读完全书，《江城》一书的最大的特色在于，何伟是以一个局外人或者外来者的身份来观察中国的，这一点在书中也不断地被提起。
1.《江城》其书与何伟其人
《江城》，是前《New Yorker》驻北京记者何伟（彼得·海斯勒）著名的“中国三部曲”的第一部，另外两本则是《寻路中国》和《甲骨》。
1996年，从普林斯顿和牛津大学结束了本科和硕士学位学习的何伟，选择到中国的小城涪陵做一名志愿教师，《江城》则记录了这两年的教师生活，成为他书写中国的起点。
2.如何看待中国传统的历史、传说和神话
何伟用陌生人的方式叙述着我们熟悉的一切，比如那些从长辈、老师到我们口耳相传的神话、传说和历史，早已被我们不断重复，嚼烂了揉碎了塞进脑核深处，很少被提起。甚至在那些因太过于熟悉，再不会在心中激起一点点波澜的历史里，何伟都读出了不同的意味。
白鹤梁上的雕刻，就像是任何一个古代文明兴盛过的地方一样。凡人力之所及的山石、岩壁甚至悬崖，在大自然的刀削斧刻之余，人类偏偏要去添上一笔。
去过泰山，读了不少题刻，有帝王典礼记录的洋洋洒洒，也有丢官失爵者独自往来的暗自神伤。
有道是：得志者春风洋洋，失意者自叹清高，高位者威风作态，庸人则到此一游。
正如皇帝会时常到泰山行祭礼，以求神佑，以保社稷。白鹤梁的题刻也一样，因为有了和神秘莫测的天意相呼应的神奇传说，于是成了皇帝谋求庇护和慰藉的仪式性地点。
在旅游景点，我个人常常觉得历代帝王之好笑，明明前朝覆灭之记忆犹在，却不取前车之鉴，仍然固执地选择在同样的地方祭礼并题刻，若是真有什么神灵，岂不注定重蹈覆辙？
我还在感叹重复有何意义的时候，在这些无聊的循环里，何伟看到了历史的不断向前的力量。
“历朝皇帝的代言人都会在这些砂石上留下题刻，而跟这些永无休止的循环紧密相连的，是人类历史径直前行的轨迹。”
2.接二连三、冷酷无情、势不可挡——何伟眼中的当代中国
变化是身处变化之中的人常常难以察觉的，这就好比运动中需要一个参考系，身处运动之中的人反而感触不深。
在涪陵，被何伟描述为处在“变化边缘”的小城，是所有故事的起点。虽然在这样一个好像被遗忘的小城里度过他《江城》的全部两年，在再版的后记里，何伟还是做了这样的一个描述：
“在过去二十年，那样一种转型变化的感觉——接二连三、冷酷无情、势不可挡——正是中国的本质特征。”
第一是“接二连三”。
无论是师专来自农村的学生，还是身处涪陵小城的居民，从他们的上辈开始，就开始经历着时空压缩式的变革。
这些人身上经历过的变迁和背负着的历史，都是美国人何伟未曾体验过和难以想象的。在同一片土地上，他们被土地革命、人民公社和包产到户过，被战争和饥荒洗礼过，被政治斗争裹挟过。
如今，这些人的灵魂又被市场和资本重塑着。
小城的单位体制要变，“纯粹打不破的铁饭碗不复存在，各个单位都进行了改革，所有的社会主义制度都带上了中国特色，逐渐发展成了共产主义和市场经济的奇怪结合体，不断地改变和重塑着孔老师他们的生活参数。”
文革的伤痛、三峡工程带来的家园流失环境破坏、城市单位制度导致铁饭碗的打破，对于这些接二连三的变革，大多数人倒是显得不那么在乎。
所以，第二是“冷酷无情”，这冷漠是何伟无法理解的，尽管他试图给出答案。
他将人们对三峡工程给生活造成的影响的冷漠归结为某种爱国主义的激发，
“这里的小团体很多，也不乏爱国主义，但跟世界上的其他地方一样，这种爱国主义的激发，既可能出于心系祖国的真情实感，也可能是因为恐惧和无知。你可以操弄这种恐惧和无知，告诉人们，尽管大坝可能会破坏江河与城镇，但却对中国意义重大。”
他将学生对于文革伤痛的无视看作是某种主动的选择性遗忘。
事实上，好多学生的父母都在“文革”中吃过苦头，但是在涉及到这些历史的短剧的表演中，学生开着历史的玩笑，“似乎没有人感到沮丧，这部短剧跟《仲夏夜之梦》或者其他任何喜剧一样，令人捧腹不已。”
于是，何伟说，也许“记性好的，大概都被厚重的苦痛压死了；只有记性坏的，适者生存，还能欣然活着。”
而像是孔老师一样的小城居民们，他们变革中或者吃了亏，或者尝了甜头，他们“平和心态跟其他许许多多中国人一样，在外人看来排山倒海般的种种变革面前，他们保持着出奇的平静。原因非常简单，他曾经历过的，比这还要糟糕。”
第三是“势不可挡”。
就像是三峡大坝拦截的江水一样，上升的水位不可阻挡，那些碑刻、房屋都将被吞没。
何伟感到遗憾，但是中国人，面对变化，则很少有这种的感情。
