看新闻，学单词，

牧马人

题记：周连春从一个粗暴的红卫兵转变为一个
成功的企业家的故事，也就是新中国的故事。



Mr. Zhou was serving in the army.

The Life and Times of Book Idiot Zhou (4)  
Zhou Lianchun's transformation from brutal Red Guard to successful entrepreneur is the story of the new China

By John Pomfret
Sunday, July 16, 2006; Page W18 (Washington Post)


The middle-aged woman savaged  at the village threshing ground qualified as a target . A few days earlier she had stopped her son and another farm boy from fighting by slapping them both . Under the logic of the Cultural Revolution , she was automatically in the wrong, because her family had been labeled "rich peasant," while her son's opponent came from a "poor peasant" family. Zhou's Red Guard committee decided to teach her a lesson . It mobilized  the whole production team, about 100 people, to give her a taste of her own medicine   -- hundreds of slaps as she knelt in the village square. After the beating, the woman refused to admit she had done wrong .

"Eat [excrement],"  she screamed at her assailants .

Zhou was then dispatched to  a nearby outhouse to collect excrement in a wooden bucket and dilute it with water . The Red Guard chief took a wooden ladle  and poured the runny concoction  down the woman's throat. She kept quiet after that.

Over the next weeks and months, Zhou and his gang smashed Buddhist temples , forced monks to walk around with boulders on their backs   and garbage cans on their heads, and defaced wall paintings   of Buddhist gods, covering them with a coat of red paint . After that dried, an artist arrived and painted portraits of Mao  on top.

In their search for counterrevolutionary contraband  -- books, photographs, jewelry, knickknacks , anything representing Mao's "Four Olds" (old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas)  -- Zhou's team overturned mattresses, peered inside fireplaces and rooted through vats of preserved vegetables . Zhou remembers being particularly impressed by the bonfires of books . But he did not destroy any of the books in his own home. That was left to his older sister and a cousin, who, in an effort to show the family's revolutionary zeal , ransacked the house , placed the old, bound volumes in piles and lit the pyres themselves . Zhou hid 10 novels from his relatives, wrapping them in a flax bag  and stuffing them in an underground vault , where his family stored sweet potatoes for the winter.


Notes:

The middle-aged woman savaged  这个被批斗的中年女人
qualified as a target  够了成为靶子的条件
stopped sb. from fighting  制止某人打架
slapping them both  掌掴了他们两个
the logic of the Cultural Revolution  文革的逻辑
teach her a lesson  教训她一顿
mobilized  动员了
to give her a taste of her own medicine  让她尝尝“以其人之道还治其人之身”的滋味儿
refused to admit she had done wrong  她拒绝认错
"Eat [excrement]," she screamed at her assailants. “ 吃屎吧，”她对那些打手尖叫道。
assailants 攻击者
be dispatched to somewhere 被派往某地
dilute it with water  用水稀释
a wooden ladle  长柄木勺
runny concoction  稀溜溜的混合物
smashed Buddhist temples  砸烂佛堂庙宇
with boulders on their backs 他们背上背着大石头
defaced wall paintings 涂污墙上的图画
a coat of red paint  一层红油漆
portraits of Mao  毛主席画像
counterrevolutionary contraband  反革命违禁品
knickknacks  小饰物
"Four Olds" (old customs, old culture,
old habits and old ideas)  四旧（旧风俗、旧文化、旧习惯、旧观念）
rooted through vats of preserved vegetables  捞底搜查泡菜缸子
the bonfires of books  焚书篝火
revolutionary zeal  革命热情
ransacked the house  把屋子搜了个底儿朝天
lit the pyres themselves  他们亲自点燃这一堆堆燃柴
flax bag  麻布口袋
underground vault  地窖


（未完待续）

参m

come on, 106楼！

牧马人

Zhou felt immense pride to be a Red Guard and to be playing, as he thought of it, with the big boys. "I did what I was told, and, being 11, I liked it," he says. Never mind, of course, that he had demonstrated counterrevolutionary behavior   by hiding those few books. Like all Chinese youth, the first sentence he'd learned in school was "Long live Chairman Mao!"   To be carrying out the chairman's orders gave the precocious  boy a powerful sense of purpose and self-worth. "The more ruthless  we are to enemies, the more we love the people," the team would chant together .

