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【中文标题】为什么在中国很难找到一张明信片
【原文标题】Why It’s Almost Impossible to Find a Postcard in China
【登载媒体】纽约时报
【原文作者】STEPHEN R. KELLY
【原文链接】http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/03/opinion/find-a-postcard-in-china.html?ref=topics&_r=0
1937年8月，上海南京路的景色。
过去7个星期里，我一直在试图从这个将近200万人口（包括农民工）的“小”城市发出一张明信片，我在这里刚刚开办的杜克大学中国校区任教。
昆山位于上海以西，是现代化中国的核心地带。但是找到一张明信片、一张邮票、把它贴在明信片上、找个地方把它寄出去，甚至在这个艺术级的校园中找到一个愿意帮忙的人，似乎都充满了挑战，这还不仅仅是因为我糟糕的中文。在昆山各个哄骗游客的景点，我只见到过一个中国人在写明信片。
说到写信，我得承认自己是个门外汉。在互联网和卫星电视出现之前，我作为和平队的成员来到非洲，我学会了使用“美术笔”——就是那种书法家使用的工具——和精美的文具与朋友和家人沟通。这种习惯一直保留下来。
不仅是我有这样的习惯，从异国他乡寄回一张明信片依然是很多美国人在旅行时必须完成的一项工作，即使这仅仅是为了证明你去过某个地方。几句短短的、甜蜜的语言，不需要长篇大论和遣词造句，就像是木板印刷时代的推文。在超市广告和其它乱七八糟的东西填满我们的邮箱的时候，有谁不会惊喜地发现一封手写的信件呢？
于是，在来到杜克大学这个现代化的、崭新的校园之后，我就去寻找明信片告诉家人我已经到达。当我看到附近有一个小商店出售杂志和学习用品时，我觉得这里肯定有一个明信片金矿。但是翻过了货架上所有的商品之后，竟然一张明信片也没有。
市中心的小商品市场一样难觅明信片的踪影。想要一个L型的架子来改造家居？随处可见。法国香水？琳琅满目。一袋子绿豆？没问题。但是明信片？没有。
即使遍寻一个5层书店也一无所获。胶棒、沃伦•巴菲特的新书、昆山市地图……只是没有明信片。
后来，我的妻子和我乘坐超现代化的子弹头列车，以200英里的时速来到上海。这可是个正经的大城市，有1400万人口，这里的外国人比昆山多很多。最终，我们有所斩获（在某种程度上）。在我们的酒店，一个会说英语的门房给了我们一些他自己收藏的明信片，那是黑白时代的老上海。没什么更多的选择，但我们怎么还会挑剔呢？
他甚至还有邮票和一瓶胶水，因为他提醒我们中国邮票的背胶并不可靠。我们买了6、7张明信片，当场填好了三张，交给门房，因为我们不知道哪里可以邮寄。
我们最终在几个地方找到了一些明信片。我最喜欢的一套是在杭州这个湖边旅游城市找到的，我当时看到一个孤零零的中国明信片小贩。
位于上海东南部2小时车程的杭州，还是阿里巴巴这个让亚马逊都相形见绌的网络巨擘的所在地，它象征中国人对电子生活的热爱。这里的人们似乎比美国人对智能手机更加上瘾，在超现代化的杭州站等车时，数百张面孔在iPhone和三星手机的映照下泛出冷酷的蓝光。
我的学生告诉我，明信片在中国依然存在，只不过越来越少。美国也是如此，但是中国人在传统上推崇手写文字的沟通方式。在几乎任何一个博物馆，你都可以看到大量的书法作品。中国的学生每天依然会花费几个小时书写那些几千年前出现的、刻在龟甲上的文字。
这并不是说中国人不再书写汉字了，但是明信片的稀缺似乎表现出人们匆匆忙忙奔向数字化和去个性化的欲望。看到中国书法文化被浓缩在一个3乘5英寸的屏幕上，优雅的笔画变成了两个大拇指的动作，似乎是很遗憾的一件事。
美国人倾向于认为自己身处于一个高科技——如果不是傻瓜科技——的国家，但中国不是这样。也就是说，如果你来到中土帝国，完全可以在毛的陵寝前来一张自拍，证明你来过这里。但别想给妈妈寄一张明信片。
原文：
A view of Nanking Road in Shanghai in August 1937.