在为安置移民而营建的新城里，何伟反而感觉到某种类似于“希望”的东西。“实际上，就算有什么东西在这个时候阻挡了它的进程，那也毫无意义。在中国这个被人遗忘的心脏地带，我看到的是一个关于举国大发展的隐喻，完美无缺。”
3.不合理而被接受的习惯
在一些因为习以为常而获得了某种合法性的习惯中，何伟作为一个局外人的观察反而更具洞察。比如对社会上给予女性的压力、语言中对女性的潜在暴力，以及集体思维在社会转型中造成的恶性循环。
在后半部，有一章具体叙述了何伟在中国的几个男性朋友结婚后的作为。“让我感到惊讶的是，我在城里面结交的很多已婚男性朋友都在欺骗自己的配偶，而离婚对于涉事的女性来说仍然是不折不扣的耻辱和骂名。”
同样的行为，男人被看做风流、有能力，女性则会被认为是“水性杨花”。何伟感叹，“就连语言都在捍卫男人，使他们的率性而为不受任何指责。中文在其他很多方面更是显出性别歧视。”
看到学习优秀的女生轻易结束自己的生命、堕胎的女孩不得不放弃学业失掉工作、独身闯荡深圳的女孩子面对诱惑的抉择……
对于女性在转折期所承受的压力，他也深有感触，他说“中国女性的受教育程度也比以往有了大幅度的提高——但在一定程度上来说，这只不过让她们进一步认识到自己的苦境而已。跟中国人生活中的诸多方面一样，女性的独立问题已经走到了转折点，但这个过程似乎尤其艰难。”
在对类似文革这些社会巨变的观察中，何伟认为集体思维有可能起到了某种助长的作用。“非理性的政治冲动在世界上的任何地方都会发生——不可思议之处在于受羞辱煎熬的人数如此之巨，大家一致确信他们存在着这样那样的缺陷和不足。”
他的洞察是：
“集体思维有可能是一种恶性循环——你个人的身份认同来自某个群体，即便它发了疯，这个群体依旧受到大家的尊重，而你个人的自我认识却可能在顷刻之间轰然倒塌。中国人缺乏这样的传统，即将个人的身份认同建立在既定的价值体系之上，而不管别人怎么看待。”
4.“无言而又刚毅”的情感
这里变革过于迅速、生活太过艰辛，生命总是显得那么不堪一击，短短两年的时间，何伟也目睹数次这样的悲伤。
而一如往常，他身边中国人的悲伤总是那么以无力的方式表达，他们“显得无言而又刚毅。这样的无助和刚毅糅合成一体，其中的辛酸让我感到十分难过。”
即便是江边船上，最后的告别，也显得隐忍而含蓄。
“中国人的道别从来就没让人自在过——没有拥抱、寥寥数语、强忍眼泪。我们跟大家生硬地握了握手，然后就上了趸船。”
何伟向江水告了别。
“我跟长江之间的关系一直非常简单：我有时候顺水而下，有时候又会逆水而上。逆水较慢，顺水较快。一切的一切，莫过于此——我们在路上交错而过，然后又继续各奔东西。”
他说：
“我在涪陵花了更多的时间才看清了生活的这一面，因为我这个外国人一开始就被排斥在一定的距离之外。在一定程度上，当这样的距离不复存在的时候，问题反而更难应对。这样的情形有如凝视一张不带任何表情的空洞笑脸，却突然间发现一生的忧伤其实都凝聚在了嘴角边。”
5.全书同情而克制的表达
书里也不止一次流露出某种不满的情绪。不过，何伟的了不起之处在于，他从不扩大这种不满指向的对象，他的不满从来是针对于一个人或者一件事情，而不是全部中国，而他的表达也是同情克制和带有反思意味的。
在某次与一个擦鞋匠的冲突中，这一点尤为显著。那一次，擦鞋匠冒犯了何伟，并喊出“涪陵根本不需要外国人”。这次冲突对何伟冲击很大，即便所有其他在场的中国人都站在何伟的一边，他仍然在反思自己的问题。
他说“在这样的地方过日子，其中的陌生和压力注定会改变你，而我内心的某种东西在很早之前就已经变得坚如磐石了。实际上，我也不敢完全肯定他说的就是一句错话：也许涪陵人真的不需要这样的外国人呢。然而，在一定程度上，也是他们助长了这样的外国人。不管怎么说，我们都是同病之人。”
而对于不同的意见和作为，他保持了足够的尊重，他试图隐忍而克制地去描述这些不同，并以真诚和同情的态度试图去理解这些差异的原因。
教学中，学生和何伟对于进步和现代化的看法存在着巨大的差异。何伟对印第安平原生活的理想看法是保持他们原有的生活方式，但学生们一致认为应该帮助印第安人实现“现代化”。
他说“不过，跟大多数中国人一样，他们大都是上一代才脱离了极度贫困的状态。我觉得是自由和文化的东西，在他们眼里却是苦难和无知。”在这一点上，何伟的同情之理解比今天许多国人做得更宽容。
不同地区之间存在地域性歧视在中国并不少见，而其他地区的人说出对于四川人的偏见时，作为外国人的他在书中做了极有力量的正面辩护。
