immigrants that provides both fresh customers and new entrepreneurs. Starting in the late 1960's, Chinatown expanded as Little Italy and the Jewish community of the Lower East Side receded. Small reminders of the Italian presence peek out on the southern part of Mulberry Street. Chinatown's only park, where the elderly can be spotted doing tai chi or playing Chinese chess, is named after Columbus. The Antica Roma restaurant, renamed Asian Roma, offers dumplings along with spaghetti to the courthouse crowd.

Today Chinatown is large enough to have two main arteries: Canal Street, the tourist-friendly thoroughfare that is still predominantly Cantonese, and East Broadway, which has become Main Street for Fujianese immigrants. East Broadway, Charlene agreed, looks like China — from the stripped-down restaurants with folding tables to the vendors selling piles of snacks for long bus rides, to the signs unapologetically free of English. The center of Chinatown has shifted east, engulfing the Grand Street subway station. Perhaps one day it will get a huabu sign as well.

Charlene, raised in the north, didn't want the southern Chinese food all around us. We could do better. She wanted hotpot. So after we bought some dried fungus and preserved fruit, we hopped on a small shuttle bus to Flushing. The buses, which charge $2.50 for a ride, don't run on a fixed schedule. They wait at the base of the Confucius Tower on Division Street and leave when they are full.

My parents chauffeured me to Flushing every Sunday for folk dance lessons, martial arts and Chinese chorus; it's where I learned to twirl silk ribbons and sing "Doe, a deer" in Mandarin. Equipped with widely available parking and easy highway access, it draws the professional Chinese who live in the suburbs. This was the Chinatown that Charlene and her friends had heard of, where they could shop in boutiques carrying stylish clothing and stop in at bubble tea cafes on the side streets. Her Syracuse classmates were even staying in Flushing. Instead of paying for a hotel, they bunked in one of the $60 rooms in private residences that are advertised in Chinese newspapers — bed and breakfasts without the breakfast.

For this rising class of Chinese-American professionals, Chinatown can be an uncomfortable echo of a time when Chinese immigrants were almost exclusively male laborers.

The geographic and class divides are visible. Flushing has many more Chinese bookstores and more men in suits. It is home to the World Journal, a national Chinese-language paper owned by a Taiwan media company, and to the Taiwan government's cultural offices. When I was a bridesmaid for a Chinese-American friend who was a medical student at Columbia, she hired a white limo to take us from her Washington Heights dorm room to the Flushing Mall to get our hair and makeup done before the wedding.

Where Chinatown is shrouded in history, Flushing is bright and contemporary. The broad, flat cityscape of Queens is spiced up with the shiny metal-and-mirror aesthetic popular in industrial East Asia. "In Chinatown, everything is right in front of you," Charlene said, putting her hand right in front of her face. "In Flushing, you can breathe."

The street food is more northern and western Chinese. We bought Xinjiang-styled lamb kabobs on Main Street for $1. Charlene, raised in a city with a Muslim influence, quickly devoured them. "Do you like America?" we asked the vendor, who had come from the western Chinese city of Urumqi on the Silk Road. "I like American money," he said. But he would never raise his kids here — he doesn't like the values. Charlene, too, wants to return to China after graduate school. With its roaring expansion, the opportunities are better for her there, she said — a philosophy opposite that of my parents, who had arrived a generation before.

We trudged to Minni's Shabu Shabu, a hotpot restaurant off Main Street that is one of my mother's favorites for family occasions. Charlene ordered the thin slices of lamb, which she flash-cooked in the hot water; I ordered fish balls. It was definitely hotpot as an American experience, she observed. In China, everyone would use one big boiling pot, mixing their food together. Not here. "Each person has their own hotpot," she said. She had been lectured on American individualism in college and smiled at this simple example.

Even so, the hotpot tasted authentic. It was the meal she had been waiting for for five months since coming to Syracuse. For both of us, it was a taste of home.

more

冰点授人以柄

看当下冰点事件炒得火热，李大同自己投公开信，龙应台也投书胡锦淘，还连带消遣马帅哥。真是热闹！我是两天前从大陆的BLOG上读到冰点融化的消息的。当时准备愤怒一下，袁文现在还存在草稿里。但看了后实在是没有了脾气。就如李大同自己说的，冰点已经被盯上很久了......那么就不应该授人以柄，坏了声誉。袁不是历史学教授，而是哲学教授，写的文章也有些时候了，在网上给人驳斥得连北都找不着，考据差错，硬伤百出。据说当年是为了进WTO造势用的，希望愤青不要太排外。李大同隔了好几年在冰点登出此文，不知是何用意。有位读者给他的电话里说的话，一语道破关键。直指袁是典型的帝国主义史学观。（西方也承认只从他们自己的立场出发有问题，所以才掀起了几十年前写全球史的热潮，希望在崭新的多极世界里用所谓全球史观说话。THE　GOLOBAL　HISTORY　是个很好的尝试，但也恐怕拍拖不了文献方面的局限）中宣部看到这么大的缺口，岂会不做反应？本来是件很清楚的事，中共钳制言论，不对！但是冰点授人以柄把事情复杂化，给了中共口实，反而让事情不清不楚。就好比法轮功，本来也很清楚，中共钳制宗教信仰自由，但法轮功本身乱七八糟同样授人以柄，事情搞到最后还是不清不楚。所以前两天没有心情表达自己的愤怒。好嘛，龙应台应该是有些考据根底的，不仅不提袁文的漏洞，还高声歌颂。老实说，不怎么舒服。倒是消遣马英九恰到好处，所以不用感叹媒体只把目光放在文章的副题上了。

more

林义雄退党是个大新闻

林义雄退党是个大新闻，有人说牵涉新教伦理。但我更感兴趣的是他自己的长老会身份问题。现在的基督世界里，新教，天主，东正三足鼎立。而新教里又有马丁路德系，加尔文系和英格兰圣公会系鼎足而立。长老教会不过是加尔文系中的派别，据说最留行于苏格兰，但为什么却会在台湾会有如此惊人的势力呢？台湾和加尔文系的渊源来自何方呢？说香港有圣公会系，因为殖民传统很自然，但台湾的基督教渊源在哪里？

more

2005年社会科学院共有23项廉政课题立项

经中国社会科学院廉政研究协调领导小组批准，2005年共有23项廉政课题立项。其中：
经济片7项：金融所曹红辉的“引发金融大案的原因及治理对策”(研究报告)，财贸所王诚庆的“土地征用、房屋拆迁与基建工程腐败治理对策研究”(研究报告)，工经所黄群慧的“国有企业领导人员廉洁保障问题研究”(研究报告)，经济所林跃勤的“行政审批制度改革监控机制研究”(研究报告)、王红领的“国企高管薪酬问题研究”(研究报告)、陈健的“腐败对经济效率的影响”(论文)和桁林的“建立廉政长效机制：激励、信号与行为分析”(研究报告)。
哲学片4项：马列所王宜秋的“马克思主义廉政理论及其在中国的发展”(专著)、赵智奎的“马克思主义权力制约监督理论与我国权力制约监督体系”(研究报告)、吴波的“中国腐败的中近期趋势及反腐败的战略构思”(研究报告)和张建云的“廉政人格修养研究”(论文)。
社会政法片4项：社会学所葛道顺的“惩治和预防腐败体系效能监测指标体系研究”(研究报告)，法学所周汉华的“政务公开相关法律问题研究”(研究报告)，院研究室姜辉的“政务公开问题研究”(研究报告)，院党组办张冠梓的“中国古代反腐败机制及运作研究”(研究报告)。
国际片6项：日本所张进山的“日本的腐败与惩防”(研究报告)，亚太所李文的“东南亚国家廉政文化建设的理论与实践——新加坡、印尼、泰国比较研究”(研究报告)，俄欧亚所何卫的“‘颜色革命’中的腐败因素：以乌克兰为例”(研究报告)，拉美所刘纪新的“拉美国家的腐败问题与反腐败研究”(研究报告)，美国所姬虹的“美国反腐败机制研究”(研究报告)，世经政所郗润昌的“我国廉政建设的战略构想和对策研究”(研究报告)。
史学片2项：近代史所汪朝光的“民国贪政史研究”(专著)，边疆中心毕奥南的“历史上腐败边吏对边政的影响”(专著)。

