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本帖最后由 woikuraki 于 2012-3-31 10:36 编辑
【中文标题】中国爱圣诞节的什么，又不爱它的什么
【原文标题】What China Loves About Christmas, and Doesn't
【登载媒体】大西洋月刊
【来源地址】http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/12/what-china-loves-about-christmas-and-doesnt/250488/?google_editors_picks=true
【译者】lilyma06
【翻译方式】人工
【声明】欢迎转载，请务必注明译者和出处 bbs.m4.cn
【正文】
Christianity's most important holiday is a big event here, but state regulation of religion and a suspicion of all things Western can sometimes get in the way. And, yes, it's too commercialized.
基督教最重要的节日圣诞节本是一件重大事件，然而西方宗教政府控制和对一切事物的怀疑有些时候却很碍事。是的，这太商业化了。
A man dressed as Santa Claus walks past two security guards in downtown Shanghai / Reuters
上海市中心一名身着圣诞老人服饰的人经过两名保安身边。
It's that time of the year again. Santa smiles from the glass doors of hair salons and pharmacies; "Joy to the World" plays in busy shopping malls; plastic trees laced with blinking lights stand in front of restaurants and bars, their dark green softened by the ruby glow of lanterns hanging under the eaves. And written on banners on university campuses and flashing in neon in business districts are the characters, "圣诞快乐!". The world's most widely celebrated religious holiday is in full swing here, in the center of communist China.
又到了每年的这个时候了。圣诞老人从发廊和药店的玻璃门背后向人们微笑，繁忙的商场里又想起了“圣诞颂（Joy to the World）”的歌曲，餐馆和酒吧前摆着闪着灯光的塑料圣诞树，灯笼挂在屋檐下。大学校园和商业区的霓虹灯闪烁着“圣诞快乐”的字符。世界上最广泛庆祝的宗教节日在中国也开始活跃起来。Christmas is young in China -- it did not enter mainstream society until well into the 1990s -- and is embraced mainly by the younger generation. According to a well-regarded Chinese business magazine, 70 percent of the people celebrating it here are below age 38. First introduced to the country by western missionaries, it found popularity in 1920s and 30s among converted Christians and in elite circles. Peasants feasted with their priests inside farmhouses; businessmen toasted over candles with foreign trade partners. In 1949, after the Communist Party took power, all things Western were labeled "mental poison" and Christmas gradually became a concept so foreign that people took little interest in it. 圣诞节引入中国时日不长，直到上个世纪90年代才逐步进入中国的主流社会，主要被年轻一代所接受。中国一份有名的商业杂志的调查表明，在中国70%庆祝圣诞节的大众是38岁以下的年轻人。最初是由西方传教士传到国内，上个世纪20和30世纪在基督徒和精英圈很受欢迎。1949年共产党开始执政，所有的西方事物都被贴上“精神鸦片”的标签，圣诞节也逐渐被认为是一个很“外国”的概念，人们一开始并不十分感兴趣。
It had never occurred to me that the holiday is not universally celebrated in America as it is in China
之前我从未想过这个节日会在中国被如此地接受并庆祝，而在美国却没受到这般待遇。
The liberal spirit of the reform and opening era in the 1980s reinvigorated western culture in China, and the quickly marketized economy in the 1990s seized onto the holiday's profitable potential. Now, Christmas is both a commercial and fashion statement for many of the young in China, who celebrate in ways that would be at once familiar and alien to Westerners. Stand on Oriental Plaza in downtown Beijing and you'll see girls wearing furry reindeer antlers amble by, holding hands with their boyfriends in Santa hats. Open the government-owned Guangming Daily and stacks of ads on Christmas sales will fall into your lap. On certain streets on Christmas morning, convoys of Audis will glide past, decorated with red ribbons tied into a bow at the front, where a mini-sized Santa stands. The cars are taking happy brides and grooms to posh hotels and restaurants, where lavish wedding ceremonies -- a Christmas tradition here -- await.