“对于任何一个勤劳而果敢的流动人员而言，都可能有人用类似耳熟能详的陈词滥调去描述他们。这样的话语——简单地说，根本不能——阻挡四川人的脚步，恰如它无法阻挡任何来自逆境的人的脚步。”
何伟——这位文学硕士，在这片因为生活过于艰辛而显得苍凉大地上，在最后一章，写下了自己两年从文学出发的一点点愿望：
“我希望他们会把这一点点东西藏在记忆的深处，并从那质朴的美感中找寻到一点永恒的真实。这就是我对文学的信念：真实是永恒的，不受日常生活所累。”
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“She smiled as she spoke, but it was the Chinese smile that served as a mask against deeper feelings. Those smiles could hide many emotions - embarrassment, anger, sadness. When the people smiled like that, it was as if all of the emotion was wound tightly and displaced; sometimes you caught a glimpse of it in the eyes, or at the corner of a mouth, or perhaps in a single wrinkle stretching sadly across a forehead.”
It’s something that you do either by choice, or by no choice. I find it hard to respond to certain situations, so I wear my Chinese smile, or maybe it’s not a Chinese smile, it’s universal smile, when people don’t bother to explain or clarify or share or argue. Sometimes, it’s just for the best. I certainly find that a lot from people around me, and now somehow I find myself doing it as well. Maybe just because I’m tired, maybe I genuinely don’t know what to answer, maybe I just want to avoid the blankness after hearing someone said something, or maybe I’m just so used to staying in my own world.
The construction of the Dam will erase the culture relics and museums along the river. But Wei Tingcheng, the 70-year-old chief engineer who had spent virtually his entire professional life developing the project, scoffed at the palaces that archaeologist were proposing. “To fell you the truth,” he said, in a 1996 interview with the New York Time, “the common people of China have such a low education level that they will not be able to enjoy these cultural relics, and only some of these experts will go to theses museums.”