In September 1966, his gang of Red Guards mercilessly  beat an old man accused of once having been a landlord. That same day, fearing more torture, the old man killed himself. But the guards weren't finished. They gave the corpse to his three sons, demanding that the boys parade it around the village. Then they told the sons to chop the body into three pieces and place them in pigpens . If any of them had refused, they all would have been dubbed "evil spawn of the feudal class"  and destined for persecution.

A primary target of Mao's Cultural Revolution was the family, the last bastion of traditional Confucian culture . For centuries, morality in China was rooted in a veneration  for the elderly and the family tree. People didn't disgrace themselves in the eyes of God; they did so in the eyes of their forebears . But Mao was determined to create a new morality. During the Cultural Revolution, brothers were pitted against  sisters, children against parents, wives against husbands. People were expected to report on  those dearest to them because they alone knew the most private thoughts of their loved ones. China was turned into a society of snitches.  The stool pigeon  became a hero of the revolution.

Zhou recounts his years in the Red Guard over a lunch of beef noodles in a modern Nanjing coffee shop called Magazine -- a two-story glass-and-faux-marble structure   with sofas and waitresses wearing baseball caps. Zhou admits to   having no pangs of conscience for  what he did. "In China," he says, "no one admits to torturing, and everyone says they were victims. But do the math. If we have so many victims, we've got to have a lot of torturers."

At 15, Zhou was given a group of 11 people on whom to single-handedly undertake "thought work," a euphemism  for torture and humiliation. One of those on the list was Big Mama, who, while not his biological mother , was the woman who had raised him as her son.

Zhou took up the task of denouncing his mother without the slightest hesitation . Under the watchful eye of his revolutionary elders, Zhou forced her to spew a Maoist catechism  that neither of them quite understood. "The party is always correct. Long live the Dictatorship of the Proletariat . Long live Chairman Mao."

This went on for days in the public threshing ground. After each session, Zhou and his mother would return home together. She would cook dinner for him and the rest of the family, never talking about what went on during the daily public humiliation . Zhou never actually hit Big Mama or made her kneel on pebbles or glass. He didn't need to. He had learned how to make her quake with fear  using simpler methods -- baring his teeth, using a wild stare .


Notes:

counterrevolutionary behavior  反革命行为
"Long live Chairman Mao!"  “毛主席万岁！”
precocious  早熟的
ruthless  残酷无情的
chant together  齐声朗诵
mercilessly  残忍地，无情地
pigpens  猪圈
"evil spawn of the feudal class"  “封建阶级的狗崽子”
the last bastion of traditional Confucian culture  传统儒家文化的最后堡垒
veneration  尊敬
forebears  祖先
were pitted against  被促使与......相斗
report on  somebody  打某人的小报告
a society of snitches  密探社会
stool pigeon  告密者
glass-and-faux-marble structure  玻璃和人造大理石结构
admits to sth.  承认某件事
pangs of conscience for  为了......而良心不安（痛苦）
euphemism  委婉说法
biological mother  生物学母亲（生母）
denouncing his mother without the slightest hesitation  毫不犹豫地批判他的母亲
spew a Maoist catechism  背诵一段毛主席语录
the Dictatorship of the Proletariat  无产阶级专政
public humiliation  公开羞辱
quake with fear  吓得哆嗦
baring his teeth, using a wild stare  露出他的牙齿，凶狠地瞪着眼睛



（未完待续）

牧马人

Years later, long after he'd become disillusioned with   the Communist Party, Zhou returned to his village and did something both unusual and courageous. He undertook a survey of the devastation wrought by   his Red Guard team on his village of 2,500. According to his research, his team burned two tons of books, ransacked five Buddhist temples and four Taoist shrines , and chopped hundreds of old carvings -- dragons, phoenixes, gremlins  and birds -- from the eaves  of ancient courtyard houses. Dozens of his victims had been seriously hurt. Ten people committed suicide  following beatings.

And he still wonders: "How do you think a society where that type of behavior was condoned  -- no, not condoned, mandated -- can heal itself? Do you think it ever can?"

