以许知远为代表的知识分子的悲观主义，虽然不普遍倒是很典型，因为他们代表了在这个资本消费世界中非大众文化如何被粉碎和被市场的力量所消解，从而感到自我失落的心态。是啊，他们忧心忡忡，忧国忧民，富于思考力，只是这些词汇本身的褒贬却被这个社会所疑问，因为除了NASDAQ股价和SK-2是否重新上市以外，我们并不关心我们的过去和将来。只有现在而已。

Title: My Country My People
Source:FTChinese.com
Copyright: Copyrighted source material. Not eligible for republication and any other commercial usages.
Translated by: Frank Dai

我在书桌前，坐立不安，头脑中被杂乱的碎片所充斥。我要开始为金融时报FT中文网写一组专栏，主题是年轻的知识分子如何看待中国。我今年正好30岁，出生的1976年普遍被视作中国历史的分水岭之一，中华人民共和国的奠基人毛泽东、周恩来与朱德都在那年去世，十年文化大革命结束了，中国处于崩溃的边缘和新生的前夜。

I am sitting down by my desk in a fidget. My mind is replete with scrap and fragments. I am going to write a column for FTChinese.com, on the topic of how the young intellectuals are perceiving China. I am at the age of 30 this year. The year 1976 in which I was born is generally regarded as the dividing line of Chinese history. The founders of the republic were gone in that year: Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Zhu Dei. The decade of Cultural Revolution was ended. China was on the edge of collapse and eve of reborn. 

我的个人经历在某个浅薄的程度折射了这三十年中国的变化。我出生在江苏北部一个小乡村，父亲那时是铁道兵一名连级干部，在中国革命的发源地之一的吕梁山区修建铁路。他的运气不够好，尽管在县城里成绩优异，却无缘上大学，当兵是这些农家孩子摆脱出身的唯一出路，在彼时，解放军是国家的骄傲，不管是保卫边疆，还是在山沟里铺设铁轨。

My personal experience can to some minor degree reflected the changes in China during past three decades. I was born in a small village in the north of Jiangsu Province. My father was a military officer of company level, building railway at the womb of revolutionaries: Lv Liang Range. He was not lucky enough. Though he got high marks on county’s exam, he was rejected by university. The only way the children from the countryside can get rid of their rural identities is to join in the army. At that time it is a national pride to be a member of PLA , whether his job is to guard the national board or build railway in the valley.

我在1983年来到北京。在邓小平决定裁减的100万军队中，铁道兵首当其冲，父亲脱下军装，成了铁道部的一员，幸运地分配到了首都。我对于八十年代中国的记忆甚少，印象里那是个充满着朝气的年代，女排获得世界冠军，知识分子在《河殇》里探讨中国命运，而街上则有了红裙子与牛仔裤，农民获得了在自己的土地上种什么庄稼和怎么种的权力，没人怀疑执政党， “小康社会”比起昔日伟大的革命理想，更令人憧憬……

I came to Beijing in 1983. In Deng Xiaoping’s disarmament plan, the railway army was the among the first targets. My father was retired and assigned to an position at the Department of Railway Transportation in the Capital. My memory for the 80s was far-between. In my impression it was an era of youthful spirit. The female volleyball has won a world champion. The intellectuals were discussing the fate of China on the TV series “Cry At The River”. There were jeans and red skirts on the streets. The countrymen were granted with the right to decide what and how to grow their crops. Nobody was suspecting the ruling party. The “well-off society” was much more appealing than yesterday’s vision for great revolution…….

1989年5月时，我恰好住在长安街旁，整天为能否考上重点中学忧心忡忡。电视里不断播放军车被烧、学生占据天安门的报道。我记得班里的一名女生，住在长安街的另一边，为了让她正常上学，两名男生每天去接他，他们三人都看到了长安街上燃烧的火堆。在我的青春期，政治的冷漠是社会的普遍情绪。1995年进入北京大学时，蔡元培时代的兼容并包早已是昔日的传奇，甚至八十年代的浪漫主义气质也消失殆尽。大学正变成了一个流水线式的加工厂。我们被教育成一个讨人喜欢的工作者，年轻人对诗歌、理想失去了兴趣，IBM与宝洁公司招聘会上人头攒动。大学不再是新思想的实验场，而是工作前的培训中心。

In the May of 1989 I happened to live by the Changan Street, worrying about entering the first-rated high schools. The TV is on live with reports on how the military vehicles were burn and the square was occupied by the students. I still remembered that a girl in my class, who lived in another end of Changan Street, was picked up by two of my boy classmates in order to make her attendance regular. All of them witnessed the inflaming fire near the Changan Street. In my adolescence the indifference toward politics was normal and prevailing. When I entered Bejing University in 1995, the principle of “Diversity and Tolerance” in Cai Yuanpei’s era was only the legend of yesterday. Even the romantic blood of 80s was gone too. The university was becoming more of a factory with assemble line. We are educated on how to be a popular workers. The youth lost their interests in poems and ideals. Instead, the job fair of IBM and P&G was crowded. The university is no longer the place where new thinking can play around, but a training center for pre-work drill.

