Mao and the art of management毛泽东与管理艺术

Staying at the top居高不下
Mao and the art of management毛泽东与管理艺术
Dec 19th 2007
From The Economist print edition

A role model, of sorts
负面榜样

                                                                                         Corbis

Books on management tend to define success in the broadest possible terms―great product, happy employees, continuous improvement, gobs of profits, crushed competitors. Even when words such as "excellence" and "success" are omitted from the title, they are often implicit. A case in point is the book which many would say defined the genre, Alfred Sloan's "My Years with General Motors", published in 1963 when GM was still an iconic company and Sloan correctly acknowledged as the architect of the well-run, decentralised, global corporation.
　　管理类书籍总是用尽可能泛泛的表达来定义成功――如产品众多、员工快乐、改进不断、利润巨大以及对手受制等等。即便"卓越"和"成功"这类词未在标题中出现，这些表达往往都是暗示。艾尔弗雷德•斯隆（Alfred Sloan）的《我在通用汽车的岁月》就是其中一例，该书于1963年出版，当时通用还是一个标志性公司，而斯隆也因高效运作、分散经营和跨国企业缔造者的身份而闻名于世。

But focusing on how the best produce the best has its limits. Most managers, after all, do not stitch an industrial triumph from a vast bankrupt junkyard, as Sloan did. They do not delight their customer, crush competitors and create vast wealth. They struggle. They stumble.
　　然而关注于如何最优生产出最好产品，仍有其局限性。毕竟大多数经理人不像斯隆，能将一个频临破产的巨大烂摊子整合为行业翘楚。他们不懂取悦顾客、打压对手以及创造丰厚财富。他们且战且败。

Where is the book for them? Who can help the under-performing, over-compensated chief executive fighting to survive intrusive journalists, independent shareholders and ambitious vice-presidents who could do a better job? Where is the role model for the manager who really needs a role model most―the one who by any objective measure of performance cannot, and should not, manage at all?
　　那么为他们准备的管理书籍在哪呢？又有谁能助这些尸位素餐的高管一臂之力，让他们能从同侵扰不断的记者、独立董事与野心勃勃打算取代自己的副手之间的战争中生存下来？经理人的榜样在哪里呢？这些经理人既不能对业绩给出任何客观评价，也不能管理一切，他们真正最需要榜样。

An obvious candidate is Mao. Yes, he was head of a country, not a company. But he self-consciously carried a business-like title, "chairman", while running China from 1949 until dying in office in 1976, having jailed, killed, or psychologically crushed a succession of likely replacements and therefore created the classic business problem: a succession void. He thought of himself as, in his own words, an "indefatigable teacher" and the famous "Little Red Book" drawn from his speeches is packed with managerial advice on training, motivation and evaluation of lower-level employees (cadres); innovation ("let a hundred flowers bloom"); competition ("fear no sacrifice"); and, of course, raising the game of the complacent manager (relentless self-criticism).
　　显而易见，毛泽东就是一个典范。是的，他是一国之首，而非公司，但他有意选用了一个类商业的"主席"头衔。从1949年执政到1976年在这一职位上辞世，这些年间，他对那些有可能取代自己的人或关、或杀、或心理迫害，从而也造成了后继无人这一典型的商业困境。他自诩为一名"诲人不倦的老师"，在那本荟萃了他言论的著名红宝书中，满是关于如何训练、激励、评价低级员工（基层干部）；如何创新（"百花齐放"）；如何竞争（"不怕牺牲"）的管理条目，当然也包括提醒自满者的方法（坚持自我批评）。

Mao still has at least a symbolic hold over the Chinese economy, even though it began to blossom only after death removed his suffocating hand. His portrait is emblazoned on China's currency, on bags, shirts, pins, watches and whatever else can be sold by the innumerable entrepreneurial capitalists that he ground beneath his heel when in power. No other recent leader of a viable country (outside North Korea, in other words) is so honoured―not even ones that did a good job.
　　至少现在，毛泽东对中国经济的拖累仍有象征意义，只有在他死后，中国经济才摆脱他那只扼杀的手开始走向繁荣。他的肖像被印在人民币上，印在书包、T恤、像章、手表和一切能够被无数资本家出售的商品上。而这些资本家，在他掌权时都被踩在其脚下。如此的殊荣，没有哪一个理性国家（换句话说，朝鲜除外）的近代领导人享受过――即使是那些造福于民的领袖们。

It was not a nurturing management style that won Mao this adulation. According to Jung Chang's and Jon Halliday's "Mao, the Unknown Story", admittedly an unsympathetic portrait, he was responsible for "70m deaths, more than any other 20th-century leader". But why stop at the 20th century? In Chinese history, only Emperor Qin Shi Huang, who started building the Great Wall (in which each brick is said to have cost a life), was competition for Mao; and since the population was much smaller then, Mao is likely to have outdone him in absolute numbers.
　　毛泽东赢得这些谄媚，并非因为培养式的管理风格。在张戎（Jung Chang）和乔•哈里戴（Jon Halliday）所著的《毛泽东：鲜为人知的故事》一书中，他分明是一个无情的人，他应该为"7000万亡魂负责，这是20世纪领导者之最。"但为什么只停留在20世纪？中国历史上，也只有兴建长城（一条人命砌一口砖）的秦始皇能与之媲美了。而且秦代的人口远远少于现代，因此毛泽东在绝对数上还要胜过秦始皇。

Botched economic policies caused most of the carnage. Deng Xiaoping, Mao's successor, turned the policies, and eventually the economy, around. Yet he does not even merit an image on a coin.
　　拙劣的经济政策是这场大屠杀的主因。而毛泽东的继任者邓小平，虽然是他改变了这样的政策，并最终扭转了中国经济。然而，他甚至没有在一枚硬币上享受过如此的荣耀。

The disparity between Mao's performance and his reputation is instructive, for behind it are four key ingredients which all bad managers could profitably employ.
　　毛泽东的成就与其盛誉之间的差距，源于其背后的四个因素，它们对于所有糟糕的经理人而言都有借鉴意义。

• A powerful, mendacious slogan
• 激昂却虚假的口号

Born a modestly well-off villager, Mao lived like an emperor, carried on litters by peasants, surrounded by concubines and placated by everyone. Yet his most famous slogan was "Serve the People". This paradox illustrates one aspect of his brilliance: his ability to justify his actions, no matter how entirely self-serving, as being done for others.
　　生于富农家庭的毛泽东，过着帝王般的生活：出门坐轿、妻妾围绕、众民顺朝。然而，他最有名的一句口号竟是"为人民服务"。这一矛盾反映出他的某方面的智慧：他能将其所为合理化处理，即不论他是如何完全的为自己服务，也是为别人服务。

Corbis
Psychologists call this "cognitive dissonance"―the ability to make a compelling, heartfelt case for one thing while doing another. Being able to pull off this sort of trick is an essential skill in many professions. It allows sub-standard chief executives to rationalise huge pay packages while their underlings get peanuts (or rice).
　　心理学家称此为"认知失调"――虽然做的是一套，嘴上说的另一套却能使人由衷信服。对于某些从业者而言，这是一项不可或缺的职业技能。这能使得在基层只能获取微利的时候，那些不称职的高管还能理所当然的享受高薪福利。

But Mao did not just get a stamp from a compliant board and eye-rolling from employees. He convinced his countrymen of his value. That was partly because, even if his message bore no relation to his actions, it expressed precisely and succinctly what he should have been doing. Consider the truth and clarity of "serve the people" compared with the average company's mission statement, packed with a muddle of words and thoughts tied to stakeholders and CSR, that employees can barely read, let alone memorise.
　　但是顺从的政治局没有抱怨毛泽东，而广大人民也没有翻白眼。他的价值观牢牢控制着国民。这部分的原因是，即使他表达的内容与其行为无关，但也简明的表达出他该做什么。想想吧，"为人民服务"的真理性与透彻性，岂是一般企业满纸股东与社会责任的宗旨所能比的？员工读起来都困难，何谈牢记？

Deng Xiaoping's slogan, which he used in his campaign to revive the economy, had similar virtues. "Truth from facts" is a sound-bite that Sloan would have loved and every manager should cherish, but you won't find it chiselled on a Chinese wall. It doesn't have the hypocritical idealism of Mao's version―nor was it pushed so hard.
　　邓小平在恢复经济时提出的"实事求是"口号也有类似的优点。这是一个会使斯隆喜欢、每个经理人喜爱的语录，但你会发现它没有像"为人民服务"一样被刻在中国的墙上。因为它既没有毛泽东式伪善的理想主义，也没有被极力推广。

• Ruthless media manipulation
• 肆无忌惮的媒体操纵

Mao knew not just how to make a point but also how to get it out. Through posters, the "Little Red Book" and re-education circles, his message was constantly reinforced. "Where the broom does not reach", he said, "the dust will not vanish of itself." This process of self-aggrandisement is often dismissed as a "personality cult", but is hard to distinguish from the modern business practice of building brand value.
　　毛泽东不仅善于提出想法，还善于传播想法。通过各种海报、"红宝书"以及再教育循环，他的教导不断被追捧肯定。因为他深知"扫帚不到，灰尘照例不会自己跑掉"的道理。自我扩张的过程常被视为"个人崇拜"而被人鄙视，却又很难同建设品牌价值的现代商业行为区别开来。

Yet within China economic growth was pathetic and living conditions were wretched. So why did a vast list of Western political, military and academic leaders accept the value of Mao's brand at his own estimation? Even Stalin, no guileless observer, believed in and, to his later regret, protected Mao. The brand-building lesson is that a clear, utopian message, hammered home relentlessly, can obscure inconvenient facts. Great salesmen are born knowing this. Executives whose strategies are not delivering need to learn it.
　　虽然当时中国的经济增长停滞，生活条件恶劣。但为什么有那么多西方军政要人、学术都会接受毛泽东自我构建的品牌价值呢？甚至斯大林这么一个圆滑的旁观者，相信并保护了毛泽东，虽然他后来后悔了。通过毛的品牌建设，我们可以看到一个简明却幻想式的言辞，经过极端的不断重复，便可以掩盖事实。伟大的推销员天生深谙此道，但那些战略执行不利的管理者需要好好补上一课。

Chief executives are not in a position to crush the media as Mao did. Nevertheless, his handling of them offers some lessons. He talked only to sycophantic journalists and his appeal in the West came mainly from hagiographies written by reporters whose careers were built on the access they had to him.
　　当然，企业高管们不能像毛泽东那样控制媒体。但毛泽东的处理方式能为他们提供一些参考。毛泽东只接受马屁精记者的采访，他对西方的魅力也大多来自这些记者神化过的传记，而这些记者就是靠和毛泽东打交道吃饭的。

The law constrains the modern chief executive's ability to imitate Mao's PR strategy. Publicly listed companies have to publish information, rather than hand it out selectively. But many, within bounds, emulate Mao's media management; others, determined to control information about them, are delisting. Burrow beneath laudatory headlines on business and political leaders, and it becomes clear that the strategy works.
　　法律约束着这些高管们模仿毛泽东公关策略的才能。上市公司必须披露信息，而不是选择性的发布。但是仍有很多公司在合理范围内效法毛的媒体管理，当然也有一些试图操控信息的公司被摘牌。挖掘赞誉标题背后的商政要人，这个策略已变得有效。

• Sacrifice of friends and colleagues
• 朋友与同志的牺牲

"Who are our friends? Who are our enemies? This is a question of first importance," Mao wrote. Sloan agreed. He worried that favouritism would come at the expense of the single most valuable component of management: the objective evaluation of performance.
　　毛泽东写道"谁是我们的敌人？谁是我们的朋友？这个问题是革命的首要问题。"斯隆对此也表示认可。他担心偏袒会带来"客观评价表现"这一管理中最有价值构成的损失。

Corbis

Mao had a different goal: he did not want people too close to him, and therefore to power; so being Mao's friend often proved more dangerous than being his enemy. One purge followed another. Promotions and demotions were zealously monitored. Bundles of incentives were given and withdrawn. Some demotions turned out well. Deng Xiaoping's exile in a tractor factory may have helped him understand business, and thus rebuild the economy, but that was an unintended benefit.
　　毛泽东有个不一样的目标：他不喜欢别人太接近他，因而接近权力；所以成为毛泽东的朋友，往往被证明比成为敌人的处境还要危险。一次接一次的清洗，升贬都被狂热所左右，大量奖励派送出去，然后又被收回去。结果有些贬谪并不是件坏事，下放到拖拉机厂能使邓小平更懂商业，因此他重建了经济，虽然这只是个意外的好处。

This approach makes sense. Close colleagues may want your job, and relationships with them may distract you. Mao's abandonment of friends and even wives and children seemed to be based on a calculation of which investments were worth maintaining and which should be regarded as sunk costs. Past favours were not returned. According to Ms Chang and Mr Halliday, a doctor who saved his life was left to die on a prison floor after being falsely accused of disloyalty. Mao let it happen: he had other doctors by then.
　　这种做法是有道理的。亲密的同志可能抢了你的饭碗，而且处理和他们之间的关系可能让你分心。毛泽东对妻儿朋友的抛弃似乎是以计算为基础的：那些投资是值得的，而那些应当视为沉没成本。即便过去有恩也得不到报答。据张戎和乔•哈里戴的记载，一位曾经救过他命的医生，被错误指控为不忠后死在了监狱。而他任其发生：那时他已有其它医生了。

