偶看新闻江西炒米粉用生抽吗:欧洲观光旅行
来源：百度文库 编辑：偶看新闻 时间：2024/04/29 16:30:01
欧洲观光旅行
by Evan Osnos
by Evan Osnos
For several millennia, ordinary people in China were discouraged from venturing beyond the Middle Kingdom, but before the recent New Year’s holiday—the Year of the Rabbit began on February 3rd—local newspapers were dense with international travel ads. It felt as if everyone was getting away, and I decided to join them. When the Chinese travel industry polls the public on its dream destinations, no place ranks higher than Europe. China’s travel agents compete by carving out tours that conform less to Western notions of a grand tour than to the likes and dislikes of their customers. I scanned some deals online: “Big Plazas, Big Windmills, Big Gorges” was a four-day bus tour that emphasized photogenic countryside in the Netherlands and Luxembourg; “Visit the New and Yearn for the Past in Eastern Europe” had a certain Cold War charm, but I wasn’t sure I needed that in February.
在过去很长时间里，普通中国人不被鼓励进行海外的冒险，但在最近2月3日兔年新年假期开始前，本地报纸上充满了关于国际旅行的广告。这让人觉得似乎每个人都要跑掉一样，我决定加入他们的队伍。中国旅行产业对公众想要去旅游的地方进行了调查，结果发现没有比欧洲得分更高的地方了。中国旅游机构彼此展开竞争，他们更注重客户的好恶而不是观光旅行中的西方元素。我仔细浏览了网上的一些内容：“宽敞的广场，巨大的风车，壮阔的大峡谷”，这是一个为期四天的汽车旅行的宣传。这次旅行的重点是适宜照相的荷兰和卢森堡的乡间。“游览东欧新景、怀念昔日旧况”这个说法带有明显的冷战魅力，但我并不确定在二月份自己需要这个。
I chose the “Classic European,” a popular bus tour that would traverse five countries in ten days. Payment was due up front. Airfare, hotels, meals, insurance, and assorted charges came to the equivalent in yuan of about twenty-two hundred dollars. In addition, every Chinese member of the tour was required to put up a bond amounting to seventy-six hundred dollars—more than two years’ salary for the average worker—to prevent anyone from disappearing before the flight home. I was the thirty-eighth and final member of the group. We would depart the next morning at dawn.
我选择的是“经典欧洲”，这是一个很受欢迎的汽车旅行项目。它将会在十天的时间内穿过五个国家。费用提前支付.机票、旅馆、餐饮、保险以及其他各类收费项共计2200美元，参加者需将其兑换为人民币进行支付。除此之外，每个参加此旅行的中国人都需要交纳7600美元的抵押金，这笔费用数目要高于中国劳动者两年的平均工资数额。它的目的在于防止有人在回程前消失掉。我是第38位也是这个团体的最后一位成员。我们将会在明天清晨时分动身启程。
I was told to proceed to Door No. 25 of Terminal 2 at Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport, where I found a slim forty-three-year-old man in a gray tweed overcoat and rectangular glasses. He had floppy, parted hair, and introduced himself as Li Xingshun, our guide. To identify us in crowds, each of us received a canary-yellow lapel badge bearing a cartoon dragon with smoke curling from its nostrils, striding in hiking boots above our motto: “The Dragon Soars for Ten Thousand Li.” (A li is about a third of a mile.)
我被告知要前往上海浦东国际机场2号停机楼的25号通道，在那里我见到了一个身材消瘦的43岁男人，他穿着灰色斜纹软呢外套，戴了副矩形眼镜，梳着松散分头。他自我介绍说他是我们此行的导游Li Xingshun。为了方便从人群中进行辨认，我们都收到了一个淡黄色的上面印着个卡通龙的形象。龙的鼻孔里冒着缭绕的烟，穿着登山靴。靴子下方是我们的标语：“龙吟万里”。（一里约等于三分之一公里。）
We settled into coach on an Air China non-stop flight to Frankfurt, and I opened a Chinese packet of “Outbound Group Advice,” which we’d been urged to read carefully. The specificity of the instructions suggested a history of unpleasant surprises: “Don’t travel with knockoffs of European goods, because customs inspectors will seize them and penalize you.” There was an intense focus on staying safe in Europe. “You will see Gypsies begging beside the road, but do not give them any money. If they crowd around and ask to see your purse, yell for the guide.” Conversing with strangers was discouraged. “If someone asks you to help take a photo of him, watch out: this is a prime opportunity for thieves.” I’d been in and out of Europe over the years, but the instructions put it in a new light, and I was oddly reassured to be travelling with three dozen others and a guide. The notes concluded with a piece of Confucius-style advice that framed our trip as a test of character: “He who can bear hardship should carry on.”
我们乘坐的是从中国直飞法兰克福的航班，我打开了一份中文的“出境团体注意事项”（我们被要求认真阅读此文件。）。此注意事项详细陈述了一些令人惊奇但不太愉快的事情,比如：“旅行时不要携带欧洲商品的仿冒品，否则海关检察人员将会没收仿冒品并对携带者进行处罚。”文中重点关注了旅客在欧洲的安全。“你将会看到路边乞讨的吉普赛人，不要给他们钱。如果他们围着你要求看你的钱包的话，喊导游寻求帮助。”同陌生人交谈也是不被鼓励的。“如果有人请求你帮忙拍照的话，要当心了——这是盗窃发生的最佳时机。”为本文结尾的是一句孔子式格言，这句格言为我们的旅行定下了考验个人品质的基调——“嚼得菜根，百事可做”。
We landed in Frankfurt in heavy fog and gathered in the terminal for the first time as a full group. We ranged in age from six-year-old Lü Keyi to his seventy-year-old grandfather, Liu Gongsheng, a retired mining engineer, who was escorting his wife, Huang Xueqing, in her wheelchair. Just about everyone belonged to the sector of Chinese society—numbering between a hundred and fifty million and two hundred million people—that qualifies as the country’s middle class: a high-school science teacher, an interior decorator, a real-estate executive, a set designer for a television station, a gaggle of students. There was nothing of the countryside about my companions—the rare glimpse of a horse grazing in a French pasture the next day sent everyone scrambling for cameras—and yet they had only begun to be at home in the world. With few exceptions, this was everybody’s first trip out of Asia.
我们在大雾中降落在法兰克福，并在停机楼进行了全团的首次集合。按照年龄我们进行了排队，团队中游客年龄不等，从6岁的Lü Keyi到他70岁的祖父Liu Gongsheng均有。Gongsheng是一个退休的采矿工程师，他陪着自己坐着轮椅的妻子Huang Xueqing。这里的每个人都属于人数在一亿五千万到两亿的中国中产阶级：一个高中理科老师，一个室内装潢师，一个房地产经理，一个电视台布景设计师，一群叽叽喳喳的学生。我的同伴们对于乡下没有丝毫的概念——在法国牧场上放牧的一匹马的掠影让所有人的摄像机都疯狂转动起来——他们仅仅只是刚刚开始在世界层面上找到感觉。除了少数几个人，这几乎是所有人第一次走出亚洲的旅行。
Li introduced me, the lone non-Chinese member of the group, and everyone offered a hearty welcome. Ten-year-old Liu Yifeng, who had a bowl cut and wore a black sweatshirt covered in white stars, smiled up at me and asked, “Do all foreigners have noses that big?”
Li向大家介绍了我这个团队中的孤单的外国人，所有人都表示了真诚的欢迎。十岁的Liu Yifeng留着锅盖头，穿着身黑底上点缀白色星星的体恤衫，他仰着脸对我微笑，问：“外国人的鼻子都这么大吗？”
We boarded a gold-colored coach, which shuddered to life. I took a window seat and was joined by a sturdy eighteen-year-old in a black puffy vest and wire-frame glasses. He had long, dark bangs and a suggestion of whiskers on his upper lip. He introduced himself as Xu Nuo; in Chinese, the name means “promise,” which he liked to use as an English name. Promise was a freshman at Shanghai Normal University, where he studied economics and shared two sets of bunk beds with three roommates. His parents were seated across the aisle. I asked him why his family had chosen to travel rather than visit relatives over the holiday. “That’s the tradition, but Chinese people are getting wealthier,” he said. “Besides, we’re too busy to travel the rest of the year.” We spoke in Chinese, but when he was surprised he’d say, “Oh, my Lady Gaga!,” an English expression he’d picked up at school.
我们登上了一辆发动了的金色长途汽车。我找了个靠窗的座位，邻座的是一个十八岁的强健的男孩子，他穿着很蓬松的背心，戴着线框眼镜，刘海又长又黑，上嘴唇上方隐隐露着胡须的痕迹。他自我介绍说他的名字是Xu Nuo，这个名字在中文中有“promise（承诺）”的意思，所以他也用这个单词作为他的英文名字。Promise是上海师范大学的一年级学生，他的宿舍里摆着两张双人床，一共住了四个人。他的父母坐在过道的对面。我问他为什么他们家庭假期选择旅行而不是拜访亲戚。“传统是这样的，不过中国人现在变得更加富有了，”他说。“而且如果如果一年余下的时间都用来旅行就太累了”。我们用中文交谈，不过当吃惊的时候他会说，“Oh, my Lady Gaga!,”，这是他在学校学会的一个英语表达。
In the front row of the bus, Li stood facing the group with a microphone in hand, a posture he would retain for most of our waking hours in the days ahead. In the life of a Chinese tourist, guides play an especially prominent role—translator, raconteur, and field marshal—and Li projected a calm, seasoned air. He often referred to himself in the third person—Guide Li—and he prided himself on efficiency. “Everyone, our watches should be synchronized,” he said. “It is now 7:16 P.M.” He implored us to be five minutes early for every departure. “We flew all the way here,” he said. “Let’s make the most of it.”