KUNSHAN, China — For the last seven weeks I have been trying to send a postcard from this “smallish” city of nearly two million (counting migrant workers), where I have been teaching at Duke University’s just-opened China campus.
Kunshan is just west of Shanghai, in the heart of modernizing China. But finding a postcard, finding a stamp, getting that stamp to stick, finding a place to mail the postcard — even just getting anyone on this state-of-the-art campus to accept the idea of putting a letter in the mail — have proved a challenge, and not just because of my wobbly Chinese. In my travels to the tourist traps around Kunshan, I have seen exactly one Chinese person writing a postcard.
I confess I am an outlier when it comes to letter writing. During a pre-Internet, pre-satellite-television Peace Corps tour in Africa, I learned to use an italic pen — the kind calligraphers use — and decent stationery to communicate with friends and family. The habit has stuck.
But I’m not alone. For many Americans, sending a postcard from an exotic locale is still a mainstay of modern travel, if only to prove you actually went somewhere. It’s short and sweet, no heavy messaging required, the Twitter of a block-print age. And who doesn’t enjoy finding a handwritten missive among the supermarket fliers and other invasive species that swarm our mailboxes?
So shortly after arriving at Duke’s campus, which like everything within view is soaring and modern and brand new, I set out to find postcards to document our arrival. I thought I’d hit gold when I found a store in a nearby mini-mall that sold magazines and school supplies. But amid all the paper products on sale, there wasn’t a single postcard.
Ditto for the downtown warrens of small businesses. You want some L-shaped angle-iron brackets, for a little home project? Sure. French perfume? Check. A kilo bag of mung beans? No problem. But postcards? No way.
Even the five-story bookstore was a miss. Glue sticks, recently translated inspirational books by Warren Buffett or a map of Kunshan (in Chinese only), but no postcards.
My wife and I finally escaped from Kunshan on the ultramodern bullet train that whisked us at 200 miles an hour to Shanghai, a serious city of 14 million-plus that sees many more foreigners than Kunshan. And finally, pay dirt, of a sort: At our hotel the English-speaking concierge had his own secret cache of postcards, black-and-white period photos of old Shanghai. Not a wide selection, but who were we to be picky?
He even had the correct stamps and a pot of glue to affix them, since he warned us that Chinese stamp glue was notoriously unreliable. We bought a half-dozen cards, filled out three on the spot and gave them back to the concierge, because it wasn’t clear where we would mail them.
We did eventually find other postcards here and there. One nice collection was in the heart of the lakeside resort town of Hangzhou, where I saw that sole Chinese postcard writer at work.
Hangzhou, about two hours southwest of Shanghai, is also the home of Alibaba, an online behemoth that dwarfs Amazon and is a symptom of the ballooning Chinese love affair with electrons. Even more than in the United States, people appear addicted to their smartphones. Waiting for the train home in the yawning ultramodern Hangzhou station, hundreds of faces basked in the cool blue light of an iPhone or Samsung. Not a pen was in sight.
My students here have assured me that the postcard is not dead in China, just moribund. You could say the same in America. But the Chinese traditionally have revered handwritten communication. Just walk through the floors stuffed with centuries of pen-and-ink calligraphy in virtually any museum. And Chinese schoolchildren still spend hours copying characters that began life thousands of years before, when they were etched on the shells of turtles.
That’s not to say that Chinese people don’t write anymore. But the relative rarity of the handwritten postcard here is symptomatic of a pell-mell rush toward a digital and depersonalized future. It seems sad to see the broad strokes of Chinese culture and communication shrunk to a 3-by-5-inch screen, and delicate brush lettering now reduced to pecking with two thumbs.
Americans like to imagine that we are the most tech-savvy, if not tech-addled country on the planet. But we have nothing on China. Which means if you visit the Middle Kingdom, plan on sending a selfie from in front of Mao’s tomb to prove you were here. But forget about mailing Mom a postcard.
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狗仔卡
发表于 2015-6-23 08:56
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发表于 2015-6-23 10:12