Enemies, conversely, can be useful. Mao often blamed battlefield losses on rivals who were made to suffer for these defeats. The names of modern victims of this tactic will be visible on the list of people sacked at an investment bank after a rough quarter; the practitioners are their superiors, or those who have taken their jobs.
　　相反，敌人可能是有用的。毛泽东常常把战争失利归咎于自己的对手，让他们承担失败的后果。这一伎俩的现代受害者名字可以在投资银行的解雇名单上看到，在一个糟糕的财季之后，肇事的人还稳居高位，或已经顶替了他们的位置。

• Activity substituting for achievement
• 以行动取代成绩

Mao was quite willing to avoid tedious or uncomfortable meetings, particularly when he was likely to be criticised. But maybe that helped him avoid getting bogged down. From the Anti-Rightist Movement of the late 1950s to the Great Leap Forward, a failed agricultural and industrial experiment in the early 1960s, to the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s, Mao was never short of a plan.
　　毛泽东喜欢避开沉闷或者不快的会议，尤其是他有可能被批判的时候。但这能帮助他避免陷入困境。从50年代末期的反右运动，到60年代初弄砸工农业的大跃进，再到60年代后期的文化大革命，毛泽东从来不缺乏逃避的办法。

Under Mao, China didn't drift, it careened. The propellant came from the top. Policies were poor, execution dreadful and leadership misdirected, but each initiative seemed to create a centripetal force, as everyone looked toward Beijing to see how to march forward (or avoid being trampled). The business equivalent of this is restructuring, the broader the better. Perhaps for the struggling executive, this is the single most important lesson: if you can't do anything right, do a lot. The more you have going on, the longer it will take for its disastrous consequences to become clear. And think very big: for all his flaws, Mao was inspiring.
　　在毛泽东的领导下，中国没有偏离航线，只是在摇摆中前行。推动力来自于高层。下面缺失政策、执行不力而且领导无方，但是每个自发行动似乎都能形成向心力，每个人都心向北京，想知道如何前行（或者避免被踩踏）。这类似于商业中的重组，范围越宽越好。也许，对于挣扎的管理者而言，唯一重要的教训是：如果你不能保证每件事都做对，那么就多做。你做得越多，出现灾难性后果的时间就会越延后。而且要敢想：对于他的所有缺点而言，毛泽东是有启发性的。

In the long run, of course, the facts will find you out. But who cares? We all know what we are in the long run.
　　不过，事实最终会揭露你是个什么人。但谁在乎？最终我们都会知道我们是谁。


学谦评：
　　这篇文章，无疑是我在《经济学人》上看到过最烂的一篇文章了。
　　说烂，不仅是因为文章的观点、逻辑站不住脚，也是因为文章最终要表达的东西，只是借管理之手，行鞭尸之事罢了。
　　先从标题《毛泽东与管理艺术》谈起，乍一看还以为是对毛泽东管理思想的研究，加上用一顶圣诞帽给主席戴上，显得是如此可爱。于是，这样一个虚假的标题、伪善的封面使众多没有读懂文章的人产生了错觉，竟有不少人纷纷转载后还以为是对主席的褒扬，让我真是苦笑不得！
　　细看下全文，这哪里是谈"管理艺术"，分明就是谈"权术"！或者说透些，就是大肆诬蔑古人，放肆鞭尸！反正古人也不会从水晶棺里跳出来，可以随意而为了！
　　好吧，且让我们看看他们是怎么鞭尸的吧。
　　先通过与斯隆的对比，勾勒出一群丑陋的经理人形象。事实上，这些经理人的确很丑陋。然后笔锋一转，便把这形象转嫁到毛泽东头上了，甚至冠名以"榜样"。这样大概有两个好处：一是用熟知的丑陋形象来丑化一个人，实在是省事高效的高明类比；二是不明情况的人，自然会觉得毛是一个比丑陋更丑恶的人了。
　　于是，就这样强盗般的造成一个恶人的既成事实――不容你反驳，不容你辩解，就是这样了。当然他们间或搬出一些事实，便以偏概全的定性了。这分明不是"春秋笔法"，这分明就是"文革笔法"！他们敢于强奸古人，把毛泽东的"主席"头衔，称为之是有意选用的；他们敢于玩弄历史，把后人对毛泽东的怀念而在人民币上、各种纪念品上印制头像的行为，暗示为自己对荣耀的追求。他们或许觉得没有论据也说不过去，于是便一本以鞭尸为目的的《毛泽东：鲜为人知的故事》就成了他们取之不尽的素材库。而不忌讳野史、孤证不立的原则。如此三点，让人读来岂不气塞？岂不和文革无限上纲上线的整人思路不谋而合？
　　好吧，这些也许是西方人士对毛泽东不了解，所以才这么幼稚吧。可是越往下读，方知人家哪里是在要写"毛泽东和管理艺术"，分明就是要描述一个"恐怖的毛太祖"！且看――
　　• 生于富农家庭的毛泽东，过着帝王般的生活：出门坐轿、妻妾围绕、众民顺朝。
　　我不知道他老人家有车不坐，为什么要坐轿？如果这里的轿指车的话，那么难道布什、布莱尔等人平时出门是走的么？再有"妻妾围绕"一条，我不知道江青同志会怎么想？大概那些妾，应该都死得很惨吧！还有"众民顺朝"，人们爱戴不可以么？众所周知，中国人到现在还有封建残余思想，人家把国家领导人当作帝王膜拜，难道就是一定他老人家的错？如此下笔，用心何其险恶。如此荒谬的论调一出，"为人民服务"这句话也成了毛泽东"认知失调"的明证了。于是他们洋洋洒洒的自由发挥，却不敢再提毛泽东到底为人民做了多少事的事实。
　　• 毛泽东不仅善于提出想法，还善于传播想法。通过各种海报、"红宝书"以及再教育循环，他的教导不断被追捧肯定。
　　• 毛泽东只接受马屁精记者的采访，他对西方的魅力也大多来自这些记者神化过的传记，而这些记者就是靠和毛泽东打交道吃饭的。
　　是的，我承认中国领导人有个通病，就是喜欢出版选集。但是仔细想想，广为传播这些著作也不是一件坏事，只是怕利用、歪曲这些著作上纲上线的迫害人。文革时期，是有不可回避和否认的污点，但是局限于这么一点就盖棺定论，是很不客观，也很不理性的。而且这段话，毫无根据的就把毛泽东语录的疯传，当作是毛泽东本人的意愿了，这也是极不负责任，不了解那段历史，或者根本就是利用那段历史鞭尸。另外，毛泽东肯定不止接受过斯诺等赞同中国革命的记者采访，只是其它意识形态的记者，固然不可能全面地了解一个人，怎么可能写得出《西行漫记》这样的文章呢？而且，所谓的"马屁精记者"对中国革命和毛的赞扬，引起了西方社会极大的不满，纷纷排挤、打压"马屁精记者"。那么，这些记者在自家吃不饱饭，来毛泽东这里讨些题材，不也是很正常的吗？关键是看什么心态去对待了。
　　• 毛泽东对妻儿朋友的抛弃似乎是以计算为基础的：那些投资是值得的，而那些应当视为沉没成本。即便过去有恩也得不到报答。
　　• 据张戎和乔•哈里戴的记载，一位曾经救过他命的医生，被错误指控为不忠后死在了监狱。而他任其发生：那时他已有其它医生了。
　　对朋友的抛弃，或许是政见不合了，或许是个人原因；对妻儿的抛弃，难道就是他愿意的吗？毛岸龙、还有一个长征途中送掉的女儿，不都是迫不得已吗？是的，西方人士最讲人性，他们以为毛泽东就应该坚持不抛弃这些幼子，让他们跟随部队转移，让部队为了保护他们而付出更大代价，造成更大牺牲也是值得的。还有毛岸英，那样的死去难道也是抛弃吗？讲人性的人，在写此文的时候究竟有没有人性？！
　　张戎和乔•哈里戴的故事，又一次被引用了，只是没有人知道这是不是杜撰，背后有没有其它原因，甚至毛泽东本人知不知道他的救命恩人被关押了。但是这些都不重要，重要的是，这是可以证明毛泽东"无情"的"有力证据"。
　　• 毛泽东喜欢避开沉闷或者不快的会议，尤其是他有可能被批判的时候。但这能帮助他避免陷入困境。从50年代末期的反右运动，到60年代初弄砸工农业的大跃进，再到60年代后期的文化大革命，毛泽东从来不缺乏逃避的办法。
　　作者也许忽略了一点，自从中国有了民主起，借民主整人、开批斗会的事件就自然而然的发生了，这并不是毛的创造，要找可以先找王明算账。反右、大跃进以及文化大革命，是有问题的。但是，我想，如果没有西方世界的排斥与对抗，相互多一些宽容与理解，中国的历史也将改写吧。
　　最后，我想表明一个个人观点。从这篇文章的文风来看，不太像《经济学人》一贯的行文和逻辑风格，倒是有些美式。而且，看得出来文章中明显的贬毛尊邓倾向，对于以意识形态一刀切的西方人士而言，似乎不会有这样分明的爱憎取向。因此我猜测，这大概是出自特殊年代受过迫害的华人（或后代）之笔

 

