現(xiàn)代大學(xué)英語(yǔ)精讀 Paper Tiger 英漢版本

1、Lesson 1 Paper TigersWhat happens to all the Asian-American overachievers when the test-taking ends?當(dāng)考試結(jié)束時(shí)，所有的亞裔美國(guó)人都會(huì)有怎樣的表現(xiàn)呢？By Wesley Yang Published May 8,2011para 1 Sometimes Ill glimpse my reflection in a window and feel astonished by what I see. Jet-black hair. Slanted eyes. A pancake-flat surfa

2、ce of yellow-and-green-toned skin. An expression that is nearly reptilian in its impassivity. Ive contrived to think of this face as the equal in beauty to any other. But what I feel in these moments is its strangeness to me. Its my face. I cant disclaim it. But what does it have to do with me?有時(shí)我會(huì)從

3、窗戶里瞥見(jiàn)我的倒影，我會(huì)對(duì)我所看到的感到驚訝。烏黑的頭發(fā)。斜眼。黃綠色膚色的薄煎餅狀的表面。一種近乎爬行動(dòng)物般冷漠的表情。我想方設(shè)法地認(rèn)為這張臉在美貌上與其他任何人都不相上下。但在這些時(shí)刻我感覺(jué)到的是它對(duì)我來(lái)說(shuō)很奇怪。這是我的臉。我不能否認(rèn)。但這和我有什么關(guān)系呢？Para 2 Millions of Americans must feel estranged from their own faces. But every self-estranged individual is estranged in his own way. I, for instance, am the child of

4、 Korean immigrants, but I do not speak my parents native tongue. I have never dated a Korean woman. I dont have a Korean friend. Though I am an immigrant, I have never wanted to strive like one. 一定有無(wú)數(shù)的美國(guó)人對(duì)他們自己的長(zhǎng)相會(huì)有一種疏離感,但是其中每個(gè)人的原因卻又不盡相同。以我自己為例,我是韓國(guó)移民的后裔,但我卻不會(huì)講我父母的母語(yǔ)。我從未跟韓國(guó)女性約過(guò)會(huì),甚至都沒(méi)有韓國(guó)朋友。雖然我是移民,但是我從

5、未想過(guò)像移民那樣努力奮斗。para 3 You could say that I am a banana. But while I dont believe our roots necessarily define us, I do believe there are racially inflected assumptions wired into our neural circuitry. And although I am in most respects devoid of Asian characteristics, I do have an Asian face.你可能會(huì)說(shuō)我是亞裔

6、美國(guó)人。雖然我并不認(rèn)為一個(gè)人的種族出身就會(huì)決定他的一切,但我相信對(duì)各個(gè)種族的成見(jiàn)已經(jīng)深深地植入了我們的思想里。盡管在很多方面,我已經(jīng)沒(méi)了什么亞洲人的特點(diǎn)，但我確實(shí)長(zhǎng)著一張亞洲人的臉。para 4 Here is what I sometimes suspect my face signifies to other Americans: An invisible person, barely distinguishable from a mass of faces that resemble it. A conspicuous person standing apart from the cro

7、wd and yet devoid of any individuality. An icon of so much that the culture pretends to honor but that it in fact patronizes and exploits. Not just people “who are good at math” and play the violin, but a mass of stifled, repressed, abused, conformist quasi-robots who simply do not matter, socially

8、or culturally.我有時(shí)懷疑我的長(zhǎng)相對(duì)于其他美國(guó)人來(lái)說(shuō)代表著什么:像一個(gè)長(zhǎng)著大眾臉的隱形人;一個(gè)站在人群里很顯眼但毫無(wú)個(gè)性的人;一個(gè)美國(guó)文化表面上十分尊重而實(shí)際上卻鄙視并利用的形象。我們不只是那些”數(shù)學(xué)學(xué)得很好”和會(huì)拉小提琴的人,而且是一大群憋屈得要死、壓迫得不行、被虐得快殘了的循規(guī)蹈矩的半機(jī)器人,對(duì)社會(huì)和文化根本就沒(méi)什么影響力。para 5 Ive always been of two minds about this sequence of stereotypes. 對(duì)于以上各種成見(jiàn)，我總在兩種想法間搖擺不定。On the one hand, it offends me grea

