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| ROUGE STREET Three Novellas By Shuang Xuetao Translated by Jeremy Tiang | 《艳粉街——三部中篇小说》，双雪涛著，程异译 |
| A swindler in northeast China is called a “porcelain chipper.” The term comes from an age-old trick in the antique trade: Put fragile items on teetering display and let an unsuspecting shopper’s clumsy reach knock them over. The scam — you break it, you buy it — clears shelves faster than waiting for a collector with a fat wallet. | 在中国东北，有一种骗子被称为“碰瓷的”。这个术语来源于古董交易中的一个古老把戏：把易碎物品放在摇摇欲坠的陈列架上，毫无防备的购物者会笨手笨脚地把它们碰倒，打破什么东西就得买下来。比起期待富有的收藏家光临，这样的骗局更能清空货架。 |
| Few characters in “Rouge Street,” a suite of three novellas by the Chinese writer Shuang Xuetao, have any illusion that the daily hustle gets much better than a good confidence trick. Such is life for them on the outskirts of Shenyang, an industrial hub of 7.5 million people in what is sometimes called China’s Rust Belt. The region was dealt a rough hand during the economic restructuring in the 1990s, as its Soviet-style, state-owned enterprises from the ’50s — coal, textile and steel factories — were made over. For many workers, the change was its own kind of swindle, breaking the so-called Iron Rice Bowl of lifetime employment under Communism. | 中国作家双雪涛的三部中篇小说集《艳粉街》中的人物大多都清楚地知道，每天的忙碌打拼无非就是一场精心的骗局。这就是他们在沈阳郊区的生活。这是一个拥有750万人口的工业中心，有时被称为中国的“锈带”。在1990年代的经济转型中，这里受到了粗暴的对待，那些50年代的苏联式国有企业——煤炭、纺织和钢铁工厂——遭到了改造。对许多工人来说，这种变化本身就是一种骗局，打破了共产主义制度下被称为“铁饭碗”的终身就业。 |
| Shuang’s book, his first to be translated into English — and nimbly so by Jeremy Tiang — is named after the dilapidated neighborhood he knows well. He gives voice to an intriguing cast of characters left behind by China’s economic miracle. They struggle to emerge from their bleak reality in search of light, efforts that sometimes have a religious overtone: A woman finds a way to pay back the good will of a stranger who saved her father’s life during the Cultural Revolution; a young protagonist follows a madman’s prophecy and unravels a murder mystery; a washed-up worker helps a young idealist fulfill his dream. | 本书是双雪涛的作品首次译为英文——出自敏锐的译者程异之手——书名取自他熟悉的一个破败社区。他讲述了被中国经济奇迹抛下的一群有趣的人物。他们挣扎着从黯淡的现实中走出来，寻找光明，这种努力有时带有宗教色彩：一个女人寻找办法来报答一个在文化大革命期间救了她父亲一命的陌生人；一个年轻的主人公听从一个疯子的预言，解开了一个谋杀之谜；一名潦倒的工人帮助一个年轻的理想主义者实现梦想。 |
| Rouge Street is otherwise not a particularly polite or hopeful place. It runs on personal vendettas and blood feuds instead of fair trials. Women and children get beaten up regularly, and their husbands and fathers are just as often victims of violence as they are initiators. Shuang pulls no punches, and the reader has much to gain by stepping into this world of matter-of-fact brutality, mystery and intrigue, unexpected humor and small but meaningful acts of personal honor. | 除此之外，艳粉街并不是一个彬彬有礼或充满希望的地方。它靠的是个人恩怨和世仇，而不是公正的审判。妇女和儿童经常遭到殴打，她们的丈夫和父亲既是暴力的发起者，也是受害者。双雪涛的描写丝毫不留情面，书中不乏理所当然的残酷、神秘与阴谋、意想不到的幽默以及为个人荣誉而做出的微小但有意义的举动，读者踏入这个世界，必定会有很多收获。 |
