(春燕注：前段撰文说朋友的高中毕业生女儿读完南京大屠杀久久不语，接着这看似柔弱的前校刊编辑、即将的哥大新鲜人又读完了The Chinese in America, 也是张纯如女士的力作。我问孩子写篇书评吧？下面英文让我震动，这是高中生写得出来的吗？我们一代，好好学学吧。译文来自孩子母亲，希望更多人看到，也请给二代看下面英文原文。）
这听起来是个有点愚蠢的问题， 但我在小学二年级时可觉得它是个大问题。 我不记得有人这样问过我， 不知怎么的， 这个问题就在我的脑海出现了， 而且它强烈地困扰着我 - 对一个七岁的孩子来说， 战争的概念就是和弟弟打枕头仗。 真正困绕我的， 不是战争， 而是: “我是谁?”。 我是五千年血与火中炼就的龙的传人? 还是中国人时代的一粒种子? 像我的父母告诉我的那样。 还是， 我只是一个黑头发的女孩， 喜欢卡通和名牌食物； 而当有同学问:“你家里人吃狗肉吗?”会低头羞愧不语。
我从来没有告诉过任何人，这个问题是这样地折磨着我，可以想像当我读到张纯如的“在美华人”这本叙述性历史书时， 不到10页， 它就带来的那份震撼。 在书中，张讲述了她的一个同学， 问她: “如果中美开战， 你是回中国帮着打美国呢， 还是准备留下来在美内部搞破坏?”张写到: “当时我能想到的是: 这个说法对华人来说， 是灾难性的打击， 因为他们会觉得自己被两边的人恨着”。 他们的状态好像就是: 在两边都找不到安身之处。
这样挑恤的问题听起来令人不快。 但，也许没什么好生气的， 它是个世界范围内的普遍问题。 这是张写这本书的目的。 这部史诗般的历史书， 横贯从1984，旧金山第一批华人掏金者的到来， 到今天现代社会华人的成功和奋斗。虽然华人被白人主流集体看成是没名没脸没有差别的一群， 张却成功描述了他们作为个体，每个移民他(她)独特的故事。 他们中有:劳工， 企业家， 学者， 妓女和 富家弟。 反之，这些个体的经历又被紧密地串在一起。
张，作为历史学家和名作“南京大屠杀”一书的作者， 在“在美华人”这本书中发掘了一个半世纪以来华人的种种经历。 她讲述了梅阿方(Afong Moy)， 一个16岁的中国女孩， 在1834年被带到纽约城的一个“文化”展览会上， 穿着丝绸衣服， 坐在一个大西洋镜前展示用筷子吃饭， 以此取悦观众； 她还讲述了那些在来美的船上就已经被卖身为奴的男人和卖身为妓的女人；讲述了唐人街的第一次暴乱； 讲述了当时的立法是怎样驳夺了华人在生意， 农垦，和政治上的权力。 毫无疑问: 这样一段充满了种族歧视和违反人道的历史， 应该被强调和借鉴。 但是，它却从美国的学校历史教课书中被忽略了 - 除了那些修建大陆铁路的华工们， 勉强得到了一点肯定。
但是， 张清楚地表明: 美华历史并不只是一部华人屈辱和被动接受命运的历史，虽然今天华人的整体形像还是如此。 事实上， 华人从一开始， 就一直在抗争。他们打官司，挑战违权行为； 他们也参与，在世界大战中 和白人并肩为美而战。 在学术， 体育， 艺术，和技术革命方面都取得成就。其中家喻户晓的名字有: 美国空间科学的先驱: 钱学森博士； 世界瞩名花样滑冰选手: 关颖珊；好莱坞第一位无声电影明星: Anna May 王；亚虎创始人: Jerry 杨。
这些成功的例子加上今日华裔学生的持续杰出表现， 帮助巩固了华裔: “模范少数族裔”的形像: 一群不出声的，埋头工作， 不敢有丝毫抱怨的移民群体。 而张的“在美华人”这本书， 很重要的一个方面， 则是扯解了这种刻板单一模式。华裔历史和其它少数族裔一样， 是多彩多姿， 复杂纷成的。 。。。
张的书能引起共鸣不仅仅是因为她充满人性， 而又精确详尽的描写， 更在于她成功地，平行地把握着过去和今天这两条线， 华人来之族裔内部的和族裔外部的，过去所经历的和现在正在经历的事情， 以及那些经历所带来的持续的伤痛效应， 和人们止今评论它们时的角度，眼光。 第一代移民在被贴上服从和安于现状的标签后今天的华裔后代在他(她)们各自的领域内就会面临着冲破这个天花板的种种困难。新生代的华裔孩子， 白天上美国学校， 晚上在家学中文 - 即要像他们父母希望的那样，传承本族裔的文化， 又渴望追求美式自由 - 像所有移民孩子一样地不易。
20年前， 张纯如问自己， 在两种文化里长大的她， 如果被迫选择， 她该选择哪一半的自己? 20年后的今天， 我也问自己同样的问题。 但是我不再是一个人在孤独中自问。“在美华人”这本书不仅在给我们上历史课， 它也是给我们这些寻找自己在美的身份特征的人们一个指引。 她希望: 我们将“重新发现一个基本的真理，我们的特征可能会被拗曲或被破坏， 但是我们的本质特征， 终将应该由我们各人的表现来决定”。 在畅述这部漫长而令人骄傲的历史中， “在美华人”这本书告诉我们: 我们并不孤独， 我们能够做出这个正确的决定， 能够学会拥抱在两种文化里长大的我们自己。
Essay by Crystal Song
If America and China went to war, which side would you be on?