more

如何使绝学不绝于我们这一代人之手-----对两门“绝学”现状的思考

（中国社会科学院民族所 邸永君 2004-9-14）
在我院民族学与人类学研究所，曾有一批堪称“绝学”的传统优势学科，也拥有为数不少的老一代专家学者在自己的研究领域造诣精深、硕果累累。他们几十年如一日，孜孜以求，痴心不改，为中华古老文明的延续奉献着生命和心血。其中尤以照那斯图先生和刘凤翥先生的成就最值称道，他们分别以八思巴蒙文和契丹文研究而蜚声国内外。
照那斯图先生曾任民族所所长10年，是著名蒙古族语言文字专家。他以八思巴文研究方面的突出成就而享誉学术界。
700多年前，蒙古人建立起横跨欧亚的大元帝国。至元六年（公元1269年），世祖忽必烈命西藏萨迦派学者八思巴以藏文为基础而创制国书，并特此颁布诏书以实施推行。当时规定，凡于国家版图之内，新国书可以拼写一切其他文字；同时在国书旁也要附上汉字和其他主要民族文字，与之并存使用。这样，作为拼音文字的“八思巴文”就此诞生。八思巴文在全国范围内使用一百余载，最后随着元朝的倾覆而退出历史舞台。它逐渐被人遗忘，成为无人能识的“死”文字。
20世纪初，蒙古人的辉煌历史引起了中外学者特别是西方学者的浓厚兴趣，蒙古学作为一门国际性的学问逐渐形成。而研究一个民族的历史文化，离不开它的语言文字，因此八思巴文重新进入了人们的视野。至30年代，国内的研究者也开始有所作为，但就整体水平而言，却落后于西方学者。而中国毕竟是蒙古学的故乡，中国学者特别是蒙古族学者具有诸多优势。近20年来，随着更多文献的出土，中国学者终于占据了八思巴文研究领域的学术制高点。照那斯图先生就是在八思巴文研究领域纵横驰骋的一代天骄。
照那先生大学时期的专业是现代蒙古语，而研究现代离不开对古代源流的追溯，八思巴文也就被纳入其视野之内。当时国内的资料非常有限，只有一两位学者偶尔发表几篇论文可供参考，故而进展缓慢。至文革乍起，斯文扫地，知识分子厄运当头，照那先生也被下放到五七干校劳改。痛苦之余，他的精神没有沉沦。正巧手边有一本俄罗斯学者撰写的有关八思巴文的蒙文译本，他仔细研读，发现外国学者研究中国文化存在着诸多局限，从而认识到自身既懂蒙古文字又通蒙古历史的学术优势，因而决心予以深入研究。
在那段不堪回首的黑暗岁月里，不少人在绝望中挣扎，而照那先生心中却燃起了希望之火。他潜心研读八思巴文，大有颜回“三月不知肉味”之境界。其实严格说来，八思巴文并不属于真正的死文字，已有双解的工具书传世。只要发现新的文献资料，通晓蒙古文和历史的学者便能通过悉心研究予以解读。随着大量资料的不断出土，经过照那先生等诸位专家学者的努力，我们对元代的政治、经济、宗教、社会体系有了越来越全面的了解。就八思巴文本身研究而言，中国学者也从文字学的角度提出了新的见解：八思巴文的拼音单位是比音节还要小的音素。在这种神奇文字的背后，蕴涵着多种文化和多种民族的关联与渗透。
在20余年时间里。照那先生先后发表关于八思巴文的学术论文近80篇，每篇皆是经意之作，力求解读新词，并做到立论审慎、考证精详、自圆其说，因而得到了同行的广泛认可。
其实学术界对每位学者同行的评价皆有公论，某些研究领域更是狭窄，几斤几两更是心知肚明。发表的文章虽几个人懂，也没有很多人感兴趣，但学者之间的关注，同行圈内的认可，才是学者追求的最高境界。
照那先生认为：通过自己的研究，哪怕是只解读一个字，只要是脚踏实地、实事求是地完成，也就觉得很满足了。这的确算不上大本领，只是认识一种大多数人不认识的字，能给后人留下一些观点和见解，就心满意足。
刘凤翥先生也是民族所的资深学者，他以对契丹文字的研究而饮誉士林。
契丹族曾建立辽朝，与北宋长期对峙，但由来却销声匿迹，踪影难寻。现代科学家曾从基因分析入手，以寻访其去向。契丹族也曾创制文字，并通行使用达300年之久。后来随着战败的契丹族迁徙、流散、直至融合于其他民族，契丹文字也不见踪影。用契丹文字撰写和翻译的书籍竟无一本保留传世，契丹文字遂成真正的死文字。
上个世纪20年代初，当辽兴宗皇帝和仁懿皇后哀册（墓志铭）被发现后，诸多文字专家竟面对墓志铭所刻文字面面相觑，一无所知。经历上千年沧海桑田般世事变迁，契丹文字已经辗转成谜，等待着后人去破译解读。
目前，全世界研究契丹文字的学者不过10个，而真正能破译解读一些契丹字并有所减数者，十人之中也不超过四五人而已。与照那先生同年的刘凤翥先生，便是能够破译解读契丹文字的学者之一。
契丹字引起世人关注，应归功于一位比利时传教士凯尔温。1922年，这位传教士在赤峰一带传教，闻知当地百姓挖掘了一座陵墓（具说是他雇人盗掘），这就是兴宗皇帝耶律宗真的庆陵。据记载，是年6月21日，辽庆陵三个陵墓中的一个被掘，发现刻有文字的石碑四方，其中两方文字奇特，因不谙捶拓之法，遂以五日之力逐字描摹抄录，并绘制了墓室草图。1923年，北京 118号《天主教公报》刊载了所绘墓室草图及奇特文字的摹写，同年法国10月号《通报》予以转载。一时间，国内外学术界因此而轰动——这奇特的文字正是失传了的契丹小字。契丹文字在隐介藏形近九百年后得以重新面世。
契丹文字之解读十分困难，出土的墓志虽然是契丹文和汉文各两种，但并非一一对应关系，从文字到内容，都有一定差异。应用对照解读方法，仅识别出年月日、少数干支和数目文字、皇帝年号等单词70余个，发音则无一可以确定。日本学者在二战后也开始参与契丹文字研究，并提出“契丹语与蒙古语发音相近”之观点，并以蒙古语确定已识别出的契丹字的读音。后来的研究证明，其中30多个契丹字的读音基本可以得到确认。对契丹文字研究的水平一直进展迟缓，至“文革”时期，仍旧保持在70多个单词的含义，30多个字的发音的水平。
刘凤翥先生早年就读于北大历史系，毕业后考取中国科学院民族研究所的研究生。离校前，系主任翦伯赞先生曾叮咛道：“研究中国古代历史，务必要学习一两种古代少数民族文字，将终生受益无穷。”刘凤翥谨记翦老教诲，学习之余，便去图书馆收集有关契丹文字的论文。然而由于旧中国数十年间的战乱频仍、新中国接踵而至的种种政治运动，使得国内关于契丹文字的研究无任何新的进展。
与照那先生一样，刘凤翥先生也被发往五七干校。他不甘于岁月蹉跎，学业荒废，昔日翦老的叮咛又浮现响在耳边。他让妻子将读研究生时摘抄、收集而无暇细看的资料邮寄过来，利用劳动之余的时光潜心研究契丹文字，并一以贯之，直至今日。
契丹文字书写形式是以汉字笔画为基础，而根据造字的时间前后，又分为大字和小字。其构成方式复杂，属于拼音与单音节相结合的类型。至70年代中期，中国在契丹小字的研究方面取得了迅猛发展，已解读的单词量达3500多个，确定发音的也达到170多个。解读是研究契丹文字最重要的环节，读破译一个字，就是一个进展，一个贡献。刘凤翥先生坚信：勤能补拙，熟能生巧。他运用反复对照、假定推理、以已知求未知等方法，在人名、官名、地名上的研究当面获得的一系列重要突破。
随着研究进程的深入，解读契丹小字的难度越来越大，至80年代以后，进展速度明显趋缓。但无论如何，随着破译的契丹字越来越多，为纠正前人仓促修成的《辽史》中的诸多舛误提供了史料的依据。翦老“终生受益无穷”之语诚不虚也，刘先生曾笑言自己“不仅是自己吃饭穿衣全靠它，而且是安身立命的依托所在”。去年，他得到一份新出土的墓志铭拓片，记录的是一位节度使的生平，但能解读的文字非常少，刘先生如获至宝，逐字逐句加以研读分析。由于假定和推论合理，对文字的解释一路顺畅，两天时间内竟攻下四行。刘先生为此欣喜若狂，兴奋不已，彻夜难眠，不得不服用安眠药才得以进入梦乡。真是乐在其中，不可与外人道也。
在二位先生的眼中，祖宗留下的东西，后人理应了解和珍惜。任何学科，后人都是踏着前人的肩膀攀登，他曾经踏过别人的肩膀，也希望自己能助后来人一臂之力。同时，他们也为自己为之奋斗的事业后继乏人而深感忧虑，有孤独无助之感。作为国家最高学术机构的中国社会科学院，其最重要的历史使命就是传承文明。而我国古代遗留下来的诸多濒临绝继的学问，应当是我们倾尽全力保护的珍贵文明遗产。是否应当为他们提供必要的帮助，如何使绝学不绝于我们这一代人之手，怎样做才不致让我们成为遗弃文化遗产的千古罪人，这些问题难道不值得我辈深思吗？