在汽车的前排，Li面向大家站着，手里握着麦克风，在后来的日程中我们清醒的大多数时刻中他都是这种姿势。在中国旅行团中导游扮演着非常重要的角色——翻译，气氛调动者和地面调度——Li表现的很冷静老练。他经常用第三人称——Li导游——来称呼自己，而且他很自豪于自己的效率。“大家注意，我们要把手表时间都调到一致，”他说，“现在时刻是下午7点16分。”他恳求我们大家要在每次出发前提早五分钟准备好。“我们一路这么远飞到了这里，”他说，“那就让我们做到最好吧。”
He outlined the plan: we would be spending many hours on the bus, during which he would deliver lectures on history and culture, so as not to waste precious minutes at the sights, when we could be taking photographs. He informed us that French scientists had determined that the optimal length of a tour guide’s lecture is seventy-five minutes. “Before Guide Li was aware of that, the longest speech I ever gave on a bus was four hours,” he added.
他大致描述了具体计划：我们的大部分时间都会在车上，在这些时间中他将会给大家讲解一些相关历史和文化的内容，这样的话当我们给风景拍照的时候就不会浪费宝贵的时间。他告诉我们法国科学家发现导游讲解时间最佳为75分钟。“在Li导游知道这信息之前，最长我曾在汽车上讲解过四个小时。”
Li urged us to soak our feet in hot water before bed, to fight jet lag, and to eat extra fruit, which might balance the European infusion of bread and cheese into our diets. Since it was the New Year’s holiday, there would be many other Chinese visitors, and we must be vigilant not to board the wrong bus at rest stops. He introduced our driver, Petr Pícha, a phlegmatic former trucker and hockey player from the Czech Republic, who waved wearily to us from the well of the driver’s seat. (“For six or seven years, I drove Japanese tourists all the time,” he told me later. “Now it’s all Chinese.”) Li had something else to say about the schedule: “In China, we think of bus drivers as superhumans who can work twenty-four hours straight, no matter how late we want them to drive. But in Europe, unless there’s weather or traffic, they’re only allowed to drive for twelve hours!”
Li力劝我们在上床之前用热水泡脚好克服时差的影响，并多吃些水果以均衡我们饮食中加入的欧式面包和奶酪。因为是新年假期，这里可能会有许多中国游客，我们必须注意在休息地点不要上错车。Li给大家介绍了司机Petr Pícha，Petr Pícha是一个来自捷克的前卡车司机和曲棍球运动员，看上去有些冷漠。他在司机座上对我们无精打采地挥挥手。（“在过去六七年里，我一直为日本游客开车，”稍后他告诉我。“现在就全是中国人了。”）关于行程计划Li还有别的要说：“在中国，我们都把司机当成可以二十四小时连续工作的超人，也不去管驾车的时间究竟有多晚。但在欧洲除非是天气或交通因素，司机只能工作12个小时！”
He explained that every driver carries a card that must be inserted into a slot in the dashboard; too many hours and the driver could be punished. “We might think you could just make a fake card or manipulate the records—no big deal,” Li said. “But, if you get caught, the fine starts at eighty-eight hundred euros, and they take away your license! That’s the way Europe is. On the surface, it appears to rely on everyone’s self-discipline, but behind it all there are strict laws.”
他解释说每个司机都有一张卡，这张卡插在汽车仪表板上的一个槽中；驾驶时间过长的话司机有可能被被处罚。“也许你觉得弄个假卡或处理一下记录不是什么大事，”Li说，“但如果被抓住了，罚金最低是8800欧元，而且会被收走驾驶证！这就是欧洲的风格。表面上似乎依靠个人自觉，但实际上有着严格的法律规定。”
We were approaching the hotel—a Best Western in Luxembourg—but first Li briefed us on breakfast. A typical Chinese breakfast consists of a rich bowl of congee (a rice porridge), a deep-fried cruller, and, perhaps, a basket of pork buns. In Europe, he warned, tactfully, “Throughout our trip, breakfast will rarely be more than bread, cold ham, milk, and coffee.” The bus was silent for a moment.
我们正在向位于卢森堡的Best Western旅馆驶去。但Li先行给大家介绍了早餐的情况。典型的中国式早餐包括慢慢一碗的粥（一种大米粥），一张炸的很透的油饼，可能还会有一笼猪肉馅包子。在欧洲，他很巧妙地提醒大家， “贯穿我们整个旅行，早餐一般是面包，冷火腿，牛奶和咖啡。”汽车里霎时沉默了一会。
We never saw Luxembourg in the daylight. We were out of the Best Western by dawn and were soon back on the Autobahn. Li asked us to make sure we hadn’t left anything behind, because some of his older travellers used to have a habit of hiding cash in the toilet tank or the ventilation ducts. “The worst case I’ve had was a guest who sewed money into the hem of the curtains,” he said. We headed for our first stop: the modest German city of Trier. Though it’s not quite a household name for most first-time visitors to Europe, Trier has been unusually popular with Chinese tourists ever since Communist Party delegations began arriving, decades ago, to see the birthplace of Karl Marx. My Chinese guidebook, written by a retired diplomat, said it once was described as the Mecca of the Chinese people.
我们没见到白天的卢森堡。破晓时分我们离开了旅馆然后就又上了高速路。Li要求大家确保没有东西遗忘在旅馆中，因为他以前负责的一些游客经常有在卫生间水槽或通风管道中藏现金的习惯。“我曾见过最糟糕的是一个旅客把钱缝在了窗帘的褶里。”他说。我们向第一个休息地点驶去：特里尔——一个普通德国城市。从共产党派遣团体数十年前开始访问此处的卡尔·马克思诞生地时起，特里尔迄今为止对于中国游客有着出乎寻常的吸引力。我的中国导游手册是由一位退休外交官员写的，在书中他声称此处曾被描绘成中国人的麦加。
We got off the bus onto a tidy side street lined with peaked-roofed, pastel-colored buildings. The cobblestones were silvery with rain, and Li donned a forest-green felt outback hat and pointed us ahead as he started at a brisk walk. We reached No. 10 Brückenstrasse, a handsome three-story white house with green shutters. “This is where Marx lived. Now it’s a museum,” Li said. We tried the door, but it was locked. Things were slow in the winter, and the museum wouldn’t be open for another hour and a half, so we’d be experiencing Marx’s house only from the outside. (“The sooner we finish here, the sooner we get to Paris,” Li had said.) Beside the front door was a plaque with Marx’s leonine head in profile. The building next door was a fast-food restaurant called Dolce Vita.
我们在一条整洁的偏街下了车，这条街道两侧是尖顶彩绘的建筑。雨水冲刷过的鹅卵石闪耀着银色的光泽。Li戴着顶森林绿色的毡帽子，他迈着轻快的步子示意我们前行。我们到达了布吕肯街10 号，这是座漂亮的三层白色房子，上面装着绿色的百叶窗。“这里是马克思曾经居住过的地方，现在它是座博物馆。”Li介绍说。我们试着去开门，但门是被锁着的。冬天什么都是慢吞吞的，博物馆离开门还有一个半小时，所以我们只能从外面感受一下马克思的房子了。（我们越快结束这里的行程，就越快能够去巴黎，”Li曾经这样说过。）前门旁边有一块饰板，上面是马克思那狮子般的侧面头像。和这房子相邻的是一家叫做Dolce Vita的快餐店。
Li urged us to stay as long as we wanted, but he also suggested a stop at the supermarket on the corner to buy fruit for the ride ahead. We milled around awkwardly in front of Marx’s house, snapping photographs and dodging cars, until one of the kids pleaded, “I want to go to the supermarket,” and tugged his mother toward the bright storefront. I stood beside Wang Zhenyu, a tall man in his fifties, and we looked up at Marx’s head. “Not many people in America know about him, right?” Wang asked.
Li劝我们在这里尽量多玩会，不过他也建议在一家拐角处的超市那里停车买点路上吃的水果。我们一群人在马克思家房子前面很尴尬地走来走去，拍拍照片，不时的给车辆让路。直到有个孩子要求，“我想去超市，”，他朝商店装饰华丽的门面的方向拽他妈妈。我站在Wang Zhenyu身边，他是个50多岁的高个儿。我们仰头看着马克思的头像。“知道马克思的美国人不多吧？” Wang问我。
“More than you might think,” I said, and added that I’d expected to see more Chinese visitors. Wang laughed. “Young people no longer know anything about all that,” he said. Wang was thin and angular, with the bearing of a self-made man. He had grown up in the eastern commercial city of Wuxi and had been assigned the job of carpenter, until economic reforms took hold and he went into business for himself. He now ran a small clothing factory that specialized in the production of wash-and-wear men’s trousers. He didn’t speak English, but he’d wanted a catchy, international name for his company, so he’d called it Ge-rui-te, a made-up word formed by the Chinese characters that he thought sounded most like the English word “great.”
“可能比你想的要多吧。”我说，补充说我本来估计能在这里见到比这更多的中国游客。Wang笑了，“年轻一代现在不太了解这些了。”他说。Wang体形消瘦，比较有棱角，有着种白手起家的创业者气质。他出生于无锡这个东部的商业城市，这个城市的特色是免烫男裤产业。他不说英语，但给自己公司起了一个比较引人注目的国际化名字。他公司的名字叫Ge-rui-te，这个自撰的词是由数个中国字组成的，Wang认为这个名字听起来像英文单词“great”。
Wang was an enthusiastic tourist. “I used to be so busy that now I want to travel,” he said. “I always had to buy land, build factories, fix up my house. But now my daughter’s grown and working. I only need to save up for the dowry, which is manageable.” I asked why he and his wife had chosen Europe. “Our thinking is, Go to the farthest places first, while we still have the energy,” he said. Wang and I were among the last to arrive at the supermarket. Our group had stayed at the Chinese Mecca for eleven minutes.