20世纪80年代改革开放的自由主义精神使得西方文化在中国得以复兴，而90年代开放的市场经济使得假日经济变得更加活跃。现在圣诞节对于中国许多年轻人来说是既商业化又时尚的名词，这些年轻人会用不同方式来庆祝圣诞节。在北京市中心的东方广场，你会看到很多女孩带着鹿角发箍，手挽着戴着圣诞帽的男朋友。打开一份《光明日报》你会发现很多关于圣诞节打折促销的广告。圣诞节的清晨，很多装扮着红丝带的奥迪护航车，车里面载着幸福的新郎和新娘去酒店，Chinese and Americans might both indulge in shopping sprees around Christmas time, but how they think about the holiday is quite different. Christmas in the West represents an occasion to spend time with cherished ones, for families to exchange presents and friends to visit each other. In China, however, it is a social event not for one's private life but for the public domain. Students rehearse dance performances and plays for school-organized galas; foreign companies' labor unions hand out movie tickets and gift vouchers to employees. The intimate western traditions such as building gingerbread houses, hanging up stockings, or gathering as a family to open presents on Christmas morning have no equivalent in China; on Christmas eve, most young people will get together with maybe a dozen friends to watch the latest big release at the movie theater or belt out at a few songs at a karaoke bar. In many Chinese cities, Christmas kicks off what is often the most festive time of the year -- in a couple of weeks, when migrant workers jump onto homebound trains for Chinese New Year, these cities are left with little more than empty streets and closed stores.
中美两国人在圣诞节假期可能都会进行圣诞购物大狂欢，然而他们对圣诞节的看法却不尽相同。西方圣诞节代表是和心爱的人共度时光，家人互赠礼物，朋友之间互相拜访。而在中国，圣诞节是一个社会节日，并不属于私人生活的一部分。在学校的学生排练舞蹈表演，参与学校晚会。外企的劳工会会给员工分发一些电影票和打折购物券。而西方那些像摆姜饼屋，挂袜子，全家人聚在一起在圣诞节清晨打开礼物在中国却没有市场。圣诞节前夜大多数年轻人跟朋友聚在一起去电影院看最近上映的大片，或者在KTV开怀大唱。在很多中国大城市中，圣诞节通常被认为是一年节日的开始，在之后的几周内，农民工会坐上返乡的火车回家过春节。而城市中就剩下空空的街道和闭门的商店。The popular Chinese perception of Christmas as a holiday for the masses has two very different causes: peoples' love of communal celebration and the government's effort to distract from the holiday's religious aspect. Growing up in Beijing, I learned to hum "Jingle Bells" in elementary school and heard the story of the birth of Jesus from American teachers. Still, Christmas for me was a Western cultural phenomenon rather than something religious. It had never occurred to me that the holiday is not universally celebrated in America as it is in China until I came to the country six years ago as a student. When a Jewish friend described her plans on the night of the 24th of December, I asked, out of confusion, why none of it involved Christmas. When she told me, I exclaimed, "It is your national holiday after all!"
在中国圣诞节被大多数人接受作为一个节日主要有两个原因：人们热衷于集体欢庆活动，政府想把节日中的宗教方面分离出去。我在北京长大，从小学就会唱《铃儿响叮当》这首歌，也从外交那里听说过耶稣出生的故事。圣诞节对于我来说是一种西方文化现象，而跟宗教关系不大。之前我从未想过这个节日会在中国被如此地接受并庆祝，而在美国却没受到这般待遇。一个犹太朋友在12月24日晚上说着她本周计划，我十分迷惑地问她为啥跟圣诞节没关，当她回答我时，我大呼“这其实根本就是你们的节日！”My surprise was common among new arrivals from China. "It looked like a national holiday to me," Zhongling Yuxiu, a Chinese student at Yale, told me. "In China, Christmas is just like Valentine's Day or other western holidays that we decided to celebrate." Brought up in a Christian household in China, Zhongling had spent Christmases at underground churches in Beijing before she came to America. (There were also government-sanction services, but she called them "no different from propaganda.") She says she had considered herself only "culturally Christian" then. Living in America's more tolerant religious environment, where society attaches a much weightier significance to Christmas, she now feels her Christian identity better defined.
