【纽约客 20160209】看不见的桥：中俄边境的生活
【中文标题】看不见的桥：中俄边境的生活
【原文标题】Invisible Bridges: Life Along the Chinese-Russian Border
【登载媒体】纽约客
【原文作者】Peter Hessler
【原文链接】http://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/invisible-bridges-life-along-the-chinese-russian-border?intcid=popular
扎赉诺尔区的圣巴索大教堂的复制品。
哈尔滨市松花江畔的一个食品摊主在等待顾客，他的上方是新旧中东铁路桥。左边的旧桥由俄罗斯人在二十世纪初建造，右边的新桥由中国人建造。
一位俄罗斯人正在走出位于黑龙江省五大连池市的一个医疗所。在号召加强中俄合作和旅游的广告攻势下，这个地区已经成为很多俄罗斯人修养身体的旅游目的地。
中俄边境哈巴罗夫斯克边疆区拉佐的一个小村庄蒙基洛夫卡，两名俄罗斯哥萨克骑兵在巡逻。
中国，满洲里。
边疆镇居民张玉兰是中俄混血后裔。
苗中林出生在俄罗斯一个中俄混血的家庭，现在居住在边疆镇。
中国，满洲里。建筑工人正在修建新“俄罗斯套娃村”主题娱乐公园。
人们在边疆镇的一个小商店里打牌，这里属于黑龙江省，大约三分之一的居民都是俄罗斯和中国的混血后裔。
从俄罗斯森林中运来的木材在满洲里被加工，然后销往中国南方地区。
俄罗斯阿穆尔河畔的特罗伊茨科耶。
边疆镇的一家人。
中国，哈尔滨。俄罗斯学生在“布鲁斯俱乐部”表演挣钱。
53岁的皮军来自扎赉诺尔，他在新“俄罗斯套娃村”的建筑工地上边吃午餐边休息。
卡佳•迪亚诺娃、孙盛昌和他们的孩子娜塔莎、拉闵。他们在2012年结婚，她来自后贝加尔斯克，他来自海拉尔附近的一个小村庄。他们在后贝加尔斯克和满洲里两地居住。
余事在圣彼得堡学习，即将成为一名东正教牧师。
62岁的于淑云是中俄混血后裔。这里是哈尔滨一所非官方的东正教教堂。
哈尔滨的东正教基督徒在一所私人公寓中参加礼拜祈祷。
俄罗斯学生在黑龙江大学的中文课间休息。
一个女人在松花江里捞鱼。
2014年夏天，一位在莫斯科居住过十年的意大利摄影师大卫•蒙特利昂开始前往中俄边境，寻找那种他所谓的真实、可信的东西。“我曾经报道过乌克兰起义、乌克兰内战和占领克里米亚，”他对我说，“在媒体的聚焦下，让我感到不安的是自己很难保持中立。我感到，无论我做什么都会被用来当作宣传工具。于是我想去一个遥远的地方做些事情。”当欧盟和美国对俄罗斯施加经济制裁之后，这个国家开始积极地与中国签订了一系列能源和贸易协议。“在俄罗斯有很多文章报道与中国的新友谊，”蒙特利昂说，“于是我想，到那里去看看吧，这样的关系是真实的吗？”
蒙特利昂在莫斯科读到一篇报道，说俄罗斯人准备在布拉格维申斯克市建造一座跨越阿穆尔河的大桥。“但是当你去到那里，根本没有大桥，”他说，“莫斯科的人都知道这座桥，但是当地人甚至不知道有这个计划。”在那座不存在的大桥附近，他还发现了一些令人困惑的事情。“俄罗斯境内没有任何农业活动，”他说，“全部都是森林，仅此而已。你问俄罗斯人为什么不种庄稼，他们说：‘气候条件不好，什么也种不出来。’然后你走到中国境内，到处都是大农场！两地最近的距离只有两百米，气候肯定都是一样的。”