Nasty, brutish and not that short险恶、野蛮、漫长

The battle of Towton 陶顿战役 Nasty, brutish and not that short 险恶、野蛮、漫长 Medieval warfare was just as terrifying as you might imagine 中世纪战争一点也不比你想象的温和 Dec 16th 2010 | TOWTON | from PRINT EDITION THE soldier now known as Towton 25 had survived battle before. A healed skull fracture points to previous engagements. He was old enough―somewhere between 36 and 45 when he died―to have gained plenty of experience of fighting. But on March 29th 1461, his luck ran out. 现在被人们称为陶顿25（Towton 25）的战士在陶顿战役前还参加过别的战斗，有愈合的头骨骨折为证。他年纪不小（死时约在36~45岁之间），想必战斗经验已颇为丰富。但在1461年3月29日，运气没有再次眷顾他。 Towton 25 suffered eight wounds to his head that day. The precise order can be worked out from the direction of fractures on his skull: when bone breaks, the cracks veer towards existing areas of weakness. The first five blows were delivered by a bladed weapon to the left-hand side of his head, presumably by a right-handed opponent standing in front of him. None is likely to have been lethal. 这一天，陶顿25头部总共受到8处创伤。我们可以通过他头骨骨折方向精确判定受伤顺序：当骨头断裂时时，裂缝总是向薄弱之处扩展。起先的5击使用的是利器，击打部位在头部左侧，应该是被右手持械的对手从身前击中。这5击均不致命。 The next one almost certainly was. From behind him someone swung a blade towards his skull, carving a down-to-up trajectory through the air. The blow opened a huge horizontal gash into the back of his head―picture a slit you could post an envelope through. Fractures raced down to the base of his skull and around the sides of his head. Fragments of bone were forced in to Towton 25's brain, felling him. 基本可以确定是第6击要了他的命。有人从他身后手持利刃砍向他的头颅，从下至上贯穿了整个头部。这一击在他的头部后侧撕开了一道巨大的水平豁口，足以塞进一个封信。骨折一直延伸到头骨底部，并向头部两侧扩展。骨头的碎片迸入了他的大脑，终于使他倒地不起。 His enemies were not done yet. Another small blow to the right and back of the head may have been enough to turn him over onto his back. Finally another blade arced towards him. This one bisected his face, opening a crevice that ran from his left eye to his right jaw (see picture). It cut deep: the edge of the blade reached to the back of his throat. 但敌人并未就此罢休。他的头部右后方又遭受了一次较轻的袭击，这使他转了个身。最后，又一柄利刃朝他砍来，将他的面部一分为二，从左眼一直砍到右颌（见图）。这一砍砍得极深，锋刃已经触及到喉部后侧。 Thorny tales 争议传说 Towton is a nondescript village in northern England, between the cities of York and Leeds. Many Britons have never heard of it: school history tends to skip the 400-or-so years between 1066 and the start of the Tudor era. Visitors have to look hard to spot the small roadside cross that marks the site of perhaps the bloodiest battle ever fought in England. Yet the clash was a turning point in the Wars of the Roses. And, almost 550 years later, the site is changing our understanding of medieval battle. 陶顿是英格兰北部约克和利兹之间的一个平凡小村庄。许多英国人压根就没听说过这个地方：在他们的历史课本上，从1066年一直到都铎王朝开始的400年间是一片空白。游客们得睁大了眼睛留神乡村小路牌，才找得着这个或许是英格兰历史上最惨烈战役的现场。然而这场战役乃是玫瑰战争的转折点。而大约550年之后，这片战场改变了我们对中世纪战争的认识。 In Shakespeare's cycle of eight plays, the story of the Wars of the Roses is told as an epic drama. In reality it was a messy series of civil wars―an on-again, off-again conflict pitting supporters of the ruling Lancastrian monarchy against backers of the house of York. According to Helen Castor, a historian at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, the wars arose from the slow breakdown of English government under Henry VI, a man who was prone to bouts of mental illness and "curiously incapable" even when well. As decision-making under Henry drifted, factions formed and enmities deepened. These spiralling conflicts eventually drove Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, to assert his own claim to the throne. York was named Henry's heir, but he was killed in December 1460. His 18-year-old son, Edward, proclaimed himself king just before the battle of Towton. 在莎士比亚笔下，《玫瑰战争》是八台连环史诗剧。但在现实中，玫瑰战争可谓英格兰国内的一场乱战――当政的兰开斯特家族和约克家族的支持者们战了又和，和了又战。据剑桥大学悉尼苏塞克斯（Sidney Sussex）学院历史学家海伦•卡斯特（Helen Castor）的说法，玫瑰战争的起因是亨利六世治下的英格兰政府逐渐陷入了分裂。亨利六世是位精神病患者，即使在正常状态下也"不可理喻"。在争夺亨利王朝决策权的过程中形成了不少派系，彼此之间渐成水火。最终，约克公爵理查•金雀花（Richard Plantagenet）在混战中脱颖而出，自称将接过英格兰的王冠。约克被入继亨利之大统，但在1460年被杀。随后，其子、年仅18岁的爱德华自立为王，此时正在陶顿战役前夕。 That set the stage for a vicious fight. Edward had his father and brother to avenge. After killing him, Lancastrian forces had impaled York's head on a lance and adorned it with a paper crown. Following years of skirmishes others had scores to settle, too. In previous encounters, efforts had been made to spare rank-and-file soldiers. At Towton, orders went out that no quarter be given. This was to be winner-takes-all, a brutal fight to the death. 一场恶战由此而起。爱德华身背父兄血海深仇。金雀花被杀后，兰开斯特军给他的头颅被戴上一顶纸王冠，挑在长矛上示众。随后几年，各方恩怨冲突不断。在陶顿战役之前，各方只是务除魁首，不问伍卒。但陶顿战役的军令是格杀勿论。这是一场血战到底的决斗，赢家将一统江山。 The result was a crushing victory for the Yorkists and for the young king. Edward IV went on to rule, with a brief interruption, until his death 22 years later―a death that triggered the final stage of the conflict and the rise of a new dynasty under Henry Tudor. The recorded death toll at Towton may well have been inflated to burnish the legend of Edward's ascent to the crown. Yet there can be little doubt it was an unusually large confrontation. 最后，陶顿战役以约克派和年轻国王大获全胜告终。爱德华四世由此登基，开始了22年的国王生涯，期间只发生过一次小动荡。爱德华四世驾崩后，玫瑰战争战火重燃，不久后以亨利•都铎建立新王朝而告终。陶顿战役的战果记载很可能被大大夸大了，因为要给爱德华的登基增添几分传奇色彩。但毫无疑问，这是一场不同寻常的大交锋。 In a letter sent nine days after the battle George Neville, the then chancellor of England, wrote that 28,000 men died that day, a figure in accord with a letter sent by Edward to his mother. England's total population at the time is thought not to have exceeded 3m people. George Goodwin, who has written a book on Towton to coincide with the battle's 550th anniversary in 2011, reckons as many as 75,000 men, perhaps 10% of the country's fighting-age population, took the field that day. 在陶顿战役之后9天寄出的一封信中，时任英国宰相乔治•内维尔（George Neville）写道，28 000人在战役中丧生，这与爱德华寄给其母的信中的数字一致。当时英格兰人口总数大概不会超过300万。乔治•古德温（George Goodwin）在其为纪念陶顿战役550周年（2011年）而写的书中认为，那天大约有75 000人参加了战斗，相当于英格兰从军适龄人口的10%。 They had been dragged into conflict in various ways. Lacking a standing army, the royal claimants called on magnates and issued "commissions of array" to officers in the shires to raise men. Great lords on either side had followings known as "affinities", comprising people on formal retainers as well as those under less rigid obligations. These soldiers would have been among the more experienced and better-equipped fighters that day (foreign mercenaries were there, too). Alongside them were people lower down the social pyramid, who may have been obliged to practise archery at the weekend as part of the village posse but were not as well trained. Among this confusion of soldiers and weaponry, almost certainly on the losing Lancastrian side, was Towton 25. 参战军队来自四面八方。王室常备军不足，便发动各路诸侯，并向各郡下达"动员令"，征集勤王大军。双方各有由亲兵和游勇组成的队伍，即所谓的"统一战线"。这些（还包括一些外国雇用兵）都是装备精良、经验丰富的斗士。还有不少下层民众也卷入了这场战役，这些人也许平时就有民兵义务，在周末练习射箭，但训练质量终究要差一截。总之，陶顿战役的参与者素质和装备良莠不齐，陶顿25是其中之一，十有八九隶属于战败的兰开斯特军。 The bone collectors 骨骸收集 He gets his name from the order in which he was removed from the ground. In the summer of 1996 builders working at Towton Hall, about a mile away from the main battlefield, discovered a mass grave. Archaeologists from the University of Bradford eventually took charge of an excavation of almost 40 individuals, 28 of whom were complete skeletons. (Further bodies have subsequently been recovered from beneath the dining-room at Towton Hall, which must make for conversation, at least.) The skeletons had clearly been the victims of great violence. Many display the same frenzied wounding as Towton 25. "Imagine one of those movie scenes with people closing in on a cornered individual," says Christopher Knüsel, one of the original team of archaeologists and now at the University of Exeter. "Usually the camera has to pan away because you cannot show some things. Here you see it." The location of the bodies, and subsequent carbon-dating, linked them conclusively to the battle of Towton. 陶顿25这个名字来自其出土顺序编号。1996年夏，陶顿厅（Towton Hall）施工人员在据主战场约1英里的地方发现一处万人坑。发掘工作由布拉德福德大学（University of Bradford）考古学家接手，他们清理出近40具个体，其中28具为完整骨骸。（在陶顿厅餐厅下方已发现了另一批骸骨，这一定会成为人们热议的话题）显然，这些骸骨生前遭遇过重创。多具骸骨上的伤痕如陶顿25一样令人触目惊心。"想象一下那些某人被逼到角落绝望受死的电影场景，"克里斯托弗•努赛尔（Christopher Knüsel）说，他是陶顿万人坑考古队的一员，现在艾克赛特大学（University of Exeter）任教，"通常电影镜头会就此打住，转向下一幕，因为有些东西不适合出现在银幕上。但在这里，不会。"这些骸骨的发现地以及碳年代测定结果表明，这些骸骨的主人是陶顿战役的参与者。 It is the only mass grave of known medieval battle victims to have been found in England. The only comparable find is that of a mass grave of victims of the Battle of Wisby in Sweden in 1361, which was excavated in the early 20th century. That find was considerably larger―1,185 individuals from four separate pits―and notable, too, for the fact that the dead had been buried in their armour. The Towton men had been stripped before being thrown into the pit. The only personal effect found in the grave was a silver ring still encircling the little finger of Towton 39; it may have been missed because of the sheer quantity of gore. 这是迄今为止英格兰发现的唯一一处中世纪战争万人坑。唯一可以与之相提并论的是20世纪初在瑞典挖出的维斯比战役（Battle of Wisby）万人坑。维斯比万人坑规模要大得多，在4处相互隔离的大坑中发掘出1 185具骸骨。更令人瞩目的是，这些人是连同身上的铠甲一起被掩埋的。而陶顿万人坑中的骸骨在掩埋之前已被剥得赤条条的，坑中发现的唯一个人物品是陶顿39小拇指上的银指环，大概是因为血肉太过模糊没被发现而留了下来。 But Towton has proved more instructive in some ways. The size of the Wisby find and the way in which the bodies there were removed, with the graves broken into grids and excavated one square at a time, made it almost impossible to reassemble skeletons later. At Towton, under the guidance of Tim Sutherland, an archaeologist who has been researching the battlefield ever since, skeletons were carefully recorded in the grave so that they could be put back together again. As described in "Blood Red Roses", a book on the archaeology of Towton, this has allowed a more complete picture of participants in the fighting to emerge. 但从某种意义上说，陶顿万人坑更有启发意义。维斯比万人坑规模巨大，发掘时将整个坑分成好几部分，逐个发掘，导致尸骸被损坏，无法复原成人。而在陶顿，指导发掘工作的是有多年陶顿战场研究经验的考古学家蒂姆•萨瑟兰（Tim Sutherland），坑中的骸骨被小心编号，因此得以复原。记录陶顿万人坑考古历程的书《血色红玫瑰》（Blood Red Roses）中描述道，这样的发掘方式使这场战役的参与者较为完整地展现在人们眼前。 Who are you calling short? 你说谁是矮子？ The men whose skeletons were unearthed at Towton were a diverse lot. Their ages at time of death ranged widely. It is easier to be precise about younger individuals, thanks to the predictable ways in which teeth develop and bones fuse during a person's adolescence and 20s. The youngest occupants of the mass grave were around 17 years old; the oldest, Towton 16, was around 50. Their stature varies greatly, too. The men's height ranges from 1.5-1.8 metres (just under five feet to just under six feet), with the older men, almost certainly experienced soldiers, being the tallest. 在陶顿的土地之下，各色各样的人都有。他们死时年纪各异。年轻人的骸骨可以精确地测定年龄，因为青春期和20来岁时的牙齿发育和骨骼接合有迹可循。在陶顿万人坑中，年纪最轻的死者大约17岁，年纪最大的陶顿16大约50岁。他们的身高也相差悬殊，最低的只有1.5米（略低于5英尺），最高的高达1.8米（略低于6英尺）。身材最高的是一位年龄较大的战士，十有八九是个战场老油条。 This physical diversity is unsurprising, given the disparate types of men who took the battlefield that day. Yet as a group the Towton men are a reminder that images of the medieval male as a homunculus with rotten teeth are well wide of the mark. The average medieval man stood 1.71 metres tall―just four centimetres shorter than a modern Englishman. "It is only in the Victorian era that people started to get very stunted," says Mr Knüsel. Their health was generally good. Dietary isotopes from their knee-bones show that they ate pretty healthily. Sugar was not widely available at that time, so their teeth were strong, too. 死者生理差别悬殊并没有什么可奇怪的，因为在战役当日，什么样的参与者都有都有。不过陶顿万人坑向我们表明，我们对中世纪男性的印象――矮小、满口烂牙――是大错特错了。这些中世纪男人平均身高为1.71米，只比现代英格兰人矮4公分。"人们开始普遍变矮大概是维多利亚时代的事情，"努赛尔说。他们的健康状况大体不错。膝盖骨营养元素同位素测定表明，他们的饮食相当健康。当时糖尚未普及，因此他们的牙口也保持的相当强健。 Laid out on a laboratory bench in the University of Bradford's archaeology department, the biggest of the soldiers still look burly (though their bones, without any collagen in them, are incredibly light to handle). They seem to have led active lives. Bone grows in response to strenuous muscular activity, particularly if exercise starts in childhood. For instance, the serving arm of a professional tennis player has as much as a third more bone in it than his non-dominant arm. 最大的一具骸骨被抬上了布拉德福德考古系的实验室工作台，他依然显得那么魁梧，尽管骨骼中早已没有了胶原，变得非常轻。他们生前充满了活力。剧烈运动能够刺激骨骼生长，在孩提时代便开始训练更是如此。比如，职业网球选手的持拍臂会比另一只手臂多出三分之一的骨骼。 Some of the Towton men display the same type of unusual bone density. But it is distributed in a very unmodern way: their upper-arm bones are very well-developed towards the right shoulder and the left elbow. The medieval longbow, which placed huge stress on both the drawing arm and the arm that held the bow steady, may have been responsible. Towton 16 has something known as an avulsion fracture to his left elbow, a condition first clinically identified among young baseball players in America. This injury occurs only in adolescence, when the bones in the arm have not yet fully fused, and may have been caused by attempts to practise with an adult longbow. In 1420s England the teenage Towton 16 was suffering from Little Leaguer's Elbow. 一些陶顿骸骨显示出相似的反常骨骼结构。但这种结构显然是非现代的：从右肩至左肘部分的上肢骨骼非常发达。这可能是因为拉开中世纪的长弓要求拉弦臂和持弓臂均十分有力。陶顿16的左肘处呈现所谓的撕脱骨折状态，这种骨折最初发现于美国年轻棒球选手。此类伤只见于臂部骨骼尚未完全接合的青春期，致伤原因可能是用成人长弓作拉弓练习。在15世纪20年代的英格兰，不满20岁的陶顿16染上了少棒肘（Little Leaguer's Elbow）。 Ground work 地面作业 Piecing together what happened on a single day 550 years ago is exceedingly difficult. Even observers would have found it hard to discern a precise order of events in the confusion. Contemporary accounts of the battle may be politically biased or exaggerated. Mr Sutherland says that the idea of medieval soldiers slugging it out for ten hours, as the conventional view of the battle has it, defies credibility; he thinks there was a series of engagements that led to the main battle and that took place over the course of the day. 要拼出550年前某一天的完整图景实在是太难了。即使是专家也难以准确说出当日各事件的顺序。对这场战役的现代描述难免春秋笔法。萨瑟兰说，传统说法――这场战役在激战10小时战后分出了胜负――并不可靠；他认为主战役可能分为好几个阶段，进行了一整天。 For a long time it was assumed that archaeology could not help much. That changed with work done in the 1980s at Little Bighorn in Montana, site of George Custer's "last stand" against native American warriors in 1876. A brushfire allowed archaeologists to re-examine the site, using metal detectors to map the location of spent cartridge cases and bullets. By matching them to the weapons used that day, researchers could trace the movements of soldiers over the battlefield. The work suggested that the engagement was over far quicker than Custer's legend implied. 长久以来，人们认为考古学在这方面帮不上忙。这一论点在20世纪80年代被推翻。在蒙大拿州小巨角（Little Bighorn），乔治•卡斯特（George Custer）与印第安人的"最后一战"现场，一场山林火灾使考古学家得以重新考察战场。在金属探测器的帮助下，弹壳和子弹的分布被勾勒出来。研究者将弹药与当日使用的军火进行匹配，从而还原出战士们在战场上的进退。结果表明，这场战役持续的时间远远短于卡斯特传奇故事中所流传的。 The Towton site is 400 years older, presenting greater challenges. The battlefield was first swept for ferrous materials such as arrowheads. That search proved frustrating. The trouble was not too little material, but too much―bits of agricultural machinery and other things dating from after the battle. Looking for non-ferrous items―things like badges, belt buckles, buttons, pendants and coins that would have been ripped off during the fighting―proved to be much more fruitful. After identifying clusters of these personal effects, which seemed to mark the main lines of battle, researchers went back to looking for ferrous materials and started finding a concentration of arrowheads. 陶顿战场要比小巨角古老400年，情景还原自然更为困难。一开始，考古学家清扫整个战场收集箭镞之类的铁质物件。结果徒然无功。问题不是铁器太少，而是太多，其中有大量晚近铁质农具之类的东西。于是，考古学家转而寻找非铁质物件，比如徽章、皮带扣、纽扣、垂饰以及战斗过程中遗落的硬币。这一次收获颇丰。研究者首先识别出几处衣冠冢，从中推断战役的主线；接着再回头寻找铁质物件，马上便发现了箭镞冢。 Arrows were not the only things flying through the air that day. Some of the first bullets were, too. The Towton battlefield has yielded up the earliest lead-composite shot found in England. Mr Sutherland thinks he may have found a fragment of a handgun, which was small enough to be carried around and probably set down on a trestle table or small carriage to be fired. 当时，能在天上飞的不仅有箭，还有最原始的子弹。在陶顿战役现场发现了英格兰历史上最早用于实战的铅弹。萨瑟兰认为他可能还找到了一片手枪残骸，这支枪已经小到能够随身携带，但可能仍需支架才能发射。 The arrows would have been fired as part of the opening exchanges. Accounts of the battle report that the Yorkist archers reached their target, but that the Lancastrians fell short, forcing them to move forward to engage in hand-to-hand fighting. The stress of this kind of fighting was immense: a few of the Towton skeletons had been clenching their teeth together so tightly that bits of them splintered off. This central confrontation would have been responsible for many deaths: Mr Sutherland says he has found a total of five pits on the battlefield that may be mass graves and plans to excavate them next year. But it was unlikely to have been the place where the Towton skeletons died. Their burial location, a mile from the battlefield, is one reason to think so. The way they were killed is the other. 战役可能以双方对射为开端。据战役报告记载，约克军弓箭手击中了目标，而兰开斯特军射不到那么远，只能冲锋陷阵去打肉搏战。肉搏战的压力是巨大的：一些陶顿遗骸把牙齿都咬碎了。这处中央战斗可能造成了巨大的伤亡：萨瑟兰说，他已经找到五处可能的万人坑，计划于明年开始挖掘。但陶顿遗骸肯定不是死于中央战场。他们被掩埋的地点距离战役现场有1英里之遥，这是原因之一。他们被杀的方式则是原因之二。 Whereas many of the skeletons found at Wisby in Sweden had lots of wounds to their lower limbs, the Towton group had suffered a disproportionate amount of damage to their heads. Shannon Novak, a forensic archaeologist at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University who worked on the skeletons when they were first uncovered, was responsible for working out when and how wounds had been inflicted. 很多瑞典维斯比万人坑中的遗骸有不少下肢伤口，但陶顿遗骸的伤口绝大量集中在头部。雪城大学麦克斯韦学院（Maxwell School of Syracuse University）的法医考古学家香农•诺瓦克（Shannon Novak）在出土的第一时间便开始对这些遗骸进行研究，她负责找出伤口是何时以及如何产生的。 Injuries that have been sustained well before death are easy to spot because of the way fractured bone smooths as it heals. But before the discovery of the Towton skeletons, less work had been done to distinguish blows sustained at the time of death from those that may have occurred after burial as a result of rodents, earth-moving equipment and so forth. 在死前很久所受的上很容易鉴别，因为随着伤口的愈合，骨折处会逐渐平滑。但如何区分死时所受之伤与被埋后因啃噬、推土设备等因素造成之伤呢？在陶顿骸骨发现前，人们在这方面的进展颇为有限。 Overkill 赶尽杀绝 By looking at the different ways that bone fractures when it has fluids in it and when it has dried out, Ms Novak found that 27 of the 28 skulls she examined had suffered blows at the time of death. Not just one, either. Both Towton 16 and 25 were struck eight times and Towton 10 six times. Towton 32 suffered no fewer than 13 different blows to the head. 诺瓦克仔细研究了骨头在体液挥发之前和之后发生骨折的区别，认定她所考察的28具头颅中有27具在死亡时遭遇了重击，且不止一次。陶顿16和陶顿25遭遇了8击，陶顿10遭遇了6击。陶顿13则至少遭遇了13次不同的打击。 According to Graeme Rimer of the Royal Armouries, Britain's arms museum, medieval weapons had the capacity to decapitate or amputate at a single stroke. "Given how much damage you can do with one blow, why land another 12?" he asks. There were signs of mutilation, too: marks on the left side of Towton 32's head suggest that his ear had been sliced off. 皇家军械库（Royal Armouries，英国军械博物馆）的格赖姆•莱默（Graeme Rimer）的说，中世纪的兵器足以一击砍掉你的头或是卸下一条胳膊。"既然一击就能致命，何必再加上12下呢？"他问道。遗骸上也有致残痕迹：陶顿22的左脸显示他的耳朵被割去。 The next task was to try to identify the weapons which might have done this damage. Ms Novak took a variety of medieval weapons from the collection of the Royal Armouries and poked them through pieces of acoustic ceiling tile to see what shape they made. Some of the matches were uncanny―the dagger that had to be twisted on the way out, the beak of a war hammer. The puzzling range of blunt, sharp and puncture wounds have their explanation in the lethal versatility of the poleaxe, with its bladed axe, top-spike and hammer (see picture). 下一步需要确定的是什么武器造成了这一伤害。诺瓦克从皇家军械库的藏品中取来不少中世纪兵器作戳刺声学天花板实验，研究它们留下的切口。有些组合相当的诡异，比如出鞘时必须旋转的匕首、装上尖头的战槌。怪异的钝器、利器和戳刺伤可以用一种致命的多功能长柄战斧来解释――这种战斧既有斧刃，又有尖头，还能当战槌使（见图）。 Put all this together and two questions stand out: what had happened to the men's helmets, and how could their assailants hit them so many times? In the press of battle, after all, you are unlikely to want to spend time and energy landing repeated blows. 所有这些又衍生出两个问题：这些人的头盔到哪儿去了？他们的敌人为什么能对他们施以多次的打击？毕竟，在纷乱的战斗中，完全没有必要耗费时间和力气做重复打击。 At this distance any theories are likely to remain plausible rather than proven. But the likeliest explanation is that the Towton soldiers (or some of them, at least) were among the Lancastrian soldiers routed from the battlefield. The secret of success in medieval battle was to hold ranks, so that comrades on either side would still be protecting your flanks. That is particularly true given the steep ground shelving away from the plateau where the main battle was fought. "If you move, you lose," says Mr Sutherland. 在几百年后的今天看来，能解释这两个问题的理论不少，能被证实的却没有。但最有可能的解释是这些陶顿战士（或至少其中一部分）是溃逃到此处的兰开斯特军。在中世纪战争中，保命的关键是稳住阵脚，以便盟友保护你的两翼。这一点在陶顿战役――主战场是一片高原之麓的陡坡――尤为重要。"只要一移动，你就败了。"萨瑟兰说。 On the run from the battle, with Yorkist soldiers in pursuit (some of them doubtless on horseback), the men would have soon overheated. They may have removed their helmets as a result. Overhauled―perhaps in the vicinity of Towton Hall, which some think may then have been a Lancastrian billet―and disorientated, tired and outnumbered, their enemies would have had time to indulge in revenge. Even at this distance the violence is shocking. "It's almost as if they were trying to remove their opponents' identities," says Mr Knüsel of the attackers' savagery. Thanks to some unsuspecting builders and a team of archaeologists, they did not entirely succeed. 从陶顿战役中溃散的败卒被约克军穷追不舍（显然，部分追兵是骑兵），很快便热得不行了，于是便脱掉了自己的头盔。他们可能在陶顿厅――有人认为那里当时可能是兰开斯特军的营地――被约克军追上。这些溃卒失道、困乏、人数也少，只能束手就戮，让对手享受复仇的快感。即使在几百年后看来，场面之暴力仍令人震惊。"他们显然是要把对手从地球上彻底抹去。"努赛尔如此描述攻击者的残忍。但由于无心插柳的建筑工人和一群考古学家，他们的算盘并没有完全成功。 from PRINT EDITION | Christmas Specials
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2楼 发表于 3 天前 |只看该作者 本帖最后由 yannanchen 于 2010-12-27 03:38 编辑 The "Wars of the Roses" cycle 莎翁关于玫瑰战争的8本连台戏 Henry VI (Jeffrey T. Heyer) and a young Richmond (Ashley Rose Miller) in the West Coast premiere of The Plantaganents: The Rise of Edward IV, staged by Pacific Repertory Theatre in 1993."The War(s) of the Roses" is a phrase used to describe the civil wars in England between the Lancastrian and Yorkist dynasties. Some of the events of these wars were dramatized by Shakespeare in the history plays Richard II; Henry IV, Part 1; Henry IV, Part 2; Henry V; Henry VI, Part 1; Henry VI, Part 2; Henry VI, Part 3; and Richard III. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries there have been numerous stage performances including: 1.The first tetralogy (Henry VI parts 1 to 3 and Richard III) as a cycle; 2.The second tetralogy (Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 and 2 and Henry V) as a cycle (which has also been referred to as the Henriad); and 3.The entire eight plays in historical order (the second tetralogy followed by the first tetralogy) as a cycle. Where this full cycle is performed, as by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1964, the name The War of the Roses has often been used for the cycle as a whole. 4.A 10-play history cycle, which began with the newly attributed Edward III, the anonymous Thomas of Woodstock, and then the eight plays from Richard II to Richard III, was performed by Pacific Repertory Theatre under the title Royal Blood, a phrase used throughout the works. The entire series, staged over four consecutive seasons from 2001 to 2004, was directed by PacRep founder and Artistic Director Stephen Moorer. The cycle has been filmed four times: 1.for the 1960 UK serial An Age of Kings directed by Michael Hayes 2.for the 1965 UK serial The Wars of the Roses, based on the RSC's 1964 staging, directed by John Barton and Peter Hall; and 3.for a straight-to-video filming, directly from the stage, of the English Shakespeare Company's "The Wars of the Roses" directed by Michael Bogdanov and Michael Pennington. 4.for the BBC Television Shakespeare in 1983 directed by Jane Howell The second tetralogy is also the basis for the film Chimes at Midnight (also known as Falstaff) directed by and starring Orson Welles. In The West Wing episode "Posse Comitatus," President Josiah Bartlet attends a play entiled "The Wars of the Roses", including scenes from Henry VI, parts 1 and 3. "Posse Comitatus" West Wing, Season 3.