Wang是个旅游爱好者。“过去我太忙了，现在我想旅游。”他说，“我过去总是买地盖厂，处理家事。现在女儿也长大参加工作了，我只剩下给她置备嫁妆了，这还是不成问题的。”我问他为什么他们夫妻要选择来欧洲。“我们的想法是这样的：趁还有精力的时候首先要去最远的地方转转，”他说。Wang和我是最后到超市的。我们团体在“中国麦加”一共停了11分钟。
Until recently, Chinese people had abundant reasons not to roam for pleasure. Travelling in ancient China was arduous. As a proverb put it, “You can be comfortable at home for a thousand days, or step out the door and run right into trouble.” Confucius threw guilt into the mix: “While your parents are alive, it is better not to travel far away.” Nevertheless, ancient Buddhist monks visited India, and Zheng He, a fifteenth-century eunuch, famously sailed the emperor’s fleet as far as Africa, to “set eyes on barbarian regions.”
直到近来中国人还有很多理由不去为了娱乐而旅行。在古代中国，旅行是很不容易的，就像一句谚语说的那样，“在家千日好，出门一时难。”孔子给这种复杂的状况加上了道德的色彩：“父母在不远游。”然而古代的中国佛教徒就曾去印度学佛；十五世纪的时候，太监郑和指挥着这个帝国的舰队进行了一次著名的远航，这次航行最远抵达了非洲以“探索蛮荒”。
Over the centuries, Chinese migrants settled around the world, but Mao considered tourism anti-Socialist, so it wasn’t until 1978, after his death, that most Chinese gained approval to go abroad for anything other than work or study. First, they were permitted to visit relatives in Hong Kong, and, later, to tour Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia. In 1997, the government cleared the way for travellers to venture to other countries in a “planned, organized, and controlled manner.” (China doles out approvals with an eye to geopolitics. Vanuatu became an approved destination in 2005, after it agreed not to give diplomatic recognition to Taiwan.) Eighty per cent of first-time Chinese travellers went in groups, and they soon earned a reputation as passionate, if occasionally overwhelming, guests. At a Malaysian casino hotel in 2005, some three hundred Chinese visitors were issued special meal coupons bearing cartoon pig faces. The hotel said that the illustrations were simply to differentiate Chinese guests from Muslims, who don’t eat pork, but the offended Chinese tourists staged a sit-in, singing the national anthem.
数世纪以来，中国移民遍布全世界。但毛泽东认为旅游业对社会主义建设有害，所以直到1978年他逝世之后大多数中国人才获得非留学工作目的前往国外的许可。最初，政策允许他们前往香港探望亲戚，后来是台湾，新加坡和马来西亚。1997年，中国政府为那些想尝试出境旅行的人放开了道路，这种举措是以“有计划，有组织，可调控”的方式来进行的。（中国参考了地缘政治学的角度来批准出境许可。在南太平洋地区的岛国同意不从外交上承认台湾后，它们在2005年成为了获许的出境目的地。）80%首次出境旅行的中国人成团进入了这些地区，他们迅速获得了热情洋溢的好名声，不过有时候显然热情的有些过度了。2005年在一家马来西亚的赌场酒店，大约300名中国游客收到了特殊的就餐优惠券，上面印着卡通的猪脸。酒店称这种图样可以简单地将不吃猪肉的穆斯林和中国游客区分开，但这种做法激怒了中国游客。他们组织了一次静坐唱国歌的示威。
Most countries begin to send large numbers of tourists overseas only when the average citizen has a disposable income of five thousand dollars. But China—where urban residents are at barely half that level—has made travel affordable by booking tickets in bulk and bargaining mercilessly for hotels in distant suburbs. Last year, more than fifty-seven million Chinese people went abroad, ranking China third worldwide in international tourism. The World Tourism Organization predicts that before the end of the decade China will double that.
大多数国家仅在当市民的平均可支配收入达到5000美元时才会开始有大量出境旅行团。但中国的城镇居民仅勉强达到上述标准的一半水平，为了使旅行消费降低到能够支付的水平，中国人的做法是批量订票和在偏远郊区的旅馆就停宿费用进行凶狠的压价。去年超过5千7百万的中国人前往国外，这使得中国在世界范围内成为了国际旅游业排名第三的国家。世界旅游组织估计在十年后中国游客的数量将会翻倍。
Europe, initially, was an afterthought. In 2000, more Chinese tourists visited tiny Macao than visited all the countries of Europe combined. But gradually Chinese visitors began staking out a grand tour of their own design. Just as apparatchiks once flocked to Marx’s house, Chinese literature lovers began trooping to a muddy riverbank on the campus of Cambridge University to glimpse a specific stand of willow trees. Xu Zhimo, an adored early-twentieth-century poet who studied in the West, described the willows as “young brides in the setting sun.” When I passed through Cambridge not long ago, Chinese visitors were posing for pictures beside the river while other tourists streamed by. Wang Yixiong, a twenty-three-year-old physicist originally from Henan Province, was on his third visit to town, and this time he had brought a blushing economics student named Chen Si. “We fell in love with each other not long ago,” he told me. “Cambridge is a romantic place.”
欧洲起初只是占很小一部分。在2000年，去澳门那座小岛的中国游客人数比去欧洲所有国家的中国游客的总和还要多。但逐渐地中国游客开始自行计划他们的大计划。当共产党官员成群地前往马克思故居的时候，中国文学爱好者们开始向剑桥大学的那条泥泞的河堤进发。他们的目的是观看来那片徐志摩笔下的柳林。徐志摩是20世纪初期一位很受欢迎的中国诗人，他曾在西方学习过。徐志摩是这样描写这片柳林的：“夕阳中的新娘。”当不久前我路过剑桥的时候，看见一些中国游客正在河边摆姿势拍照，而其他的游客们则成群路过。Wang Yixiong是一个23岁的物理学家，原籍河南。这是他第三次造访这座城镇了，这次他带着一个脸色潮红的经济系学生，这姑娘名叫Chen Si。“我们不久前恋爱了，”他告诉我，“剑桥是一个充满浪漫气息的地方。”
The French hotel group Accor began adding Chinese television and Mandarin-speaking staff. Others were moving beds away from windows, as dictated by feng-shui. The more the Chinese went to Europe, the cheaper tours became. By 2009, a British travel-industry report had concluded that “Europe” was such a successful “single, unified” brand in China that individual countries would be wise to put aside pride and delay promoting “sub-brands” such as France or Italy. Europe was less a region on the map than a state of mind, and bundling as many countries as possible into a single week appealed to workers with precious few opportunities to travel. “In China, if you can get ten things for a hundred dollars, that’s still better than getting one thing for a hundred dollars,” Li said.
法国雅高集团的酒店开始增设中国电视机和讲普通话的工作人员。其他的酒店则根据风水的观念开始把床从窗边移开。中国游客来欧洲越多，旅行的价格就越便宜。到2009年为止，一份英国旅游产业报告声称“欧洲”在中国是一个成功的“整体性，一体化”的品牌，因此对于单个欧洲国家最明智的做法是放下身段和延缓推广如法国或意大利之类的“子品牌”。欧洲与其说是地图上的一个区域还不如说是一种思想精神，而且将尽可能多的国家捆绑在一起的一周时间对于那些很少有机会旅行的劳动者来说非常有吸引力。“在中国，如果你能花100美元干10件事要比花100美元干一件事好的多。”Li说。
I strolled back to the bus from Marx’s house with a young couple from Shanghai: Guo Yanjin, a relaxed twenty-nine-year-old who called herself Karen and worked in the finance department of an auto-parts company, and her husband, Gu Xiaojie, an administrative clerk in the department of environmental sanitation, who went by the English name Handy. He had an easy charm and the build of a lineman, six feet tall and barrel-chested. His sweater was maroon and bore an appliqué of a golf bag, but when I asked if he was a golfer he laughed. “Golf is a rich man’s game,” he said.
离开马克思故居后我和一对年轻夫妇溜达回车上，这对夫妇来自上海，妻子Guo Yanjin在一家汽车零部件公司的财务部门工作，她29岁，看起来很放松，她称呼自己为Karen；她的丈夫Gu Xiaojie是环境卫生部门的行政职员，他的英文名字是Handy。Gu Xiaojie有着一种很舒适的魅力，他身高6英尺，胸肌发达，看起来像个前锋一般。他穿了件栗色运动衫，带了个贴花高尔夫球袋，不过当我问他是否是个高尔夫球员时他笑了。“高尔夫是有钱人的游戏。”他说。
Handy and Karen had saved up for months for this trip and also received a boost from their parents. Guide Li had urged us not to ruin our vacations by worrying too much about money—he suggested that we pretend the price tags were in yuan instead of euros—but Handy and Karen kept an eye on every cent. Within a few days, they could tell me exactly how much we’d spent on each bottle of water in five countries.
Handy and Karen为这次旅行存了好几个月的钱，他们也得到了父母的支持。Li导游曾劝过我们不要因为过多担心钱的问题而毁掉假期——他建议我们假装价格标签上的数字单位是元而不是欧元——但Handy and Karen对于每一分钱两个人都很关注。在几天内，他们能准确地告诉我5个国家里我们买的每瓶水的价钱。
Back on the gold bus, rolling west across the wintry scrub of Champagne-Ardenne, Li wanted to add an important exception to his demands for efficiency. “We have to get used to the fact that Europeans sometimes move slowly,” he said. When shopping in China, he went on, “we’re accustomed to three of us putting our items on the counter at the same time, and then the old lady gives change to three people without making a mistake. Europeans don’t do that.” He continued, “I’m not saying that they’re stupid. If they were, they wouldn’t have developed all this technology, which requires very subtle calculations. They just deal with math in a different way.”