在俄罗斯境内考察了一个月之后，蒙特利昂开始关注中国境内发生的事情，他的工作得到了亚洲社会《中参馆》的资助。他的很多摄影作品都具有空间感，这样的感觉在中国很少见——原始的森林、空旷的蓝天、静静的河流。人们可以在这种空旷中设想、建造任何他们想要实现的东西。在距离莫斯科红场6000英里的边境城市扎赉诺尔，蒙特利昂发现中国人正在修建一个圣巴索教堂的原比例复制品。“中国人对于历史有独特的视角，”蒙特利昂说，“他们会说：‘这是一个建于十六世纪的教堂。’很难给他们解释清楚一个十六世纪的建筑物与一个复制品的区别。”
蒙特利昂走进建筑物内部，他发现这其实根本不是一个教堂。色彩缤纷的角楼和洋葱型屋顶仅仅是一个外壳。就像俄罗斯套娃给人们带来的惊喜一样，教堂内部是一个科学博物馆。附近的一个户外公园里展示着一个曾经横行北地的猛犸象的骨骼和长牙，但它们和教堂一样，也不是真的。“这些都是复制品，”蒙特利昂说，“我觉得这里根本没有真的东西，除我曾经在一个商店里看到出售的一只猛犸象长牙，那是唯一的真东西，我觉得那东西值50万美元。”
在过去的两个世纪里，俄罗斯和中国时常发生摩擦，也曾经出现过真正的边境冲突，俄罗斯往往占据上风。但是如今，在个人层面上，蒙特利昂发现情况在变化。“在这个遥远的地区，俄罗斯人只是在等待着一些事情发生，而中国人在试图让一些事情发生。”他说。这种差别似乎决定了他在旅行中遇到的一些跨国婚姻家庭中的人际关系。在布拉格维申斯克，他遇到了一位中国商人，她在俄罗斯拥有一家连锁酒店和几家餐厅。在哈尔滨老家，她有一个丈夫和一个孩子，但是在边境线的另一边，她还有一个现代社会中的男宠——一个俄罗斯丈夫，和另外一个孩子。“我猜想那个俄罗斯丈夫和她在一起，只是为了一些极为现实的目的，”蒙特利昂说，“如果没有俄罗斯合作方，中国人不能在俄罗斯开公司。”他饶有兴致地观察两人之间的关系：“她经常说‘把车开过来！’‘送我去那里！’‘给这个人打电话！’他是丈夫，但同时也是雇员。她的俄罗斯语带有古怪的口音。”
这仅仅是蒙特利昂所遇到的极少数中国女人与俄罗斯男人结合成的一个家庭，他说：“大多数的跨国婚姻都是中国男人与俄罗斯女人的结合。”这其中的原因或许仅仅是人口学层面上的：俄罗斯的男女比例是87:100，而中国的男女比例是106:100。但是在蒙特利昂看来，这其中还有社会和经济因素。“因为男人在这里往往死得比较早，”他直言不讳地说，“在这种苦寒之地，没有工作、没有娱乐、没有可以打发时间的活动，所以男人只会饮酒。俄罗斯女人似乎比男人承担了更多的责任，我很抱歉这么说，但女人才是让家庭和社会持续发展的动力。”在边境线的南边，他发现语言学校里全是年轻的俄罗斯女人，她们似乎一心一意地想要掌握中文，或许同时俘获一个中国丈夫。
在满洲里，他遇到了一位中国伐木工人孙盛昌和他的俄罗斯妻子卡佳•迪亚诺娃。在蒙特利昂的照片里，他们具有典型的特征：孙的高颧骨、长鼻子和中国北方男人特有的三角眼；迪亚诺娃光洁的皮肤和可以用托尔斯泰的语言来形容的容貌（“这个黑眼睛、宽嘴巴的女孩，不漂亮，但充满生机。”）。她抱着他们的女儿娜塔莎，他抱着他们的儿子拉闵。他们的房屋破旧不堪，剥落的墙皮、锈迹斑斑的暖气片。但是这个小小的家庭中有一股暖意——在这个拥有假教堂和一座看不见的大桥的边境城市，肮脏的小屋里有那么一种亲密和真实的东西。“他们没有很多钱，但是他们是一对恩爱的夫妻，”蒙特利昂说，“你可以看出他们彼此深爱着。”
原文：
A replica of St. Basil’s Cathedral, Jalainur, China, 2015.