Testing time for college graduates 学而优不仕

Aspiring mandarins
国考热

Testing time for college graduates
学而优不仕

China's civil service
中国公务员制度

Dec 16th 2010 | BEIJING | from PRINT EDITION
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"A HEALTHY society cannot come about when people study not for the purpose of gaining wisdom and knowledge but for the purpose of becoming government officials." When Ye Shi, a Chinese philosopher, bemoaned this 800 years ago, China had already been choosing officials for hundreds of years on the basis of exams that required rote learning of ancient classics. The exams are different now but Ye would still have much to complain about.
800年前南宋思想家叶适哀叹道，"在一个良性发展的社会中，人们学习是为了获得知识和智慧，而不是学而优则仕"，当时强调死记硬背四书五经的科举制已经实行了几百年了。虽说今天的国考和古代的"国考"已经大不相同，但如果叶适还活着，估计还是会抱怨。

Growing numbers of Chinese graduates aspire to join China's massive bureaucracy. On December 5th over 1m would-be mandarins spent a Sunday sitting the annual civil-service exam. Many of them had not planned to get a government job when they entered university. But college enrolment in China has boomed in recent years (see chart). New graduates face a brutally tight jobs market.
在中国，越来越多的大学生都想加入到早已臃肿不堪的中国文官队伍。12月5日国考那天，竟有100多万考生花了1整天时间坐在那儿答题。其实他们刚入大学校门时并没有说一定要考公务员。但近年中国高校的扩招（见图表）使得大学生的就业形势变得严峻起来。

In July nearly 28% of this year's graduates had failed to find work. Many who have are disappointed with their wages. A recent study by Cai Fang, an economist, found that average starting salaries for college graduates hardly changed between 2003 and 2008. They are nowadays comparable to the steadily rising wages of uneducated migrant workers.
7月，将近28%的应届大学毕业生还没有找到工作，而很多有工作的大学生又嫌工资太低。经济学家Cai Fang最近的一个研究显示，03-08这5年里，大学生的平均起薪基本没怎么涨过，处境与没有受过高等教育但工资渐涨的农民工差不多。