Maybe it’s a silly question, but I didn’t think so in second grade. I don’t remember if the question was posed to me or if it planted itself in my head without provocation, but I remember how profoundly it shook me—even as a seven-year-old whose conception of war was something my brother and I played in pillow forts. Of course, it wasn’t really a question of war. It was: who am I, really? Am I the descendant of five thousand year’s worth of fire and blood, the dragon’s daughter, as my parents said, the seed of a Chinese Century? Or am I just a girl with dark hair who likes cartoons and brand-name cereals and who looks down when her classmates ask if her family really eats dog?
I never told anyone about how I tortured myself with these questions, so imagine my surprise when, less than ten pages into Iris Chang’s The Chinese in America: A Narrative History, I stumbled upon my second grade conundrum again. Chang narrates the experience of a curious white classmate asking her if, in the event of war, she would leave America to fight for China or try to sabotage the Americans from the inside. “All I could think of at that moment,” Chang writes, “was how disastrous such a scenario would be for the Chinese American population, who would no doubt find themselves hated by both sides.” The crux of the Chinese American experience: neither truly one thing nor the other, unable to find a niche in both.
I was astonished that someone else had wrestled with the exact same question, but then maybe I shouldn’t have been—the Chinese American experience is more universal than we think. This is the purpose of Chang’s book, an epic history that spans from before the arrival of the first prospective gold miners in San Francisco in 1848 to the successes and struggles of modern Chinese Americans. Chang shows that although Chinese American immigrants are often lumped together by whites as indistinguishable—a nameless, faceless threat—each has a exceptional story, coming to America as laborers, entrepreneurs, scholars, prostitutes, scions of aristocratic families. And, conversely, that although each individual immigrant has a unique experience, these experiences are inexorably linked.
Chang, acclaimed historian and author of The Rape of Nanking, unearths more than a century and a half of these experiences in The Chinese in America. She tells the story of Afong Moy, a sixteen-year-old girl brought to New York City in 1834 as part of a cultural exhibit, who sat in a life-size diorama dressed in silk and eating with chopsticks to entertain white audiences; of Chinese men sold into slavery and women forced into prostitution en route to America; of arson and rioting in the first Chinatowns; of the laws that barred Chinese immigrants from equality of opportunity in business, agriculture, and the political process. Without doubt a history of racism and violent transgressions of human rights that should be addressed, but is often neglected in American schools—besides, perhaps, a brief nod to the transcontinental railroad workers.
But Chang makes clear that the history of the Chinese in America is not merely one of humiliation and passive acceptance of the status quo: characteristics that seemingly define the image of Chinese Americans today. From the beginning, the Chinese fought back. They brought lawsuits to court, challenging legal barriers to their rights. They fought alongside white Americans in the world wars. They found success in academia, athletics, the arts, and the booming technology industries. Household names: Dr. Qian Xuesen, who helped pioneer the American space program. Michelle Kwan, world-renowned figure skater. Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American movie star. Jerry Yang, the founder of Yahoo.