A food vender awaits customers on the bank of the Songhua River in Harbin, underneath the old and new bridges for the Chinese Eastern Railway. The old bridge, seen at left, was built by the Russians at the beginning of the twentieth century. The newer one was built by the Chinese. 2015.
A Russian patient leaves a medical-treatment facility in the city of Wudalianchi, in Heilongjiang province, China. The area became a new resort and medical-treatment destination for Russians with the help of advertising campaigns touting Sino-Russian coöperation and tourism.
A pair of Russian Cossacks patrol Moghilovka, a village in the Lazo region, in Khabarovsk Krai, on the border with China, 2015.
Manzhouli, China, 2015.
Zhang Yulan, a resident of Bianjiangzhen, is of mixed Chinese and Russian descent, 2015.
Miao Zhonglin was born in Russia to a mixed Russian-Chinese couple. He now lives in Bianjiangzhen. 2015.
Construction workers take a break from building the new “Matryoshka Village,” a Russian-doll-themed amusement park, in Manzhouli, China, 2015.
Men playing cards in the local store in Bianjiangzhen, a border town in Heilongjiang province, China, whose name literally means “border town.” Approximately one-third of the town’s population is of Russian or Chinese-Russian descent. 2015.
Timber arriving from Russian forests is processed in the Chinese city of Manzhouli and sold in south China, 2015.
Troitskoye, on the Amur River in Russia, 2015.
A family in Bianjiangzhen, China, 2015.
The “Blues Club” where Russian students perform for money, in Harbin, China, 2015.
Pi Jun, fifty-three, from Jalainur, takes a lunch break on the construction site for the new “Matryoshka Village,” in Manzhouli, China, 2015.
Katya Dianova and Sun Shengchang, with their children, Natasha and Ramin. Married since 2012, she’s from Zabaikalsk and he’s from a village close to Hailar. They live in Russia, in the town of Zabaikalsk, and in the Chinese city of Manzhouli. Manzhouli, China, 2015.
Yu Shi is studying in St. Petersburg to become an Orthodox priest. Harbin, China, 2015.
Yu Shuyun, sixty-two, is of mixed Russian and Chinese descent, and part of the unofficial Orthodox Christian community in Harbin, China, 2015.
Orthodox Christians in Harbin, China, attend Sunday prayer in a private apartment, 2015.
Russian students take a break during Chinese courses at Heilongjiang University, in Harbin, China, 2015.
A woman fishing in the Songhua River in Harbin, China, 2015.
In the summer of 2014, Davide Monteleone, an Italian photographer who had lived in Moscow for more than a decade, began to travel to the Russian-Chinese border in search of something that felt real and reliable. “I had been covering the uprising in Ukraine, and then the civil war and the occupation of Crimea,” he told me. “I was disturbed by how hard it was to remain neutral when there was so much press attention. I felt like whatever I did was going to be used for propaganda. So I thought about doing something far away.” After the European Union and the United States levied sanctions against Russia, the country began signing high-profile gas and trade agreements with China. “There were a lot of articles in Russia about this new friendship between Russia and China,” Monteleone said. “So I figured, let’s go and see what’s going on. Is this relationship real?”
In Moscow, Monteleone had read about a new bridge across the Amur River that the Russians were supposedly building at the city of Blagoveshchensk. “But you go there and there is no bridge,” he said. “People in Moscow knew about this bridge, but the people in this place didn’t even know they were planning to build it.” In the regions around the phantom bridge, he noticed other things that were also missing. “On the Russian side, there’s no agriculture,” he said. “It’s forest and that’s it. You ask the Russians why they don’t grow anything, and they say, ‘The weather is not very good; you can’t grow anything.’ And then you cross to the Chinese side, and there are plantations everywhere! It’s only two hundred metres, so the climate must be the same.”