more

“拉美化”讨论的来龙去脉及其利害关系

（中国社会科学院拉美所 郑秉文 江时学 孙洪波 2005-5-15）
一、讨论“拉美化”问题的由来

20世纪90年代末，国内一些学者在讨论中国改革时偶尔提到“拉美化”或“拉美病”。但他们中的绝大多数人没有明确地界定“拉美化”或“拉美病”的概念，只是笼统谈论拉美国家遇到的各种问题，如贫富悬殊扩大、腐败严重、国有企业效率低下、社会治安恶化、城市人口过多、地下经济泛滥、对外资依赖性强、金融危机频繁和政局不稳定，等等。由于当时提及“拉美化”或“拉美病”的学者很少，因此他们的呼吁在国内学术界没有引起多大回应。
2002年，由于阿根廷金融危机引起了国际社会的关注，国内一位学者在网上发表了一篇题为“反思拉美金融动荡：中国会拉美化吗？”的文章。2003年末和2004年初，“拉美化”越来越引起人们的关注。
“拉美化”热的出现与几位重要人物的言论有关。
2003年12月6日，在《中国企业家》举办的“2003中国企业领袖年会”上，一位著名经济学家首先挑起话题。他说：“在欢迎巨大外资的同时，中国所有的民营企业家应该有一丝悲哀，因为捆住了私人企业的手脚才使得外资大规模进入。”我们看中国经济主体的时候，发现真正主导中国经济主体的不是中国的企业。他认为，中国对外资的依赖正在造成“拉美化”。
2004年1月6日，著名经济学家厉以宁在一次会议上说：“根据他国经验，人均年收入达到1000美元后，国家发展趋势会分化为两类：一类国家，如新加坡、韩国，人均1000美元后继续向2000美元、4000美元发展；另一类，如拉美等地的国家，人均达到1000美元后经济就停滞不前。原因在于，人均1000美元后，这些国家原来的比较优势降低了。”
2004年6月，著名的民营企业家张文中在某杂志上发表了一篇他访问巴西后撰写的文章《对拉美化说不》，认为：“从巴西乃至整个拉美的发展经验可以看出，通过引进外资虽然可以获得短时间的经济繁荣，但无限制的、过度的开放给国家发展带来的危害却是根本的、长久的。……事实上，我国的外资渗透程度已然十分严重，如再不警醒，恐难避免重蹈拉美化的复辙。我国外资存量所占GDP的比重已大大高于其他亚洲国家，甚至多出日本30多倍。我国的FDI占社会固定资产投资总额的比例已然是世界主要经济体中最高的之一。”“如同在巴西已经发生的结果一样，外资大量进入，逐渐形成了对中国社会资产的拥有和控制。在全国并购研究中心出版的《中国产业地图》中，研究人员发现，中国每个已开放产业的前5名都由外资公司控制。在中国28个主要产业的三资企业中，外资在21个产业中拥有多数资产控制权。”他认为，“谨记拉美发展经验的教训，对拉美化说不，应该是中国致力于经济发展的正确选择。”

二、对“拉美化”的不同理解

“拉美化”问题的讨论在2004年达到了高潮。除上述经济学家、政府官员和企业家以外，其他人也不时使用“拉美化”的提法，而各人心目中的概念是各不相同的。例如，有人在讨论中国是否应该修正外资政策时说：“中国公司在走向‘拉美化’即逐步沦为跨国企业的代工厂和附庸，失去独立发展的可能性。”在他们看来，所谓“拉美化”，就是指拉美国家在20世纪90年代，“由于选择‘外资主导型’开放道路，虽然经济获得了阶段性的快速发展，但由于丧失对本国经济、资源的控制权，从而引发了严重的经济危机和社会动荡，至今在一些领域造成的阴影还挥之不去。”一些学者在探讨中国的收入分配时指出，“许多人一提到‘拉美化’就想到贫富两极分化，事实上，贫富分化是‘拉美化’现象的后果，而不是原因。‘拉美化’的病源在于民粹主义。”还有人则直截了当地指出：“拉美化”是指拉美地区国家在发展过程中出现的以经济危机、政权更迭和社会失范为特征的整体性危机。
某杂志刊载的一篇文章提出了“拉美化”的三个特点：国际垄断资本控制受资国经济，形成大量的利润转移；对外资的依赖造成长期困扰发展中国家的严重的债务危机；外资主导型的开放经济不利于受资国消化、吸收国外先进技术，不利于发展中国家产业的技术升级。
某报发表的一篇文章则以“中国大豆‘拉美化’悄然露头”为题，提出了“拉美化”之忧。文章指出，“一旦中国的民族大豆加工业被消灭，外资掌控中国大豆市场，‘自己做主，别人当家’的拉美现象将首先在中国大豆产业身上上演。”
一些文章的题目委实非常引人注目。例如，有一篇文章用了这样的题目：“外资引进‘拉美化’，威胁可持续发展目标”，还有一篇讨论中国汽车工业的文章则以“中国汽车飞奔在‘巴西道路’上，‘拉美化’日渐突出”为题。但读者无法从这些文章中得知“拉美化”的确切含义是什么。
与“拉美化”相提并论的还有“拉美病”、“拉美现象”。但这些提法的定义同样是模糊不清的。例如，有人认为，若清醒地观察中国问题，就会发现中国社会已出现“拉美病”的五大症状：第一，政府的高度软政权化；第二，农业经济陷入破产半破产境地，大量无地农民涌入城市，附着在城市边缘，成为犯罪群体的后备军；第三，地下经济勃兴，黑社会组织泛滥成灾，并与政府官员合流；第四，贫富差距继续拉大，极少数人占有社会总财富的绝大部份；第五，政治利益集团、经济利益集团与一些外商相结合，联合对广大中下层人民进行统治。
有人在一篇讨论中国政治改革的文章中说：“软政权化与分利集团化相互作用而形成的现代化的两重陷阱”，使社会成为一个缺乏“体内自动平衡机制”的社会，一个“失去自我警报系统”的社会。“长此以往，它无疑隐含着某种类似‘拉美病’的危机可能。”
在一篇讨论当代中国知识分子思想分化的文章中，该作者认为，“东亚与拉美的民情和文化不同，东亚国家的政府比拉美二元化社会中的政府具有更强大的经济调控功能，能化解‘拉美病’带来的种种社会问题。”
有一篇讨论政府与法治的文章指出，“法治国家不是法律国家，以法律的形式约束、窒息经济的发展，是坏的市场经济的一大原因。在其他的发展中国家，早已发生了这种情况，非常值得我们借鉴和警惕，比如所谓的‘拉美病’和‘印度病’。”
有人在讨论自由主义时说，如果“人们最后都习惯于腐败，习惯于用腐败这种方法完成交易，制度将被锁定在‘腐败’这种不良的状态，最后可能出现的不是他们想像中的欧美式自由市场经济，而是出现俄罗斯式官僚与裙带资本主义，或者出现‘拉美病’、‘南亚病’。”
有人在分析中国城乡就业问题时指出，拉美的“城市化带来的是问题成堆的城市化，这样的城市化不仅没有促进拉美的发展，反而进一步加深加重了拉美病。”认为，“中国也可以得上拉美病：两极分化的城市社会、不断激化的城市矛盾和落空的经济承诺。”
还有人认为，“人们通常从经济学角度对‘拉美病’进行解释，但这实际上是一个政治问题。拉美国家与欧美国家最大的区别在于：欧美国家经济发展的结果是实现了全社会的共同富裕，而拉美国家经济发展的结果却是造成了近一半人口的贫困化。”“经过20多年的改革开放，中国已经形成了不同的利益团体，它们有着不同的利益诉求，如果我们的体制不能使这些不同的利益和声音能够在一种正常的宪政体制里表达出来，通过互相的冲突和交流形成某种决策的话，就会促使它们采取体制外的方式表达自己的呼声，造成社会与政治冲突，从而出现拉美现象”。