IT WASN'T UNTIL 1970 THAT THE MAYHEM  OF THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION FINALLY ABATED. The following year, schools in Zhou's commune reopened after a five-year hiatus , and Zhou was able to graduate from high school. Lacking any connections to continue his education, he was put to work in the fields.

From 1971 until 1976, Zhou and the other men in his village dredged riverbeds , dug ditches and repaired the commune's irrigation system. In the summer, Zhou worked in bare feet. In the winter, the ice on the San Cang riverbed would pierce his straw shoes  and slash his feet. Zhou rose each day at 4 a.m. and, with brief breaks for meals, worked until 9 p.m. Staggering home each night, Zhou felt like a walking corpse . Men on his work team frequently had to be carried away after collapsing from exhaustion and malnourishment .


Notes:

be disillusioned with  对......不再抱有幻想
wrought by sb. 拜某人所赐，乃由某人造成
Taoist shrines  道观
gremlins  神灵，精灵
eaves  屋檐
committed suicide  走上了自杀的道路
was condoned  被宽恕
MAYHEM  有意的破坏
a five-year hiatus  五年的中断
dredged riverbeds  疏浚河道
straw shoes  草鞋
a walking corpse  一具行尸走肉
collapsing from exhaustion and malnourishment  因为衰竭和营养不良而瘫倒在地


（未完待续）

牧马人

Zhou's diet consisted mainly of corn, carrots and sweet potatoes, never meat. To this day, he becomes nauseated at a mere whiff of those vegetables . Though still in his teens, Zhou had a reputation as a good laborer and could keep up with the men in his work brigade . But he wanted to stop digging ditches. To do so, he needed someone with influence   in the party.

One day in the fall of 1972, the local party chief  approached 17-year-old Zhou with a proposition . He wanted to introduce him to a young woman. Party chiefs often played the role of matchmaker .

The party chief told Zhou that if he agreed to court the young woman , he would recommend Zhou for a position that would get Zhou out of the fields.

All in all, it was a remarkable offer. But Zhou eventually learned what had prompted it: The party chief and the young woman were lovers. The party chief was married, and he had promised to find the woman a husband to help cover up his infidelity .

Zhou balked . He loved literature and had devoured whatever novels he could find by Balzac, Tolstoy, Flaubert. He wanted the sort of romance he had read about, not a business deal brokered by a party boss. Zhou told the chief he would not marry the woman. The chief was enraged.

"Little Zhou," he said, wagging his finger at the boy, "you've been reading too much, and you've forgotten how to be decisive. You should know when to act, but you've become a book idiot " -- the Chinese term for a bookworm . The Book Idiot nickname stuck.

IN OCTOBER 1977, the Shen Kitchen Commune's loudspeakers crackled with a report from the capital: University entrance examinations , which had been suspended since 1966, would be reinstated .


Notes:

becomes nauseated at a mere whiff of those vegetables  只要一闻到这些蔬菜的气味就感到恶心
work brigade  劳动小组
someone with influence   某个有影响力的人
party chief  党组头头
proposition  提亲
played the role of matchmaker  扮演媒人的角色
court the young woman  向女方提亲/求婚
cover up his infidelity  掩盖他的不忠行为
balked  犹豫了
you've become a book idiot  你已经成了书呆子了
bookworm  书虫，书呆子
University entrance examinations  高考（大学入学考试）
be reinstated  恢复了


（未完待续）

参m

thanks a lot.
I am reading them

牧马人

Zhou was determined to pass the college entrance exam, which covered history, geography, mathematics and Chinese. He studied for two months before taking the exam in December 1977. Though he did well in most subjects, he scored only 5 out of 100 in math and failed.

Zhou decided not to take the test again in July 1978. But his elder sister had other plans. One evening early that year she visited and found him reading a translated Russian novel under the wavering light of an oil lamp .

"Why aren't you studying?" she asked.

"I don't want to," Zhou replied.

His sister had brought a suitcase with her. Inside were her high school textbooks, all for Zhou. "I never burned these," she informed her little brother with a smile.