告别大学生活前，一场dot.com席卷了中国城市，它可能是我这一代人最浪漫的经历。硅谷的技术天才正像是鲍勃·迪伦与麦克卢汉的继承人，《连线》则是新时代的《滚石》，他们都把旧世界撕开了一道裂缝。我们都是全球化毫不保留的拥护者，我们理解的全球化就是美国化，且颇为自得的认定,我们与那种浅薄的美国推崇者不同，它不仅是麦当劳、可口可乐与好莱坞电影，更重要的是，它有林肯的政治理想、爱默生的个人主义和哈佛大学的自由教育。

Before waving goodbye to college life, the wave of .com swept all Chinese cities. That’s the probably the most romantic experience of our generation. The geeks of silicon valley were endowed with the genius of Bob Dylan and Mcluhan. Wired Magazine is the Rolling Stone of the new era. They ripped a crack on the Old World. We were the firmest advocates of globalization, which in our viewpoint equals to Americanization, and we were so self-righteous that we thought ourselves to be distinct with superficial adorers of America. It did not only mean McDonald, Coca Cola and Hollywood to us but the most important thing is that they owns the political ambitions of Lincoln, individualism of Emerson and free education in Harvard University.

毕业前，我成为了一名dot.comer，第一个月的工资相当于我母亲一年的收入。网络泡沫破灭了，我又成了一名新闻记者，中国的出版物不再仅由官方控制，一些以市场基础的报纸、杂志，正学习用《纽约时报》、《商业周刊》的口吻报道中国。在1999年至2003年的几年中，我被一种强烈的乐观情绪左右着。

Before graduation I became a dot.comer. My salary in the first month equals to my mother’s income in one year. When the bubble was busted I became a journalist then. The Chinese publications were no longer controlled by government. Some market-oriented newspapers and magazines are learning to report news in a New York Times and Business Week styles. Between 1999 and 2003 I was dominated by strong sense of optimism.

中国正在成为世界最伟大的故事，它保持了四分之一世纪的高速经济增长；全球化与信息革命使得我毫不怀疑自己正与纽约、伦敦、东京的青年站在同一个起跑线上，我们听同样的音乐、看同样的电影，用同一种Windows操作系统；市民空间日益扩大，新兴的中产阶级可能将最终导致一个民主中国的出现……我相信，中国必然将成为世界的一部分，成为类似美国那样的国家，以至于1999年中国驻南斯拉夫使馆被轰炸时，我没有太多愤怒，并且怀疑游行的队伍的真诚性——我知道我的同学们都在拼命获得前往美国的签证。

The China itself is becoming the most wonderful narratives on the world. Its economy kept booming at fast pace within a quarter of century; globalization and info tech make me firmly believed that we are on the same starting line with youngsters from New York, London and Yokyo alike. We are listening to the same music, watching the same movies and using the same Windows operating system; the ever expansion of civil sphere and rising of middle class would eventually lead to the birth of democracy in China. I believed that China would be integrated as a part of the world and become countries like America. So when Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia was bombed I was not so much angry and begin to suspect how genuine they were–I knew that all my classmates were striving for American visa.

我不清楚到底是什么原因促使了这种乐观情绪的消失。过去20年中，中国的知识分子迷信过各种东西，我们迷恋过市场，迷恋过技术，互联网将导致信息的自由流通，将打破政治权力对信息的垄断；迷恋过消费主义，它将消解极权主义……

I don’t know what has prompted the disappearance of such optimism on me. In the past 20 years the Chinese intellectuals have been superstitious with various kind of stuff: we had been fascinated with the market and technology, believing that the free flow of information would break up the political power’s monopoly against information.  

但是，一切的结果都与我们最初想象的不同。一个外来者与生活其中的人对一个社会的感受是截然不同的。我对于中国的乐观情绪，很大程度受西方报道影响。那些跨国公司的首席执行官，《时代》的记者和到访的政要，他们住在北京、上海的五星级酒店里，看到新建的高楼大厦里、宽阔的公路，交谈的则是一小群中国的全球化了的精英，他们总是在谈论中国庞大的市场、令人惊讶的劳动力储备，中国的官员们的效率体验在对经济增长的迷恋。他们面对的是一个商业力量从所有的伦理、政治、文化束缚中摆脱出来的中国，一个不顾一切要生产与消费的中国。

However everything tends to be different from our initial imagination. The perception of a society for an outsider and insider are totally different. My optimism for China was largely influenced by the reports on China from foreign media. The CEO of multinationals, journalists from Time Magazine and visiting leaders are people who lived in the five-starred hotel, seeing the newly established skyscrapers and broad boulevard, chatting with a few of globalized elites in China. They were always talking about huge Chinese market and amazing labour reservation. The Chinese officials are fascinated with economical growth and efficient productivity. The country they are dealing with wants to get rid of all boundaries of ethnics, politics and culture by manipulating the power of commerce, who want to produce and consume regardless of any obstacles.

