金融时报：铜像暴露中西之间的裂痕
【原文网址】http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/85022a92-0a81-11de-95ed-0000779fd2ac.html【译文】铜像暴露中西之间的裂痕提到埃尔金伯爵，声名狼藉的持有者名号就会涌上我们的心中：他以前是英国驻土耳其帝国大使，他在1801年时，从帕特农神庙带走了许多大理石雕像，这些雕像现在存放在大英博物馆。
他的儿子不那么有名，他同样也得为自己破坏文物的不光彩行为负责。作为1860年的鸦片战争后果之一，是这位第八代埃尔金伯爵继承人命令法国、英国和彭加陛（印度）的士兵摧毁了北京圆明园。
由埃尔金伯爵发动的文化战争仍在继续。希腊人不断游说，好让那些雕像被归还给希腊。在中国，很多人对两座显然是从圆明园抢出来的青铜器的拍卖很愤慨。上个月在巴黎的已故的圣罗兰遗物的拍卖中，那两件青铜器变成了中国“埃尔金雕像”。
中国在蔡铭超身上似乎看到Melina Mercouri的影子，Melina Mercouri是希腊前文化部长，这位声音嘶哑的女部长领导希腊人要求归还雕像的运动。既是收藏家又是拍卖商的蔡，以3150万欧元拍得两件青铜器，但他拒绝付款——实际是阴谋破坏拍卖。但他被认为是爱国英雄。
在不断增长的有关文物的法律争议中，青铜器的案例是很重要的，因为它暴露了中国和西方在历史方面的断层，这不断威胁要爆发。由乾隆在18世纪中期建造的圆明园是个巨大的游乐场，包含迷人的花园，池塘和展馆，连接不同水塘的桥有240个。摧毁圆明园被中国人视为最大的刺激，当英法和其他殖民国家的军队打败腐朽的清朝，占领中国部分土地，强迫中国进行鸦片贸易时，中国认为那是“百年国耻”。圆明园遗址是耻辱的纪念碑，尽管也许是为了奥运，它去年没有被提及。
虽然中国外表很自信，但中国也有其易碎的一面，偶尔用这些事件来扮演受害者。去年扰乱圣火传递的事件和1999年轰炸贝尔格莱德大使馆触动了这个神经。
中国共产党已经成为这些历史记忆精心的守护人。实际上，最近几年最严重的媒体审查是关于历史的。2006年，冰点杂志出版了一个历史学家的文章，他认为学校教科书扭曲了摧毁圆明园的原因和其他在中国的殖民犯罪。这个杂志被临时停刊，主编被裁。因此当中国官方开始讨论“国耻”的时候，有时是鼓励你寻找其他线索的途径。随着失业增加、西藏动荡，北京还是很欢迎民族主义的愤怒的。
很多中国人对使用和滥用历史深表怀疑，指出这只是几十年前的事；在天安门屠杀后，北京喜欢推进殖民罪恶的记叙。中国最近的历史记录，说委婉一点，很可怜。圆明园会在文革中幸免吗？建筑师艾未未（音）本周说：“我们是对子孙造成最大伤害的一代”。
中国文化也有比鼠首和兔首更好承载者的文物。那两件雕塑是由法国人建造的喷泉装饰的一部分。作家Jasper Becker曾经看到共产主义青年团的小孩子在圆明园遗址宣誓对党忠诚，他说，那个地方其实是‘文化交流’的积极象征。圆明园的一部分有意大利人Jesuits设计，他们写的关于北京的神奇刺激了欧洲对中国艺术风格的热情。
由于一些愤怒是必然的，我们无法回避。圆明园依然是殖民战争的见证。我这一代的英国人认为关于这个帝国有一些是很错误的，但我们也因此用这些来回避伴随着的肮脏贸易。我们关上书本，代价很重。伊拉克的溃败告诉我们，尽管我们认为是正确的，但是在枪口另一面的人们却有不同的想法。
埃尔金死在了Dharamsala——这是印度一个小山镇，现在是达赖的居住地——是他那个年代的宽容的国际主义者。埃尔金的拥护者说，他想教训中国皇帝——他曾绑架过他的副手——而不是中国人。但他误判了这种情况。即使在他那个年代，也有人认为他的决定是不折不扣的侮辱。维克多雨果一年后写到：“对帕特农做的有发生在圆明园，我们欧洲人是文明人，对于我们来讲，中国人是野蛮人。这就是文明人对野蛮人的所作所为”！
【原文】Beijing bronzes expose faultline with westPublished: March 6 2009 19:15 | Last updated: March 6 2009 19:15
Mention the Earls of Elgin and one notorious holder of the title springs to mind – the one-time British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (and 7th earl) who, in 1801, removed the marble sculptures from the Parthenon that are now housed in the British Museum. His son is less well-known, but he was also responsible for what many view as an infamous act of cultural vandalism. In the aftermath of the second opium war in 1860, it was the 8th Earl of Elgin who ordered French, British and Punjabi soldiers to destroy the Old Summer Palace in Beijing.