9、tly that anyone would think to apply them to me, or to anyone else, simply on the basis of facial characteristics. On the other hand, it also seems to me that there are a lot of Asian people to whom they apply. 一方面，僅僅因?yàn)橄嗝蔡卣骶蛯⑽一蚱渌魏稳伺c這些成見(jiàn)對(duì)號(hào)入座，這讓我覺(jué)得不舒服；但另一方面，我自己確實(shí)也發(fā)現(xiàn)了不少這樣的亞洲人。para 6 Let me summarize m

10、y feelings toward Asian values: Damn filial piety. Damn grade grubbing. Damn Ivy League mania. Damn deference to authority. Damn humility and hard work. Damn harmonious relations. Damn sacrificing for the future. Damn earnest, striving middle-class servility. 讓我總結(jié)一下我對(duì)亞洲價(jià)值觀的感受：該死的孝道。該死的好好學(xué)習(xí)。該死的常春藤聯(lián)盟狂

11、熱。該死的服從權(quán)威。該死的謙遜努力。該死的和諧關(guān)系。該死的為未來(lái)犧牲。該死的認(rèn)真努力的中產(chǎn)階級(jí)奴性。para 7 I understand the reasons Asian parents have raised a generation of children this way. Doctor, accountant, engineer: These are good jobs open to whoever works hard enough. What could be wrong with that pursuit? Asians graduate from college at a

12、 rate higher than any other ethnic group in America, including whites. They earn a higher median family income than any other ethnic group in America，including whites. This is a stage in a triumphal narrative, and it is a narrative that is much shorter than many remember. Two thirds of the roughly 1

13、4 million Asian-Americans are foreign-born. There were less than 39,000 people of Korean descent living in America in 1970, when my elder brother was born. There are around 1 million today. 我理解亞洲父母為何用這種手段撫養(yǎng)整整一代子女。醫(yī)生、律師、會(huì)計(jì)、工程師:無(wú)論是誰(shuí),只要足夠努力就能得到這些好的工作機(jī)會(huì)。難道追求這些好工作有錯(cuò)嗎?亞裔美國(guó)人從大學(xué)畢業(yè)的比率比包括白人在內(nèi)的美國(guó)其他種族人群都高。他們家庭收

14、入中位數(shù)也比包括白人在內(nèi)的美國(guó)其他種族人群高。這些只是亞裔取得成功故事中的一個(gè)縮影,這遠(yuǎn)比很多人記憶中的成功故事要短得多。在約1400萬(wàn)的亞裔美國(guó)人中,有三分之二的人不是在美國(guó)出生的。在1970年,美國(guó)只有不到39000名韓國(guó)后裔,而今天,韓國(guó)后裔達(dá)到了大約100萬(wàn)人。para 8Asian American success is typically taken to ratify the American Dream and to prove that minorities can make it in this country without handouts. Still, an und

15、ercurrent of racial panic always accompanies the consideration of Asians, and all the more so as China becomes the destination for our industrial base and the banker controlling our burgeoning debt. But if the armies of Chinese factory workers who make our fast fashion and iPads terrify us, and if t

16、he collective mass of high-achieving Asian American students arouse an anxiety about the laxity of American parenting, what of the Asian American who obeyed everything his parents told him? Does this person really scare anyone?亞裔美國(guó)人的成功總被用來(lái)證實(shí)美國(guó)夢(mèng),證明那些少數(shù)族裔在這個(gè)國(guó)家依靠自己也能取得成功。但是,想到亞洲人時(shí),總是伴隨著潛在的種族恐慌特別是在中國(guó)成了美

17、國(guó)的工業(yè)基地和控制迅速增長(zhǎng)的債務(wù)的債主的時(shí)候。但是,如果那些制造出快速時(shí)尚服飾和iPad的中國(guó)的勞動(dòng)力大軍讓我們感到懼怕的話,如果眾多的優(yōu)秀亞裔學(xué)生讓美國(guó)父母為他們那寬松的教育方式感到焦急的話,那對(duì)于處處聽(tīng)從父母安排的亞裔學(xué)生,人們又是怎么想的呢?這些亞裔學(xué)生真就那么令人懼怕嗎?para 9 Earlier this year, the publication of Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother incited a collective airing out of many varieties of race-based hyst