In this environment, government jobs become even more attractive. The pay is not great, but it is offset by job security and good welfare benefits. Competition, however, is fierce. This year there were 16,000 jobs on offer, one for every 64 test-takers. There were nearly 5,000 applications for the most sought-after post, that of "energy conservation and technology equipment officer".
在此形势下，当公务员当然显得更有吸引力些。虽说工资不暴高，但考虑到工作稳定、福利好还是可以"忍受"的。毕竟，外面的竞争那么激烈。2010年，国考一共有16000个岗位，录取比例为1/64。其中"节能与技术设备岗位"竞争最激烈，近5000人报考。

Shu Fang of Renmin University says the departments that attract the most interest are the ones seen as most powerful or influential. These include the Ministry of Public Security, whose jobs include rounding up dissidents as well as ordinary criminals, and the Ministry of State Security, a spy agency. Another popular choice, he says, is the Ministry of Personnel, which administers the civil-service test and arranges government employment.
中国人民大学的Shu Fang说：竞争大的职位权力和油水也大。比如负责逮捕上到政敌下到普通犯罪分子的公安部，再比如情报部门国安部，不过，人事与社会保障部也不错，负责组织公务员考试和录用。

Jessica Zhang of Beijing Foreign Studies University, who applied for a job this year in the foreign ministry, says she found the multiple-choice general knowledge questions easier than she expected. But she was caught unawares by the written section, which required several essays about management of the Yellow River.
北京外国语大学的张同学今年就报考了一个外交部的职位，他说行测的多项选择题比预计得要简单些，但申论有些措手不及，需要写篇关于如何"把黄河治好"的文章。

Some worry that the craze for government jobs may be bad for business. But Mr Shu says surprises like the one for Ms Zhang are good tests of bureaucratic talent. He says that civil-service exams, unlike in imperial days, "emphasise thinking and innovation and not just repeating the same old thing". Some consolation for Ye Shi.
有人担心国考热对经济发展有影响。但Shu认为Zhang在申论一科考试上的措手不及恰恰证明了国考与古代的科举考试不同，"强调思考和创造力而不是死记硬"，可以很好的测验一个人未来的行政管理能力。倘若叶适还活着，应该多少感到些安慰了。

from PRINT EDITION | Asia

备注：很巧，刚刚翻译的一篇是讲科斯的，而科斯是新自由主义经济学家，他的新制度经济学是目前最受推崇、影响最广的新自由主义。而本文讲的是政府文官制度。尽管科斯与古典经济学不同，将制度作为变量引入到经济学中，但他终究是自由主义的。所以两篇文章放在一起，就是"两只手"，一只"看不见的手"，一只"看得见的手"。于是结合南宋哲学家叶适的呼吁，就自然出现了到底是"学而优则商"还是"学而优则仕"的选择，中国当下的大学生正面临这样的一个权衡取舍。而这个选择直接反应出的是中国作为一个整体的激励机制是否扭曲，但对个人来说，选择那条路则取决于个人价值观，所以我们不妨问一问自己，我的价值观是什么？当然，除了市场和政府这传统二大部门外，第三部门的说法也越来越流行。一个人也可以选择从事环保、慈善等非盈利组织工作，前几天梁从诫那篇文章就是这个选择的最佳注脚。

欢迎拍砖~

 

 

 

很巧，刚刚翻译的一篇是讲科斯的，而科斯是新自由主义经济学家，他的新制度经济学是目前最受推崇、影响最广的新自由主义。而本文讲的是政府文官制度。尽管科斯与古典经济学不同，将制度作为变量引入到经济学中，但他终究是自由主义的。所以两篇文章放在一起，就是"两只手"，一只"看不见的手"，一只"看得见的手"。于是结合南宋哲学家叶适的呼吁，就自然出现了到底是"学而优则商"还是"学而优则仕"的选择，中国当下的大学生正面临这样的一个权衡取舍。而这个选择直接反应出的是中国作为一个整体的激励机制是否扭曲，但对个人来说，选择那条路则取决于个人价值观，所以我们不妨问一问自己，我的价值观是什么？当然，除了市场和政府这传统二大部门外，第三部门的说法也越来越流行。一个人也可以选择从事环保、慈善等非盈利组织工作，前几天梁从诫那篇文章就是这个选择的最佳注脚。

 

 

 

通篇文章行文流畅，通俗易懂。

但是是不是有点过于意译了呢？导致有些地方的漏译。。

比方说China's massive bureaucracy 这里说的中国官僚机构的庞大；
On December 5th over 1m would-be mandarins spent a Sunday sitting the annual civil-service exam. 这里说一年一度的考试。

都没有翻译出来。。


还有就是原文说powerful and influential，影响力大和油水多还是不一样吧（虽然在某种程度上关联性很大，你懂的~~）

另外就是标题。一开始看到还蛮震惊的，觉得哇，这个译者不简单啊。

可是仔细推敲一下，题目只是说大学毕业生去参加公务员考试了。仅此而已。

和优不优没有太大关系吧，而且这里是不仕么？那么多人考，应该是争先恐后的去"仕"吧？

本帖最后由 郁郁金香 于 2010-12-17 20:06 编辑 回复 EstellaLee 的帖子 1."China's massive bureaucracy"这个massive的确漏掉了 马上改正； 2.一年一度的我觉得没必要，读者通常都知道国考是一年一度的，反倒加进去有些画蛇添足，有些不适合中国的思维习惯，我当时的确就"一年一度"揣摩了一番才作此决定，比如"一年一度的国考"，读起来�嗦； 3."powerful and influential"这个地方我觉得那个同学没好意思说出来，我帮他说出来了而已。此外本篇文章估计是在Beijing写的，所以估计是《经济学家》杂志在中国的记者对此同学进行的采访，所以他们两个交流的时候有转换语言（翻译）的因素，很可能记着在翻译作者原话的时候有失准确，所以作了合理的推测； 4.关于标题重点我认为在于testing一次，既然是"考验"，当然存在"为之"和"不为之"两种情况，而本文的确讲的是大多数人都为之。但"考验"就在于"我们青年"要经得起物质上的诱惑，所以我舍掉了testing的另一层意思，力图观点鲜明，就是"不仕"，也在于作为标题对现在这种"学而优则仕"的不"HEALTHY"的风气的一种呼吁。此外，对于日美乃至欧洲来说，当一个国家的青年们都想做官的时候，对一个民族来说的确在某种程度上是一种悲哀，要知道，欧美通常只是三流四流的大学生才努力去做公务员的，所以我才"固执己见"； 不知道我的回答是否有一定的作用

Remembering the Boxer Uprising 义和团起义

Remembering the Boxer Uprising
义和团起义
A righteous fist
正义之拳

The Boxer Uprising means different things to different people in China
对中国不同的人来说，义和团起义意味不尽相同

Dec 16th 2010 | from PRINT EDITION



IN A schoolyard in a village on the dusty north China plain, martial artists drill children in the stylised kicks and punches of Plum Flower Boxing. This discipline, they proudly claim, spearheaded the Boxer Uprising of 1900. In a village recreation room, musicians practise the ear-splitting tunes which their ancestors played for Boxer braves heading into battle with the foreign "hairy ones". Folk memories abound of an event that transformed the country's relationship with the West, and its own view of itself.
中国北方平原上，尘土飞扬，一家村庄的学校操场上，武术师傅们正训练孩子们梅花拳的脚法和拳式。他们骄傲地宣称，这样的操练造就了1900年的义和团起义。村里的一间娱乐室中，艺人们在练习祖先为义和团冲锋陷阵拼杀洋人"毛子"时的曲调，震耳欲聋。民间的传说中，也充满了这次传奇：它曾经改变了中国同西方的关系，也改变了中国对自己的看法。

The Boxer Uprising, 11 years before the collapse of China's last imperial dynasty, was portrayed in Western accounts as a savage outburst of primitive xenophobia directed at the West and its civilising religion, Christianity. The northern Chinese peasants with their red headscarves, who believed in a magic that protected them from foreign bullets and in the power of ancient martial arts that could defeat the industrial world's most powerful armies, were described with a mixture of fear and racist scorn. But in China the Boxers are officially remembered as somewhat misguided patriots. In the countryside south of Beijing where they burned churches, killed foreign missionaries and slaughtered tens of thousands of "secondary hairy ones", as Chinese converts to Christianity were known, some call them heroes. The missionaries they attacked had it coming, having trampled on China's sovereignty. Their converts were no more than local ruffians who exploited foreign protection to ride roughshod over their countrymen.
义和团起义发生在中国末代王朝倒塌前11年，在西方文献中被描述为因原始的仇外心理而对西方及其文明宗教——基督教——的野蛮运动。中国北方农民头戴红头巾，认为这会产生一种神力，保护他们不受外国子弹的伤害；认为武功的力量能打败工业化世界中最强大的武器——他们被描述成了恐惧了种族仇视的混合体。但在中国，义和团被官方以多少误入歧途的爱国者纪念。在他们曾经烧教堂，杀外国传教士，还屠戮了上万"二毛子"——即皈依基督教的中国人——的北京南郊，有人称他们英雄。义和团打击的传教士，践踏着中国主权才得以传教。改宗的人们，无异于利用洋人保护，在乡亲中横行霸道的土流氓。

In East Zhangwu Village, close to the railway line between Beijing and the port city of Tianjin, the village doctor is a Boxer fan. Sitting behind his desk in the clinic, he recounts, as if he had seen the action himself, how one sultry June local Boxers tore up the line to stop a trainload of foreign troops from heading to Beijing to break a siege of the capital's embassy district by pro-Boxer imperial troops. "The foreigners had a couple of interpreters who said to the Boxers, 'Don't fight, we'll give you some money, OK?' The Boxers replied, 'We don't want money. We want the foreigners' heads'." He shows off a copy of the scores used by the musicians whose flutes, cymbals, drums and pipes accompanied the Boxers into combat. He and a group of fellow enthusiasts have formed what they call the Boxer Band. It performs at ceremonial send-offs for local army recruits. A picture of Boxers charging into pith-helmeted foreign soldiers covers a wall of their practice room.
连接京津的铁路附近，彰武村的村医就是义和团的粉丝。诊所里，他坐在桌子后面讲着义和团的故事，仿佛曾经亲临：闷热的六月，当地的义和团员摧毁了铁路，挡住了一火车开往北京的国外军队道路，这军队是要去营救被亲义和团的朝廷军队包围的首都使馆区。"洋人们有几个翻译，对义和团的人说：'不要打，我们给你们钱还不行吗？'义和团说：'我们不稀罕钱。我们要洋人的项上人头。'"他展示了一张艺人的乐谱：用长笛、铜钹、鼓和短笛演奏的义和团进行曲。他和一些同样着迷义和团的伙计们组成了乐队，称之为"义和团乐队"。为当地部队新兵送行时，他们就会在欢送典礼上表演。排练室的一面墙上，贴着一张义和团刺杀带帽洋兵的图画。

The martial-arts tradition of the Plum Flower Boxers of Pingxiang County, 325km (200 miles) south-west of Beijing, goes back centuries, but it is the prominent role of Plum Flower Boxing masters 110 years ago in "exterminating the foreign" (as the Boxer slogan urged) for which it is best remembered. During the uprising, the Plum Flower Boxers renamed themselves the "Righteous and Harmonious Fists". The name was adopted by the movement as a whole, which embraced many martial-arts sects in drought-parched northern China. At Pingxiang's Mingde Primary School, since last year synchronised Plum Flower Boxing drills in the playground have become obligatory. Yelling, the children jab their fists in unison at imagined enemies.
北京向西南325公里（200英里）处，萍乡县梅花拳武功已有了几百年传统，但110年前，梅花拳大师们在"灭洋"（义和团口号）发挥的突出作用，才最让人们铭记。运动中，梅花拳的人们给自己新取了个名字"义和拳"。运动从始至终都使用了"义和拳"的名号，还有中国北方诸多武功教派的加入。在萍乡明德小学，自去年起，操场上的集体梅花拳训练就成了必修课。孩子们喊着口号，向假想中的敌人同时出击。

The rise of nationalism in an increasingly powerful China worries many foreigners. They fret about the emergence of a new breed of Chinese who are often called fenqing, or angry youth. The fenqing are often dismissive of economic and political liberalism and scornful of the notion of universal rights. The rebellion and subsequent invasion by an eight-nation allied force of Western and Japanese troops that lifted the 55-day siege of Beijing's legation quarter and embarked on an orgy of looting and indiscriminate violence loom large in their cultural memory.
中国日益崛起，其民族主义的上扬让许多海外人士担心不已。中国一群"愤青"的出现，让他们十分困扰。愤青们总是轻视经济和政治自由主义，也不待见普世价值这一说法。八国联军的反抗和接下来的侵略，突破了为期五十五天的北京使馆区重围，他们又开始了一轮烧杀掠抢，而这些，都在愤青的文化记忆中久久回荡。