回到金色大巴上，我们一路穿过香槟阿登的冬季灌木丛向西驶去，Li想给自己高效率的风格上添加点例外。“我们得习惯有时候欧洲人做事很慢，”他说。当在中国购物的时候，他继续说，“我们习惯在收银台上同时放三个人的东西，收银的老太太可以毫无错误地同时找给三个人零钱。欧洲人并不这么干。”他说，“我不是说他们很愚蠢。如果愚蠢的话他们也不可能研发出那些需要非常精密计算的技术。他们只是用不同的方式来处理数学问题。”
He ended with some advice: “Let them do things their way, because if we’re rushing then they’ll feel rushed, and that will put them in a bad mood, and then we’ll think that they’re discriminating against us, which is not necessarily the case.”
他用建议结束了自己的话：“就让他们用自己的方式做事吧，因为如果我们蜂拥过去的话他们会感到很匆忙而情绪不好，那样的话我们就觉得他们存在歧视，不过实际上根本不是那么回事。
At times, he marvelled at Europe’s high standard of living—bombarding us with statistics on the price of Bordeaux wines or the average height of a well-fed Dutchman—but, if there was ever a time when Chinese visitors marvelled at Europe’s economy, this was not that time. Li made a great show of acting out a Mediterranean life style: “Wake up slowly, brush teeth, make a cup of espresso, take in the aroma.” The crowd laughed. “With a pace like that, how can their economies keep growing? It’s impossible.” He added, “In this world, only when you have diligent, hardworking people will the nation’s economy grow.”
他不时地会惊叹于欧洲的高生活标准——波尔多葡萄酒的价格和营养良好的荷兰人的平均身高这些数据让我们目瞪口呆——但如果有中国游客惊叹于欧洲的经济（这次没有），Li会表现出地中海风格的精彩表现：“睡懒觉，刷牙，弄一杯浓咖啡，呼吸一下香味。”人们轰笑。“就这样的效率，他们的经济怎么可能保持增长？根本不可能。”他补充说，“在这个世界上，只有勤劳刻苦的人民才能使国家经济增长。”
I dozed off, and awoke on the outskirts of Paris. We followed the Seine west and passed the Musée d’Orsay just as the sun bore through the clouds. Li shouted, “Feel the openness of the city!” Cameras whirred, and he pointed out that central Paris had no skyscrapers. “In Shanghai, unless you’re standing right next to the Huangpu River, you can’t get any sense of the city, because there are too many tall buildings.” Europeans, he added, “preserve anything old and valuable.”
我打着瞌睡，到了巴黎市郊醒了过来。我们沿着塞纳河向西，通过了奥塞博物馆，这时候太阳从云层中露了出来。Li喊叫，“感受一下这个城市的开放吧！”摄像机拍摄着周围，他指出巴黎中心是没有摩天大厦的。“在上海，除非站在黄浦江边，你根本看不到城市的任何风景，因为高楼大厦太多了。”欧洲人，他补充说，“把所有古老和有价值的东西都保存了下来。”
At a dock beside the Pont de l’Alma, we boarded a double-decker boat, and as it chugged upriver I chatted with Zhu Zhongming, a forty-six-year-old accountant who was travelling with his wife and daughter. He had grown up in Shanghai and had ventured into real estate just as the local market was surging. “Whenever you bought something, you could make a ton of money,” he said. He was charismatic, with large dimpled cheeks framing a permanent, mischievous smile, and he’d been going abroad since 2004, so others in the group deferred to him. He was drawn to Europe, above all, because of “culture.” (In Chinese surveys, “culture” often leads the list of terms that people associate with Europe. On the negative side, top results include “arrogant” and “poor-quality Chinese food.”)
在阿尔玛桥一侧的码头，我们登上了一艘双层船，当它扎扎作响地向河上游驶去的时候我同Zhu Zhongming聊了起来。他是个46岁的会计，和他妻子女儿出来旅游的。他在上海长大，在本地市场开始兴起的时候他冒险闯入了房地产市场。“那时不管你买点什么，都能挣许多钱。”他说。他有着种领导者气质，有着很大的酒窝的脸看起来像永远在恶作剧般微笑。他自从2004年就去过国外，所以团体中其他人都比较听从他。吸引他来到欧洲的最主要因素是“文化”。（在中国的调查中，此处的“文化”通常与人们联想到欧洲的一些因素相关。从不好的一面来说，最多的结果包括“傲慢”和“劣质中餐”。
The boat reached Pont Sully, and turned slowly against the whitecaps on the Seine to head back downriver. Zhu said that Chinese interest in Europe contained a deeply personal motivation: “When Europe was ruling the world, China was strong as well. So why did we fall behind? We’ve been thinking about that ever since.” Indeed, the question of why a civilization that had printing six hundred years before Gutenberg slumped in the fifteenth century runs like a central nerve through China’s analysis of its past and its prospects for a return to greatness. Zhu offered an explanation: “Once we were invaded, we didn’t respond quickly enough.” It was a narrative of victimhood and decline that I’d often heard in China. (Historians also tend to blame the stifling effects of bureaucracy and authoritarianism, among other factors.) But Zhu did not trace all of China’s troubles to foreign invaders. “We cast aside our three core ideas—Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism—and that was a mistake. We were taught Marxist revolutionary ideas from 1949 to 1978.” He paused and watched his wife and daughter snapping photographs at the railing, an orange sun sinking into the city beyond them. “We spent thirty years on what we now know was a disaster,” he said.
船抵达了苏利桥后缓缓掉头，在塞纳河浪花的白沫驶向了下游。Zhu说中国人对欧洲的兴趣中包含了一个很深的个人动机：“当欧洲统治世界的时候，中国也很强大。为什么我们会落在后面？我们一直在思考着这个问题。”确实，一个领先15世纪的古登堡600年的文明为什么出现这种情况，这个问题像中枢神经一样贯穿了中国对过去的分析和对未来复兴的展望。Zhu提供了一个答案：“当我们被侵略的时候，我们没有足够及时地反应过来。”这种受害人角度和衰退的言论我经常在中国听到。（历史学家们也倾向于将其归结于诸多因素中的官僚主义和权力主义的压抑性后果。）但Zhu没有把中国的所有问题都推脱给外国侵略因素。“我们把我们原有的三个精神内核—佛家，道家和儒家—给抛弃了，这是个错误。从1949年到1978年我们接受了马克思革命思想教育。”他停下来看自己的妻子和女儿在栏杆处拍摄，橙色的太阳在他们的远处沉入了城市中。“我们花费了30年时间来发现这是种灾难性失败。”
he boat docked, and we headed to dinner, walking through the crowds and din of the city for the first time. Karen hugged Handy’s arm, their heads swivelling. We followed Li into a small Chinese storefront, down a flight of stairs, and into a hot, claustrophobic hallway flanked by windowless rooms jammed with Chinese diners. It was a hive of activity invisible from the street, a parallel Paris. There were no empty seats, so Li motioned for us to continue out the back door, where we turned left and entered a second restaurant, also Chinese. Down another staircase, into another windowless room, where dishes arrived: pork braised in brown sauce, bok choy, egg-drop soup, spicy chicken.
船靠岸了，我们首次步行通过这座城市的喧嚣，前去吃晚餐。Karen挽着Handy的胳膊，他们在四下看着。跟着Li我们走进一家很小的中国店面，走下一段楼梯，进入了一个又闷又热的走廊。走廊的侧面是一些没有窗子的房间，里面拥挤着中国用餐者。这是个站在街道上发现不了的“蜂窝”，另一个平行的巴黎。没有空位子了，Li示意我们从后门走出去。出了门我们向左拐进了第二家餐馆，这里也是中国餐馆。差不多同样的一条楼梯，一间没有窗子的房间，不过在这里我们吃上了饭：上了棕褐色酱油炖熟的猪肉，白菜，蛋花汤，辣子鸡。
Twenty minutes later, we climbed the stairs out into the night, hustling after Li down the block to the Galeries Lafayette, the ten-story department store on the Boulevard Haussmann. The store appeared happily poised for an onslaught from the East: it was decked in red bunting and cartoon bunnies for the Year of the Rabbit. We received Chinese-language welcome cards promising happiness, longevity, and a ten-per-cent discount. On the sixth floor, a restaurant called Sichuan Panda was serving dinner.
20分钟后，我们从楼梯上去离开餐馆，走进了夜晚。推挤着跟着Li沿着街道走向老佛爷百货，这座10层的百货商店位于奥斯曼大道。这座商店似乎镇静而快乐地迎接了来自东方的猛烈攻击：因为兔年的原因商店用红色旗帜和卡通兔装饰着。我们收到了祝愿幸福、长寿的中文欢迎卡片和10%的折扣。在第六层，一家叫做四川熊猫的餐馆正在提供晚餐。
Our group moved with purpose. Promise and his parents, followed by Zhu Zhongming and family, turned right, after the Rolex counter, and headed into a luminous Louis Vuitton boutique. A corps of Mandarin-speaking salesgirls, in matching neckerchiefs, worked the counters. On average, a Chinese tourist buys more than a thousand dollars’ worth of tax-free stuff abroad—more luxury bags, watches, and designer clothes than any other nationality, including the Japanese, according to Global Blue, the tax-free-shopping refund service. Chinese tourists abroad spend nearly twice as much on shopping as they do on hotel rooms. Several in our group told me how sorry they were that we weren’t stopping at a place called Aotelaise. The name baffled me. Someone explained that it’s a new Chinese word: “outlets.”