All these success stories, as well as the continuing achievements of Chinese American students, helped mold the image of the “model minority”: a silent mass of immigrants who keep their heads down, do their work well, and don’t complain. One of the central aspects of The Chinese in America is Chang’s neat dismantling of this stereotype. Chinese American history is just as colorful, sordid, and complex as that of another other minority. For a time, street gangs prevailed in Chinatowns, and younger immigrants beat up their American-born Chinese counterparts, exposing tension and hostilities within the community itself. Taiwanese “parachute kids,” sent to America by their parents to get a good education, acted out and blew extravagant allowances without adult supervision; some, traumatized by being separated from the families, were expelled from school and became juvenile delinquents. A far cry from the picture-perfect Chinese student.
Chang’s book resonates because it does not merely tell these stories with care and precision. It resonates because it draws clear parallels between the challenges Chinese Americans faced then and now, both from within the ethnic community and without. It describes not only the problems faced, but the lasting scars they left on an entire people, and the ways in which they are viewed. The first Chinese immigrants were favored over other laborers of minority groups because they were believed to be obedient and unlikely to seek self-promotion; Chinese Americans today face the same stereotype when trying to break through the bamboo ceiling in their own fields and industries. Their children grew up going to “normal” school during the day and Chinese school at night, encouraged by their parents to retain the cultural values of the Old World while yearning for American independence—a familiar feeling to the children of any wave of immigrants. In the early twentieth century, Chinese girls often taped their eyelids in order to achieve a desirable double lid and look like the white girls at school. Today they get plastic surgery.
Growing up in the 1980s, Iris Chang asked herself what she would do if she were forced to choose between two halves of herself. Twenty years later, I had the same question, but I shouldn’t have felt alone in asking it. The Chinese in America is more than a history lesson: it is a guide that every Chinese American can consult as they grapple with their own identity. Chang hopes that we will “rediscover a basic truth—that while identity may be shaped and exploited by the powerful, its essence belongs, ultimately, to the individual.” In laying out the intricacies of a long and proud history, The Chinese in America tells us that we are not alone, giving us the power to make that decision while learning to embrace both sides of ourselves.
| 百草园 (2014-08-01 21:35:33) |
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孩子们读书和想到的，深刻和尖锐喔喔，只要我们是黄头发黑眼睛，我们就会面对好些问题。 |
| 李春燕 (2014-08-01 22:35:16) |
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是的，这么深刻，我觉得是研究生水平。值得我们所有人学习。 |
| 海云 (2014-08-02 02:10:38) |
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好文章！好思考！ |
| 李春燕 (2014-08-02 02:49:21) |
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有朋友问答案是什么？恐怕得我们每人读完书自己得出？ |
| 李春燕 (2014-08-02 15:09:11) |
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转“这是一个叫人纠结的问题。道义，还是归宿？利益还是良心？ 没有答案，不需要答案！” |
| 李春燕 (2014-08-02 15:12:03) |
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转：“一直不敢触碰张纯如的作品，害怕自己沉溺于悲伤的情绪中，挥之不去。读了Crystal的文章，觉得挣扎之中有一种向上的能量。非常佩服这样的年龄居然有这样的深度！” |
| 李春燕 (2014-08-02 15:20:12) |
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转“Astonishing writing skill and profound thoughts! Allow me to be direct, that's a silly question for the young abc generation. IMHO, deep down they might wanna say that they would go with America, yet they might not speak it loud per their 2-side identity. To be frank, if that's the question for me, I'd struggle and be in pain with prayers that wars aren't inevitable.” |
| 李春燕 (2014-08-02 15:24:25) |
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我想这个问题不只是这两位早熟的女士，也不仅是华裔的思考吧。 |
| 李春燕 (2014-08-02 15:25:21) |
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转：“这是一个叫人纠结的问题。道义，还是归宿？利益还是良心？ 没有答案，不需要答案！” |
| 李春燕 (2014-08-09 05:39:33) |
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转“我会跳上飞机逃走，在这里我是敌国公民，回国我会是美国间谍。我不是开玩笑，我觉得中美进入冷战或者某种低烈度热战虽然仍然是小概率时间，但已经不是零了。我是做了很多这方面的考虑。” |
| 李春燕 (2014-08-09 05:40:29) |
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转“没有 cheetsheet? 最好的结果是帮两边阻止开战。大部分的事情不用武会更好达到目的。现在差距没有当年火枪对冷兵器那么悬殊，打起来会是很愚蠢没有赢家的一场战争。” |
| 李春燕 (2014-08-09 05:42:49) |
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说来惭愧，我虽然推荐此书，自己还没来得及看，而孩子已经读完了，还写了如此深刻的书评。看来只有读完此书才能有体会？ |