Under her watchful eye , Zhou began to cram again . This time, he aced the test . His score was the highest in the commune.

Zhou's acceptance letter from Nanjing University  arrived on October 10, 1978. He packed a small canvas bag  of clothes, including a blue Mao suit that had been washed so many times it was bleached white, and a padded cotton jacket  he'd worn for five years. At 23, he was leaving the fields at last.


Notes:

the wavering light of an oil lamp  一盏油灯摇曳的光影
Under her watchful eye  在她关切的目光下
began to cram again  又开始了死记硬背
aced the test  考试取得了优等成绩（A)
acceptance letter from Nanjing University  南京大学录取通知书
canvas bag  帆布包包
a padded cotton jacket  一件棉大衣

牧马人

OF ALL THE SOCIAL SCIENCES, the teaching of history was the most strictly controlled and politicized . The communists imposed a crude and monolithic interpretation  on China's 3,000-year written history, retelling it as a Marxist fairy tale  of endless class struggle  and imperialist aggression . There was no room for free-thinking  Chinese history majors like Zhou. But privately Zhou opened his heart to several close friends. This country and this system are rotten, he would say, receiving nods of agreement. During one meeting of the history department's Communist Party members and prospective applicants , he let his frustration surface publicly . The secretary opened the meeting, saying the party wanted China's elite to join. One by one, the students chirped in, telling him how eager they were to join, too. Then it came time for Zhou to speak. An excellent student, Zhou had been identified early on as a good party candidate.

"I used to worship party members," Zhou recalls saying in his clear reedy voice . "But during the Cultural Revolution, I noticed that the people entering the party were all relatives of important people. I stopped worshiping them. I stopped wanting to enter the party." Silence descended on the room.

The secretary spoke up and, with perfectly twisted reasoning , offered the students a lesson laced with evasion and threats . "It's natural to have doubts," Zhou recalls him beginning, "but this doesn't necessarily have to shake our belief in Marxism ."

The secretary's argument was as simple as it was warped . Look at what the Communist Party had done to China: killed 30 million people during the Great Leap Forward, ruined the lives of millions more during the Cultural Revolution. Despite these disastrous failures, it remains in power. That's proof, he said, of the party's superiority.

Zhou would always remember this argument. No matter what the party would do to China, no matter how many lives it crushed, it would always remain strong enough to rout any challenger . The Communist Party would stay in power because it would do anything   to stay in power. That's an argument that Zhou believes to this day.


Notes:

strictly controlled and politicized  严格控制和政治化了的
crude and monolithic interpretation  粗陋而笼统的诠释
Marxist fairy tale  马克思主义的幻想传说
endless class struggle  无休止的阶级斗争
imperialist aggression   帝国主义的侵略
no room for free-thinking Chinese hitory majors 没有空间留给自由思考的历史专业学生
Party members and prospective applicants  党员和入党积极分子
surface publicly  公开表露
clear reedy voice  细弱而清晰的声音
Silence descended on the room.  静默笼罩了这个房间。
perfectly twisted reasoning   纯粹扭曲了的推理
laced with evasion and threats  含有回避与威胁
to shake our belief in Marxism  动摇我们的马克思主义信念
warped  变形的、扭曲的、乖戾的
to rout any challenger  打败任何挑战者
would do anything  会做任何事情/会不惜一切代价

牧马人

DURING HIS LAST YEAR AT NANJING UNIVERSITY, Book Idiot Zhou finally entered the Communist Party, swallowing his antipathy  in the hope that party membership  would result in a better job assignment . It didn't.

To avoid being sent back to the country-side where he'd grown up, he enlisted in the People's Liberation Army . He entered as a lieutenant  a month after graduating from the university in July 1982. He awoke on his second day realizing he had made a mistake. "This is going to be a tragedy," he wrote in his diary. "I have to begin my struggle to leave."

It took Zhou four years of maneuvering to win permission to leave the army. Afterward, he landed a low-paying job as a teacher at the Anhui Institute of Finance and Trade in the small, grimy city  of Bengbu, just west of Jiangsu province. His subject: Marxism. "For several years, my income was equivalent to nothing," Zhou would write later. By this time, he was married, with twin daughters to support. One daughter was healthy; the other had been born with Down syndrome . "My dinky salary  had to support my parents and my family. One child needed medicine and nourishment." He needed more money.