我们团体非常有目的性地行进着。Promise和他父母以及后面跟着的Zhu Zhongming一家向右走去，在逛过了劳力士柜台后走进了一家富丽堂皇的路易威登精品店。一群讲普通话，戴着同样围巾的售货女孩运作着柜台。根据环球蓝联这家免税购物退税服务机构的调查，平均来讲，一个中国游客在国外会买价值超过1000美元的免税商品；相比其他国家包括日本游客，他会购买更多的豪华包，手表和名牌服装。中国海外游客在购物上消费的金额是在旅馆房间消费金额的两倍。我们团中的一些人告诉我他们很遗憾没有在一个叫Aotelaise的地方停车。这个名字把我搞糊涂了。有人解释说这是个汉语新词：“品牌直销购物中心。”
Promise’s mother, Li Ying, pulled out a stack of printouts bearing photographs and model numbers of purses. She tried one after another, swaying back and forth before the mirror, frowning at her reflection. Handy and Karen took one look at the prices and kept walking. Zhu Zhongming urged Li Ying to find a bag with “more nobility.” “That one looks like the same junk we have on the mainland,” he said. She tried a large bag called the Artsy, which cost about fourteen hundred dollars. It had a tan strap and miniature “LV”s tattooed across its chocolate hide. “What do you think?” she asked, and everyone nodded. “I’ll take it.”
Promise的母亲Li Ying掏出一叠印着照片和钱包号码的复印纸.她试了一件又一件，在镜子前后晃动，冲着镜子中的自己皱眉。Handy and Karen看看价格就继续溜达了。Zhu Zhongming催促Li Ying买个更“贵族”的。“那个包看起来就像我们在大陆买的廉价货，”他说。她试了个很大的Artsy包，这个包大概值1400美元。咖啡色皮革包上有块鞣革的小LV标志。“你觉得怎么样？”她问，每个人都点点头。“我要这个了。”
That night, we stayed at a hotel in the suburbs called the Dream Castle. It had coats of arms in the lobby and a giant statue of a king in flowing robes.
那天晚上，我们呆在市郊的旅馆里。这家叫梦幻城堡的旅馆大厅里摆设着盾形纹章和一个巨大的，穿着丝滑长袍的国王雕像。
En route to the Eiffel Tower, the next morning, we passed a group of African street venders, and Li mentioned that the city is a magnet for illegal immigrants. “They don’t have a hukou,” he said—the document needed to live permanently in a Chinese city. “Why haven’t they been arrested? Because it’s exhausting to arrest them, feed them, and send them home, when they’ll fly right back again tomorrow.” I didn’t sense overwhelming sympathy. The Chinese have been the world’s most abundant migrants, but these days many believe that they have better job prospects at home than abroad. Li joked that Americans and Europeans should be more concerned about Chinese visitors buying up prime real estate. “The European economy is in decline,” he said bluntly. “Times have changed.”
第二天早上路过了埃菲尔铁塔，我们经过了一群非裔的街道小贩。Li介绍说这个城市就像块磁铁般吸引着非法移民。“他们没有户口，”他说，户口是在中国城市永久居住所需要的一种证件。“不逮捕他们是因为要逮捕他们费时费力而且还要给他们提供食物、把他们送回去，而且第二天他们就又飞回来了。”在话里我没感觉到太多的同情。中国的移民数量是世界上最多的，但现在许多人认为国内有比国外更好的工作发展前景。Li开玩笑说美国人和欧洲人应该更多地关注中国游客收购优质地产的情况。“欧洲的经济正在变得萧条，”他很直率地说，“时代已经变了。”
He pointed out the grounds of the French Parliament, which he said had been the site of a recent protest against raising the retirement age, a protest that he found baffling. “Can a place where workers go on strike every day grow economically? Certainly not,” he said. “People here are strangely used to it. Their laws on public demonstrations are very mature. As long as you apply to the government, you have the right to protest on a predetermined route.” This is their “routine way of demanding their rights,” he said, though he didn’t think it was good for tourism. “You can be stuck at one spot for four hours because the streets are blocked. I hope that you all will never encounter a terrible situation like that.”
他指着法国议院的一处地方，说那里是最近一次抗议提高退休年龄的集会所在地。他对这此抗议活动很感困惑。“一个天天工人都在罢工的地方的经济会增长吗，肯定不会，”他说。“不能理解的是这里的人都对此习以为常了。他们针对公共游行的法律非常不成熟。只要向政府申请，你就有权利在预定的路线上举行抗议活动。”这是他们“习惯的权利诉求方式，”他说，尽管他不觉得这对旅游业来说是件好事情。“有可能因为接到被堵塞你不得不在一个景点被堵上4个小时。我希望大家都永远不要遇上那样可怕的情况。”
By midmorning, we were done with the Eiffel Tower and had set off for Versailles. A Chinese-speaking guide met us at the palace gate and led us upstairs. In one of Marie Antoinette’s chambers, the Salon des Nobles de la Reine, he pointed out a blue vase of “beautiful Chinese porcelain, which was stolen from us and brought here.” The Hall of Mirrors, he said, was host not only to royal galas but also to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, in June, 1919—a notorious document in Chinese history, because it allowed German territory in Shandong Province to be placed under Japanese control.
到半中午的时候，我们逛完了埃菲尔铁塔，出发前往凡尔赛。一个讲中文的导游在宫殿的门口遇见了我们，他领着我们上了楼梯。在玛丽@安托瓦内特的一间厢房中，这位贵族沙龙皇后，他指示着一个蓝色的“魅力的中国瓷器”花瓶，这花瓶是被从中国抢走并运到这里的。”镜厅，他说，不仅对皇家节日中的客人开放，而且也是1919年6月凡尔赛条约的签署地。这是份在中国历史中臭名昭著的条约，因为它允许日本取代德国来控制山东省。
At the Louvre, we picked up another Chinese-speaking guide, a hummingbird of a woman, who shouted, “We have lots to see in ninety minutes, so we need to pick up our feet!” She darted ahead beneath a furled purple umbrella, which she used as a rallying flag, and without breaking stride she taught us some French using Chinese sounds: bonjour could be approximated by pronouncing the Chinese characters ben and zhu, which mean, fittingly, “to chase someone.” We raced after her through the turnstile, and Wang Zhenyu, the pants manufacturer, tried out his new French on the security guard: “Ben zhu, ben zhu! ”
在卢浮宫，我们有了另一位讲中文的导游，这是个讲话像蜂鸟般迅速的女性，她喊叫着，“我们在这90分钟内有很多东西要看，所以大家要跟上队伍！”她走的飞快，手里还拿着把紫色的伞；伞没有打开，她把伞当成集合队伍的旗帜来用，脚步丝毫不乱。她交给我们一些用中文拼音讲的法语：bonjour（你好）可以用中文的“笨”和“猪”大致来发音，这句话的意思也很切合，“to chase someone.”我们跟在她后面奔跑着穿过了十字转门，裤子生产商Wang Zhenyu对保安试验了他新学习的法语：“笨猪，笨猪！”
The guide advised us to focus most on the san bao—the three treasures—the Winged Victory of Samothrace, the Venus de Milo, and the Mona Lisa. We crowded around each in turn, flanked by other Chinese tour groups as identifiable as rival armies: red pins for the U-Tour travel agency, orange windbreakers for the students from Shenzhen. We’d been going non-stop since before dawn, but the air was charged with diligent curiosity. When we discovered that the elevators were a long detour from our route, I wondered how Huang Xueqing, in her wheelchair, would get to see much of the museum. Then her relatives carried her chair while she hobbled up and down each marble stairway, and rolled her in front of the masterpieces.
这个导游建议我们把游览的重点放在三宝上，所谓三宝就是带翅膀的萨摩塔斯女神像、爱神维纳斯雕像和蒙娜丽莎。我们拥挤着轮流观看，身边是敌军般虎视眈眈的其他中国旅游团：红色别针的是U-Tour旅行社，橙色防风上衣的是来自深圳的学生。在傍晚来临前我们一会儿也没歇着，但团体中充满了很勤奋的好奇情绪。当我们发现电梯对于我们的路线来说绕路太远，我很好奇Huang Xueqing坐着轮椅该怎么样来游览博物馆。遇到大理石楼梯的时候她的亲戚们就会抬着她的椅子，她就不时颠簸着来到每个杰作前。
By nightfall, another day of touring Europe’s finest sights had kindled a sense of appreciation, albeit with a competitive streak. While we waited for tables—at a Chinese restaurant—Zhu brought up the Zhou dynasty (1046-256 B.C.), the era that produced Confucius, Lao-tzu, and other pillars of Chinese thought. “Back then, we were damn good!” Zhu told a group of us. His wife, Wang Jianxin, rolled her eyes. “Here you go again, always talking about the same thing,” she said. Zhu was wearing a recently purchased Eiffel Tower baseball cap with blinking battery-powered lights. He turned to me in search of a fresh audience. “Really, during the Zhou dynasty we were practically the same as ancient Rome or Egypt!”
到傍晚的时候，游览欧洲最美风景的一天让大家产生了满意的感觉，尽管这种感觉还带着竞争意识。我们在一家中餐店等待晚餐的时候，Zhu提及了周朝(1046-256 B.C.)，这个朝代里产生了孔子，老子和其他中国核心思想。“比起那时，我们现在真的生活不错。” Zhu对我们大家说。他妻子Wang Jianxin翻翻眼睛，“你又来了，总是说这些,”她说。Zhu戴着顶最近买的印着埃菲尔铁塔的棒球帽，帽子上装饰着电池供电的小灯。他向我扭过头想找个新听众。“真的，在周朝的时候我们实际上和古代罗马或埃及差不多。”
His wife peered toward the dining room. “How long are we going to have to wait?” she asked. Someone joked that we might do better at McDonald’s, which gave Promise something new to consider. “Does Beijing have the biggest McDonald’s in the world?” he asked me. I wasn’t sure, but Zhu was certain. “The one by the Grand Hyatt—it’s enormous!” he said.
他妻子望着餐厅。“我们要等多久啊？”她问。有人开玩笑说我们可能去麦当劳会更好。这话让Promise有了新想法。“北京有着世界上最大的麦当劳吗？”他问我。我不清楚，但Zhu很肯定。“君悦酒店旁边的那个，非常的大！”他说。
The Grand Tour has been a tradition of newly rich countries ever since young British aristocrats took to the Continent in the eighteenth century, picking up languages, antiques, and venereal disease. Once the railroad arrived, in the mid-nineteenth century, large numbers of Britain’s ballooning middle class followed—“lesser men with less fortunes,” suddenly free to “tumble down the Alps in living avalanches,” in the sniffy words of Lord Normanby, the future British Ambassador to France.