18、eria. 今年早些時(shí)候,蔡美兒所著的虎媽戰(zhàn)歌的出版激起了各種帶有種族成見(jiàn)的歇斯底里說(shuō)辭。But absent from the millions of words written in response to the book was any serious consideration of whether Asian Americans were in fact taking over this country. If it is true that Asian-Americans are dominating in the elite high schools and universit

19、ies, is it also true that Asian-Americans are dominating in the real world? My strong suspicion was that this was not so, and that the reasons would not be hard to find. If we are a collective juggernaut that inspires such awe and fear, why does it seem that so many Asians are so readily perceived t

20、o be ,as I myself have felt most of my life, the products of a timid culture, easily pushed around by more assertive people, and thus basically invisible? 但是,在眾多對(duì)該書的評(píng)論之中,沒(méi)有任何一條認(rèn)真地考慮過(guò)“亞裔美國(guó)人是否曾經(jīng)真的主導(dǎo)過(guò)這個(gè)國(guó)家”的問(wèn)題。假設(shè)亞裔學(xué)生集體在名牌高中和大學(xué)的成績(jī)和表現(xiàn)確實(shí)更好,那么亞裔美國(guó)人是否在現(xiàn)實(shí)世界中獲得了同樣的主導(dǎo)地位?我懷疑結(jié)果并非如此,而其原因也不難發(fā)現(xiàn)。我經(jīng)常感到,如果我們真像描繪的那樣是一個(gè)令

21、人敬畏懼怕的集體,那為什么還有那么多亞裔經(jīng)常被認(rèn)為是一種過(guò)于謹(jǐn)小慎微文化的產(chǎn)物,很容易被那些更加自信的人所左右。從根本上來(lái)說(shuō),這不就是隱形人嗎?para 10 A few months ago, I received an e-mail from a young man named Jefferson Mao, who after attending Stuyvesant High School had recently graduated from the University of Chicago. He wanted my advice about “ being an Asian wr

22、iter”. This is how he described himself:” I got good grades and I love literature and I want to be a writer and an intellectual; at the same time , Im the first person in my family to go to college, my parents dont speak English very well, and we dont own the apartment in Flushing that we live in. I

23、 mean, I'm proud of my parents and my neighborhood and what I perceive to be my artistic potential or whatever, but sometimes I feel like I'm jumping the gun a generation or two too early.”幾個(gè)月前,一個(gè)名叫杰弗遜·毛的年輕人給我發(fā)了一封電子郵件。他曾就讀于史岱文森高中,現(xiàn)已從芝加哥大學(xué)畢業(yè)。他向我征求建議,想要成為一名亞裔作家。他是這么描述自己的:“我成績(jī)優(yōu)異,熱愛(ài)文學(xué)并且想成為一

24、名作家和知識(shí)分子;另外,我是家里的第一個(gè)大學(xué)生,父母英語(yǔ)說(shuō)得不好,我們至今都沒(méi)能買下我們?cè)诜ɡ⒆庾〉墓?。我的意思?我為自己的父母和社區(qū)感到自豪,我認(rèn)為自己有藝術(shù)等方面的潛能,但有時(shí)候,我感覺(jué)自己作為第一代移民家庭的兒子就有這種想法,是不是太過(guò)心急了?也許再等一兩代才比較合適?！盤ARA 11 One bright , cold Sunday afternoon, I ride the 7 train to its last stop in Flushing, where the storefront signs are all written in Chinese and the sid

25、ewalks are a slow-moving river of impassive faces. Mao is waiting for me at the entrance of the Main Street subway station, and together we walk to a nearby Vietnamese restaurant. 一個(gè)晴朗而寒冷的星期日下午,我乘坐地鐵7號(hào)線到法拉盛的最后一站。那里所有的店面都掛著中文招牌,人行道上緩慢走動(dòng)的人流帶著一張張毫無(wú)表情的面孔。毛在緬街地鐵站的入口處等著我,我們一起去了附近的一家越南菜館。PARA 12 Mao has a

