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北京街头一句粗话惹得老外苦寻思
http://www.sina.com.cn 2003/01/22 10:51  北京青年报

  Strolling along the streets and taking taxis are always enlightening activities for someone who wants to understand how the people in a country think. That was how I recently happened to hear two Chinese expressions that I found most interesting.

  The first instructive experience took place while I was crossing the street. In the Dongdaqiao area, the traffic volunteers are very conscientious and often shout at pedestrians who wish to walk on the side road originally intended for bicycles. One Chinese pedestrian was taking no notice of the traffic volunteer's injunctions, heading straight for the nearby bus stop, some 10 meters ahead. The volunteer started shouting at him, and far from politely. One of the things I heard was: "You are no Chinese!" It was obviously an insult, meaning that if you don't obey traffic rules as interpreted by traffic wardens and instead choose to walk in the bicycle lanes, you don't deserve to be Chinese.

  At first I took this as simple racism, implying that foreigners don't obey rules, crossing the streets anywhere and anytime without regard for the common good. I had to laugh at that thought. Chinese traffic is without doubt the most chaotic I have ever encountered and often the topic of jokes among foreigners. So hearing the traffic warden, I was amused. A biblical phrase came to mind: "seeing the mote in one's neighbor's eye, but not the beam in one's own". The raging traffic warden continued in this vein①for some time, denouncing the pedestrian repeatedly as "no Chinese" and qualifying him as merely "a pig, or a dog". This was an enlightening performance. I at last understood that in Chinese arithmetic, zero Chinese = zero human being, and hence that one foreigner = one pig or one dog.

  A bit later I was the beneficiary of further enlightenment. After five years of life in China shared with my Chinese husband, I now speak good Mandarin; taxi drivers often gosintosecstasies over it and offer congratulations. Wishing to be polite and friendly, one Beijing taxi-driver recently told me, "You are a bit more than half a Chinese." After some rapid mental arithmetic, I reached the conclusion that this meant I could constitute at most 60 percent of an honest-to-goodness Chinese, hence that I should receive a grade of 60/100 for my Mandarin. Flattered that my years of struggle with the Chinese language had raised me to such a high share of human dignity, I wondered if, by pursuing my efforts, I could approach Chineseness even more closely. I felt elevated but also started to regret my French origins. If only...②I marveled at the taxi driver's honesty and sincerity: according to the Chinese grading system, I would just be able to pass the exam for humanity.

  How can the gap between Chinese and foreigners remain so large?

  I sighed and took another tack. Rather than regretting my foreign origin, I began to reflect on the outdated Chinese way of looking at foreigners. After 25 years of increasing openness to the outside world, Beijingers still consider Chineseness as the standard of human conduct, and are somehow unable to view foreigners symmetrically with Chinese. After five years of voluntary adaptation to China and even more numerous years of Chinese language study, I am somewhere between "a pig or a dog" (when insulted) and "60% of a Chinese" (when complimented).

  From the Editor :

  Readers, you may share my view that the author has misunderstood the Chinese language here and jumped to the wrong conclusions. Certainly I believe that Chinese people respect foreigners, and the traffic volunteer mentioned in the article never meant to imply that foreigners are less than human. But imagine if you were in New York and you heard a policeman shouting at someone: "You're not an American - you're a dog, a pig!" (By the way, no one in New York would talk this way, since it's simply not an American-style insult.) How would you feel? Don't you think you might well draw the same sort of inference as Patricia H?rau?

  Politeness is essential in serving the public. We should strive to respect the reasonable sensitivities of our fellow Chinese - and of all the rest of our fellow human beings.

北京街头一句粗话惹得老外苦寻思

  若想了解一个国家的人如何思维,沿街漫步或打的总是能获得启迪的方式。而我最近碰巧听到让我觉得最有意思的两句中国话也是通过这种方式获得的。

  我经历的第一件获益的事发生在过街的时候。在东大桥,有一位交通协管员非常尽责,他对于那些想走自行车道的行人常常大声喊叫。有一次,一位行人没有注意到交通协管员的禁令,径直向10米外的公共汽车站走去,协管员就没有礼貌地冲他大喊,我听到的一句话就是“你不是中国人!”这显然带有污辱性,意思是如果你不遵守交通协管员所诠释的交通法规而走自行车道,你就不配是个中国人。

  我对此话的第一反应就是种族歧视,它暗指外国人不遵守交通规则,不顾公共利益而随时随地横穿马路。对这一想法我不能不发笑,中国的交通是我见到的最无序的,这在老外当中常常成为笑谈,因此听这位协管员这么说我觉得挺好笑。这让我想到《圣经》里的一句话:能看见别人眼里的尘埃,看不见自己眼里的木头。那位勃然大怒的交通协管员以这种架势又喊了一阵子,反复宣称那位行人“不是中国人”,只配“是猪,是狗!”这可真是有启迪性,我终于明白了中国人的算术:不是中国人=不是人,因此外国人=猪或狗。

  此后不久我又进一步获得启迪。

  我和我的中国丈夫在中国居住了几年以后,中国话已经说得不错,打的时司机常常听得入了神,并且夸我说得好。不久前,一位司机出于礼貌和友好,对我说道:“你是大半个中国人啦!”我在心中速算之后,得出了结论,这意味着我最多是60%的纯粹的中国人,因此我的普通话也只是60分。几年来我刻苦学习汉语使我做人的尊严升到如此高的地步真是深感荣幸,我便寻思,通过继续努力,我能否离成为一个中国人更近一些呢?我觉得有点飘飘然了,但又开始为我的法国原籍而遗憾,我多么希望……我惊叹司机的真诚,按照中国的评分标准,我将将能够通过“人”格考试。

  为什么中国人与外国人的沟壑有那么深?

  我叹了口气开始采取了另一种思路。我不再为我的外国原籍遗憾,而是开始反思中国人对外国人的陈旧看法。在不断深化的对外开放25年以后,北京人仍然把中国人作为人的标准,而不能将外国人与中国人一样相称对待。在五年心甘情愿地适应中国以及比五年还要长的汉语学习之后,我还是处于“猪狗”(在受污辱时)与60%的中国人(在受到夸奖时)之间。

  编者的话

  亲爱的读者,当你读完了这篇文章,恐怕和我一样,认为作者是误解了中国话而得出了错误结论。毫无疑问,中国人民是尊重外国朋友的,文中的那位交通协管员也绝没有“外国人不是人”的意思。但设想一下,你身处纽约,一个美国警察对着一个人喊:“你不是美国人,你是猪,你是狗!”作为东方人的你会如何感受?你会不会也做出与本文作者波特丽霞相同的推断?

  文明礼貌是为公众服务的工作人员的基本素质,让我们努力营造文明环境,尊重每一位国人——也尊重地球人类的每一位同胞。




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