A country like China is accustomed to making difficult choices that Americans might not dream of considering. I thought of this every time I visited the White Crane Ridge, where I was always amazed to see the conduction of the ancient carvings, and the timeless river. Nowhere else had I felt so strongly that three are two types of the history, nature’s and man’s, and that one is a creature of cycles while the other, with mixed results, aims always at straightness - progress, development, control. But this was a poetic turn of thought, and most people in Fuling couldn’t afford it. They didn’t have the time or interest to visit the White Crane Ridge, and they didn’t worry much about the relationship between man and nature. Often there were no other tourists on the ridge, other than me. Even educated people often weren’t interested. It wasn’t like America, where an empty and featureless late-Qing Dynasty battlefield might receive millions of dollars in funding, simply because some soldiers had fought and died there during a civil war. There was a great deal of history in China nd if you protected all the ancient sites, the people would have nowhere to grow their crops.
I wouldn’t even realize the issue, should it not for Peter to write about it in his book. I used to have a very purposeful and clear ruler to evaluate everything I do - does it serve my purpose? Can this make me more successful? Will this look good on my CV? Will it help me make more money? will this make me look better in front of other people? And I would only do things that serve a particular short-term purpose, or maybe sometimes long term as well. And from this perspective, all the things I do, including the politically correct things, like reading, learning and volunteering, becomes very short-sighted. The reason I’m writing about my own mentality, is because somehow I found this to be traced back to the generalities set by the country. Art and history are of no use, relics and museums cannot create economic values, or “straightness” so we can abandon them. Their inspirational values mean nothing. Is it the low education degree that makes it hard for the general public to appreciate them, or is it the other way around, that the narrow-mind pursuit of gains and success has left not time for even pondering the possibility of those things to exist? At least for me, it’s the latter. I’ve been taught, to focus on the orthodox studies, to achieve higher, because that makes you admirable and successful. If one day I do end up learning art, it is not because I myself genuinely have developed an interest into it, but because it makes me look good, once other people know I’m knowledgeable about it, or it adds on my charm. To make things worse, if one day you do have the “poetic” thoughts about something other than the mundane criteria of success, most likely you will be ridiculed, anti-mainstreamed, and get critiqued about been too naive, innocent, young, and idealist, of not setting your feet on earth to grab something solid. And to be honest, it will be very hard, and most of the times in vain, to try to fight against that perception. Most people, would give in, and follow the earth-ed way. But I cannot help thinking, what will the whole society end up look like, if everyone is so straight-forward, and explicit in pursuit materialistic gains? Sure we do have may galleries, museums, and artistic places, but do they exist to let people pay tribute for the genius minds, or do they exist just to suit the crave for what seems to be a more “sophisticated” image of success? A certain sense of loss will always exist, if external approval is what we seek for. People, and personal will, the freedom to choose shall persist. Of course, we build museums, and galleries, not for everyone to enter and appreciate the masterpieces, but at least, we let them be there, so that people who have the ability and interests, can have that choice to being nurtured, and educated inside.
Chinese teaching styles are also significantly different from western methods. In China, a teacher is absolutely respected without question, and the teacher-student relationship tends to be formal. The teacher teaches and is right, and the student studies and is wrong. But this isn’t our tradition in America, as my own students noticed. I encouraged informality in our classes, and if a student was wrong I pointed out what she had done right and praised her for making a good effort. To them, this praise was meaningless. What was the point of that? I fa student was wrong, she needed to be corrected without and quibbling or softening - that was the Chinese way. Success was expected and failures criticized and promptly corrected You were wight or you were budui, there was no middle ground. I grew to hate budui: its sound mocked me. There was a harshness to it; the bu was a rising tone and the duo dropped abruptly, building like my confidence and then collapsing all at once. And it bothered me all the more because I knew that Teacher Liao was only telling the truth: virtually everything I did with the language was budui. I was an adult and as an adult I should be able to accept critics where it was needed. But that wasn’t the American way I was accustomed to having my ego soothed; I wanted to be praised for my effort. I didn’t mind criticism as long as it was candy-coated.
