老外在中国：关掉电视，畅游书海

One of the many good things I have experienced since I moved to China has been an invigorated interest in reading. With my favorite television programs harder or impossible to access, I turned to the electronic pages of an e-reader.
我来到中国后感受到的众多好处之一便是我对阅读的兴趣大增。由于喜欢的电视节目要么不能收看，要么需要大费周章才行，我便打开了电子书。

Since I was eager to learn all about my new home, I turned to Chinese authors as well as foreign authors, including those of the Chinese diaspora. I had read a biography of early revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen when I was about 12, long before I ever imagined living here.
我对新环境的一切都很好奇，于是我开始阅读中外作家，包括那些海外华人作家的作品。早在12岁时，我就读过革命先驱孙中山的传记了，但那个时候我从没想过会在这里生活。

One of my early favorites when I arrived in China was US writer and journalist Peter Hessler, who took the name of 何伟 (He Wei) in China. His River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, about his introduction to China in 1996 as an English teacher in Fuling, Sichuan province — now part of Chongqing — is an excellent primer for newcomers. His descriptions of day-to-day life are insightful, and he captures an interesting point in time as China opened up.
彼得•赫斯勒是我到中国后最先喜欢的作家之一，他在中国叫何伟。赫斯勒来自美国，他也是一名记者，他的《江城》对初来乍到的外国人来说是一本极好的入门书，这本书是关于1996年他在四川涪陵（现属于重庆）当英语老师时对中国的介绍。他对日常生活的描写深刻有见解，在中国对外开放之际，及时捕捉到了一个有趣的视角。

I devoured two other well-known Hessler books about China, Oracle Bones and Country Driving. I also read Mo Yan's Red Sorghum, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature, Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China, novels by Pearl S. Buck and Amy Tan and many more.
我还阅读了赫斯勒另外两本关于中国的名作，《甲骨文》和《寻路中国》。还有2012年诺贝尔文学奖得主莫言的《红高粱》，埃德加•斯诺的《红星照耀中国》，以及赛珍珠、谭恩美的小说等等。

Lately I have returned to reading books about Latin America, a region that was my first foreign love.
最近, 我重新读起有关拉丁美洲的书籍，这里是我最初向往的异国他乡。

I am now reading Love in the Time of Cholera by Colombian Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who was a master of magical realism. The book is set roughly in the period from 1880 to 1930 in a Caribbean port based loosely on Cartagena, Colombia.
我目前正在读的是诺贝尔奖得主、魔幻现实主义大师、哥伦比亚作家加夫列尔•加西亚•马尔克斯的《霍乱时期的爱情》。这本书的背景设定在大约1880到1930年间的一个加勒比海港口（以哥伦比亚卡塔赫纳海港为原型）。

The book, first published in 1985, centers on a young couple. The woman, Fermina Daza, goes on to marry a blue-blood doctor, while the man, Florentino Ariza, tries to lose himself in affairs while pining away for her for 50 years.
该书于1985年首次出版，故事围绕一对年轻夫妇展开。女主费尔米纳•达萨嫁给了贵族医生费洛伦蒂纳•阿里萨，而在共处的50年中，阿里萨一边为女主憔悴，一边试图沉迷在婚外情中。

But it is far from a flowery romance novel, and incorporates death, the meaning of life and how "happily ever after" is never so simple. Cholera is compared with love, in that both can strike quickly, destroy lives and respect neither class nor race.
但这本书绝不只是一部华丽的爱情小说，它还融合了死亡，生命的意义，以及“幸福生活”并不容易等主题。爱情可与霍乱相提并论，因为这两者都可以迅速袭来，摧毁生命，无视阶级地位和种族。

His depictions of an insular, stratified society in a crumbling colonial city being dragged into the modern age are vivid. Garcia Marquez describes a scene in which Fermina disappears for a time: "No one knew anything in a city where everything was known, and where many things were known even before they happened, above all if they concerned the rich."
加西亚•马尔克斯生动描绘了一个支离破碎的殖民城市中被拖进现代的孤立分层的社会，其中有一段描写费尔米纳失踪的句子：“在这座城市里，人们知晓一切，许多事甚至还没发生之前就有人知道，尤其是关于富人的事，而这件事竟无人知晓。”

I also have been reading the works of another Nobel Price winner, Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru, who often ties his works more directly to history. His War of the End of the World revolves around an uprising in 19th century Brazil motivated by a messianic cult. Death in the Andes portrays the gritty reality of Andean towns caught amid the Shining Path terror of the late 20th century. The Feast of the Goat is a masterful story of the Trujillo years in the Dominican Republic, complete with courage, cowardice and cruelty and set in the penetrating humidity of the Caribbean country.
我还在读另一位诺奖得主马里奥•巴尔加斯•略萨的作品。这位秘鲁作家的著作常与历史话题更直接相关。他的作品《世界末日的战争》讲的是19世纪的巴西，因为对救世主的崇拜而展开的一场起义。而《安地斯山脉上的死亡》则描述了被20世纪晚期的光辉道路恐怖事件笼罩的安地斯镇的残酷事实。《山羊的盛宴》是一部关于多米尼加共和国特鲁希略时代的杰作，故事有关于勇气、怯懦与残忍，整个故事笼罩着加勒比海国家的蒙蒙雾气。

My wife and I have not totally forsworn the screen — Beijing has some very nice movie theaters, and we enjoy videos on DVD and Youku.com. But movies usually pale beside the pictures that master writers can conjure in your head. You can go as fast as you want or slow down and savor a scene.
我和妻子并没有发誓不看荧幕作品，北京有一些不错的电影院，有时我们也会用DVD或者在优酷上看视频。但是与文学大师在你脑海中描绘的画面相比，电影通常是苍白无力的。你尽可匆匆掠过，亦可放慢速度，细细品读一个场景。

I have heard that reading has been declining as electronic devices make access to streaming and video games possible virtually anywhere. But my hope is that young people don't lose the pleasure of reading.
我听说，由于电子设备可以让人在任何地方访问流媒体、玩电子游戏，人们的阅读时间一直在减少。但是我希望年轻人不要失去了阅读的乐趣。

As Garcia Marquez once said, "The duty of the writers is not to preserve the language but to open the way for it in history."
正如加西亚•马尔克斯曾说，“作家的职责不是保护语言，而是为语言在历史上开辟道路。”

编审：董静 丹妮
音频编辑：焦洁
来源：CHINA DAILY 微信公众号：

About the author & broadcaster

Matt Prichard is a copy editor and writer who works on the front page team of China Daily. He has lived in China for more than four years, in Shanghai and Beijing. Before that, he had a 30-year career as a reporter and editor in the United States and Latin America. He has an ABJ from the University of Georgia and did postgraduate work at the Universidad Nacional del Sur in Argentina. He speaks Spanish fluently and is still learning Mandarin.
Contact the writer at mattprichard@chinadaily.com.cn