但是，生活在这个社会中的人却必须承担另一些东西。中国已成为一个价值失衡、庸俗、焦虑的社会。为中国人提供内心安定感的因素大都已消失，传统早已失效，不管是儒家思想，还是共产主义理想。但新的价值观则迟迟未来，北京街头与华北乡村的墙壁上，粉刷着各种新标语招贴，让人想起文革时的口号，往往成为人们嘲讽的对象。知识分子则在过去十年的社会变革中，彻底失语了，政治上冷感，更无力应对市场变革与大众文化的兴起。就像托马斯·卡莱尔所说的，金钱是这个社会唯一的连接点，更糟的是，金钱还并非是那种”利润面前人人平等的金钱”，在大部分时刻，它与政治权力紧密相联。

But other people living in the same society must bear something else. China is becoming the country in which a lack of balanced value, general philistinism and anxiety is widely popular. The factors contributing to stable state of mind of Chinese are gone. The tradition is out of date, whether it’s Confucius or communism, without new values looming at large. The walls painted with all kinds of slogan, which can be found in the rural area of Beijing and North China, were usually the targets for satire and irony. The intellectuals are completely out of words in the social changes during the last decade, who can not cope with the social revolutions and rising of mass culture. Money is the only node connecting the society as said by Thomas Carlyle. The worst of it is that the money is not the one presented in sayings such as “money is equal to all men” but closely connected to political power.

一种讥讽一切的犬儒主义已盛行，人们不愿意严肃地谈论任何话题。在谈论中国社会旺盛的生命力时，我们会发现，这种生命力中缺乏生气勃勃的成分，更多是一种没任何禁忌的嚣张。

A kind of cynicism is prevailing, which tried to sneer at almost everything. People are reluctant to talk about any serious topics. When talking about the vitality of Chinese society, we can find out that there is a lack of thriving nutrition in such vitality. Rather, it’s a hubris without any taboo.

整个20世纪，国人用各种主义、各种理论解释中国。但中国人的真实生活总是被这些抽象的主义所吞噬。历史的连续性、日常生活的细微性、个人的命运，总是被历史洪流冲刷。以至于，作为一个30岁自认为是知识分子的青年人来说，谈起自己国家时倒像个陌生人。我经常怀疑，我对大英博物馆对面那几家小书店的熟悉程度，可能要超过我对北京南城的理解。

During the whole 20th century the Chinese tried to interpret China from various theories and -ism, but the real life of Chinese are always swallowed by such abstract -ism. The continuity of history, the subtlety of daily life and fate of individuals were washed out by the wave of history. For me, a thirty-something who claimed to be a young intellectual, to talk about my homeland is to feel like a stranger. I often suspected that I was more familiar with some book stores in opposite to British Museum than with the south of Beijing city.

但的确到了这样一个时刻， 中国青年知识分子必须从他们的角度来描述与解释自己所生活的国家，这种描述与解释正是这个社会目前最匮乏，因为对自己从哪里来，又将到哪里去深感迷惘，中国社会正陷入一种深重的焦虑中，对于物质的崇拜难以长期充当这种缺乏价值的替代物。

But it came to a critical moment in which Chinese young intellectuals must describe and interpret the country they are living in. That’s the thing in scarcity in this society because they are bewildered with where they came from and where they are going. Chinese society was thrown into deep anxiety because the worship against money can not substitute the value for long time.

“当今中国最重要的事件之一，是中国青年知识分子正在重新认识自己的国家。” 在介绍林语堂1935年出版的《吾国吾民》中，美国作家赛珍珠写道。整整七十年过去了，我们不仅没有进步，甚至大步后退了。整整七十年中，仍没有人比林语堂更从容、有趣、兴致昂然的描绘了中国的过去与未来。

“The most important current event in China is that the Chinese young intellectuals must re-recongnize his country.” American writer Pearl Buck wrote on her introduction to the book “My Country, My People” by Lin Yutang. Seventy years have been passed and we did not make any progress, or even go backward in great stride. For seventy years nobody other than Lin Yutang has depicted the past and future of China in such a leisured, interesting and cheering way.

我无意成为严格意义上的专栏作家，告诉你中国现状如何，有何种解决方案。以后的专栏系列，更像是一种个人的经历、经验加上观察，它激起的头脑风暴可能比它提供的清晰分析更多。但它的确是一个年轻知识分子看待自己国家的真实努力，尽管这种努力困难重重并可能注定失败。但每个社会乃至每位个人，不都是在对自身命运与境况的探讨中，获得生活之意义吗？

I don’t want to be columnist in strict sense, telling you the current situation of China and coming up with the ideas to solve its problems. This column would be more of personal experience and observation. The brainstorm it triggered off would provide more than what it will analyze. But it’s the genuine effort by a young Chinese intellectual to perceive his own country, which might fail in spite of all difficulties. But should every society and every men derive the meaning of life from the discussion of their own situation and destiny?