我这种疑惑对于刚从中国来的学生来说都很普遍。耶鲁大学的中国学生钟灵毓秀（音译）告诉我，“之前我一直觉得圣诞节是全国性的节日，在中国它就像情人节和其他西方节日一样所以我们才庆祝。”在中国的基督教徒家里长大，钟灵在来美国之前一直都是在北京的地下教会过圣诞节。Some religious groups in China have tried to reconnect Christmas to its spiritual origins. Wiggling around in what limited space the government allows, the boundaries of which seem ever-changing, these groups do not always have much success. After graduating from Yale, an American I'll call Jane headed to southern China in 2008 to teach English. (She has asked not to be named for fear of putting her friend's church at risk.) A devout Christian, she planned to spend her Christmas in Beijing singing in a choir led by her friend, a pastor. Throughout that year, the Chinese government had been cracking down on ethnic protests and working to suppress negative food safety reports, all prior to the Olympic Games. It had little patience left for respecting Chinese Christians' end-of-the-year rituals. Although Jane's friend tried to negotiate permission for the concerts from the government, even agreeing to forego choir outfits and cut religious words from the carols, the performances -- which had won official approval in earlier years -- were called off at the last minute. The government had decided to cancel all "crowd-gathering events" for the fear that they might sparkle unrest.That the state so tightly manages Christmas's image can be off-putting for Christians in China, but it also liberates them from some of the western perceptions surrounding Christianity. Jane says that she feels much more comfortable inviting friends in China to her Christmas choir than she might in America. "Religion is so stigmatized in America. The word Christianity is associated with Republican, Tea Party ... it's politicized." she told me. "In China, because non-Christian people understand so little about the religion, it is less threatening for them than for the non-Christian in the States." Her identity as a foreigner also gives her license to observe Christmas in China, she says. "Other Chinese people pretty much just assumed [I did that] because I was a crazy foreigner," she laughed. When Jane's non-Christian Chinese friends showed up to her choir performance, they saw not just foreigners, but also large crowds of men and women of fellow Chinese, engaging in activities they'd always perceived as western. There is one thing that China's Christmas and America's have in common: both are widely lamented as over-commercialized. While some in America fight to resurface the holiday's spiritual significance, Christmas-bashers in China warn against allowing Western culture to contaminate Chinese civilization. Shortly before Christmas in 2006, ten post-doctoral students from Peking University, Tsinghua University, and other elite colleges penned an open letter asking Chinese people to boycott Christmas and resist the invasion of "western soft power." They warned, "[Christmas celebrators in China] are doing what western missionaries dreamed to do but didn't succeed in doing 100 years ago." The letter added, "Chinese people need to treat Christmas cautiously, and support the dominance of our own culture."
中美圣诞节有一点相似：都被过度商业化了。一些美国人正在恢复节日的精神意义而努力的同时，在中国抨击圣诞节的人反对西方文化破坏中国文化。2006年圣诞节前不久，北大清华的十名博士后学生和其他精英大学的一些学生写了一封公开信，呼吁中国人民抵制圣诞节，反对“西方软实力”的入侵。他们警告说：“在中国过圣诞节的人们正在做着100年西方传教士想做却没做成的事情。”这封公开信上还写道，“中国人民要谨慎对待圣诞节，支持我们自己的文化。”In the summer of 2007, I taught English in rural Fujian, a coastal province in southern China. One student had taken a few weeks off to work in a factory in Fuzhou, the capital of the province and a large export hub. When he returned to school, on a scorching mid-summer day, he dropped something into my palm, explaining it was a product of his factory that he had sneaked out to bring to me as a present. It was a large piece of gummy candy wrapped in plastic, wet from his sweaty palm, the shape of a white-bearded man in red robes.
"I brought more with me, but ate all of them on the train. It was too yummy." He smiled apologetically. "It was meant to be sent to America, for a holiday they call -- they call --" He struggled for the name."Sheng Dan Jie," I said. Christmas."Right," he repeated shyly, scratching his head. "Sheng Dan Jie."
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