三、对“拉美化”的不同理解可能产生误导作用

我们认为，上述关于“拉美化”的某些提法和理解不是非常准确的，有些看法应予以澄清和匡正。
第一，对“拉美化”的理解不应无限比喻下去。每一个国家或每一个地区在发展道路上总会遇到这样那样的问题。如果简单地把各种问题说成是某一地区或国家特有的“病”，显然有夸大其词之虞。我国目前经济转型中出现的最主要的问题应是社会分配领域的问题，即主要是两极分化和由此导致的各种社会问题，这是我们在努力实现十六届四中全会提出的“以人为本、构建和谐社会”伟大目标的过程中遇到的一个严峻挑战。就目前来看，这是我国“拉美化”的主要问题，而不是其他。
如果采取广义的态度，像西方有些学者用来评价俄罗斯那样来对待和比喻我国，这显然不太符合目前我国的改革成就和经济现状。广义的理解和无限制地延伸“拉美化”的比喻范围，不仅不符合拉美国家的实际，而且对我国来说其潜在结果和客观效果都具有很大的负面效应，对政策制定者具有一定的误导作用，对20多年来改革开放政策和大方向会产生误解，对全社会将有可能引起不必要的争论甚至混乱。
第二，将“拉美化”与利用外资政策扯在一起容易误导决策。如果将“拉美化”的概念理解为外资控制东道国的国民经济，那么，我们可以说，利用外资不会使中国出现“拉美化”。拉美经济稳定性差的根源在于过度外债，而非利用外国直接投资。统计数据表明，在进入拉美的外资中，外国直接投资的数量明显少于外债。而我国利用外资的主要形式是外国直接投资，不是外债，此其一。其二，在进入拉美的外国直接投资中，“绿地投资”较少，用于“并购”的较多。我国的情况则相反，“绿地投资”较多，“并购”较少。
第三，对“拉美化”的讨论有一定的积极意义。尽管对“拉美化”的某些理解欠妥，但我们并不否定“拉美化”讨论对我国政策制定者所具有的警示作用。例如，我们在推动改革开放时，必须注意以下问题：外国直接投资可能带来的国际收支风险、资源误置、环境成本、跨国公司和国内私人寡头的垄断，等等。因此，讨论“拉美化”也充分说明，我国的企业家和学者正在走向成熟。

more

林義雄:「永為民主國家主人─為退出民主進步黨告同志書」

親愛的同志：
平安！義雄自十九歲起研習法律，二十六歲起執律師業，迄今已四十年；三十五歲起參與政治工作，如今匆匆也已三十年。

其間曾鐵窗幽居苦讀四年半，負笈遊學美、英、日六年，專研政府組織與政治運作，可說大半生浸淫於法律、政治且略有所得，因此對於自己的法政見解，即使與一般學者專家有所不同，亦常敝帚自珍，不敢隨意苟同流俗。

關於政黨，義雄認為理想的民主國家的政黨，應該有如下特質：

一、政黨是一群志向相同的人協力爭取政治權力及地位，並藉著爭取到的政治權力及地位來實現社會正義的團體。所以參與政黨的人，以有心辦理黨務或代表政黨爭取公職的人始有必要。

二、一般人民應站在國家主人的立場，對各式各樣的政黨隨時保留選擇支持或拋棄的超然地位。所以政黨只有一時的支持者，而不必有永久的黨員。否則一般人民分別成為各個政黨的黨員時，各政黨就形同人民相互對抗的集團，而人民也失去了主人的超然地位。

三、政黨依附國家而生存，所以政黨的目的應在促進國家的政治進步。政黨應認定其他政黨是促進國家進步的同工。所以對於他黨都應視為友黨，不應為了爭奪政治地位及權力而捨棄國家的利益，更不應互相仇視、敵對。
我本著這樣的信念於公元一九九四年加入民主進步黨。入黨之後，承蒙全體同志愛護提攜，於一九九五年擔任本黨第三屆立委選舉總指揮，一九九六年起擔任首席顧問，一九九八年承同志厚愛，惠賜高票而擔任第八屆黨主席並在任內擔任第十任總統選舉總指揮，幸能不辱使命而於公元二千年完成政黨輪替之民主重大工程。

自二千年黨主席任滿卸職後，我已無意從事黨務工作。至於競選公職，以近年來台灣的選舉情況來說，代表各政黨的候選人，大多數會夥同該黨之公職人員，舉辦所謂造勢大會，或刊登巨幅廣告號召自己的黨員及支持者，一起來批評痛罵，甚至於誣蔑其他政黨及其候選人，並無理性的政策辯論。所以每一次選舉，幾乎都讓台灣的族群更加分裂，階級更加對立，選後仍然互相仇視、惡鬥，使整個國家和社會陷入紛擾不安。我既已無意從事黨務工作，也不願代表任何政黨競選公職，所以作為民進黨黨員已無任何意義，因此選擇作為一個超然的民主國家的主人，從此不再附屬於任何政黨。但多年來同志的支持鼎助，恩義難忘，今後雖非同黨，仍然深願能因同胞之情愛，在維護台灣主權、民主進步的路途中，互賜關愛提攜，並肩同盡心力。


東風送暖，寒天將盡；在人生旅途中，我時而駐足凝視野花的綻放，時而踏著普照一切的陽光疾馳，任天上雲舒雲捲，心中則無風無雨也無晴，夢魂所繫，唯婆娑之洋、美麗之島與同志之音容而已。今將離別，難免感傷，然哭啼拉扯，終是小兒女態，故強忍滿眶淚水，謹借先賢名詩兩句明志並與各同志互勉：「豈是腸枯無熱淚，願留他日潤蒼生」。謹祝身心愉快林義雄敬上。」

more

Military Airports in HD satellite maps

liebigson just posted one more great work on his website! In this new post, liebigson managed to obtain several HD satellite maps of one important military airport located in Taizhong, Taiwan. An model of this airport has been built in northwestern China by airforce for practices of bombers. Don't miss it.

more

果真故事，触动我心

在纽约时报网上看到的一则小故事触动我心。作者讲述的是发生在我们这一代孩提时候的故事。那情那景，历历在目。一则小故事架通了遥遥相距的时间和空间，让我心潮起伏！

于是我这个八卦人简单的搜索了一下作者LI　LIYUN（李依云？）原来作者是美国文学界的一颗超级新星！北大九一级生物系才女啊！ 希望她不会那么快的BURNOUT，以后拿个普利策！

see
a 5 page special report from Washingtonpost


From U Iowa:
Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing and came to the United States in 1996. She has an MFA from Iowa Writers’ Workshop and an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Zoetrope: All-Story, Ploughshares, The Gettysburg Review, Glimmer Train, Prospect, and elsewhere, and translations have appeared in Sweden and Mexico. Named by The Los Angeles Times as one of the three authors to watch in 2005, she has won the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review, and a Pushcart prize. She lives in Oakland, California with her husband and their two sons, and teaches in the MFA program at Mills College.