观光旅游一直是新富国家的传统，它自从18世纪英国年轻贵族前往新大陆就开始了，这些年轻人去那里学习语言，搞点古董以及染上性病。铁路时代来到后，在19世纪中期，大量英国中产阶级——跟随着“较少的穷人，”突然能自由地“在活生生的雪崩中推倒阿尔卑斯山脉”。这是不久后成为出使法国的英国大使诺曼比勋爵那些自命不凡的原话。
The railroad made it possible for schoolteachers, engineers, and civil servants to go from London to the Alps in less than twenty-four hours, instead of spending weeks in a stagecoach, according to “The Smell of the Continent,” a history of Victorian travel by Richard Mullen and James Munson. In Switzerland, the Londoners and, later, the Americans savored the fresh air, but they found much to complain about elsewhere: Henry James saw Venice as nothing but a “battered peep-show and bazaar.” Everyone complained, above all, about the food: French dishes “stewed in grease” and breakfasts consisting of nothing more “than a thimbleful of coffee or chocolate and a morsel of bread.” Mark Twain, whose 1867 trip to Europe and the eastern Mediterranean produced “The Innocents Abroad,” described American tourists “who talked very loudly and coarsely, and laughed boisterously when all others were so quiet and well behaved.” But, through it all, the journeys changed the travellers in powerful ways. As Samuel Rogers, the English poet, put it, travel sowed in them “doubt of our own exclusive merits.”
铁路使得教师、工程师和文职人员能在24小时内从伦敦前往阿尔卑斯山脉而不必在驿马车中花费数周的时间——这是《The Smell of the Continent》的说法。这本书介绍了维多利亚时代旅游的历史，作者是Richard Mullen和James Munson。在瑞士，伦敦人和稍后的美国人给这里的新鲜空气增添了别样的风味，但他们也对其他地方也抱怨了很多：Henry James认为威尼斯不过是个“打碎了的西洋景儿和集市”。每个人都抱怨食物：法国饭菜“用黄油炖”而且早餐仅仅是一点儿咖啡或巧克力和一口面包。”这是马克吐温的说法。他1867年欧洲和地中海东部旅游中写了《傻子出国记》，这本书描写了美国游客“在他人保持安静和良好的举止的时候说话声音很大还很粗俗，而且笑的很大声。”但尽管如此，旅行在很多有影响的方面改变了旅客。像英国诗人Samuel Rogers说的那样，旅游在他们中播下了“两倍的我们特有长处。”
By the fourth day on the road, we no longer thought twice about riding three hours in the morning and another three in the afternoon, separated by cultural excursions. When we stopped for snacks and bathroom visits, we spoke to nobody outside our ranks. We were as mobile and self-contained as a cruise ship. On a map, our route resembled the Big Dipper; it started in Germany and looped through Luxembourg and into Paris, before a long southerly swoop through France, over the Alps, and down into Italy as far as Rome. It might have ended there, but instead it did an about-face and doubled back to Milan, for the flight home. (“Every route is largely determined by the plane tickets,” Li explained to me. Wherever the cheapest flights are on a given day, Chinese tours see opportunity.)
到旅程的第四天，我们不再考虑早上和下午各三个小时、而且中间还间隔人文游览的车程。当我们停车就餐和上卫生间的时候，我们不和团体外的人说话。我们就像个机器或自动行驶的游轮一样。在地图上，我们的路线看起来像北斗七星；从德国开始，在卢森堡转了个圈进入巴黎，经过一个向南的俯冲穿过了法国，然后越过阿尔卑斯山脉，来到了意大利，在这里我们最远走到罗马。”本来在这里就结束了，但它转过头原路返回来到了米兰来乘坐回程航班。（“所有的旅程很大程度上是由航班机票决定的，”Li对我解释。无论是哪里的最便宜预定日期机票，中国旅行团都会从中看到机会。）
The bus had a DVD player, and as we embarked on the seven-hour drive from Paris to the Alps Li put on “Sissi” (1955), an Austrian romantic drama about Princess Elisabeth of Bavaria. The movie was heavy on verdant hillsides, ballroom gowns, and surging orchestral music. Sissi had been dubbed into Chinese (“Nihao, Franz! ”), and it was a hit with the parents, who remembered when “Sissi” was a sensation on Chinese television, in the eighties. But she didn’t attract much interest from the teen-agers on the bus, and, from his backpack, Promise pulled out a crumpled edition of the Wall Street Journal that he’d picked up at the hotel in Luxembourg. He studied each page in silence and elbowed me for help when he came across a headline related to China: “EU FINDS HUAWEI GOT STATE SUPPORT.” The story said that European trade officials believed that the big Chinese technology company Huawei was receiving unfairly cheap loans from state banks. “Does the American Constitution prevent companies from receiving government support?” Promise asked.
车上装了个DVD播放器，我们从巴黎开往阿尔卑斯山脉需要七个小时，Li播放了《茜茜公主》(1955)，这是部关于巴伐利亚的伊丽莎白公主的奥地利浪漫剧。这电影中充满了青翠山麗，舞会礼服，汹涌的管弦音乐。茜茜公主被用中文配了音（“你好，弗朗兹！”），这片子对父母们来说是个惊奇，他们想起了在八十年代中国电视历史中《茜茜公主》有着轰动性的影响。但她没有吸引到汽车内年轻人的太多注意，Promise从他背包里掏出本皱巴巴的《华尔街日报》，这是他从卢森堡旅馆房间里拿的。他沉默地研究着每一页，在他看到一个涉及到中国的标题的时候用肘碰碰我：“欧盟发现华为获得国家资助。”这篇文章称欧洲贸易官员相信华为这个很大的中国技术公司正从国家银行中获得有失公平的贷款。“美国宪法禁止公司接受政府资助吗？” Promise问。
Sissi had a whole trilogy to her name, unfortunately, and we soldiered on to a second DVD. I asked Promise if he used Facebook, which is officially blocked in China but reachable with some tinkering. “It’s too much of a hassle to get to it,” he said. Instead, he uses Renren, a Chinese version, which, like other domestic sites, censors any sensitive political discussion. I asked what he knew about Facebook’s being blocked. “It has something to do with politics,” he said, and paused. “But the truth is I don’t really know.” I recognized that kind of remove among other urbane Chinese students. They have unprecedented access to technology and information, but the barriers erected by the state are just large enough to keep many people from bothering to outwit them. The information that filtered through was erratic: Promise could talk to me at length about the latest Sophie Marceau film or the merits of various Swiss race-car drivers, but the news of Facebook’s role in the Arab uprisings had not reached him.
《茜茜公主》这片子很不幸是三部曲，我们不得不坚持到了第二本DVD。我问Promise他是否使用Facebook，在中国它被官方屏蔽掉了，但用一些tinkering可以访问。“太麻烦了，”他说。他用的是人人，这是个中国的版本，像其他国内站点一样它会审查任何敏感性的政治讨论。我问他是否知道Facebook被屏蔽掉了。“这和政治有关，”他说，停顿了下。“但事实上我不太清楚。”我看出了这种存在于文雅的中国学生中的疏离感。他们现在有着空前的与信息和技术接触的渠道，但政府设置的巨大阻碍同样也使得许多人感到过于麻烦而不去克服。过滤过的信息是很不固定的：Promise能同我能就苏菲玛索的最新电影或者各个瑞士赛车选手的特长谈论很长时间，但他没有接触到Facebook上关于阿拉伯社会动荡的新闻。
We stayed in the Swiss town of Interlaken, where Li had promised us “truly clean air,” a treat for residents of any large Chinese city. I stepped outside to look around town with Zheng Dao and her daughter Li Cheng, a nineteen-year-old art major. We strolled past luxury watch shops, a casino, and the H?hematte, a vast green that hosts yodelling and Swiss wrestling events. Midway through the trip, the daughter was politely unmoved. “Other than different buildings, the Seine didn’t look all that different from the Huangpu,” she said. “Subway? We have a subway. You name it, we’ve got it.” She laughed.
我们停在瑞士因特拉肯镇，在这里Li许诺给我们“真正的干净空气，”这对于任何中国大城市居民来说都是种享受。我，Zheng Dao和她女儿Li Cheng一起出来在小镇周围溜达溜达，Li Cheng是个19岁的艺术专业学生。我们逛过了家卖昂贵手表的商店、一家赌场和一家H?hematte——这是片很大的草地，用来唱岳得尔调和举行瑞士摔跤等活动。旅行进行了一半，但Li Cheng很委婉地表示没什么深刻印象，“除了建筑不同，塞纳河看起来和黄浦江没有什么两样，”她说，“地铁？我们有一条地铁了。只要你能说出来，我们就有。”她笑起来。
As Li Cheng walked on ahead with friends, her mother told me that she wants her daughter to see differences between China and the West that run deeper than “hardware.” Our guide had mocked Europe’s stately pace, but Zheng said her countrymen have come to believe that “if you don’t elbow your way on to everything you’ll be last.” A car paused for us at a crosswalk, and Zheng drew a contrast: Drivers at home think, “I can’t pause. Otherwise, I’ll never get anywhere,” she said.
在Li Cheng和她的朋友们走在前面的时候，她母亲告诉我她希望女儿能看到除了“硬件”之外，中国和欧洲之间的不同。我们导游曾经嘲笑过欧洲的缓慢庄重的速度，但Zheng说她的同胞们现在相信“如果你不争，那么你什么也得不到。”在一处十字路口一辆车为我们停了下来，Zheng做了个对比：中国司机会想，“我不能停车，否则我哪儿也不能去了。”
Not far from Interlaken, we boarded a train that inched up a snowy mountain, bound for an Alpine saddle between the peaks known as the Jungfraujoch. Skiers, flushed and sweaty in fluorescent powder suits, swooshed by, shouting in German and French. We were dressed for train travel, not mountaineering: Liu Yang was in leather thigh-high boots; Li Cheng wore a white furry hat in the shape of a polar bear, paws reaching down to warm her chin. We chuckled at the Europeans.
