英国卫报：中国,我想回来!(11)

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In her novel Revenge¹ of the Mooncake Vixen, Marilyn Chin, whose family moved to the US from Hong Kong, writes: "Deep in her heart, she knew that each step backward would only mean regret – the vector goes in only one direction, the homing geese must find their new nest, the 10,000 diasporas will never coagulate – there was no way back to the Middle Kingdom."

全家从香港迁往美国的陈美玲在她的小说《月饼泼妇的复仇》中写道：“在她的内心深处，她知道每后退一步只会意味着遗憾——方向只有一个，归巢的大雁必须找到自己的新巢，一万名散居海外的人永远不会聚集在一起——没有办法回到中央王国。”

Since March 2020, the pandemic has forced us into our homes. At the time of writing, more than 575,000 Americans have died of Covid-19. As borders have closed, I became more and more trapped in the fact of my Americanness. In the country where I was born, I watched years of inflammatory news headlines and anti-China rhetoric² explode into anti-Asian violence. In the WeChat group, worried relatives talked of US Covid death tolls³ and stories of street attacks.

自2020年3月以来，新冠迫使我们回家。截至发稿时已有超过57.5万美国人死于新冠。随着边境的封锁，我越来越被自己的美国身份所困。在我出生的国家，我目睹了多年的煽动性新闻头条和反华言论演变成反亚洲暴力。在微信群里，忧心忡忡的亲属们谈到了美国新冠肺炎的死亡人数和街头袭击事件。

While Americans have been told to stay indoors, life in China has been near-normal for some time. In October, my oldest aunt, an insatiable adventurer, went on vacation to Everest. While she was there she piled a few stones on top of each other, a miniature⁴ Tibetan altar. She sent us a picture via WeChat. "So their souls may rest in peace," she said in the group. Another aunt replied: "You are at the spot closest to heaven, and closest to Mom and Dad."

虽然美国人被告知待在家里，但中国人的生活已经接近正常有一段时间了。10月，我的大姨，一个贪得无厌的冒险家，去珠穆朗玛峰度假。她在那里把几块石头堆叠在一起，形成了一个微型的西藏祭坛。她通过微信给我们发了一张照片。“这样他们的灵魂就可以安息了，”她在群里说。另一个阿姨回复说：“你在离天堂最近的地方，离爸爸妈妈最近的地方。”

Since my grandparents passed, their children have filled the WeChat group with messages to them. They address my grandparents' spirits directly, sometimes with heartfelt messages of longing⁵, sometimes with regret, sometimes diary entries with news, complaints and gossip⁶. For the parts where my Chinese wasn't up to it, there was in-app machine translation available, its innocent English, though fraught⁷ with errors, achieving a kind of poetry.

自从爷爷奶奶去世后，他们的孩子们就在微信群里填满了给他们的留言。他们直接说给爷爷奶奶的灵魂听，有的是发自内心的渴望，有的是遗憾，有的是写新闻、抱怨和八卦的日记。而对于那些看不懂的中文我可以用应用内的翻译软件翻译，虽然翻译出来的英文错误连连，但它很简单，就像一首诗。

1 revenge   

v.报...之仇，为...报仇 ；n.报仇，复仇

参考例句：

• She poisoned his mind with ideas of hate and revenge.她用复仇的思想来毒害他的心灵。
• There was anger in his eyes and revenge in his heart.他两眼闪现怒火，一心只想复仇。

2 rhetoric   

n.修辞学，浮夸之言语

参考例句：

• Do you know something about rhetoric?你懂点修辞学吗？
• Behind all the rhetoric,his relations with the army are dangerously poised.在冠冕堂皇的言辞背后，他和军队的关系岌岌可危。

3 tolls   

（缓慢而有规律的）钟声( toll的名词复数 )； 通行费； 损耗； （战争、灾难等造成的）毁坏

参考例句：

• A man collected tolls at the gateway. 一个人在大门口收通行费。
• The long-distance call tolls amount to quite a sum. 长途电话费数目相当可观。

4 miniature   

adj.小型的，微小的；n.微小的模型，微型画

参考例句：

• He's giving a party in miniature on his birthday.他生日那天将举行一个小型晚会。
• Games are real life in miniature.游戏是现实生活的缩影。

5 longing   

n.（for）渴望

参考例句：

• Hearing the tune again sent waves of longing through her.再次听到那首曲子使她胸中充满了渴望。
• His heart burned with longing for revenge.他心中燃烧着急欲复仇的怒火。

6 gossip   

n.流言蜚语，爱说长道短的人；vi.传播流言

参考例句：

• She broadcast the gossip all over the town.她将这个流言传遍全镇。
• They spread a lot of tacky gossip about his love life.关于他的爱情生活，他们散播了许多不堪的闲言闲语。

7 fraught   

adj.充满…的，伴有(危险等)的；忧虑的

参考例句：

• The coming months will be fraught with fateful decisions.未来数月将充满重大的决定。
• There's no need to look so fraught!用不着那么愁眉苦脸的！