| Those paltry acts are the only way the powerless can rebalance the world for themselves. In the third novella, “Moses on the Plain,” a tutor invokes the reprisals of Exodus to comfort her student: “As long as what’s in your heart is genuine and sincere, the mountains and oceans will part for you, and the people coming after you, the ones who didn’t make space for you, will all get punished.” These words take on greater significance by the end of the story, after the student becomes a person of interest in a serial-murder case. Shuang once said that he tore a clump of hair off a girl’s scalp in a childhood fight, and that the 10-year-old retaliated by dismantling his family’s front door overnight, in the dead of winter. You’re never too young or old to fight for what’s yours, his stories remind us. “Rouge Street” offers modest hope and a fleeting sense of restored harmony, while avoiding any moral high ground or grand narrative. Instead of taking a bird’s-eye view, Shuang places his gaze at the level of his characters. | 书中那些微不足道的举动是无权无势的人们令自己的的世界得到平衡的唯一途径。在第三个中篇小说《平原上的摩西》中，一位老师援引《出埃及记》中的报复行为来安慰她的学生：“只要你心里的念是真的，只要你心里的念是诚的，高山大海都会给你让路，那些驱赶你的人，那些容不下你的人，都会受到惩罚。”在故事的结尾，当这个学生成为连环杀人案的嫌疑人后，这些话变得更有意义。双雪涛曾经说过，在童年的一次打斗中，他从一个女孩头皮上扯下了一撮头发，这个10岁的女孩为了报复，竟然在隆冬的夜里拆掉了他家的大门。他的故事提醒我们，不论老少，一个人永远可以去争取属于自己的东西。《艳粉街》提供了适度的希望和短暂的恢复和谐之感，同时避免了道德高地或宏大叙事。他没有从高处俯瞰，而是平视自己笔下的人物。 |
| China’s Rust Belt is a distant reality even for most Chinese. With his candid but intriguing portrayals of the northeast, the 38-year-old Shuang belongs to a small cohort of writers in the region who emerged from decades of breathless growth feeling more force-fed than nourished. His work has captivated readers for this reason, not to mention the distinctive use of a northeastern dialect and its colloquialisms (not easy to capture in translation); the oil reek of factory floors and chimney stacks maintained by workers who built Mao’s China; the unrelenting, icy winters in which tales of vengeance and murder abound; the less-than-nostalgic recall of the Sino-Soviet friendship in the 1950s; and the eclipse of that past as China pushed for market reforms in the 1990s and 2000s. | 即使对大多数中国人来说，中国的“锈带”也是一个遥远的现实。38岁的双雪涛对东北的描写坦率而耐人寻味，他是那里产生的一小撮作家之一，他们经历了几十年令人眼花缭乱的发展，感觉更多是遭受了灌输，而不是滋养。正因如此，他的作品才深深吸引读者，更不用说他对东北方言及其俗语的使用（在翻译中很难捕捉）；在他笔下，散发油烟味的工厂地板和烟囱由建设毛泽东时代中国的工人们维护；无情冰冷的冬天里，复仇和谋杀的故事比比皆是；对1950年代中苏友谊的回忆并不那么令人伤感；在1990年代和2000年代中国推动市场改革时，过去的辉煌黯然失色。 |
| Shuang explores these elements in stories of outcasts, killers and everyday people who still want meaning — and sometimes religious salvation — despite it all. From start to finish, his scope is close to the ground, his language sparingly emotive and unobtrusive. He never flinches. As a result, we don’t look away either. | 在探索这些元素的同时，双雪涛讲述了被遗弃者和杀手的故事，还有那些普通人，尽管有着这样的遭遇，他们仍然想要探寻意义——有时是希望获得宗教上的救赎。从始至终，他的视野贴近大地，他的语言平实，充满有节制的情感。他从未退缩。因此，我们也不会把目光移开。 |
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