Zhou began to think the unthinkable: going into business . Raised with the conventional view of merchants, who ranked far below government officials and scholars, Zhou had also absorbed communist propaganda describing business owners as "capitalist bloodsuckers ." But China's de facto ruler , Deng Xiaoping, was changing the economy -- and changing the country's mind-set.

In just a few years, China had ditched  the we're-all-poor-together egalitarianism  in favor of a nationwide quest for cash.

Deng devised a new way to describe China's economy, calling it "socialism with Chinese characteristics ." From then on, every capitalist-style reform was justified as falling within this deliberately vague, catch-all category . Policymakers were now free to jettison crackpot Marxist economic theory , so long as they didn't discard the one thing the party held dear : its continued domination.

Zhou's colleagues and friends were buzzing with talk about new possibilities. Several of his classmates from Nanjing University had already "jumped into the sea ," as the Chinese called starting a business. One graduate student, who'd been tossed out of the university for having too many girlfriends, opened a coffee shop; another bought and sold iron ore ; another raised mushrooms   in the basement of his apartment building.


Notes:

swallowing his antipathy  强忍住他的反感
party membership  党员身份
job assignment  工作分配
enlisted in the People's Liberation Army  参加了人民解放军
lieutenant  陆军中尉
grimy city  污秽的城市
Down syndrome  唐氏综合症（=mongolism，一种先天性染色体疾病，又叫21三体，乃由于受孕的卵子多出了一条染色体所至。婴儿存在明显的智能障碍。）
dinky salary  数量微少的工资
going into business  经商
capitalist bloodsuckers  资本家吸血鬼
de facto ruler  事实上的统治者
ditched  抛弃了
egalitarianism  平均主义（=equalitarianism）
socialism with Chinese characteristics  有中国特色的社会主义
deliberately vague, catch-all category  故意模糊的、包罗万有的范畴
jettison crackpot Marxist economic theory  抛弃臆想的马克思主义经济学理论
held dear  紧紧抓住
"jumped into the sea"  下了海（经商）  
bought and sold iron ore  买卖铁矿石
raised mushrooms  种植蘑菇



（未完待续）

牧马人

In 1987, a high school classmate from Dongtai contacted Zhou with a proposition. The classmate knew of a pharmaceutical factory in Guangzhou that was looking to buy enzymes found in, of all places, human urine. What he needed was a source. Zhou's friend had heard that Nanjing University had the technology to isolate the enzymes   and that the chemistry professor in charge of the process was also from Dongtai.

The former classmate asked Zhou to contact the man and work out a deal. The professor agreed to share the technology. Zhou, his classmate in Dongtai and a third man, Sheng Hongyuan, then formed a partnership to open plants to extract these enzymes . Zhou was the only one without capital , so he agreed to establish and manage the facilities in exchange for a piece of the profits.

"It was pretty fitting," Book Idiot Zhou says with a laugh. "I'd made a few pennies collecting turds  as a boy. Here I was doing pretty much the same thing."

Within months, Zhou and his partner Sheng had secured contracts to collect urine  in Bengbu and other cities. For a fee, local sanitation departments allowed them access to the public toilets. Zhou and Sheng would then organize a platoon of laborers  to pedal three-wheeled pedicabs  mounted with huge vats to collect the goods each day. For every ton of urine, they would extract 60 grams of a raw material that the pharmaceutical company used to make an anti-clotting heart medicine  and 100 grams of a raw material for a medicine that helps dissolve gallstones . Zhou transported the enzymes once a month by bus to Guangzhou. Book Idiot Zhou had jumped into the sea -- of urine.

ZHOU HELD ONTO TO HIS TEACHING JOB, which provided him with a safety net of sorts: an apartment and medical care. Several days a week, he taught Marxist, Leninist and Maoist thought and railed against the exploitation by the capitalist class. The rest of the time he spent as a budding entrepreneur, employing dozens at rock-bottom wages, working the system to enrich himself, his partners and his family. In 1991, Zhou was accepted into a program at Beijing University designed to keep history and politics professors up on the latest trends in teaching Marxism. Zhou spent most of his time setting up a urine-extraction plant. He landed two contracts with the Beijing municipal government to collect urine at 1,000 public toilets. He got to know each public toilet intimately while pedaling his bicycle through Beijing neighborhoods, showing his workers where the collection sites were.