在距离因特拉肯不远，我们登上了一列火车。在雪山中火车缓缓向上，在圣女峰间的阿尔卑斯安鞍状山脊上移动着。穿着荧光服的滑雪者脸色通红汗流浃背地从附近掠过，用德语和法语大声叫喊。我们穿着适合火车旅行而不是登山的服装: Liu Yang穿着齐膝的皮靴；Li Cheng戴了个北极熊形状的白色皮帽，熊爪子伸下来暖住她的脸。我们对着那些欧洲人露出笑容。
The train let us off at a spacious lodge with restaurants and brilliant views of peaks and valleys that stretched to the Black Forest. We ate lunch at 11,388 feet—the Bernese Alps, the Aletsch Glacier, chow mein and spring rolls. The gift shop was overpriced, so Handy and Karen bought a single postcard and mailed it to themselves as a souvenir.
火车把我们放在了一处宽阔的地方，这里有饭店和寥廓而美丽的山峰和峡谷风景，这些景致一直延伸到幽暗黛郁的深林处。我们在伯尔尼兹山阿莱奇峰海拔11,388英尺的高度吃了午餐——炒面和春卷。特产商店的东西价格很高，所以Handy and Karen买了一张明信片并邮给了自己作为纪念品。
Milan was cold and clear when we arrived the next day. Li said the climate accounted for “why foreigners love to bask in the sun.” Pursuing a tan is anathema in China, where women vigilantly cover their skin to avoid the bronze of a laborer. “Westerners’ skin will turn red and then quickly turn white again,” he said. He went on, “After someone has turned red, he can go back and show others, and they will know that he’s been travelling on vacation.” China was so isolated for so long that stereotypes about outsiders have an especially long half-life. Li peppered his lectures with his observations: South Koreans have square jaws, Western men are covered in short, dark hair, and Italian men grow long eyelashes, which they “flutter like fans” at unsuspecting women.
我们第二天到达米兰的时候，这座城市寒冷而清澈。Li说这里的气候是“外国人喜欢晒太阳”的原因。在中国晒成棕褐色是不受欢迎的，女性很警觉地遮盖住自己的皮肤来防止晒成体力劳动者的古铜色。而“西方人”的皮肤会变红然后很快重新变白，”他说。“在变红之后，他可以回去向其他人展示，这样别人就知道他刚去旅行度假了。”中国与世隔绝了太长时间了，所以那些关于外国人的陈词滥调一直有着很旺盛的生命力。Li滔滔不绝地介绍着他的观察心得：韩国人下巴很方，西方男人的头发短，颜色比较深，意大利男人有着长长的眼睫毛，当面对没有防备的女性时，他们的眼睫毛“呼扇的像扇子似的”。
We had thirty minutes to wander in downtown Milan, so Karen and Handy and I stepped into the cool interior of the Duomo. Handy peered up at soaring sheets of stained glass. “That looks exhausting,” he said. “But it’s beautiful.” A few hours earlier, Li had reminded us again to be on guard against thieves, but Handy said, “Italy is not as chaotic as they made it seem. It sounded really terrifying.” He was a sanitation specialist by training, and he couldn’t help but notice Milan’s abundant graffiti and overstuffed trash bins. As Li had explained it, “The government wants to clean, but it doesn’t have enough money.” Handy tried to be polite, but he said, “If it was like this in Shanghai, old folks would be calling us all afternoon to complain.”
我们有30分钟的时间游览米兰商业区，Karen and Handy和我走进寒冷的杜奥莫大教堂中。Handy向上凝视着那些飞扬的涂彩玻璃。“看起来很累，”他说，“不过很漂亮。”几小时前，Li再次提醒我们提防小偷，但Handy 说，“意大利不像他们说的那么乱，那听起来很吓人。”他是个专业的环境专家所以忍不住注意米兰的大量涂鸦和塞的过满的垃圾箱。像Li解释过的那样，“政府想清洁，但没足够的钱。” Handy试着表现的比较礼貌，但他说，“如果上海出现这种情况的话，老人们会给我们打一个下午的电话。”
The Italian papers were full of news that Prime Minister Berlusconi was about to be charged with sleeping with a teen-ager. Li was diplomatic. “What a unique man he is!” he said. The drive across Italy that day had put him in a reflective mood about life at home. “You might wonder now and then whether it would be good to promote democracy,” he said. “Of course, there are benefits: people enjoy freedom of speech and the freedom to elect politicians. But doesn’t the one-party system have its benefits, too?” He pointed out the window to the highway and said that it had taken decades for Italy to build it, because of local opposition. “If this were China, it would be done in six months! And that’s the only way to keep the economy growing.” Li was so boosterish that I might have taken him for a government spokesman, except that his comments were familiar from ordinary conversations in Beijing. “Analysts overseas can never understand why the Chinese economy has grown so fast,” he said. “Yes, it’s a one-party state, but the administrators are selected from among the élites, and élites picked from 1.3 billion people might as well be called super-élites.”
意大利报纸上充满了总理贝卢斯科尼将因为同一个未成年女孩发生性关系而被指控的新闻。Li对此表现的很有外交风格。“这男的真是少有！”他说。那天驾车穿过意大利的司机让他沉浸在一种同中国生活对比的情绪中。“你可能不时地会考虑促进民主是否有益，”他说。“当然，肯定会有好处：人民享受着言论自由而且可以自由地选举政治领袖。但独党执政体制就没有它的好处了吗？”他指着窗外的高速公路说因为反对意见的原因意大利花了数十年才建成。“如果在中国的话，6个月就可以建好。这是维持经济增长的唯一途径！”Li这么热诚，如果不是他的评论很像北京的那些闲聊风格，让我几乎觉得他是一个政府发言人了。“海外分析家永远不能理解为什么中国经济发展的这么快，”他说。“是的，确实是一党专政，但领导者们是从精英中挑选出来的，而精英们是从13亿人中挑选出来的，他们可以被称为超级精英。”
Li’s portrait of the West contained at least one feature of unalloyed admiration. He mentioned a Western friend who had quit his job to go backpacking and find his calling in life. “Would our parents accept that? Of course not! They’d point a finger and say, ‘You’re a waste!’ ” he said. But, in Europe, “young people are allowed to pursue what they want to pursue.”
Li对西方的描绘中至少在一方面有着纯粹的羡慕。他提及一个西方朋友辞了职去徒步旅行并从生活中发现了自己的真实需要。“我们的父母会接受这种行为吗？肯定不会！他们会指着你说，‘你就是个废物！’”他说。但在欧洲的话，“这里允许年轻人去追求自己想要的。”
He went on, “Our Chinese ancestors left us so many things, but why do we find it so difficult to discover new things? It’s because our education system has too many constraints.” Our group was even more attentive than usual. At the very moment that American parents were wondering if they had something to learn from China’s purportedly hard-nosed “tiger mothers,” Chinese parents were trying to restore creativity to the country’s desiccated education system. One mother, Zeng Liping, told me that teachers had frowned upon her bringing her sixth grader to Europe. “Before every school vacation, the teachers tell them, ‘Don’t go out. Stay at home and study, because very soon you’ll be taking the exam to get into middle school.’ ” But Zeng had made her peace with being out of step. She had quit a stable job as an art teacher and put her savings into starting her own fashion label. “My bosses all said, ‘What a shame that you’re leaving a good workplace.’ But I’ve proved to myself that I made the right choice.”
他继续说，“我们的祖先给我们留下了很多东西，但为什么我们这么不容易去创造新的东西呢？这是因为我们的教育有很多约束。”我们的团体变得更加的专注了。在美国父母们思考他们是否可以从中国所谓的严厉的“虎妈妈”中获得益处的时候，中国的父母们在试着为干枯的教育体系恢复创造力。一个叫Zeng Liping的母亲告诉我老师很不满她带着6岁的孩子来欧洲。“在放假前，老师会告诉他们，‘不要出去。呆在家里学习，因为你们很快就面临着中招考试。’”但Zeng为她的出格做出了协调。她辞去了艺术教师的稳定工作并且把所有积蓄都用在开创自己的时尚品牌。“我所有的老板都说，‘这么好的工作还要走，真是不应该。’但我已经向自己证明了我的选择是正确的。”
We reached Venice in the early afternoon, and people were hungry, urging Li to stop even if there wasn’t a Chinese restaurant. We had been in Europe for a week and had yet to sit down to a lunch or a dinner that was not Chinese. (Nearly half of all Chinese tourists in one market survey reported eating no more than one “European style” meal on a trip to the West.) But Li warned that Western food would take too long to serve, and he recalled a five-hour dinner in Spain. “If you eat Western food too fast, you’ll get an upset stomach,” he added. “Save it for your next trip.” Everyone consented, and we stopped for a twenty-minute lunch at La Pagoda Ristorante Cinese, on the outskirts of town. In Venice, we crisscrossed the lagoon by ferry, visited a glass factory, rented a fleet of black gondolas, and had time for a quick stop at Prada before heading back out of town. On the way to La Pagoda for dinner, Zhu picked up a local real-estate circular. “Look at this—a hundred and ten thousand euros for a house!” he cried. “Cheaper than America. Much cheaper than Shanghai!”