One thing I noticed when I spent my exchange year in the States, was how frequently I was appreciated for my efforts, and oddly they made it sound so easy that I didn’t even sense even a slight hint of hypocrisy or faking. All I feel is genuinely and sincerity. I still remember the first time I was on public speaking class, giving a room of American students a speech about blood donation. Of course I was nervous. Confidence and capability is another matter here, but after the class there were students coming to my desk, saying to my face, Jing you did a good job! And, that, meant a lot to me. For the past 19 years, back then, I was living in a Budui environment. I have to work very very hard to be dui, to gain approval from my teachers and parents. If the result doesn’t turn out to be good, like the score was not above 60, or I failed to become one of the top 5 students in class, then the efforts I’ve made all along the way, doesn’t mean anything. This might be trivial, compared to the impact on a kid’s passion to learn. The lack of attention to the whole journey, and the evaluation criterial associated with it, will very likely make the kid to ignore how much they have gained during the journey. No good result comes out of it, OK, then I’m worthless. They are in such a desperate craze for a good result, if not, that destroys everything. But luckily I found my way out of it. Experience matters, results, just go with it.
Emotionally speaking, this is hard to take as well. Feelings are not important, egos are not tendered. In the long run, that instills you a sense of self-doubt, and a strangely combined sense of stubborn. You said I was budui, but I will prove to you that one day I can make it dui. So you work harder, but again for a result and people’s approval, which actually, is very risky. We never learn to value our own true gains and the gradual changes that happen to us along the way. You’ll be lucky if the second time you get the ideal result, but doomed if you don’t, and that will be a vicious cycle.
He had a quarrel with a shoeshine man and lost his temper：
I was ashamed of what i had done. I was glad that the people on Gansuntang liked me enough to come to my defense, but I knew that I had been needlessly cruel and petty. The incident left me embarrassed; I had been educated at Princeton and Oxford, and yet for some reason I felt the need to face off with a Sichuanese shoeshine man until the locals said he had no culture. I knew that his harassment had nothing to do with me personally, and I knew that I should have sympathy for him, because his bitterness was the result of other pressures. But after a year and a half in Fuling I couldn’t push away the wave of hatred that I felt. I could remind myself who I was, and I could think about the advantages that I had received my whole life; but out on the street all of that slipped away. The strangeness and the pressures of life in a place like that were bound to change you, and something in side of me had stiffened long ago. In deed, I wasn’t certain that the man was entirely worong; perhaps the people in Fuling didn’t need this kind of waiguoren. but to some extent they had helped create him, and for better or worse we were struck together.
I used to believe in one line, from the Great Gatsby, that says, you should always try your best to understand and sympathize the people who dissatisfy or unpleased you, because not everyone is as privileged as you to receive such good education. 如果别人让你感到不满或真快，或者他们的行为不如意，你需要理解，不是每个人都像你这样，受到了良好的教育。I think it goes beyond education, it’s about experience. Not everyone is as lucky as you, able to see more of the world, to explore different dimensions, so you can develop into a mature, and understanding well-being. Plus you being able to do that is not solely because of your own efforts, but with a series of co-incidents and God proposed arrangements. If you think about it this way, the sense of superiority would easily fade away, because should it for the other person to live your life trait, maybe they would be the same kind of high-achievers, or even outperform you. It is your experience that defines who you are, and the people around you, the circumstances that has made you into a package of being. In no way would I be entitled to land on a position to judge people, based on their behaviors, and appearance, because I had no idea of what kind of pressure they are facing, or what kind of incidents and circumstances, which in most cases are uncontrollable, that have made them the people they are today. From this perspective, it’s of no use to compare yourself to others, because there is very little commonality to ensure a level playing ground. If you only focus on your own personal growth path, life would be much easier. But anyway that’s another self-help chicken soup that I wouldn’t touch upon right now.
You are made by the experience, and people around you. If you become a better person year on year, thank them. Cherish each little thing that happen to me, each little encounter that come in your way, because more or less, they shape who you are. The old say is, who are you? You invented her. But maybe a more grateful statement is, people around you, and all the encounters help you, for better or for worse, to create the person you want to be. Give yourself credit, but remember it’s never only you.
This same instinct led to the mobs that gathered around accident victims, staring passively but doing nothing to help. Crowds often formed in Fuling, but I rawly saw them act as a group motivated by any sort of moral sense. I had witnessed that far more often in individualistic America, where people wanted a community that served the individual, and as a result they sometimes looked at a victim and thought: I can image what that feels like, ands I will help. Certainly there is rubbernecking in America as well, but it was nothing compared to what I saw in Fuling, where the average citizen seemed to react to a person in trouble by thinking That is not my brother, or my friend, or anybody I know, and it is interesting to watch him suffer. When there were serious car accidents, people would rush over, shouting eagerly as they ran, “Sile meiyou? Silemeiyou?” - Is anybody dead? Is anybody dead? In the end, the divide between crowd and mob was extremely fragile in Fuling.