None of his laborers had ever been in Beijing before. Zhou couldn't find urbanites  willing to do the dirty work. Most of his workers came from the provinces, farm boys with strong bodies and a willingness to do anything to get out of the fields. Zhou's processing plant -- a bankrupt state-owned factory that he rented from a local party chief -- was south of downtown Beijing, 3 1/2 miles from the nearest toilet. The workers made as many as nine trips a day, seven days a week, earning the equivalent of $50 a month.

One day in January 1992, Zhou discovered that the plant's drainage system was blocked, leaving him with no place to dump several vats of effluent . Zhou had been told that the runoff, mostly ammonia, would harm neither people nor animals, so he discharged the stuff into the ponds of a local fish farm. Zhou spent the Spring Festival holidays dredging thousands of dead fish out of the ponds, leaving a stench on his hands and clothes for months. He reimbursed  the owners the equivalent of $2,000 -- a small fortune.


Notes:

isolate the enzymes   分离这类酶
extract these enzymes  提取这类酶
without capital  没有出资
collecting turds  收集粪便
collect urine  收集尿液
a platoon of laborers  一群劳工
three-wheeled pedicabs  三轮脚踏车
an anti-clotting heart medicine  一种抗心脏血栓形成药物（抗凝剂，这里指尿激酶）
helps dissolve gallstones  帮助溶解胆结石
Book Idiot Zhou had jumped into the sea -- of urine.  书呆子老周下了海，下了尿的海洋。
urbanites  城市人
effluent  流出物
reimbursed  赔偿


（未完待续）

牧马人

ZHOU'S BUSINESS WAS FAILING. Although the market for enzymes was good, he had so little money that his platoon of 18 pedicabs had dwindled to a squad of five .

Zhou periodically would ask his partner in Dongtai for a share of the firm's profits. Each time, the partner would refuse, saying the business was facing difficulties. Then on a trip to Guangzhou, Zhou asked a representative of the Guangzhou pharmaceutical company how he thought the business was doing. "Not bad," Zhou recalls the representative replying. "We must have made several hundred thousand together." Other than the occasional pittance  to cover expenses, Zhou had not seen any money from his Dongtai partner in more than six years.

His experience was typical for many Chinese entrepreneurs. So new to the business of business, the Chinese ripped one another off with mind-boggling regularity . The country's lack of a moral compass  only made things worse. Zhou once stored 120 pounds of enzyme at a friend's refrigerated warehouse. The friend sold it and refused to give him any money. Zhou hadn't asked for a contract because to do so would have amounted to an insult. Business is all done on a handshake, yet in China, handshakes are worthless.

Zhou finally went to Dongtai and confronted his partner, demanding that he give Zhou the Beijing portion of the business. The partner relented. Zhou found himself at the end of 1994 the sole owner of his own urine-extraction business in the capital.

Meanwhile, Zhou was growing weary of his job teaching Marxism at the Anhui Institute, and he was increasingly unwilling to toe the party's ideological line. Each year a handful of students, usually those applying for party membership, would express doubts about Zhou's loyalty to the party and to China. One student even delivered a report with statistics on how frequently Zhou was critical of the state .

In 2002, the party secretary at the institute summoned Zhou to his office. "Either you change the nature of your instruction, or you will stop teaching Mao," the secretary warned.

Zhou told the secretary that he did not think that he was particularly anti-party or anti-Mao. The secretary remained unconvinced. He informed Zhou that he was being switched from teaching Maoist thought to teaching business administration.

LAST APRIL, BOOK IDIOT ZHOU RETURNED to his ancestral village , arriving with the air of a conquering hero. He was wearing a tie and driving his freshly washed and polished white Volkswagen Bora . It was the Qingming Festival -- during which Chinese traditionally honor their ancestors -- and Zhou planned to tend to the graves of his parents and grandparents.