Another one from his employer:
Considered a math prodigy in her native China, Li earned a BS in cell biology from Peking University, and an MS in immunology from the University of Iowa. This semester, she is completing two MFA degrees in writing - one in fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop, and one in creative non-fiction from the University of Iowa. She is currently a teaching fellow at the University of Iowa.


an interesting one on a random blog




Several stories by Liyun Li

Eat, Memory: Orange Crush

By YIYUN LI
Published: January 22, 2006
During the winter in Beijing, where I grew up, we always had orange and tangerine peels drying on our heater. Oranges were not cheap. My father, who believed that thrift was one of the best virtues, saved the dried peels in a jar; when we had a cough or cold, he would boil them until the water took on a bitter taste and a pale yellow cast, like the color of water drizzling out of a rusty faucet. It was the best cure for colds, he insisted.

I did not know then that I would do the same for my own children, preferring nature's provision over those orange- and pink- and purple-colored medicines. I just felt ashamed, especially when he packed it in my lunch for the annual field trip, where other children brought colorful flavored fruit drinks - made with "chemicals," my father insisted.

The year I turned 16, a new product caught my eye. Fruit Treasure, as Tang was named for the Chinese market, instantly won everyone's heart. Imagine real oranges condensed into a fine powder! Equally seductive was the TV commercial, which gave us a glimpse of a life that most families, including mine, could hardly afford. The kitchen was spacious and brightly lighted, whereas ours was a small cube - but at least we had one; half the people we knew cooked in the hallways of their apartment buildings, where every family's dinner was on display and their financial states assessed by the number of meals with meat they ate every week. The family on TV was beautiful, all three of them with healthy complexions and toothy, carefree smiles (the young parents I saw on my bus ride to school were those who had to leave at 6 or even earlier in the morning for the two-hour commute and who had to carry their children, half-asleep and often screaming, with them because the only child care they could afford was that provided by their employers).

The drink itself, steaming hot in an expensive-looking mug that was held between the child's mittened hands, was a vivid orange. The mother talked to the audience as if she were our best friend: "During the cold winter, we need to pay more attention to the health of our family," she said. "That's why I give my husband and my child hot Fruit Treasure for extra warmth and vitamins." The drink's temperature was the only Chinese aspect of the commercial; iced drinks were considered unhealthful and believed to induce stomach disease.

As if the images were not persuasive enough, near the end of the ad an authoritative voice informed us that Tang was the only fruit drink used by NASA for its astronauts - the exact information my father needed to prove his theory that all orange-flavored drinks other than our orange-peel water were made of suspicious chemicals.

Until this point, all commercials were short and boring, with catchy phrases like "Our Product Is Loved by People Around the World" flashing on screen. The Tang ad was a revolution in itself: the lifestyle it represented - a more healthful and richer one, a Western luxury - was just starting to become legitimate in China as it was beginning to embrace the West and its capitalism.

Even though Tang was the most expensive fruit drink available, its sales soared. A simple bottle cost 17 yuan, a month's worth of lunch money. A boxed set of two became a status hostess gift. Even the sturdy glass containers that the powder came in were coveted. People used them as tea mugs, the orange label still on, a sign that you could afford the modern American drink. Even my mother had an empty Tang bottle with a snug orange nylon net over it, a present from one of her fellow schoolteachers. She carried it from the office to the classroom and back again as if our family had also consumed a full bottle.

The truth was, our family had never tasted Tang. Just think of how many oranges we could buy with the money spent on a bottle, my father reasoned. His resistance sent me into a long adolescent melancholy. I was ashamed by our lack of style and our life, with its taste of orange-peel water. I could not wait until I grew up and could have my own Tang-filled life.





What Has That to Do with Me?

Yiyun Li

This story I am going to tell you, it is a true story.
The year was 1968. The girl was nineteen, the secretary of the Communist Youth League for her class in a local high school in Hunan Province, China. You probably don’t know much about Hunan, but I am sure you have heard of at least one person from the province—Chairman Mao, our father, leader, savior, our god and our dictator.
So it was in 1968 that the nineteen-year-old Hunan girl, after seeing many men and women being kicked and beaten to death by her fellow Red Guards, expressed her doubts about Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution he had started two years earlier, in a letter to her boyfriend, who was serving in the military. He turned in the letter to the company officer. The officer reported to his superiors, who in turn telegraphed the Revolutionary Committee of her town. Three days later, she was arrested.
She was jailed for ten years, ten long years during which she kept writing to officials of all levels to appeal her case. The letters accumulated as evidence of her failure to reform, and ten years later, in a retrial, she was sentenced to death.
She was executed in the spring of 1978, two years after Chairman Mao’s death. Hundreds of people attended the execution in a local stadium. A bullet took her twenty-nine-year-old life, and that was the end of her story.

But the story I am telling you, it is not over yet.
Because I still have to tell you what happened before the final moment. Minutes before the execution, an ambulance rushed into the stadium, and several medical workers jumped out. I call them medical workers because I don’t know if they were doctors. Do doctors kill? But these medical workers, they were professional, efficient. Working quickly so as not to delay the execution, they removed the girl’s kidneys. No anesthesia.
The bullet entered her brain after the kidneys were taken out. The brain was the sinning organ. The kidneys were amnestied, airlifted to a hospital in the province capital, and transplanted into an older man’s body. The man was the father of a member of the province Revolutionary Committee.
The kidneys outlived her, for how many years I do not know.

The story I am telling you, it does not end when the brain was murdered. Not yet.
Because I still have to tell you what happened to the young woman’s body, minus her kidneys. Like the families of many counterrevolutionaries, her family paid for the bullet that took her life. Twenty-four cents it was, the price of a thin slice of pork in 1978. They signed the paper and paid for the bullet, but they did not dare to pick up the body after the execution. So the girl was left outside the town, in a wild land of stray dogs, crows, and other scavengers. One of the others got to the body first, a fifty-seven-year-old janitor. When jars were later discovered at his home, he admitted to having raped the body. Then he amputated the sex organs and preserved them in formaldehyde for his personal collection.
He was sentenced to seven years of imprisonment.

But the story I am telling you—you may have guessed this by now—the story I am telling you, it is not over yet.
At the time, in the city in Hunan Province, before the final sentence of the young woman, there were people who tried to organize and appeal on her behalf. They did not stop at the woman’s execution, fighting now not for her life but her innocence. Ping-Fan, depurge, was what it was called, for in our country, as in any other communist nation, innocence was determined not by one’s behavior but by the tolerance of such behavior at a certain time. I grew up reading stories of depurge in newspapers and magazines, of people who had been labeled as counterrevolutionaries for ten, twenty, or even thirty years, and now were reabsorbed into our communist family. Some were still alive, but most who were depurged had long been dead. Still, a readmission to the society was celebrated by grateful family members in tears. So you see, in our country, one’s story does not end at one’s death.
Back in the Hunan town, people gathered for the young woman’s posthumous reputation. Hundreds of people joined the protest, and every one of them was punished in the end, years in prison for some, dismissal or suspension from work for luckier ones. One of them, a woman thirty-two years old, an organizer of the protest and mother of a two-year-old boy, was sentenced to death. She signed on the sentence paper and was reported to have thrown away the pen and said, “What makes you all fear death so? Everybody dies.”