下午很早我们就到达了威尼斯，人们都很饿，催着Li停车，哪怕是没有中国餐馆也行。我们在欧洲已经待了一周的时间了，也吃过非中餐的饭菜。（在一份市场调查报告中显示将近半数的中国游客在西方旅游的时候仅吃过一顿西方风格的饭菜。）但Li警告说西方饭菜要很久以后才会上来，而且他提起了在西班牙的那次5个小时的晚餐。“如果吃西餐太快的话肚子会不舒服，”他补充说，“下一次旅行的时候再吃吧。”大家都同意了，我们在镇郊的La Pagoda Ristorante Cinese停了20分钟吃午饭。在威尼斯，我们乘渡轮穿过水路参观了一家玻璃工厂，租了一队黑色小船，在返回小镇前还有时间短暂停车去购买普拉达。在去La Pagoda吃晚餐的路上，Zhu捡起一张本地房地产传单。“看这个——一栋房子11万欧元！”他叫喊着。“比美国便宜。比上海便宜的多！”
In Rome the next day, we stopped at the Trevi Fountain, where tall Senegalese men were selling counterfeit Louis Vuitton bags and venders tended carts offering cheap magnets and paperweights. Handy gazed at them and said, “Made in China.” At the Vatican, Zhu took in the full scale of St. Peter’s Square. “Pretty impressive!” he said. “Their Pope can just stick his head out anytime he wants and watch all of us down here? I bet he doesn’t get any happier than that.” The scale reminded him of Beijing. “It’s just like the old days, when Chinese people used to go to Beijing just to catch a glimpse of the Communist Party.” He laughed.
第二天在罗马的时候，我们在特莱维喷泉停车。这里有个子很高的塞内加尔男人卖假路易威登包；小贩们推着小车卖很廉价的磁铁和书镇。Handy盯着他们看，说，“中国制造。”在梵蒂冈，Zhu惊诧于圣彼得广场的规模。“真是惊人！”他说。“他们的教皇是不是只要愿意就能伸出头看下面我们所有这些人？我打赌他准很自豪。”广场的规模让他想起了北京。“很像过去的时候，人们去北京只是去看看共产党。”他大笑。
We wandered down the block and sat down to rest on a windowsill. Zhu lit a cigarette. He’d been thinking about the fluctuating fortunes of great powers. I asked if he believed American politicians who say they have no objections to China’s rise. He shook his head. “No way. They’ll let us grow, but they’ll try to limit it. Everyone I know thinks that.” Ultimately, he said, in the politest way he could think of, Americans would need to adjust to a weaker position in the world, just as China once did. “You are so used to being on top, but you will drop to second place. It won’t be immediately—it’ll take twenty or thirty years—but our G.D.P. will eventually surpass yours.” I was struck that, for all his travels, Zhu saw an enduring philosophical divide between China and the West: “two different ways of thinking,” as he put it. “We will use their tools and learn their methods. But, fundamentally, China will always maintain its own way,” he said.
我们沿着街区溜达着，坐在一个窗台上歇息。Zhu点了根香烟。他一直在思考着大国国运的波动。我问他是否相信美国某些政客声称他们对中国的崛起没有敌意。他摇摇头。“不可能。他们会让我们发展的，但他们会试着去限制。我认识的每个人都这么想。”最后，他用能想到的最礼貌的方式说，美国人可能需要调整来适应在国际上地位的弱化，就像中国曾经做的那样。“你们太习惯于高高在上了，但你们将会落到第二的位置。这种情况不会立即发生，可能需要20到30年时间，但我们的GDP将最终超过美国。”对此我很震撼，因为贯穿整个旅途，Zhu看到了西方和中国在意识上的持久性分歧：“两种不同的思想，”就像他的说法。“我们将使用他们的工具，学习他们的方法。但在本质上中国讲永远保留着它的自我，”他说。
His sentiment didn’t inspire much optimism about China’s future alongside the West. On some level, it was hard to argue with him; the myth that a richer China would soon become a Western, democratic China has rarely looked more frayed than it does today. But if it was na?ve to imagine that China’s opening up would draw it close to the West, it is also na?ve, perhaps, to dismiss the power of more subtle changes. Modern Chinese travel, like the modern Chinese state, is predicated on the fragile promise that it will impose order on a chaotic world, by shepherding its citizens and keeping them safe from threats that can include Western thieves and Western cuisine. In the flesh, the world our group encountered was, indeed, more Europe than “Europe”—unkempt and unglamorous in ways that Sissi never mentioned. And yet, behind Berlusconi’s opera buffa and the prosperity gospel about Chinese one-party efficiency, my busmates caught unredacted flickers of insight. On this first trip, there was much they would never see—a rowdy free press, a social safety net forged by political wrangling—but, mile by mile, they were quietly discovering how to see it at all. When Promise finally put down his wilted copy of the Wall Street Journal, there were no trumpets. He said simply, “When I read a foreign newspaper, I see lots of things I don’t know about.”
他的情感并未给与西方相邻的中国的未来带来太多乐观。在某个层面上很难与他争论；一个更为富裕的中国将很快成为一个西式的、民主的中国，这种神话与目前现状相比看起来更有问题。但如果说中国的开放会使其靠近西方这种想象非常天真的话，可能将更细微变化的效用忽略掉的这种做法更为天真。现代中国人的旅游，就像现代中国政体那样，是基于一个很脆弱的允诺。这种允诺通过牧养其居民并使他们不受欧洲小偷和欧洲烹饪风格之类的威胁来给混乱的世界带来强制性秩序。在我的范围内，我们团体遭遇的世界实际上比“欧洲”更欧洲——那是《茜茜公主》中没有涉及到的粗野和黯然无光。而且在贝卢斯科尼的喜歌剧和中国一党体制高效率带来的繁荣福音背后，我的汽车旅行同伴们看到了未被删订过的真实闪光。在这第一次的旅行中，有太多他们可能永远不会见过的东西——喧嚣而自由的言论，由政治角力构成的社会安全网络——但一点一点，他们会安静地发现如何去看。当Promise最终放下他那本皱巴巴的《华尔街日报》，没有任何的慷慨激昂，他很简单地说，“当我读外国报纸的时候，我看到好多不懂的东西。”
The three-hour drive to Florence was our last long bus trip, and Li raced through some topics, including Catholics and divorce, Pavarotti, balsamic vinegar, truffles and the pigs that find them, and leather goods that are marked as Italian but made in China. He once had a leather-factory boss on a trip to Italy, he said, who spent the time collecting samples of Italian products to replicate at home.
开往佛罗伦萨的为时三个小时的车程是我们最后一次长途汽车旅行，Li对于一些主题只是一扫而过，其中包括天主教徒、离婚、帕瓦罗蒂、意大利黑醋、松露和那些找松露的猪、另外还有标着意大利但实际上中国制造的皮革制品。Li曾经在一次意大利旅行中接待过一位开皮革工厂的老板，他说，这位老板把时间用在收集意大利产品样品上，他打算回去进行仿制。
The Piazza della Signoria was a riot of sun-pinked Russians, American students, and cops in white thimble-shaped helmets. A local guide steered us into a leather shop called Peruzzi, where purses and shoes were displayed with the motto “If you don’t take home a Peruzzi souvenir, you can’t prove you have been to Florence.”
领主广场聚集着许多被太阳晒成粉红色的俄罗斯和美国学生，警察带着白色顶针形头盔。一个本地导游指引着我们进入一家叫Peruzzi的皮革店，在这里展示着各种钱包和皮鞋，还有条格言：“如果没有带回家一件Peruzzi纪念品，你就不能证明你曾来过佛罗伦萨。”
We were about to reboard the bus for another ninety minutes, to snatch a photo of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. But then something strange happened: people said no. Handy, Karen, and a few others wondered why we couldn’t skip the tower and linger in Florence. Li gathered everyone in the shadow of the bus and said, “Whoever wants to go, raise your hand.” Two-thirds or so of the hands went up. A woman’s voice urged solidarity—“We should all go together.” After a minute of discussion, Li called for another straw poll, and it was clear that some of the mutineers had been winnowed. A consensus of a certain kind washed over the group, and we all dutifully lined up for the bus. Handy lifted his eyebrows and said, “Voting Chinese style will always end this way.”
在我们要重新要上车度过另一个90分钟去拍摄比萨斜塔的时候，发生了很奇怪的事情：人们拒绝了。Handy, Karen和一些其他人不想去比萨斜塔而是在佛罗伦萨多留一阵子。Li将所有人聚集在汽车的阴影里，说，“想走的人举手。”差不多三分之二的人举起了手。一个女性的声音劝大家保持团结——“我们应该一起去。”在经过一分钟的讨论后，Li号召另一次民意表决，很明显一些反抗者被找了出来。集体意见在团体中开始发挥效用，我们都很忠实地排队登车了。Handy扬起眉毛说，“中国的表决总是这个样子。”
On the highway to Pisa, I wondered how much longer Chinese tours at this pace might endure. Solo tourism was growing in popularity among the young people, and even in the course of our time together my fellow-tourists had wearied of hustling so much. When we reached Pisa and its charmingly goofy tower, each of us took turns standing at the perfect spot, grimacing, arms outstretched, for the photo of ourselves holding up the tower. There was a spectacular blue sky above. Huang Xueqing got up from her wheelchair, to feel the cobblestones beneath her feet. We worked up an appetite, and I pointed out a Chinese restaurant not far from the tower. Handy and Karen had another idea, and I followed them into a McDonald’s. ?
在去比萨的高速公路上，我想知道中国人还能忍受这种旅游多久。单独旅行越来越受到年轻人的欢迎，在我们旅行的时候我的旅游同伴已经厌倦了这么拥挤。当我们到达比萨看到那漂亮而滑稽的斜塔，我们每个人轮流站在最佳位置做鬼脸、伸展双臂来和斜塔合影。上方的蓝天看起来非常引人注目。Huang Xueqing从轮椅上站起来感受着脚下的鹅卵石。我们都产生了食欲，我指出离塔不远有家中国餐馆。不过Handy and Karen两个人有着不同的想法，我就随着他们进了一家麦当劳。