26、round face with eyes behind rectangular wire-frame glasses. Since graduating , he has been living with his parents, who emigrated from China when Mao was eight years old. His mother is a manicurist; his father is a physical therapists aide. Lately, Mao has been making the familiar hour-and-a-half ri

27、de from Flushing to downtown Manhattan to tutor a white Stuyvesant freshman. 毛,圓臉,戴著一副長(zhǎng)方形金屬框眼鏡。畢業(yè)后,他和父母住在一起。他們?nèi)以诿藲q的時(shí)候從中國(guó)移民到了美國(guó)。母親是一名美甲師,父親是助理理療師。最近,毛經(jīng)常搭乘從法拉盛到曼哈頓市區(qū)這段再熟悉不過(guò)的一個(gè)半小時(shí)的地鐵,為一名史岱文森高中一年級(jí)白人學(xué)生輔導(dǎo)功課。PARA 13 Entrance to Stuyvesant, one of the most competitive public high schools in the country, i

28、s determined solely by performance on a test: 史岱文森高中是美國(guó)競(jìng)爭(zhēng)最激烈的公立高中之一,錄取完全依據(jù)考試成績(jī):the top 3.7 percent of all New York City students who take the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test hoping to go to Stuyvesant are accepted. There are no set-asides fort the underprivileged or, conversely, for alumni

29、or other privileged groups. There is no formula to encourage “diversity” or any nebulous concept of “well-roundedness” or “character”. Here we have something like pure meritocracy. This is what it looks like: Asian Americans, who make up 12.6 percent of New York City, make up 72 percent of the high

30、school. 在參加特殊高中入學(xué)考試的所有紐約市學(xué)生中,只有成績(jī)排名在前3.7%的考生才能被錄取。學(xué)校不會(huì)留出名額給貧困學(xué)生,另一方面,也不會(huì)對(duì)校友及特權(quán)群體加以照顧。學(xué)校的招生政策并不鼓勵(lì)“多元化”或者“全面發(fā)展”“個(gè)性”這樣模糊不清的觀念。學(xué)校純粹以成績(jī)決定一切。其結(jié)果就是亞裔人口在紐約市的比例為12.6%,而在這所高中卻占到了72%。PARA 14 This year, 569 Asian Americans scored high enough to earn a slot at Stuyvesant, along with 179 whites, 13 Hispanics, and

31、 12 blacks. Such dramatic overrepresentation, and what it may be read to imply about the intelligence of different groups of New Yorkers, has a way of making people uneasy. But intrinsic intelligence, of course, is precisely what Asians don't believe in. They believe and have proved that the con

32、stant practice of test taking will improve the scores of whoever commits to it. 今年有569名亞裔學(xué)生憑借高分被史岱文森高中錄取，一起被錄取的還有179名白人、13名拉美裔和12名黑人。如此夸張的比例以及可能會(huì)對(duì)紐約不同種族智力水平的暗示，總會(huì)引起人們的不安。但是，亞裔恰恰并不相信天賦。他們相信，并已通過(guò)實(shí)踐證明，任何人只要依靠不斷的考試練習(xí)就能提高分?jǐn)?shù)。All throughout Flushing, as well as in Bayside, one can find “cram schools”, or s

33、torefront academies, that drill students in test preparation after school, on weekends, and during summer break. “Learning math is not about learning math,” an instructor at one called Ivy Prep was quoted in The New York Times as saying. “It's about weightlifting. You are pumping the iron of mat

34、h.” Mao puts it more specifically: “You learn quite simply to nail any standardized test you take.”在法拉盛以及貝賽德，到處都可以找到“填鴨學(xué)校”或是各種小規(guī)模的補(bǔ)習(xí)學(xué)校，利用放學(xué)后、周末和暑假時(shí)間培訓(xùn)學(xué)生的應(yīng)試技巧。引用常春藤預(yù)備學(xué)校的一名老師接受紐約時(shí)報(bào)采訪時(shí)所說(shuō)的一句話：“學(xué)習(xí)數(shù)學(xué)不只是學(xué)習(xí)數(shù)學(xué)這么簡(jiǎn)單，它是在舉重。你在鍛煉著你的數(shù)學(xué)二頭肌?！泵雍?jiǎn)明扼要地說(shuō)：“學(xué)習(xí)就是為了搞定你要參加的任何標(biāo)準(zhǔn)化考試?！盤ARA 15 And so there is an additional conc