I am not sure how to tell the story I want to tell you. Sometimes when I think about the story, it becomes a grotesque kaleidoscope spinning with patterns and colors that startle my eyes. Sometimes I have to shut my eyes in order not to see.
And shut my mind’s eye so I can stop imagining: the clean incision when the scalpel cut into the skin, hastily disinfected for the sake of the kidneys; the short moment between the operation and the death; the parents who gave up not only the daughter’s life but her body; or the boy who grew up not knowing his mother and who was taught to thank the government five years later when she was depurged.
What makes you all fear death so? I do not have an answer. I run away from the deaths of the two young women because I have only enough courage to tell the stories of those alive—for instance, the audience who filed into the stadium and watched the young woman suffer and die. The execution must have taken place in the morning, as all executions have in my country for hundreds of years. Did people go to the stadium first before they went to work, or did they parade to the stadium from different working units, singing Chinese and Soviet marching songs?
I try to see the world through my eyes of 1978. That spring I was five and a half years old, a problematic kid in day care, disliked by all the aunties, as we called the day care teachers. One, Auntie Wang, especially hated me. I knew she hated me, but I did not know why. I feared her more than any other kid feared her; I feared her more than I feared any other person in my life. I was always the first to stop playing and run to her when she called out any order. I would stand in front of her, looking with expecting eyes, waiting for her to praise my promptness. But she saw through my willingness and brushed my head aside with a heavy hand. “Stop looking at me like that. I know you do this just to make us believe you are a good kid. Don’t think you can deceive me.”
I tried not to cry, not knowing that what angered her was my blunt, wide-eyed stare. Auntie Wang turned to another auntie and said, “This is a kid who has too much of her own will.” The other auntie agreed.
I did not know what they meant. I did not have any will except to please Auntie Wang so she would smile at me, or praise me, or at least not yell at me every time I played the guerilla leader. In the day care our favorite game was battle game, boys the male guerilla fighters, girls the female guerilla fighters. Our enemy was Japanese invaders, the reactionary nationalist army, American soldiers in Korea or Vietnam, all in the forms of houses and trees, rails and weeds. I was always the guerilla leader because I was the one who made up the story for our battle games, the one to lead them to charge or retreat.
But before I had won my first battle this morning, Auntie Wang grabbed my collar and brought me to a full stop. “What are you making them do?” she said.
I tried not to look at her, but I did. “Play guerillas,” I said.
“No guerilla playing today,” Auntie Wang said and waved to my soldiers standing beside me. “Go play other games.”
The boys and girls scattered. I tried to slip away, but Auntie Wang stopped me with a thundering yell. “You, did I tell you to leave?”
“No,” I said.
“Right. Time-out for you this morning. Now squat here.”
I squatted between her and another auntie, who was busy knitting a sweater for her son. Auntie Wang reserved this special punishment for me. Other kids served five or ten minutes of time-out standing in front of her, but she always had me squat, for half an hour at least.
Many years later I read in an article that having prisoners squat for hours is a common practice in Chinese prisons. Squatting while holding the legs, putting the whole body’s weight on the heels of the feet, back bending and hips drooping—such a primitive position creates pain as well as shame, the article said.
I wonder if Auntie Wang was an inventive person or if she simply knew the practice. Either way, I had to squat in such a position so often that I was no longer bothered by it. Yes, my legs still cramped, but I could still watch my friends with cramping legs. I saw boys chase one another in meaningless circles, girls gather wildflowers and grass leaves. They did not know how to play a guerrilla game without me.
I sighed. Auntie Wang caught me immediately. “Why did you sigh? Do you think I am wrong to punish you?”
“No,” I said.
“You are lying. Did you not sigh? I heard you. You are dishonest. Do you hate me?”
“No,” I said, trying hard to hold back my tears.
“Liar. I know you hate me. I know you do,” Auntie Wang said.
Such exchanges happened often when I was on time-out. I did not know what made Auntie Wang so persistent in tormenting me. Did she have much fun having me in the day care? I do not know the answer. Many years later, when I was already in America, my mother met her in a shop. Auntie Wang recognized my mother right away and asked about me. In the next five years, as my mother told me, they met in the street many times, and Auntie Wang asked about me every time. I wonder if she remembers me for the same reason I remember her. Sometimes I wonder about it, knowing I will never get to know the real reason, accepting her comment that I was a kid with too much of my own will as the only explanation.
So on this unlucky day, I was bracing myself for a long squatting period when the police patrol drove into an open field by our play yard. There were two tall metal poles at the center of the field. On evenings when movies were shown in the open field, a piece of white cloth would be stretched between the two poles, with people sitting on both sides of the screen watching the same war movie and speaking the lines in a collective voice along with the heroic actors. During daytime the field was left for weeds and insects, and I was surprised to see the police car drive in there, calling through a loudspeaker for the residents to gather in ten minutes. Retired men and women walked out of the apartment buildings carrying folding chairs and stools. Some even carried umbrellas to shield them from the morning sun. The electric bell clanked in the nearby elementary school. A minute later students of all grades rushed out of the school building, pushing and shouting and ignoring the teachers’ orders.
I was so excited by what was going on that I forgot to squat. I stood up and looked for my sister among the schoolchildren. Immediately Auntie Wang came and snatched me off the ground. I was scared, but she did not have time to scold me. She placed me at the end of the long rope that we all held onto when we went out of the day care. I held the rope and started to stomp my feet as other kids did, waiting impatiently to be taken outside our play yard.
As we walked onto the open field, the old men and women patted and squeezed our cheeks. Other, younger adults had also arrived from different working units. We sat down in the grass at the very front. Workers were building a temporary stage with bamboo sticks and wooden planks. The students from the elementary school sat behind us. I looked back and found my sister in the secondgrade line, and I grinned at her, glad that she was not as close to the stage as I was.
As we waited, the aunties chattered among themselves and passed around a bag of dried tofu snacks. I caught a black ant and put it in my palm, let it walk over my fingers, something my parents told me not to do because, as they said, my hand was too hot for an ant and it would have a fever walking on my fingers. I watched the ant looking in a feverish way for an exit to leave my hand. When I was tired of the ant, I flipped it with a finger and saw it land on the neck of Auntie Wang, sitting not far from me. I held my breath, but she did not turn around. I hesitated and cried out a warning. “Auntie, auntie,” I said.
“What?” she turned around and said. “Now it’s you again. Get up and squat. Keep quiet.”
I got up on my feet, trying to keep my head and my back as close to my legs as I could, so my sister could not tell that I was being punished again.
The truck drove into the open field as I was struggling to keep a decent squatting position. Policemen, dressed up in snow white uniforms, jumped down from the covered truck. Then four men, all heavily bound with ropes, were pushed out of the truck and led onto the stage. Two policemen stood behind each man, pushing his head down. A police officer with a loudspeaker came onto the stage, announcing that the four counterrevolutionary hooligans had been sentenced to death and the sentence would be carried out after they were paraded through all the neighborhoods of the district. Then he raised a fist and shouted, “Death to the counterrevolutionary hooligans!”
The aunties signaled us, and I raised my fist, still in the squatting position. We shouted the slogan along with the elementary school students, the uncles and aunts from all the working units, and the retirees, who had already started to leave the meeting with their chairs. The hooligans were escorted back to the truck, and a minute later the police car and the truck pulled out of the open field and drove away to the next meeting place. I felt disappointed at the shortness of the meeting. Auntie Wang walked up to me and put her hand to my head, in the shape of a handgun. “You see that? If you have too much of your own will, you will become a criminal one day. Bang,” she said, pulling her finger as if to trigger the gun, “and you are done.”