China's nationalists have plenty of examples of Western imperialist outrages to pick from, but the eight-nation force holds a particular fascination. A divided West formed an extraordinary alliance in 1900 to deal with the Chinese threat: British, Germans, Russians, Americans, Italians, French, Austro-Hungarians and even Japanese (playing their first role as honorary Westerners). In the G8, NATO and the Japan-America alliance the fenqing see spiritual descendants of the invaders of 1900.
要说西方帝国主义的恶行，中国民族主义者们有太多可摘可选，但八国联军这段故事他们却死死不放。1900年，西方列强组成了大型联盟，来对付中国的威胁：英、德、俄、美、意、法、奥匈帝国，甚至还有日本（作为荣誉西方国家的首次行动）。在G8、北约和日美结盟在愤青的眼中，都是1900年侵略者的精神后裔。

Ever since the uprising, memories of it have troubled the relationship between China and the West. For the West, "Boxerism" became synonymous with a rabid, anti-foreign demon that was thought to lurk in China, ready to wreak bloody havoc if given a chance. As The Economist advised its readers in 1905: "The history of the Boxer movement contains abundant warnings as to the necessity of an attitude of constant vigilance on the part of the European Powers when there are any symptoms that a wave of nationalism is about to sweep over the Celestial Empire."
义和团运动过后，此事的记忆一直困扰着中西关系。对西方人而言，"义和团主义"已经成了一种狂热的仇外妖魔——西方人认为这妖魔潜伏在中国，一有机会就会带来一场血腥的浩劫。《经济学家》杂志早在1905年就敬告读者："义和团运动的历史充分地告诉我们，民族主义浪潮在天朝大国出现风靡苗头之时，欧洲列项需要提高警惕。"

That was the year of Japan's defeat of Russia. Never before had an Asiatic power defeated a European one. Fears of a "yellow peril" stalked Europe. These anxieties found fictional expression in the evil Dr Fu Manchu, invented by an Irish writer, Arthur Ward, under the pen-name Sax Rohmer. In the first novel about him, published in 1913, Dr Fu is described as "the yellow peril incarnate in one man". Fu Manchu movies were still being made in the 1960s. Sinophobia was fashionable long before China emerged as a global economic power.
当年，日本打败俄国。从前亚洲国家从未击败过欧洲对手。"黄祸"的恐惧在欧洲蔓延。这样的恐惧写入了爱尔兰作家亚瑟•瓦德——笔名萨克斯•罗默——的小说中，成就傅满楚这样一个邪恶形象。第一部关于傅满楚的小说在1913年发表，他被描述成"化身为人形的黄祸"。直到1960年代，傅满楚的电影还在推出。中国作为全球经济强国崛起之前许久，恐华症就已然流行。

Such worries occasionally resurface. They reappeared in 1967 when Red Guards shouting "Kill, kill", ("the same cry that had been heard at night during the Boxer Rebellion", wrote a former British envoy, James Hoare) besieged and burned the British mission in Beijing and assaulted its staff; in 1999 when thousands of students hurled paint and stones at the American and British embassies in Beijing after NATO warplanes bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade; and again in 2008 when at least ten foreign correspondents in China received death threats amid an outpouring of anti-Western vitriol in the wake of upheaval in Tibet. The Japanese have been among the biggest worriers, their anxieties fuelled by large and sometimes unruly anti-Japanese protests in several Chinese cities in 2005 and again this year.
恐华担忧时而会重新浮出水面。1967年，红卫兵大喊"杀，杀"，（前英国大使詹姆士•霍雷写到："和义和团叛乱时晚上同样的喊声。"），包围并焚烧北京的英国公使馆、袭击公使馆成员时，恐惧再度出现；还有1999年，北约战机轰炸中国驻贝尔格雷德大使馆，上千学生向美国和英国的驻京使馆投掷油漆和石头；还有2008年，西藏骚乱过后，不断出现反西言辞，至少10名外国驻华通讯员都收到了死亡威胁。日本一直是忧心最重的国家之一，他们是因为2005年及今年在中国几座城市中出现的大型——而有时会蛮横的——反日游行。

A journey through the Boxers' heartlands shows that many Chinese share these worries. Debate still rages over what to make of the Boxer Uprising and how it relates to Chinese nationalism today. In 2006 a liberal weekly newspaper supplement, Freezing Point, was briefly closed down and its editor fired for publishing an article that said the portrayal of Boxer history in Chinese textbooks was poisoning the minds of young people. A journalist for History, a Beijing magazine, compares the empress-dowager Cixi's manipulation of the Boxers with Hitler's of German nationalists. China, he says, is in danger of breeding a similar mentality of vengeful nationalism unless it gets its history straight.
来到义和团的发源地，会发现许多中国人亦有此忧。如何理解义和团起义，如何将它同中国今日的民族主义联系，仍争论不休。2006年，一家自由派周报副刊《冰点》曾遭短期封锁，主编被炒，因为杂志刊文称中国教科书中队义和团历史的刻画对年轻人思想是一种毒害。北京《历史》杂志的一位记者将慈禧太后对义和团的利用同希特勒对民族主义的利用相提并论。他说，中国如果不还原历史真相，就有滋生类似报复性民族主义心理的危险。

Bicycles and boxing
自行车和梅花拳

On a road lined with maize fields and factories that leads into the county seat, a huge billboard boasts of a "city famous for bicycles, the birthplace of Plum Flower Boxing and a countryside with an eco-friendly water system". Pingxiang County is indeed one of China's biggest centres of bicycle and bicycle-parts production, but it has struggled to shed a reputation for brand-name knock-offs. The fetid open drains lining the main street of the town do not smell eco-friendly; the place is officially designated poor. But locals reckon that Plum Flower Boxing could give them a boost.
通往县城的道路上，满目玉米田和工厂，一张巨大的广告牌上写着"自行车名城，梅花拳源地，生态化水乡"。萍乡的确是中国最大的自行车和自行车部件产地之一，但却没能建立起自己的品牌。县城主要街道上，没有上盖的下水道散发着臭味，闻起来一点也不生态化；官方将此地定性为贫困。但当地人认为，梅花拳能给他们壮壮士气。

In 2006, after much lobbying by Zhang Xiling, the owner of a printing factory and expert in the art, the central government included Plum Flower Boxing in its first-ever list of "intangible cultural heritages" worthy of protection. Early in 2010 Mr Zhang started work on what he and the local government (which has a small share in the project) hope will one day be a 200-hectare Plum Flower Boxing park, with temples, luxury hotel facilities, a training school for martial arts and an annual turnover of $750m.
2006年，印刷厂老板、印刷专家张西岭大力游说过后，中央政府决定将梅花拳纳入第一份值得保护的"非物质文化遗产"。2010年初，张西岭就开始建造占地200公顷的梅花拳公园，他和当地政府（也在项目中占有少量股份）希望在将来的某一天，这里面会有庙宇、豪华宾馆设施，还有一家武术教馆，每年盈利7.5亿美元。



The Boxers' negative image in the West is of little concern. The scheme is aimed primarily at Chinese. The Communist Party has always had a soft spot for Boxers, in contrast with the Nationalist government it toppled in 1949, who called them "bandits". Paul Cohen, an American historian, described in a 1997 book on the Boxers how, by the 1920s, Chinese revolutionaries were beginning to rework the Boxers into "a more positive myth". Mao Zedong's Red Guards sometimes called themselves "new Boxers".
他们不管义和团在西方的负面形象。这一项目主要是面对中国人。相对1949年共产党推翻的国民政府，他们一直对义和团情有独钟——国民政府当年称义和团"土匪"。美国历史学家保罗•科恩1997年出版关于义和团的书中曾描述，1920年代前，中国革命家如何开始将义和团重新打造为"更为正面的神话"。毛泽东的红卫兵有时也会称自己为"新义和团"。

Jeffrey Wasserstrom, another American historian, says that in the post-Mao era official rhetoric has shifted from glorifying Boxer violence to focusing on the foreign invasion it triggered. But the Boxers remain in favour. In 2009 the party's main mouthpiece, the People's Daily, published an article on its website saying the "anti-imperialist, patriotic" Boxer movement had caused "utter panic" among imperialist countries that had been trying to carve up China in the late 19th century. Officials are happy to give the nod to places like Pingxiang. But there is a proviso: they must not alarm foreigners.
另一位美国历史学家华志坚称，在后毛泽东时代，官方言论从颂扬义和团的暴力行径，开始转变为把重点放在义和团引发的外国侵略。但义和团仍旧正面。2009年，党的喉舌《人民日报》在其网站上刊文，称"反帝国主义的爱国"义和团运动在"19世纪末企图瓜分中国的帝国主义国家中"引发了"彻底恐慌"。官方很乐意给萍乡这种地方开绿灯。但有个条件：不能惊动外国人。

Pingxiang, eager to boost exports and attract foreign investment, has no wish to. The kung fu lessons at Mingde Primary School are not an attempt to revive anti-foreignism. The headmaster, Yang Peihua, explains tactfully that they help improve memory and concentration and instil "morality". He says the children have become keener on household chores.
一心发展出口、吸引外国投资的萍乡可没这打算。明德小学开设武术课并不是想要复兴仇外主义。校长杨培华巧妙地解释：这可以帮助提高记忆和注意力，并且是一种"美德"教育。他说孩子们现在在家务中更积极了。

Mr Zhang says he would like to have a Boxer memorial in his park, but he thinks the government will object. The experience of the neighbouring county of Wei, the birthplace of one of the area's best known Boxer leaders, Zhao Sanduo, suggests he might be right. In 2000, the 100th anniversary of the Boxer Uprising, it started building a spacious Boxer museum. The $1.2m edifice was touted as China's monument to Boxer history. Leading military officers from the Hebei region attended the opening ceremony in 2003. A large bust of Zhao took pride of place inside. The museum was named a provincial-level base for "defence education".
张西岭说，他希望在公园中设立一块义和团纪念碑，但他觉得政府不会答应。从不远处魏县——当地义和团最著名领袖赵三多的故乡——经历看来，不容乐观。2000年，义和团起义百年之际，魏县开始建造大型的义和团纪念馆。大楼耗资120万美元，号称中国义和团历史博物馆。2003年，河北军区领导参加了开幕仪式。博物馆中竖立着一尊巨大的赵三多半身像。博物馆也被列为省级"国防教育"基地。

The authorities later had second thoughts. The bust was moved to a less prominent position outside. The other exhibits (including a large black-and-white photograph of Zhou Enlai, China's prime minister in the Mao era, proudly holding up a Boxer flag) remained intact. But large characters proclaiming the building as the "Boxer Memorial Hall" were replaced with "Hebei Province Patriotic Education Base". In East Zhangwu Village a nervous official tries to steer the conversation away from Boxer history towards the Boxer Band's music.
此后地方政府再度考虑，半身像被移至馆外不太显眼的位置。其他的展览（包括毛泽东时代总理周恩来骄傲地高举义和团旗帜的大黑白照片）仍旧保持原位。但"义和团纪念馆"这几个大字却被换成"河北省爱国教育基地"。在东彰武村，官员们也显得很紧张，想避开义和团历史，将话题转移到义和团乐队的音乐。

Some Chinese share the foreigners' point of view. In the village of Zhujiahe, about 120km (75 miles) to the north-east of Pingxiang, the Boxers are remembered as butchers. It was here that one of their bloodiest acts of violence occurred. Zhu Junhuan, who is 75, describes how her Catholic great-grandmother was killed by a combined force of Boxers and Chinese imperial troops as she was spreading her arms to protect a French missionary priest. The Boxer episode is commonly portrayed in the West as an orgy of anti-foreign violence. But the 200-300 foreigners who died in the uprising were far outnumbered by Chinese victims.
一些中国人和国外人士想法一致。萍乡东北方向120公里（75英里）的朱家河村，义和团在人们的记忆中就是屠夫。这儿曾经经历他们最血腥的暴力。现年75岁的朱俊环（音）告诉我们，她的信仰天主教的曾祖母在伸手保护法国神父的时候，如何被义和团和清政府军队联手杀害。在西方，义和团多半被描述成一股仇外的狂热。但起义中总共才牺牲两三百名外国人，比起受害的中国人，不足挂齿。

Because both killers and victims in Zhujiahe were Chinese, communist histories gloss over the massacre. Wei County's museum offers a rare mention of the event as if it were one of a series of Boxer victories ("three or four thousand religious followers were killed or drowned themselves"). It displays a grainy photograph of the village's "captured" Catholic church, in ruins.
因为朱家河中刽子手和受害者都是中国人，共产党的历史中就尽力掩盖这次屠杀。魏县博物馆罕见地提及了这次事件，但仿佛这只是义和团一系列胜利之一（"三四千名宗教信徒被杀或自溺而亡"）。博物馆还展出了一张村中"被占领的"天主教堂木纹照片，照片中，教堂已经成了一片废墟。

The fault lines of Chinese nationalism are visible in Zhujiahe, a cluster of brick houses surrounded by fields of maize. About 70% of its inhabitants are Catholic. They would like to honour "martyrs" killed by the Boxers, but fear upsetting officials.
中国民族主义的裂痕，在朱家河清晰可见——这是一座一群砖瓦房组成的村庄，周围满是玉米田。这里70%居民都信奉天主教。他们愿意纪念被义和团杀害的"烈士们"，却担心触怒政府。

