評論
打印
"I'm not going to be much help," murmured Zhang Fang, my interpreter. "I don't understand the Cantonese language, and most of these people don't either."
翻譯張芳小聲對我說：“沒什么可譯的，我不懂粵語，在座的許多人也不懂。”
I thought I knew what to watch for, but the only characters I recognized were the three witches. Otherwise the small group spent most of an hour running in circles, leaping, and threatening to beat each other with long sticks. The lighting was heavy on shadows, with frequent flashes. Language wasn't a problem, as the actors mainly snarled and shrieked. Then they turned their backs to the audience and a few shouted something in Cantonese. The lights went out, and for a moment the only sound in the darkness was the whirring of an expensive camera on auto-rewind.
我本以為自己知道看些什么，可我能辨認的角色只有三個女巫。一個小時的演出中的大半時間里，這些人都圍成圈，跑來跳去，用長棍子相互威脅。燈光在演員身后留下了濃重的影子，閃電頻頻。沒有語言問題，因為演員主要是在狂呼尖叫。之后，他們背向觀眾，幾個人用粵語叫喊。燈光熄滅，有一陣子，黑暗中唯一的聲音就是一部價格昂貴的照相機自動倒卷時發出的聲音。
This is China? It could have been a college campus anywhere in the West. Until recently such a performance was unthinkable. It strained imagination that this could be the same country where a generation ago the three most desired luxury items were wristwatches, bicycles, and sewing machines.
這是中國？在西方任何一所大學都可能看到類似的情形。在西方，直到最近人們才開始接受這樣的表演。難以想象，在同一個國家，前一代人們夢寐以求的三大奢侈品曾是手表、自行車和縫紉機。
Early on I realized that I was going to need some type of compass to guide me through the wilds of global culture. So when I was in Los Angeles, I sought out Alvin Toffler, whose book Future Shock was published in 1970. In the nearly three decades since, he has developed and refined a number of interesting ideas, explained in The Third Wave, written with his wife, Heidi.
開始時，我就意識到穿越全球文化荒原會需要某種指南。因此還在洛杉磯時，我找到《未來的沖擊》的作者阿爾文·托夫勒。此書出版于1970年。此后30多年中，他不斷完善了更多有趣的思想。他與夫人海蒂合著的《第三次浪潮》一書詳細地解釋了這些想法。