So I could have been there in the Hunan stadium, five years old or seventy-five years old, a child trapped in her small unhappiness or an old man already getting tired of the long morning. Did I see the violent struggle of the young woman as the medical workers tried to pin her limbs down? Did I hear the muffled cries that came from her gagged mouth?
No, I did not see, and I did not hear. I was dozing off, out of boredom. I woke up in time to see another man, a young villager, in a provincial court in central China, stand up and say into the microphone, “I was an orphan. I was illiterate. I did not know how to be a good man. I promise I will learn to be a good man. I ask the people to listen to me.”
It was the winter of 1991, and I was one of the freshmen of Peking University in the middle of a one-year brainwashing in a military camp in central China. The Harvard of China, as the university advertised itself, Peking University had been the hotbed of every student movement in Chinese history, including the one in 1989 in Tiananmen Square that ended in bloodshed. For the next four years, to immunize the incoming students to the disease that was called freedom, all freshmen were sent to the military for a year of brainwashing, or political reeducation, as it was called.
Being in the military made me think of myself as a victim of the regime. Having to use toilet stalls that had no doors angered me. Having to listen to the officers call us disgusting wild cats in the mating season after being caught singing a love song in the break or Americans’ walking dogs after being caught reading English in political education class, their spittle on our faces, angered me. Anger sustained us as hope would sustain one in such a situation. Anger fed us instead of the radish stew that never filled our stomachs. Anger made us defy the officers’ orders in public and in secrecy. Anger helped us to endure the punishment with dignity.
Anger made our lives meaningful, filling us with selves bigger than our true selves. What could be more satisfactory for boys and girls of eighteen and nineteen than to feel that pumped self growing inside as leavened dough?
So that winter day I was sitting among; my fellow victims, a swollen self inside my dark green uniform, in a crowded theater that served as a makeshift court for three young men. We were sent to listen to the trial to learn how to be law-abiding citizens. On the stage were a judge, a public prosecutor, a one-man jury, and two assistants who recorded the trial. The three men on trial were held in separate pens. From where I sat, I could not see any of their faces, and I did not care to see.
I closed my eyes once we were ordered to sit down. I dozed off during the public prosecutor’s opening statement, spoken in a local dialect that I could not understand well, and was lost in my own dreamland until the officer on duty walking from aisle to aisle tapped my shoulder heavily with her belt. I pulled myself straight and looked at the stage. The judge was asking questions, and the prosecutor was answering, waving a knife in front of him for emphasis. “What did the men do?” I asked the girl next to me in a whisper.
“A train robbery,” the girl answered. “I don’t know for sure.”
I closed my eyes, not curious whom they had robbed, what they had done to the train. I did not see anything in the three men that was worthy of my attention. Again I was awakened by the officer.
For a while I sat there not thinking anything, looking at the back of the head in front of me and the head in front of that head. Then I traced my eyes along the head to the shoulder and to the wooden chair, where a line of characters was scrawled on its back in faint ink. I leaned forward and tried to read it. “Wang San eat dog shit!” I laughed to myself at the huge exclamation mark and pointed to the girl next to me, and she nodded with a smile.
Then the youngest of the three criminals stood in his pen and spoke into the microphone in front of him in heavily accented mandarin Chinese. “I was an orphan. I was illiterate. I did not know how to be a good man. I promise I will learn to be a good man. I ask the people to listen to me,” he said and bowed to us.
I laughed and whispered to the girl next to me, “What is he doing?”
“I think the judge just asked him if he had anything to say to defend himself.” “And that’s his defense?”
“Probably.”
“And what’s that to do with us?” I said, and we both laughed lightly, dismissing the image of the young man along with the graffiti on the back of the chair.
That was the end of the trial. We did not catch how many years the young men were sentenced to, and we did not care to know. We left the theater feeling angered that one more afternoon of our lives had been wasted, not knowing we had missed one important moment, not knowing that we forgot to answer that crucial question: What has that to do with us?

Did anyone in the Hunan stadium ask the same question? Did anyone try to answer it? I want to know what the audience was thinking as it watched the young woman’s death. Was there an Auntie Wang in the crowd?
I want to know, too, who those medical workers were, rushing in and out of the stadium in the ambulances. Was the surgeon the same one who, when I was ten years old, operated on my mother to take her gallbladder out? I saw him shortly after the operation, and he even joked with me, telling me that my mom would no longer be a quick-tempered person because she no longer had an organ to store her bile.
I want to know the man with the transplanted kidneys. After the operation did he walk with a cane to the neighborhood center to attend the retirees’ biweekly meetings, where my eighty-one-year-old grandpa was made to stand for hours, listening to the old men and women criticize him because he once fought in the army against Communism?
I want to know the boyfriend who turned in the letter to his officer. Was he
promoted for his action and admitted to the Communist Party? Did he become the officer who had us march in snow for hours when we were in the military, trying to kick our shaking legs with his leather boots?
I want to know, too, the janitor. How did he get caught? What made him seek out a criminal’s body? Was he like the janitor in my father’s working unit, who always patted my head and gave me candies to eat? He once gave me a bag of mulberry leaves, kept moist by a wet handkerchief, for my silkworms. Did he intentionally or accidentally forget that the leaves were sprayed with pesticide, so that my silkworms all died overnight, so that I flunked my second grade nature class?

And above all the questions is the one question I have been trying to answer all along. What has that to do with me? Why do I feel compelled to tell the two women’s stories? Who were they?
The first young woman was once the secretary of the Communist Youth League. She must have been a devoted daughter of the revolution to get the position. What led her astray from her faith? What made her stare back with blunt, questioning eyes? And those letters she wrote over the next ten years, page after page, what was she trying to say? What is in the letter that betrayed her, ending the ten years of imprisonment with a death sentence instead of freedom?
And the second woman, the mother of a young boy, what made her so undaunted in the face of death? Did she like to read the stories of women heroes as I once did, my favorite heroine a nineteen-year-old Soviet girl named Zoya, who was caught burning down a German stable and was hanged to death? Did she admire Autumn-Jade, the woman hero I secretly hoped was one of my ancestors?
Autumn-Jade was a student of my great-granduncle, the one we called Big Man in our family. Big Man was a revolutionary at the end of the last dynasty, fighting along with his comrades to establish a republic. He was known in history for two things—the female students he trained to be assassins and his peculiar death after a failed mission. Autumn-Jade was twenty-four, the most beautiful student of Big Man. She was sent to bomb the emperor’s personal representative; the bomb did not go off, and she was arrested, beheaded in the town center of our hometown. On the day of her execution, hundreds of people watched her paraded in the street, her body badly tortured. Many brought stacks of silver coins to bribe the executioner so they could get a bun immersed in her blood, something that was said to cure tuberculosis. How many bloody buns were consumed that day, how many men were cured? Soon after Autumn-Jade’s death, Big Man went alone on another assassination mission. He succeeded but got caught by the guards. His heart and liver were taken out and fried into a dish for the guards to eat.
I can never tell the story of Big Man and Autumn-Jade right. I cannot resist the temptation to make Autumn-Jade one of my family. I want Big Man in love with Autumn-Jade, the beautiful young woman who learned fencing, shooting, horse riding, and the chemistry of explosives from him. I want Big Man to go into the suicide mission as a tribute to Autumn-Jade, his comrade and his lover. I want the granduncle whom Big Man’s wife raised alone to be a son of Big Man and Autumn-Jade.
I want to interfere with history, making things up at will, adding layers to legend. I want Autumn-Jade’s fearless blood running in the two young women’s bodies. Sometimes I imagine the second woman looking calmly into her executioners’ eyes when she was forced to kneel down to receive the bullet, as many years ago Autumn-Jade stood quietly in front of the ax and chanted her last poem. The scenes always move me, as they are the central scenes for a hero’s story. I want the story to be about bravery. But always I am stopped.
It is a fact that heroes are created by anger and romance, but anger and romance do not carry us long. It is a fact that the first woman, after the death sentence, cried and begged for her life to anyone walking past her cell. It is a fact that she was crushed by the thought of dying at twenty-nine, a fact that she was no longer a sane person on the way to the stadium, weeping and singing and laughing and murmuring stories to herself.
As if this were an imaginary world, like the world of made-up battle games in the day care, with history carried on my young shoulders. But sooner or later Auntie Wang will shout in her loud voice, and I will run to her again, wishing that this time she will be pleased by me, knowing she is not when I see her pursed lips. Again I am squatting in time-out, watching the white clouds above me, and the black ants busying themselves in the grass. Our game was interrupted, but our lives continue.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

YIYUN LI was born in Beijing, China. She came to America in 1996 with a limited command of English and started writing in English in 1998. Her essay about the Tiananmen Square massacre was published in The Journal, and a short story is forthcoming from Glimmer Train. She is an M.F.A. candidate in The Writers’ Workshop and The Creative Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa.