The culture wars started by the Lords Elgin are still raging. Greece continues to lobby for the marbles to be restored to Athens. And in China, many people are fuming at the sale of two bronzes apparently looted from the palace before it was burnt to the ground. Auctioned in Paris last month as part of the collection of the late Yves Saint Laurent, the bronzes have become China’s Elgin Marbles.
In Cai Mingchao, China has now found its Melina Mercouri – the late gravel-voiced actress and culture minister who led the Greek campaign to return the marbles. A collector and auctioneer himself, Mr Cai announced in Beijing that he had made the winning €31.5m ($40m, £28m) bid for the bronzes but was refusing to pay – in effect sabotaging the auction. He was hailed as a patriotic hero.
Amid a growing wave of legal disputes over stolen antiquities, the story of the bronzes is particularly important because it has exposed a historical faultline running through China’s relationship with the west that keeps threatening to erupt.
Built by the Qianlong emperor in the mid-18th century, the Old Summer Palace was a vast playground of enchanting gardens, lakes and pavilions. There were 240 bridges to cross the different pools of water. The destruction of the palace is probably the rawest nerve in what the Chinese refer to as “the century of national shame and humiliation” when the British, French and other colonial powers took advantage of the decaying Qing dynasty to occupy parts of the country and prize open the economy for the opium trade. The site of the palace used to boast a monument about past humiliations, although it was taken down last year, perhaps because of the Olympics.
For all its outward confidence, modern China has a brittle alter ego that occasionally uses these events to play the victim. The disrupted Olympic torch relay last year and the 1999 bombing of China’s Belgrade embassy touched that nerve.
China’s Communist party has become the jealous guardian of these historical memories. Indeed, one of the worst acts of media censorship in recent years was about the control of history. In 2006, Freezing Point magazine published an essay by a historian who argued that school history textbooks presented a distorted version of the destruction of the palace and other colonial crimes against China. The magazine was temporarily closed and its editor fired. So when Chinese officials start talking about “national humiliation”, it is sometimes a clue that you are being encouraged to look the other way. And with unemployment soaring and unrest in Tibet beginning to bubble up again, a bout of nationalist pique is not unwelcome in Beijing.
Plenty of Chinese are sceptical about the use and misuse of their history, pointing out that it was only a couple of decades ago, in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre, that Beijing really started to promote the narrative of colonial humiliation. China’s recent record of historical preservation is, to put it mildly, poor. Would the Old Summer Palace have survived the cultural revolution? “We are the ones who have caused the most serious damage to our heritage,” the architect Ai Weiwei said this week. Chinese civilisation also has better standard bearers than these bronze heads of a rat and a rabbit. The two sculptures were part of a fountain at the palace that was the work of a Frenchman. The writer Jasper Becker, who once saw kids from the Communist Youth League declaring their loyalty to the party among the palace ruins, says that the estate was really “an inspiring symbol of cultural exchange”. Parts of it were designed by Italian Jesuits and the letters they wrote home about the wonders of Beijing helped to spur the wave of European enthusiasm for chinoiserie.
Yet while some of the fury is stage-managed, we cannot escape that easily. The Old Summer Palace is still a stark reminder about the arrogance of the colonial impulse. Pretty much unanimously, Britons of my generation believe that there was something deeply wrong about the empire, but we also use this simple admission to avoid thinking about the dirty business that came with it. We closed the book and at great cost. It took the Iraq debacle to teach us again that even when we think our motivations are good, as some did, the people at the other end of the gun will see things differently.
Elgin, who died in Dharamsala, the Indian hill town now home to the Dalai Lama, was a liberal internationalist of his age. His defenders said he wanted to punish the Chinese emperor – who had kidnapped his aides – and not the Chinese people. Well, he misjudged that one. Even at the time, some foreigners understood the crude insult of his decision. “What was done to the Parthenon was done to the Summer Palace,” Victor Hugo wrote only a year later. “We Europeans are the civilised ones and for us the Chinese are barbarians. This is what civilisation has done to barbarism.”The writer is FT Beijing bureau chief
1# yangfuguang
怎么又是艾~，文化人难道就是那么些个例嘛？ 埃尔金的拥护者说，他想教训中国皇帝——他曾绑架过他的副手——而不是中国人。但他误判了这种情况。
yangfuguang 发表于 2009-4-3 00:08 http://bbs.m4.cn/images/common/back.gif
多么冠冕堂皇的理由!!!! 最后“法国的良心”又被引用了 强盗们的逻辑与理由 诡辩者。
想转移中国人的视线？没门！ 可惜啊，不是讨论西方人喜欢树那些人物铜像，东方人喜欢树立哪些人物铜像。一个是战争狂人，一个是文化名人。这就是区别啊。从上帝那本书里就能看到西方人的好战，哎 “圆明园会在文革中幸免吗？.....
故宫幸免了吗？长城幸免了吗？颐和园幸免了吗？
这些西方白痴！ 强盗和“文明人”的理论
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