After spending a month on the Russian side, Monteleone made another trip the following year to focus on the Chinese regions, with his work funded in part by a fellowship from ChinaFile, at the Asia Society. Many of his photographs have a sense of space that’s rare in China—there are uncut forests, and open blue skies, and flat silver rivers that are free of boats. In such emptiness, a person can imagine and build almost anything. In the border town of Jalainur, six thousand miles from Red Square, Monteleone found that the Chinese had constructed a scale replica of St. Basil’s Cathedral. “The Chinese have a strange perception of history,” Monteleone said. “They would say, ‘It’s an old church that was built in the sixteenth century.’ It was hard to explain to them that there is a difference between something that was built in the sixteenth century and something that is a copy.”
When Monteleone visited the building, he realized that, in fact, it wasn’t a church at all. The painted turrets and onion domes were only a shell; nestled inside the church, like a matryoshka doll’s surprise, was a museum consecrated to the subject of science. Nearby, an outdoor park displayed the tusks and bones of woolly mammoths that once roamed the northern plains, although these fossils, like the church, were not real. “They were all copies,” Monteleone said. “I think there was not a single piece that was original. Except I went to a shop and there was a huge tusk of a mammoth that was for sale. That was the only original. I think it was five hundred thousand dollars.”
Over the past two centuries, there have been periodic tensions between Russia and China, including some serious border conflicts, and historically Russia has usually held the upper hand. But nowadays, at the personal level, Monteleone notices a different dynamic. “In a remote place like this, the Russians just wait for something that is going to happen, while the Chinese try to do something,” he said. This disparity seemed to shape the interpersonal dynamics of many Russian-Chinese couples that Monteleone met on his travels. In Blagoveshchensk, he spent time with a Chinese businesswoman who runs a small empire of Russian hotels and restaurants. Back in her hometown of Harbin, she has a husband and a child, but across the border she has acquired a kind of modern-day concubine—a Russian husband, along with another child. “I suspected that the Russian husband—it’s also for practical reasons,” Monteleone said. “Chinese cannot open companies in Russia if they don’t have a Russian partner.” He found it fascinating to watch them interact: “She was saying, ‘Go and get the car!’ ‘Bring me there!’ ‘Call this person!’ He was a husband, but at the same time he was an employee. She was speaking Russian, but in a strange accent.”
That was one of the few mixed couples that Monteleone encountered in which a Chinese woman was paired with a Russian man. “The combination is usually Chinese men and Russian women,” he said. This may be a result of simple demographics: in Russia, there are only eighty-seven men to every hundred women, whereas in China there are a hundred and six men to every hundred women. But, in Monteleone’s view, it’s also a convergence of different social and economic forces. “It’s because men die much sooner in these parts of Russia,” he said bluntly. “In this kind of remote region, there’s no jobs, no activities, no way to spend time, so the men just drink.” He continued, “And Russian women here seem to be much more responsible than men. I’m sorry to say it, but they’re the ones taking care of things.” On the southern side of the border, he noticed that language schools are full of young Russian women who seem dedicated to acquiring Mandarin, and perhaps a Chinese husband.
In Manzhouli, he spent time with Sun Shengchang, a Chinese logger, and Katya Dianova, his young Russian wife. In Monteleone’s photograph, they look like archetypes: Sun with the high cheekbones, long nose, and angled eyes of the northern Chinese; Dianova with fair skin and gentle features that could have been described by Tolstoy (“this black-eyed, wide-mouthed girl, not pretty but full of life”). She holds their daughter, Natasha; he holds their son, Ramin. Their apartment is decrepit: peeling paint, rusty radiator. But there’s a glow to the little family—in this strange borderland of fake churches and invisible bridges, the dingy room contains something intimate and real. “They didn’t have a lot of money, but they were a very sweet couple,” Monteleone said. “You could tell that they really loved each other.”
说不出的感觉，已阅，谢谢！ 中国的人勤奋，吃苦耐劳在很多细节可以体现出来。
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