35、ern accompanying the rise of the Tiger Children, one focused more on the narrowness of the educational experience a non-Asian child might receive in the company of fanatically pre-professional Asian students. Jenny Tsai, a student who was elected president of her class at the equally competitive New

36、 York public school Hunter College High School, remembers frequently hearing that “the school was becoming too Asian, that they would be the downfall of our school.” A couple of years ago, she revisited this issue in her senior thesis at Harvard, where she interviewed graduates of elite public schoo

37、ls and found that the white students regarded the Asian students with wariness.因此伴隨著虎子們呈現(xiàn)上升的趨勢(shì),人們也在擔(dān)心,和這些狂熱的早早便抱有專業(yè)意向的亞裔孩子在一起,非亞裔孩子的教育經(jīng)歷會(huì)變得更加狹隘。詹尼·蔡是一所同樣競(jìng)爭(zhēng)激烈的紐約公立學(xué)校享特學(xué)院附屬中學(xué)的學(xué)生,曾被選為班長(zhǎng),她清楚地記得,時(shí)常會(huì)聽(tīng)到有人說(shuō)“學(xué)校里的亞裔太多了,他們會(huì)搞垮學(xué)?！?。 幾年前,她在哈佛的畢業(yè)論文中再次探討了這個(gè)問(wèn)題,她采訪了公立精英學(xué)校的畢業(yè)生,發(fā)現(xiàn)白人學(xué)生會(huì)以戒備的心態(tài)來(lái)看亞裔學(xué)生。In 2005, The Wall

38、 Street Journal reported on “white flight” from a high school in Cupertino, California, that began soon after the children of Asian software engineers had made the place so brutally competitive that a B average could place you in the bottom third of the class.2005年,華爾街日?qǐng)?bào)報(bào)道了加州庫(kù)珀蒂諾的一所高中的白人學(xué)生逃離的現(xiàn)象,事情起因

39、于亞裔軟件工程師的子女使得這所學(xué)校里的競(jìng)爭(zhēng)變得異常殘酷，即使平均成績(jī)?yōu)锽,也只能排在班級(jí)后三名。PARA 16 Colleges have a way of correcting for this imbalance: The Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade has calculated that an Asian applicant must, in practice, score 140 points higher on the SAT than a comparable white applicant to have the same ch

40、ance of admission. This is obviously unfair to the many qualified Asian individuals who are punished for the success of others with similar faces. 大學(xué)自有它的辦法來(lái)調(diào)整這種失衡: 據(jù)普林斯頓大學(xué)社會(huì)學(xué)家托馬斯·埃斯彭沙德的計(jì)算,在實(shí)際情況中,一個(gè)亞裔申請(qǐng)者,他的SAT成績(jī)必須比同他實(shí)力相當(dāng)?shù)陌兹松暾?qǐng)者高出140分,才會(huì)獲得同樣的錄取機(jī)會(huì),僅僅因?yàn)樽约汉瓦@些成功人士有著同樣的亞裔面孔而受到懲罰,這對(duì)于眾多符合資格的亞裔學(xué)生來(lái)說(shuō),顯然是不公平

41、的。PARA 17 You could frame it as a simple issue of equality and press for race-blind quantitative admissions standards. In 2006, a decade after California passed a voter initiative outlawing any racial engineering at the public universities, Asians composed 46 percent of UC Berkeley's entering cl

42、ass; one could imagine a similar demographic reshuffling in the Ivy League, where Asian Americans currently make up about 17 percent of undergraduates. But the Ivies, as we all know, have their own private institutional interests at stake in their admissions choices, including some that are arguably

43、 defensible. Who can seriously claim that a Harvard University that was 72 percent Asian would deliver the same grooming for elite status its students had gone there to receive?你可以認(rèn)為問(wèn)題僅僅是因?yàn)椴黄降犬a(chǎn)生的，并迫切要求推行不分種族的量化招生標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。2006年，即加州通過(guò)選民提議的廢除公立大學(xué)中任何關(guān)于種族工程的規(guī)定10年后，加州大學(xué)伯克利分校的新升班中，亞洲學(xué)生占了46%?？梢?jiàn)，聯(lián)盟中的學(xué)生構(gòu)成比例很可能會(huì)發(fā)生類似