The Catholic church has a difficult relationship with Chinese nationalism. China refuses to recognise the Vatican because of its insistence on retaining the right to appoint Chinese bishops, which China regards as an infringement on its sovereignty. China has its own "patriotic" Catholic church, whose leaders are vetted by the Communist Party. The Vatican, to avoid being shut out of China altogether, accepts worship in the government-backed church as legitimate. But some Chinese Catholics still shun it and, risking punishment, worship "underground".
天主教堂和中国民族主义的关系非常僵硬。罗马教廷坚持要求任命中国地区主教，而中国政府认为这是对其主权的侵犯，拒绝承认教廷地位。中国有自己的"爱国"天主教堂，教会领袖都曾被共产党审核。罗马教廷为了避免在中国全部被禁，于是承认政府背景的教堂合法。但一些中国天主教徒仍冒着受惩治的危险，不去政府教堂，而是在"地下"礼拜。



In Zhujiahe, the conflict between faith and party-defined patriotism came to a head in 2000 when Pope John Paul II declared 120 Catholics who had died in China between 1648 and 1930 to be saints. They included the first Chinese citizens ever to be so honoured. Sixty-six of the Chinese were killed in the Boxer Uprising. Three died in violence related to the siege of Zhujiahe. The government was furious. It condemned the saints as "evil-doing sinners" and said their canonisation was a "gross insult to the Chinese people's patriotic resistance against foreign aggression and oppression". The pope's choice of China's national day, October 1st, to make the announcement added salt to the government's wounds.
2000年，教皇约翰•保罗二世册封1648年到1930年在中国去世的120位天主教徒为圣徒，朱家河中信仰和党定性爱国主义间的矛盾也达到了顶峰。这次宣告，是中国公民首次得到此般尊重。66名中国人在义和团起义中牺牲，3位在与朱家河围困相关的暴力活动中献身。政府非常愤怒，谴责圣徒们是"恶贯满盈的罪人"，认为把他们列入圣徒名单，是"对中国向外国侵略和压迫爱国反抗的严重侮辱"。而教皇挑选中国国庆日宣告，更是给政府的伤口上撒了一把盐。

Zhu Junhuan was delighted. Her great-grandmother became Saint Mary Zhu. She is a devotee of her ancestor: prayers to Saint Mary, she says, have helped cure illnesses. But the state-controlled church frowned on celebrations. A low-key ceremony was held in the nearby county town, not in the village itself.
朱俊环非常高兴。她的曾祖母成了圣玛丽亚•朱。她崇敬先人，说向圣玛丽亚祈祷，治好了她的病。但受政府管制的教堂不赞成举行庆典。典礼十分低调，而且是在附近县城，不在本村。

Zhujiahe church was rebuilt after the Boxer Uprising but destroyed again during the Cultural Revolution, and has not been restored since. On a Sunday, a villager finds the key to its huge red wooden outer gate to show a rare foreign visitor around. It is a small brick-built former storeroom with no pews. Pictures of Zhujiahe's five saints (two bearded Frenchmen and three Chinese) adorn one dirty, cracked wall. A larger picture is propped up beneath them, half-hidden by a desk. It shows a woman, presumably Saint Mary, her head pouring with blood, standing in front of foreign-looking priests. Flames and smoke curl up around Chinese women and children in the foreground. The picture is captioned, "The Martyrs of Zhujiahe". The courtyard is piled with bricks that villagers have been hoarding in the hope of one day building a new church. But fears of upsetting saint-resenting officials have held them back.
朱家河教堂在义和团起义过后曾有重建，但文化大革命中再度被毁，此后再未修缮。一个周日，某村民找到了教堂红漆大木门的钥匙，将一位少见的外国游客带入参观。这是一座小型砖构的房间，过去用作储物，没有长凳。朱家河五位圣徒（两位长胡子法国人和三位中国人）的画像挂在又脏又破的墙上。画像下面，有一幅大画像，一半被桌子挡住了。画中是一位妇女，可能是圣玛利亚，她的头滴着血，在看似外国人的神父面前站着。画像中的前方，火焰和烟雾在中国妇女和儿童周围卷起。画下面的字写到："朱家河烈士"。庭院里到处堆着村民们垒起的砖头，他们希望将来能建造一座新教堂。不过因为害怕触怒那些憎恶圣徒的官员，只得作罢。

In the village of Donglu, 150km (93 miles) to the north-west, the party's narrow interpretation of patriotism (essentially, supporting the party) hits another rut. The spires of a Gothic Catholic church have recently been painted gold. The church honours the Virgin Mary, who residents say appeared above the village in 1900, clad in radiant white, and helped defend it against more than 40 Boxer assaults (miraculously, they say, Boxers died in profusion while few villagers or other Chinese Catholics perished). "Holy Mary of Donglu, Pray For Us", say large red characters attached to its railings, echoing the pleas of the besieged 110 years ago.
西北方向150公里（93英里）的东路村中，共产党对爱国的狭隘解释（即支持共产党）再度遭遇门槛。哥特式天主教堂的尖顶最近被漆成了金色。教堂纪念的是圣母玛利亚，当地居民称她曾在1900年出现在村庄上方，身着发光白衣，帮村子抵御了40多场义和团袭击（他们说，非常神奇，义和团的人死了很多，但很少有村民和其他中国天主教徒丧生）。"东路的圣母玛利亚，请为我们祈祷。"栏杆上条幅的大红字体写道，让人们想到了110年前的那次包围。

The story of Mary's appearance over the village has become central to Chinese Catholic faith. The mother of Jesus is believed to have confronted the "patriots", and to have won (although Joseph Esherick of the University of California, San Diego, says in a history of the period that Catholics in Hebei were well-armed by their missionary leaders and, in their mission bases, "were usually able to hold off Boxer attacks").
玛利亚曾经出现在村子上方的故事成了中国天主信仰的中心。人们相信，是圣母对抗了"爱国义和团战士"，赢得了战斗（尽管加州大学圣地亚哥分校的周锡瑞在一部关于当时的历史中称，河北的天主教徒在传教领袖的带领下装备完善，并在传教基地中，"通常能够抗击义和团的进攻"）。

It is a hard story for the party to tell. Who are the real patriots? The party's "patriotic" Catholic church cannot easily reject Mary herself. In 1924, 25 years before the communists came to power, papal recognition of the Donglu apparition was sought by the first meeting of Chinese church leaders. This was a crucial event in the evolution of a Catholic church led by native Chinese. The meeting asked that an image of Mary holding the baby Jesus, both dressed in Chinese imperial costume, be recognised as that of Our Lady of China. It was intended to symbolise the church's Chinese-ness, something the government-backed church today is also eager to promote (ironically, the image was based on another picture—of the foreign-hating empress dowager).
这段故事对共产党来说难以启齿。谁才是真正的爱国者？共产党的"爱国"天主教堂也不能轻易反对玛利亚。1924年，也就是共产党执政25年前，在第一次中国教会领袖会议上征求意见后，罗马教皇承认东路村上圣母显灵。这是中国本土人民领导的一次天主教堂发展重大事件。会议中要求，身着中国传统服饰的玛利亚抱着同样穿着中国服饰的婴儿耶稣形象，作为"中国的圣母"。这是为了彰显教堂的"中国性"，而政府支持的教堂今天也希望倡导这一形象（很讽刺的是，该形象是以仇视外国人的慈禧太后画像为原型）。

The Vatican agreed to the Shanghai meeting's requests and Donglu became a centre of Marian worship. Under communist rule, Mary the conqueror of "patriots" found herself grudgingly adopted by the "patriotic" establishment. Donglu and the Baoding diocese to which it belongs have been the scene of the official church's bitterest struggles with underground Catholics. Backing Donglu's Marian shrine has been a way of keeping Catholics in the region from devoting their loyalty to the underground, whose priests are often harassed or detained by the police. But officials remain wary. Every year in May, as the church prepares for the annual festival of Our Lady of China when her image is paraded around the village, police set up checkpoints on the narrow roads leading to Donglu to prevent non-locals from attending. Huge displays of Mary-adoration would be embarrassing to party officials and could be used as cover for protests by underground followers.
罗马教廷答应了上海会议的要求，东路成了敬拜玛利亚的核心之一。在共产党的领导下，征服"爱国者"的玛丽亚被"爱国"教会勉强接手。所属的东路和保定教区，一直是官方教堂和地下天主教会抗争最激烈的地方。支持东路的玛利亚敬拜，是为了防止当地天主教忠心地下教会，而地下教会神父经常受到警方的骚扰和关押。但官方仍然小心。每年五月，教会准备一年一度的"中国圣母"典礼，抬着她的画像在村中游行之时，警方就会在通往东路村的狭窄小路上设立关卡，阻止外地人参加。如果崇拜玛利亚的活动做大，会让共产党领导感到尴尬，也可能作为掩饰，组织地下天主信徒抗议。

The Communist Party knows that popular nationalism could turn against it. Its efforts to equate patriotism with support for the party leave many patriots who are critics of the party feeling left out. When nationalist demonstrations occur, such as against Western countries who are perceived to have offended China, these dissidents readily join in, posing a threat to the government.
共产党知道，风靡的民族主义可能会走火。将爱国等同于支持共产党，会让许多对党持批评意见的爱国人士感到被抛弃。民族主义游行之时——如反对被认为曾侵略过中国的西方国家，这些异见人士都积极加入，对政府构成威胁。

At the end of the 19th century the empress dowager struggled with a similar conundrum: support the Boxers and risk being overwhelmed by them, or crush them and risk being accused of pandering to foreigners. At first she supported them, and then she turned against them; but by then it was too late to save the dynasty.
19世纪末，慈禧太后也面临着类似的难题：支持义和团，就有被他们推翻的危险；消灭他们，就会受到卖国的谴责。首先，慈禧站在了义和团一边，后来才变了脸；但是那时，拯救清王朝，为时晚矣

 

Music in China Free as a bard

Music in China
Free as a bard
Seeking profit in the world's toughest
recorded-music market
Dec 2nd 2010 | BEIJING | from PRINT EDITION

音乐在中国
流浪乐人般的自由
在这个世界上最难获利的音乐市场
2010年12月2日 北京

.No one will pay to listen to us. Perhaps they'll pay to watch? SUPPOSE for a moment that the gloomiest predictions for the music business turn out to be correct. Efforts by governments and record companies to shut down file-sharing websites like the Pirate Bay fail. Piracy becomes so entrenched that people simply stop buying legitimate CDs. Customers drift away from Apple's iTunes store, which sells digital music tracks. They refuse to pay even trivial monthly subscriptions for music-download services like Pandora and streaming outfits like Spotify. Improbable? Not at all. In China, this worst-case scenario has already come to pass.

没有人会花钱听我们的音乐，也许人们会愿意掏钱看？谁知道。思索片刻，你会明白，对中国的音乐市场前景作出最悲观的预测是无可厚非的。政府和唱片公司竭力试图关掉想"海盗湾"这样的资源免费分享网站，但他们的努力以失败告终。盗版音像制品坚不可摧，于是就无人理会正版CD了。卖数字音乐唱片的苹果iTunes店里，顾客渐渐流失殆尽。人们甚至不愿为音乐下载服务（像"潘多拉"）或者在线流媒体服务网站（像spotify）花费微薄的月费。你认为这是在瞎扯吗？绝对不是。在中国，更坏的情况早就发生过。

.Chinese consumers "won't pay a penny" for recorded music, says Gary Chen. The music promoter turned digital entrepreneur ought to know. In 2006 he launched Top100.cn, a website which offered a choice of à la carte music downloads and monthly subscriptions. Its prices were low―but not low enough. Chinese music fans were raised on knockoff CDs and are now accustomed to getting hold of music for nothing on file-sharing websites. China will soon have the world's second-biggest economy, but its legitimate music market is tiny (see chart). So Mr Chen changed tack.

陈家利（译名）说，中国的消费者不会花上一分钱在音乐唱片上。那些后来改行做数码的音乐业内人士应该明白这一点。2006年，陈家利创立了top100.cn，这是一个提供菜单式音乐下载和按月订购服务的音乐网站。网站上的资源价格很便宜，但是对中国消费者来说还是不够低。中国的音乐迷是听盗版光盘培养起来的，他们已经习惯于分文不花地在   网站上下载音乐。中国将很快成为世界第二大经济体，但是他的合法音乐市场却小得可怜（见表）。因此，陈先生改变了经营策略.

Last year Top100 began to offer Chinese internet users free MP3 music downloads, supported by advertisements. The website resembles a free iTunes store, or a Spotify that lets you download files rather than streaming them. It is the only such service in the world to enjoy support from leading record companies. Top100 streams about 200m tracks a month. Some 60% of its traffic comes from Google, which has invested in the website. This year Mr Chen reckons he will sell about 10m yuan ($1.5m) in advertising. That would be a trivial sum in America or Britain. In a country where sales of recorded music amounted to just $75m last year, it is not at all bad.

去年，TOP100开始向中国网民提供免费MP3音乐下载，由广告赞助。这样，top100就类似于一个免费的iTunes专卖店，或者一个让你下载音乐而不是在线收听的SPOTIFY。TOP100是世界上唯一一个已获得唱片业巨头赞助的提供免费音乐下载服务的网站。Top100每月提供的的播放量次数约为2亿。约60%的收入来自GOOGLE的广告投入。陈先生预计他的广告会卖到一千万元（约150万美元）。这个数字放在美国或者英国或许是微不足道的。但是在一个去年唱片销售额只有7500万美元的国家，这个数字就不算太坏了。

Yet it is not good enough. Top100.cn is profitable only on an operating basis―in other words, before accounting for the money it pays to record companies for their content. Google's partial withdrawal from China earlier this year, which followed a cyber-attack on the company, reduced its share of the country's search market and cut traffic to Mr Chen's website. And Top100 faces fierce competition. Baidu, China's biggest search engine, also runs a popular MP3 search service. The record companies have sued, claiming that Baidu's service provides links to pirated songs. But so far the Chinese courts have ruled in the firm's favour. Mr Chen cites Baidu as his biggest competitor.