“What Has That to Do with Me” appears in our Summer 2003 issue.

more

盂峻瑋 經典賽前 趣談古巴棒球

2006.01.23　 中國時報




美國在古巴釋出善意後，撒消原本不讓紅色旋風參賽的決定，使得世界棒球經典賽的最後一塊拼圖可以完成。綜觀世界棒球發展史，就可發現古巴不僅是業餘棒壇的強國、輸出職棒好手的出口國，也是棒球運動的散播者。這也是經典賽主辦者美國以及舉世棒球諸侯國，不敢任意讓古巴缺席的原因。

一八六四年一位在美國受過高等教育的古巴青年名叫格羅，攜帶棒球和球棒進入哈瓦那，是古巴棒球的濫觴，因此格羅又被古巴人奉為「古巴棒球之父」。十年之後，兩大棒球重鎮哈瓦那與馬坦札斯舉行了對抗賽，是古巴歷史記載的第一場球賽。一八七八年古巴三支職業球團組成聯盟，這也是世界上第二個職棒聯盟。


古巴不僅棒球歷史悠久，對棒球運動的推廣也有貢獻。古巴在一八六○年代爆發十年內戰，使得不少古巴人逃往多明尼加和波多黎各避難，據多國記載，他們開始模仿古巴難民打棒球，使棒球得以散播到各地。古巴雪茄製造商克洛馬在委內瑞拉首府卡拉卡斯設立雪茄廠，結合古巴移民和地方人士打棒球，成為委國棒球的起源。另外古巴難民也把棒球引薦到墨西哥沿岸和加勒比海區域，這使得有些墨國球團名稱有哈瓦那、馬坦札斯和古巴等字眼。

古巴棒球一個世紀以上的發展，也發生過和民族主義相關的趣事。一九五九年的夏天，當時隸屬於美國三A小聯盟的哈瓦那糖王隊，在主場迎戰羅切斯特紅翅膀隊。部分古巴民眾為了慶祝七月二十六日革命節，在場內開槍助興，導致紅翅膀隊三壘指導教練佛迪和糖王隊游擊手卡迪那斯受到槍傷，迫使紅翅膀隊總教練宣佈罷賽，率領全隊回旅館休息。美國小聯盟立即取消糖王隊接下來的主場比賽，不久之後全隊就搬遷到美國紐澤西，引起剛上台的革命領袖卡斯楚的憤怒，認為這是不尊重古巴人民的做法。

最有趣的當屬一九六一年底，美國一名情報分析員正在分析偵察機所拍的鳥瞰圖，突然發現到一個軍營，有一部分區域被劃成足球場，圖片上有些人正在踢足球。他想了想，發現情況不對勁，因為以往的圖片中，只要是古巴的軍事設施，就會有簡陋的棒球場，而不是足球場。於是再去詳細研究圖片，才知這個軍事施設根本不是古巴的。時為哈佛教授、新任國家安全會議顧問的季辛吉看了照片即說：「這些足球場可能意味著戰爭，因為古巴人玩棒球，俄國人踢足球。」，判斷蘇聯人正在幫古巴裝置飛彈，進而引爆舉世聞名的古巴飛彈危機！

不管古巴和美國有多少年的恩怨糾葛，他們都是棒球的先驅。如今古巴獲准參與，也象徵他們棒球悠久的傳統和強勁的實力，受到棒球界肯定，使得巨星雲集的十六國經典賽，更加精采可期。

（作者為樹德科技大學休閒管理系助理教授）

more

陸以正 包道格離台 下一站徬徨何處？

2006.01.23　 中國時報
還有兩天，ＡＩＴ台北辦事處長包道格就要結束三年半的任期，回華府去了。無論識或不識，外交圈、政界與媒體對他的批評都傾向兩極化。有人從個人經驗出發，認為此人眼高於頂，恃才傲物；也有人從大處論斷，說他已善盡執行美國對台政策的職責，因而得罪了不少我國政要。兩者都有幾分對，但也都不完全正確。

使人詫異的，是不論喜歡或討厭包道格的人，似乎對他過去的經歷，尤其來台前惹下的是非，都了解不深。媒體長篇累牘的報導，更偶有與事實不符之處。他來得不情不願，走得也算不上載譽而歸。國務院發言人麥考馬克說他「做得好極了」，只是抵擋媒體詢問的外交辭令而已。


論學歷與經歷，不能否認包道格要比美國一般駐外使節優秀。他曾就讀布朗、史丹福與哈佛三所名校，但未獲博士學位。服役海軍期間，他到過越南與日本，種下日後以遠東為專業的遠因。考進國務院後，一九八○年他曾短暫服務於美國駐北京大使館，然後調到駐新加坡大使館三年。一九八四年調回國務院，任職政策計畫司，兩年後因緣際會，進了雷根總統時代白宮的國家安全會議，做到亞洲事務資深主任。老布希繼任總統後，他升到總統特別助理，可云一帆風順。

政黨輪替，白宮主人換成民主黨的柯林頓，包道格只好離開公職，成立所謂「亞太政策中心（Asia Pacific Policy Center，簡稱ＡＰＰＣ）」，在華府伺機再起。就是這個貌似非營利性研究機構，實則接受外間委託從事公關工作的ＡＰＰＣ，後來給他惹出許多麻煩。ＡＩＴ網站上他的履歷，說ＡＰＰＣ是個「非營利性教育機構」，出版有關美國對亞洲關係的小冊，並與人「合辦國際會議」；此外包氏個人並「為若干美國公司提供諮詢服務」，與事實有點出入。

迷你型的智庫在華府本就很難維持，包道格找上了聲名狼藉的史導特（Anthony Stout），後者慷慨地提供辦公場所與開辦費用，雙方一拍即合。ＡＰＰＣ那時的國外主顧以新加坡與馬來西亞政府為主。史導特在馬來西亞的金主是目前身陷囹圄的前副總理安華（Anwar Ibrahim）。安華一心想提前接班，所以雇用美國公關公司為他營造聲望，其中最成功的就是包道格替他辦的「太平洋對話（Pacific Dialogue）」會議，每年從美國邀請兩黨參議員與工商鉅子，到吉隆坡與亞洲各政經領袖開會，一切由馬國政府招待，連續四年之久。

仍掌大權的馬哈地總理（Mohamed Mahathir）察覺到安華的野心，把他抓起來以雞姦定罪。審判中曾任職馬來西亞央行的穆拉特（Abdul Murad）作證說，他曾奉安華之命，先後幾次轉交給包道格一千萬美元。此後兩年，ＡＰＰＣ收入銳減，有一年只靠新加坡大使館的十六萬六千美元公關費度日。

包道格雖加入小布希競選活動，卻未進入競選總部核心的小圈圈。共和黨再度執政，他又因在老布希時代，與萊斯相處得不太愉快，未能重回國安會任職。

仗著舊日的老關係，包道格轉而想弄個駐外大使的差使，又高不成低不就。大國如日本、中國輪不到他。他先鎖定韓國，在報端與學術會議裡提出一系列對北韓的批判，最後這位置被希爾（Christopher Hill）搶走。退而求其次，他才以ＡＩＴ駐台代表為目標。

包道格的活動力很強，二○○○年春天，他在國際前鋒論壇報（ＩＨＴ）寫了一系列有關台灣政治的文章。陳水扁當選後，設在紐約名為民間機構，實受國務院補助的美國外交政策全國委員會（National Committee on American Foreign Policy）特別選派四人組團，來台灣與大陸訪問，以民間「第二軌道（Track2）為名，了解兩岸緊張局勢，尋求化解之道。該團由前東亞事務助卿羅德（Winston Lord）領隊，包道格排名第二，依次才是該會主席施瓦伯（George D. Schwab）與圓桌討論會主持人柴高利亞（Donald S. Zagoria）。此行使包道格認識了我國朝野各黨領袖，減少了陌生程度。

但他的任命又遭受自由主義派反對，拖了一年才發表。其實華府無論「藍軍」或「紅軍」都曾批評他。二○○二年二月，有九十年歷史的政論性雜誌《新共和（The New Republic）》在一篇調查詳盡的報導裡，戳穿了包道格的底細。這篇由馬謝爾（Joshua Micah Marshall）署名的長文，原由紐約時報星期週刊簽約委託，最後改由《新共和》刊出，文筆尖銳，不留情面。文中指出：包氏在文章裡寫過，布希在競選時對中國大陸的抨擊，只是「選舉標語（campaign slogans）」。布希就職後說如果大陸攻台，美國將「不計代價（whatever it took）」保衛台灣後，包氏竟然在對上海一項研討會用視訊演說時，直指布希「說錯了話（misspoke）」。

對包道格殺傷力最大的，莫如該雜誌透露，ＡＰＰＣ曾與尼克森中心（The Nixon Center）討論合併可能，結果沒有成功。文章暗示說，這所退休總統紀念圖書館的負責人對包道格的操守，不甚放心。又說包氏所以獲任ＡＩＴ駐台代表，主要是因為這個白手套機構人員的任命，無須經參議院同意之故。假如真是如此，頗有才華，在台三年半間無愧地卸下大使之名的包道格，回美後出處如何，他的朋友們難免會替他擔心。

友善列印

more