44、的變化，而目前這個(gè)群體在聯(lián)盟本科生的占比只有17%。然而眾所周知，常春藤聯(lián)盟在招生時(shí)會(huì)考慮自身的利益需求，而他們的一些政策也無(wú)可厚非。畢竟誰(shuí)敢保證說(shuō)，擁有72%亞裔學(xué)生的哈佛大學(xué)仍然能夠?yàn)槟切┫雭?lái)哈佛鍍金的學(xué)子提供含金量不變的精英桂冠。PARA 18 Somewhere near the middle of his time at Stuyvesant, a vague sense of discontent started to emerge within Mao. He had always felt himself a part of a mob of “nameless, facele

45、ss Asian kids,” who were “l(fā)ike a part of the décor of the place.” He had been content to keep his head down and work toward the goal shared by everyone at Stuyvesant: Harvard. But around the beginning of his senior year, he began to wonder whether this march toward academic success was the only

46、, or best, path.當(dāng)毛在史岱文森待了大約一半日子時(shí),他的心中開(kāi)始隱約產(chǎn)生不滿。他始終覺(jué)得自己是那一大群“沒(méi)有姓名、沒(méi)有個(gè)性的亞洲孩子”中的一分子,就像是“這地方的一個(gè)裝飾品”。他一直心甘情愿地埋頭苦讀,向著當(dāng)時(shí)史岱文森所有學(xué)生的目標(biāo)哈佛努力。然而升上高二沒(méi)多久,他就開(kāi)始懷疑,這條通往學(xué)業(yè)成功的征途,是否是唯一的,或者最好的道路。PARA 19 “You cant help but feel like there must be another way”, he explains over a bowl of pho. “It's like, we're being

47、 pitted against each other while there are kids out there in the Midwest who can do way less work and be in a garage band or something and if theyre decently intelligent and work decently hard in school. “你總會(huì)忍不住覺(jué)得一定還有另外一條路,”他邊吃著面前的一碗越南河粉,邊解釋道。 “我們這些亞裔孩子在互相較著勁,而中西部的孩子們需要做的功課則少得多,可以參加車庫(kù)樂(lè)隊(duì)之類的活動(dòng),如果這些人本身

48、相當(dāng)聰明,在學(xué)校里學(xué)習(xí)也很用功的話”PARA 20 Mao began to study the racially inflected social hierarchies at Stuyvesant, where, in a survey undertaken by the student newspaper this year, slightly more than half of the respondents reported that their friends came from within their own ethnic group. His attention focuse

49、d on the mostly white group whose members seemed able to manage the crushing workload while still remaining socially active. “The general gist of most high school movies is that the pretty cheerleader gets with the big dumb jock, and the nerd is left to bide his time in loneliness. But at some point

50、 in the future,” he says, “the nerd is going to rule the world, and the dumb jock is going to work in a carwash”.毛開(kāi)始研究起史岱文森高中內(nèi)部受種族影響的社會(huì)等級(jí)制度。史岱文森學(xué)生報(bào)今年做了一項(xiàng)校內(nèi)調(diào)查,過(guò)半受調(diào)查者都聲稱他們的朋友和自己來(lái)自同一民族。他尤其關(guān)注大多數(shù)白人團(tuán)體,這些人似乎可以在應(yīng)付繁忙學(xué)業(yè)的同時(shí),仍然堅(jiān)持著活躍的社交活動(dòng)?！按蠖鄶?shù)高中生電影的狗血情節(jié)是漂亮的拉拉隊(duì)隊(duì)長(zhǎng)跟了四肢發(fā)達(dá)、頭腦簡(jiǎn)單的肌肉男,而書呆子則被晾在一邊,寂寞地獨(dú)自打發(fā)時(shí)日,”他說(shuō),“但在將來(lái)的某一天,

51、這個(gè)書呆子將會(huì)統(tǒng)治世界,而肌肉男卻只能在洗車場(chǎng)工作。”PARA 21 “At Stuy , its completely different: If you looked at the pinnacle, the girls and the guys are not only good-looking and socially affable, they also get the best grades and star in the school plays and win election to student government. It all converges at the top