但是这还不够。TOP100.CN的盈利仅仅停留在网站本身的操作层面上。换句话说，把它付给唱片公司的使用费算进去之后，就很难说盈利了。今年初，谷歌在受到制裁后，从中国撤回了部分业务，减少了在这个网络搜索市场的份额。并削减了在陈先生的网站上的投入。
Top100面临激烈的竞争。中国最大的搜索引擎"百度"，同样经营着很受欢迎的MP3音乐搜索业务。唱片公司已经对百度提出了诉讼，指控其提供盗版歌曲链接。但是至今中国法院的判决还是站在了百度一边，陈先生把百度当做他最大的竞争对手。

If it is almost impossible to sell music, and hard to make money even from running advertisements next to free music, what options are left? Mr Chen has identified two. The first is to charge not for music but for selections of music. Top100 has begun to roll out smartphone apps through China's many online stores, charging a few yuan for music reviews and recommendations by well-known musicians, together with links to download their suggestions. The hope is that fans will pay for convenient, well-presented bundles of curated music, just as people pay for newspapers and magazines even though, in many cases, they can read all the articles online free. Next year Mr Chen also hopes to roll out a subscription cloud service, which will enable consumers to access their favourite tunes from a variety of devices.

如果买音乐几乎赚不到钱，甚至提供免费音乐、卖广告都很难赚钱的话，那还剩什么选择呢？陈先生摸索出了两个选项。第一个是，不向音乐本身收费，而对音乐选择收费。Top100已经开始通过中国众多的网点销售其智能手机设备，然后提供著名音乐人的音乐评论、推荐及其下载链接，以此收取几块钱的费用。这种模式的希望在于，乐迷愿意掏钱购买这样精心整理的音乐盛宴，就像人们尽管可以免费在网上阅读新闻和文章，但是在很多时候人们还是愿意花钱买报纸杂志。陈先生希望明年推出一项"订购云"服务，它将使消费者能够从多种播放器中选择他们最喜欢的播放器。

These experiments may not succeed. But Western media companies would do well to watch them. Forward-looking music executives and consultants have come to believe that, particularly for the young, value now resides not so much in recorded music but in the devices that play it, in the services that make it accessible and in the information and networks that allow it to be judged and shared between friends. In a country where other options for getting people to pay for recorded music have been exhausted, Mr Chen is putting those theories to the test. To see the future of the music business, look east.

这些实验未必能够成功。但是如果西方的媒体公司参考借鉴他们，或许会做得更好。有远见的前沿音乐制作人及业内专家相信，尤其对年轻人来说，音乐价值的体现不在那么局限在唱片了，而在于音乐的播放设备，在于使获取歌曲更加便捷的服务，在于它提供的能够让人评论和朋友间分享信息的平台和网络。付费听唱片的模式走到了穷途末路，而陈先生把自己的理论付诸实验。一窥音乐产业前途，还得看向东方。

 

The good, the bad and the tea parties 好坏难定的茶党

The good, the bad and the tea parties
好坏难定的茶党

A partial defence of the movement that has transformed the mid-term elections
一场让中期选举改头换脸的运动的片面辩解



IT IS not hard, if you really try, to find good things to say about America's tea-partiers. They are not French, for a start. France's new revolutionaries, those who have been raising Cain over Nicolas Sarkozy's modest proposal to raise the age of retirement by two years, appear to believe that public money is printed in heaven and will rain down for ever like manna to pay for pensions, welfare, medical care and impenetrable avant-garde movies. America's tea-partiers are the opposite: they exhale fiscal probity through every pore. In their waking hours, and in bed at night, they are wracked by anxiety. How is a profligate America to cut borrowing, balance the budget and ensure that its billowing deficit will not place an unbearable burden on future generations?
要是真的想找点茶党的好话来说说也不难。首先，他们不是法国人。因为尼古拉斯萨科齐提出一个不算过份的提议要把退休年龄推迟两年，这些法国新革命分子就大举闹事。他们似乎觉得钱都是老天印出来的，会源源不断地从天上掉下来为退休金、社会福利、医疗和晦涩难懂的前卫电影买单。美国的茶党和他们相反：他们全心全意支持财政节俭。他们不管白天醒着还是晚上躺在床上都忧心如焚。怎样能才让挥霍浪费的美国减少借贷，平衡预算，确保滚雪球一般的财政赤字不会对后代构成难以承受的负担？

The tea-partiers do not just have less selfish motives than the pampered French. They also have better manners. Let the French block roads and set things on fire: among tea-partiers it is a point of pride that their large but orderly rallies leave barely a crumpled candy wrapper behind them. Though some wear tricorn hats, and the movement takes its name from the Boston Tea Party, tea-partiers are peaceful folk. They take the view that one revolution was enough, and that the one America had in the 18th century established a constitution and form of democracy so near to perfect that they can get what they want without taking to the streets and just by working within the rules.
茶党不但动机比那些纵坏了的法国人大公无私得多，连行为举止也比法国人得体。随便他们法国人怎么堵路放火，茶党的集会人数庞大但井然有序，连张皱巴巴的糖果纸都不会乱扔，难怪他们会引以为傲。虽然有些参加集会的人戴着以前士兵戴的三角帽，而且茶党一名取自波士顿倾茶事件，但茶党集会者都是和平不滋事的民众。他们认为一场革命就够了，并认为18世纪的那场美国革命订立的宪法和民主体制几乎称得上完美，因此他们无需上街游行，只需谨遵宪法规定就能达到自己的目的。

Whether they have worked hard enough they will not know until votes are counted after next week's mid-terms, but in one way their labours have already borne fruit. In primaries all over the country they have secured the election of Republican candidates who are "true" conservatives, not the big-spending counterfeit Republicans whom they blame for leading the party astray under George Bush. The impure have been purged without mercy. Senator Bob Bennett, who has represented Utah for three terms, earned a lifetime rating of 84% from the American Conservative Union. He was turfed out for having voted in favour of the TARP, the Bush-era bail-out that may have staved off a financial collapse but has become a tea-party anathema.
茶党付出的努力够不够要等到下周中期选举结果揭晓才知道，但某种程度上来说，他们的努力已经收获了成果。在全国候选人预选中，他们已经选出那些属于"真正"保守分子的共和党人，而不是那些花钱如流水的伪共和党人。茶党指责后者在乔治布什的领导下把共和党引入歧途。这些"不良分子"已经被毫不留情地肃清了。鲍勃班内特已经担任了三个任期的尤他州参议员，美国保守联盟给他评出的终身评分也高达84分（满分100）。但他还是被排挤了，因为他投票赞成"问题资产救助计划"，一个布什执政期间推出的救市措施，虽然暂时避开了金融崩溃，但后来成为茶党的话诟。

America's pontificating class is not yet sure how to take the measure of this strange new movement. Puzzled academics gathered last week at the University of California, Berkeley, to ask, among other things, how tea-partiers were "tapping into and/or managing the populist, libertarian and radical currents on the right, as well as fear, anger and resentment among segments of the American public". The New York Times has published research suggesting that tea-partiers are mostly richer and better-educated than the average. The Washington Post spent months trying to contact every tea-party group in the nation. Having got through to 647 out of 1,400 it had identified, it found that some consisted of only a handful of members, if they existed at all.
喜欢发表高论的美国人至今还不知道该结这场不同寻常的新运动作何评价。上周，不得其解的学术界人士齐集加州大学贝克利分校提出了众多问题，其中一个就是茶党是如何"利用或者说掌握了左翼中的平民主义，自由主义和激进主义的各个趋势，以及美国不同人群中的恐惧，愤始和不满情绪。"《纽约时报》发表的调查表明大部分茶党成员比一般人更富裕，接受的教育也更优越。《华盛顿邮报》花了数月时间联系全国上下所有的茶党团体。目前经联系上已经查明的1400个团体中的647个，并发现有些茶党团体只有一小撮成员，有些甚至名存实亡。

Some call the tea parties an "Astroturf" phenomenon―not grass-roots types at all but the dupes of big business. To others they are merely the most recent incarnation of an ugly right-wing and sometimes racist populism that has surfaced before when times are hard. Such allegations are misplaced. Corporate money has indeed found its way into tea-party coffers, but if you attend a tea-party event you will generally find that it is indeed a self-organised gathering of citizens dismayed by what they see as the irresponsible behaviour of an out-of-control government. Strands of racism can be found on the movement's fringe, but most tea-party groups have done their best to snip these off.
有些人把茶党称为"得富草皮"现象－但他们根本不是什么草根阶层，反而是那些大企业里的家伙。在其他人眼里，每逢艰难时世总免不了要浮现一股丑陋的右翼平民主义，有时甚至带有种族歧视的色彩，茶党不过是这股平民主义眼下的另一个化身而已。这样指控茶党就大错特错了。企业资金确实流进了茶党运动内部，但如果你参加过茶党的集会，你一般会发现它确实只是一个自发组织的集会，组织集会的都是那些不满一个失控政府种种不负责任行为的市民。茶党运动可能偶尔出现几丝种族歧视主义，但大部分茶党团体都尽快把这些不良风气驱之于外。

Along with the liberal disparagement comes a dose of wishful thinking. Some Democrats hope the tea parties will drag the Republicans so far to the right that mainstream voters will be scared away. That looks increasingly unlikely. Few tea-party candidates are as hapless as the overexposed Christine O'Donnell, the former campaigner against masturbation and present ignoramus whose selection as the Republican candidate in Delaware will probably cost the party a precious extra seat in the Senate. Other Senate candidates who were once deemed too radical to win, such as Rand Paul in Kentucky and Sharron Angle in Nevada, have adjusted the volume if not the content of their messages and now look eminently electable. Here and there―in Florida and Alaska, for example―tea-party pressure has split the conservative vote, but in the grand scheme that is a small price for Republicans to pay for the revivifying energy the movement has imparted to a party that looked dead in the water two years ago.
除了自由派的不屑以外，还有一些人心怀鬼胎地打着小算盘。有些民主党人盼着茶党运动会把共和党拉到极右的一端，把主流选民都吓跑。但这似乎越来越不可能了。几乎没几个茶党候选人会像那个曝光过度的克莉丝蒂奥唐纳尔那么倒霉，这个人不但曾经发起过运动反对手淫，现在还是无知不减半分，选她当特拉华州的共和党参议员候选人很可能会害共和党损失一个宝贵的参议院席位。其他参议员候选人也一度被认为激进有余，难以获选，例如肯塔基州的兰德保罗和内华达州的莎朗安吉拉。虽然他们要传达的信息内容没变，但量已经有所调整，现在看起来非常值得一选。全国上下－以佛罗里达州和阿拉斯加州为例－茶党的压力已经分去了一部分保守分子的选票，但从大局来看，共和党人要借这场运动的活力让两年前奄奄一息的共和党起死回生，就必须付出这个小小的代价。

Not French, not fabricated and not as flaky as their detractors aver: these are the positives. Another one: in how many other countries would a powerful populist movement demand less of government, rather than endlessly and expensively more? Much of what is exceptional about America is its ideology of small government, free enterprise and self reliance. If that is what the tea-party movement is for, more power to its elbow.
不是法国人，没有掺杂不良成分，也没有抨击者说的那么疯癫：这些都是茶党好的方面。还有一个：在别的国家里，有几个声势浩大的平民运动会要求政府减少开支，而不是加大开支的？美国的过人之处很大程度上在于它的意识形态是政府要节俭，企业要自由，个人要自力更生。如果这就是茶党运动的最终目的，那么我们更应该对其大加支持。

Can they be serious?
Ideology is one thing. But if the tea-partiers do well next week, especially if the Republicans capture the House, they need to move past ideology into the realm of practical policy. This means having something serious to say about how actually to bring spending under control. To date, they have preferred breezy slogans. Will they cut into pensions and Medicare, and if so how? Will they accept that taming the deficit will require hikes in taxes as well as cuts in spending? Will they continue to oppose reflexively every measure of a Democratic administration, or have the courage to share responsibility for the painful decisions the times demand? It has been all too easy from the outside to conjure up a mythic America of limited government, sing hymns to the constitution and denounce the federal bureaucracy in all its forms. Once they are in government themselves, that gig will be over.

他们能认真起来吗？
意识形态是很重要。但如果茶党下周大获成功，尤其是如果共和党获得众议院多数席位，他们就不能再大谈意式形态，而是要踏入制定切实可行的政策的阶段。也就是提出如何遏制政府开支的可行意见。迄今为止，他们只打出一些无伤大雅的口号。他们真的会缩减退休金和医保吗，如果会又有什么具体措施？他们会赞成要降低赤字就要加大税收，同时减少开支吗？他们会不分青红皂白地反对民主党政府提出的每一个措施吗，还是鼓起勇气分担责任，审时度势，作出该作的的痛苦决定？幻想出一个限制政府权力的美国，对宪法大颂赞歌，对各种形式的联邦官僚作风大加谴责，对于在草野的茶党来说，简直易于反掌。但一旦当选，这种戏码就唱不下去了。