The vast majority of the people would not be directly affected by the coming changes, and so they weren’t concerned. Despite having large sections of the city scheduled to be flooded within the next decade, it wasn’t really a community issue, because there wasn’t a community as one would generally define it. There were lots of small groups, and there was a great deal of patriotism, but like most patriotism anywhere in the world, this was spurred as much by fear and ignorance as by andy true sense of a connection to the Motherland. The dam was an issue for the people who were unfortunate enough t olive along the banks, but even they weren’t likely to cause trouble. Like most Chinese, they and been toughened by their history.
Sometimes when we cannot explain something, or more accurately, when we can explain a problem but fail to find a proper solution, we’ll just say, it’s of Chinese characteristic. And the lack of community sense is definitely one of those “complicated ones”. Again this is another issue I wouldn’t notice, or dig deep of reasons had it not for Peter to disclose. A lack of empathy leads to a lack of community sense, leading to a loss of belongings. We seem to be detaching ourselves somewhere in the middle. It’s that feeling of, it’s none of my business, so I should think of myself first, doing some calculation, am I gaining something out of it? If not, then no I won’t act. But what perhaps needs to be understood is that, sometimes you do something, not to exchange the return, but simply to enjoy the pleasure of giving, giving back to the people you love, giving back to the community, and that giving will make you a complete person.
You might say this is too much for a simple excerpt of the discussion about the Dam, but it applies for basically everything. Sometimes I ask myself, in an environment where people are all focusing on short term gains and losses, what can you do to hold that beacon, and not to compromise your characters just to get what we see as “surface gains”? And what is the balance, between having faith in your own belief, and admiring others’ achievements and mimic them? Deep down I know everyone is different, there is no point of comparing yourself to others. As long as you keep working on your skills and knowledge, time will give what you want eventually. You do something, not for other people’s approval, but to satisfy your own passion, and crave. You will develop a whole system of moralities and value criteria in my mind, and it is your responsibility to safeguard them, not compromising just because others say it’s too naive and fragile. You nurture yourself, by surrounding yourself with the people who share the same sheer passion of the love of their lives, and shield yourself against the negative feedbacks.
I believe in the power of community. When working in Plan China, the advocacy for community-based child development now makes more sense to me than before. Take initiatives to form a community, nurture it, and let it grow. Maybe somehow it still should gear back to education. Teach them to be long-term oriented, learn to care, and learn to empathize, learn to nurture themselves. But at this point, still no starting point yet.
The longer I lived in Fuling, the more I was truck by the view of the individual - in my opinion, this was the biggest difference between what I had known in the West and what I saw in Sichuan. The sense of self seemed largely external; you are identified by the way that others viewed you. that had always been the goal of Confucianism, which defined the individual’s place strictly in relation to the people around her: a mother, a daughter, a wife. This was an excellent way to preserve social harmony, but once that harmony was broken the lack of self-identity made it difficult to put things back together again. Often it seemed that in China there was no internal compass that was able to withstand these events. There wasn’t a tradition of anchoring one’s identity to a fixed set of values regardless of what others thought, and in terrain periods this had contributed to the country’s disasters.
Being different wasn’t liberating, as it sometimes is in America, and this was especially true for women from a peasant background. The result that that they became outsiders not so much by choice as by helpless inclination, which naturally made them feel that they were the ones at fault.
Women could earn money themselves; this was a way of becoming independent, but a career could also result in the frustration of sexism and the criticism of people who felt that a woman shouldn’t strive in this way.