52、. It's like training for high society. It was jarring for us Chinese kids. You got the sense that you had to study hard, but it wasnt enough.”但是在史岱文森,情況完全不同:如果你看一下尖子生隊(duì)伍,那些男生女生絕不僅僅是相貌出眾、八面玲瓏,他們獲得優(yōu)異的成績(jī)是校園劇的明星,并且在學(xué)生會(huì)選舉拔得頭籌。所有這些榮譽(yù)都集聚在頂端,就好像在為進(jìn)入上流社會(huì)進(jìn)行訓(xùn)練。這讓我們這些中國(guó)孩子很受震動(dòng),你會(huì)覺(jué)得努力學(xué)習(xí)很必要,但光這樣是不夠的。PARA 22 Mao

53、 was becoming clued in to the fact that there was another hierarchy behind the official one that explained why others were getting what he never had“a high-school sweetheart” figured prominently on this listand that this mysterious hierarchy was going to determine what happened to him in life. “You

54、realize there are things you really dont understand about courtship or just acting in a certain way. Things that somehow come naturally to people who go to school in the suburbs and have parents who are culturally assimilated.” 毛漸漸看清了一個(gè)事實(shí),那就是在公認(rèn)的等級(jí)背后,還有另外一個(gè)等級(jí),可以解釋為什么別人能得到他從未得到過(guò)的那些東西“一個(gè)高中生美少女”醒目地位列其中

55、,而這個(gè)神秘的等級(jí)將會(huì)決定他的生活?！澳銜?huì)意識(shí)到自己在有些事情上確實(shí)懂得不多,比如追求女生,或僅僅按照特定路數(shù)行動(dòng)。但這些事情對(duì)于某些人來(lái)說(shuō)很自然,他們?cè)诮紖^(qū)上學(xué),父母都已融入當(dāng)?shù)匚幕??！盜 pressed him for specifics, and he mentioned that he had visited his white girlfriends parents house the past Christmas, where the family had “sat around cooking together and playing Scrabble .” This ordin

56、ary vision of suburban American domesticity lingered with Mao: Here, at last, was the setting in which all that implicit knowledge “about social norms and propriety” had been transmitted. There was no cram school that taught these lessons.我要求他舉個(gè)具體的例子，于是他提起曾在圣誕節(jié)后去自己白人女友家造訪的經(jīng)歷。“她們?nèi)胰藝谝黄鹱霾?，玩拼字游戲?！边@一幕

57、平常的美國(guó)郊區(qū)人家生活場(chǎng)景久久縈繞在毛的腦際；至少，就是在這里，所有“關(guān)于社會(huì)規(guī)范和禮儀”的那些只可意會(huì)無(wú)法言傳的知識(shí)被代代相傳。而這些東西沒(méi)有哪個(gè)補(bǔ)習(xí)班會(huì)教給你。PARA 23 Before having heard from Mao, I had considered myself at worst lightly singed by the last embers of Asian alienation. Indeed, given all the incredibly hip Asian artists and fashion designers and so forth you ca

58、n find in New York, it seemed that this feeling was destined to die out altogether. And yet here it was in a New Yorker more than a dozen years my junior. While it may be true that sections of the Asian Americans world are devoid of alienation, there are large swaths where it is as alive as it has e

59、ver been. 在受到毛的郵件之前，我自己就曾覺(jué)得，我最多不過(guò)是被亞裔疏離感的最后余燼灼傷一點(diǎn)點(diǎn)而已。的確，如果考慮到亞洲藝術(shù)家和時(shí)裝設(shè)計(jì)師等等此類你能在紐約找到的成功亞裔人士令人難以置信的受追捧程度，似乎這種感覺(jué)將逐漸消逝殆盡。然而這種疏離感現(xiàn)在卻出現(xiàn)在一個(gè)比我小十幾歲的紐約人身上。或許說(shuō)有一部分亞裔美國(guó)人已經(jīng)沒(méi)有了疏離感，這可能是真的，可是在很大一部分亞裔身上，疏離感仍然存在并鮮活如昔。PARA 24 A few weeks after we meet, Mao puts me in touch with Daniel Chu, his close friend from Stuyvesant. Chu graduated from Williams College last year,