This was very liberating thought, from my perspective, because as a modern lady, I find ourselves constantly in negotiation with the external voice. Deep down I’m still that traditional girl who wants to be the common and happily-ever-after way, but all those years of oversea study experience and self-educating has made it impossible to turn back. I enjoy the independence, and am very proud, as well as grateful for the whole journey. But inevitably, the pressure of trying to please everyone, especially the beloved ones, is always there. I believe this is no exception for a lot of young ladies. But it all depends on your own interpretations. Maybe there is no external forces, maybe the only ridicule that you feel comes from the crucified cross you have hanged over your head by yourself. If you have the courage to remove that, then you will be truly liberated, and see a bigger world. Self-identity is something to be cherished, not to be blamed. Find that anchoring value of yourself, something that you can constantly come back to, to build yourself upon, and something that will make you a better person as the fundamentals.
I thought of the old man in Fengdu with his stack of envelopes. So often my experiences in Sichuan were like that - I brushed against people just long enough to gain the slightest sense of the dizzying past that had made them what they were today. It was impossible to grasp all of the varied forces that had affected his life and would continue to affect him in the future - the war, the taiwan split, the cultural revolution, the dammed river and the new city, his pretty daughter in Xiamen withe her cell phone and driving lessons. How could one person experience all of that, helpless from start to finish, and remain sane?
I remember one of the comments about the book, saying that it is exactly because of the author’s identity as an by-passer, which makes him an inconsiderate, or detached observer of all the stories, that make all the experience and stories exotic, funny, thought-provoking and meaningful. If he were one of them, he would not have the luxury, or the good will to record everything with such a tender heart. To some extent I agree with the statement, because being in the life is what makes life boring, you will fight against it because it is YOUR OWN life, while if you are just an observer, he will not bother, in a lot of case, to struggle and fight.
I was fortunate enough to have the cultural conflict experience when I was 19, when I spent one year in the States. Very similar experience, a nice small friendly town, where you barely see any foreigners. At first, all of the curiosities, brand new experience was so overwhelming, and enlightening, I felt each day I was learning and growing, and I have to admit that brought me a genuine happiness that nothing can compare. It’s a love story you have with a place, and it extends beyond the first encounter, you just felt like everything is unfolding gradually in front of your eyes, leading you to an amazing new wonderland.
Then again at the age of 22 I spent 3 weeks in Sichuan, very similar to the author. And I came with two foreign students. I empathize everything the author had talked about in the book, the staring, the attention, the special treatment. The 3 weeks flied over quickly. I was a by-passer, and that identity, to some extent, gives me superiority. Whenever I saw adversed situations, I would do something for them, out of good will, but deep down in my mind I also know it’s not sustainable. So since then I have been constantly in this struggle of whether what I did, teaching and building a library in rural Sichuan, was a help, or an intervention. Maybe their life would be better without all the fuss. Certainly three weeks is a very short period of time of making an impact in local people’s lives. At most we bring with us a fresh air of the outside world, but I don’t know it that’s what is needed there. Or rather, I think we take more than we give. We have selfishly satisfied our crave for volunteer work, for being in a noble cause, but that’s hardly translated into anything concrete into the kids’ lives. Forgive me for being so blunt, but indeed intervention will always be controversial.
There were good days and there were bad days. To some degree this was what I liked most about Fuling: it was a human place, brightened by decency and scarred by flaws, and a place like that was always engaging. For two years I had never been bored.
And I know that I would always remember this woman’s quite pride and toughness, and the way it had gone from being infuriating to something whose consistency was admirable and even comforting.
Now I realized that the simplicity had been a mirage. That was the way so many things in Fuling turned out --- complex and uncertain. To some degree it was just the difficulties of life anywhere in the world. Death, divorce, lies, abortion, expell, etc. Those things happened everywhere. But in Fuling it had taken me longer to see that side of life, because at first as a waiguoren I was held at a distance, and in a way that distance was hardest to deal with once it was gone. It was like looking at a blank meaningless smile and suddenly recognizing a lifetime of sadness concentrated int he corner. I hoped that the students would keep it somewhere int he back of their minds, and that they would find something steady and true in its simple beauty, this was the faith I had in literature: its truth was constant, unaffected b the struggles of daily life. Despite that, the people there would turn fine. Most of them were. They were tough, and sweet and funny and sad, and people that would always survive. It wasn’t necessarily gold, but perhaps because of that it would stay.
Just like the pure beauty of his words here. And reading, literature has a beauty of simplicity, but life is complicated in nature as a normality. Everywhere the same.
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