With economic reforms, the Shen Kitchen Commune had been disbanded , and Zhou's old production brigade had been renamed Li's Kitchen Village; it was not bad off for a rural backwater . Every courtyard had a motorcycle. Many of the men and women had jobs in factories rather than in the fields. Zhou pointed out people, passing a wizened woman   who looked to be in her sixties, but was actually Zhou's age -- 50. "That's a girl I liked when I was a boy," he said. "She was the daughter of a party guy  . . . She ended up marrying a local farmer. He gets drunk and beats her now."

Zhou greeted the elderly parents of the first man killed in the village during the Cultural Revolution. A band of Red Guards murdered him because he used to paint portraits of Buddhist saints. Zhou said hello to the mother of the party secretary who had tried to bamboozle Zhou into   marrying his lover three decades earlier. The party secretary had died young. "Hello, Professor Zhou," said the old woman, who, at 89, was so bent that she stood barely four feet tall. "Tell my grandson to come home, please."

"I hired her grandson," Zhou explained. "I hired the son of the man who had tried to keep me down on the farm."

Zhou walked the dirt paths  of Li's Kitchen, smiling at the sunburned faces of the farmers who greeted him with a mixture of curiosity, envy and respect. He merited all those reactions. Facing bankruptcy in the mid-'90s, he had turned his business around and, by last year, was making more than $60,000 annually. He'd bought himself a sprawling condo in Nanjing, divorced his first wife and married a woman 22 years his junior.

But his success hasn't mellowed  his view of the Communist Party. "Let's look at China from the Marxist perspective," Zhou says. "Let's give the Chinese government the benefit of the doubt. Why did the slave society overthrow primitive society ? Because its economy was more advanced and it was richer. The same is true for why feudal society overthrew slave society and why capitalist society replaced feudal society. But then we come to Mao. Who was Mao? Who did he represent?"

"Did Mao represent economic forces stronger than capitalism? No. Did he represent anything progressive? No. He represented the most backward forces in China. He didn't even represent the working class. He represented thugs . It wasn't a communist revolution. It was a thug's revolution. That's our real history."

[I]John Pomfret is The Post's Los Angeles bureau chief. This article is adapted from his book Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China, to be published next month by Henry Holt and Co.[/I]


Notes:

dwindled to a squad of five  缩小到一个五人小组
pittance  少量的津贴
the Chinese ripped one another off with mind-boggling regularity  中国人出奇一致地互相欺诈
lack of a moral compass  缺乏道德规范
was critical of the state  批评国家
ancestral village  祖居的村子
white Volkswagen Bora  白色的大众宝莱轿车
had been disbanded  早就被解散了
rural backwater  乡村僻壤
a wizened woman  一个干瘪的女人
a party guy  一个党员
to bamboozle Zhou into  哄骗老周......
the dirt paths  土路/尘土飞扬的小路
mellowed   变柔和，变好
the slave society overthrow primitive society  奴隶社会推翻原始社会
thugs  恶棍，暴徒



（全文完）

谢谢阅读。抛开其政治观点不谈，我倒是学到不少特别词汇。

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顶115楼啊！
更期待楼上的好贴
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After more than a decade as a superstar of Chinese cinema, Gong Li (巩俐) has finally come to Hollywood. Miami Vice（迈阿密风云） — in which Gong plays a drug-money launderer（从事毒品洗黑钱） who’s sleeping with the enemy, undercover cop（卧底警官） Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) — is the second of three big English-language productions the actress shot back to back .（呵呵，这句话我也不理解啊。） Last year, Gong played a Japanese geisha （艺妓）conniving against a young rival (Ziyi Zhang) in Memoirs of a Geisha. （艺伎回忆录）
Due out in 2007 is Young Hannibal, with Gong co-starring in a prequel to The Silence of the Lambs（沉默的羔羊） that traces the teen years of future serial killer Hannibal Lecter.
Gong, 40,（转眼就40岁了？） got her start in 1988’s Red Sorghum （红高粱），beginning an artistic and romantic partnership with Zhang Yimou（张艺谋）, one of
China’s premier directors. Their films together included Ju Dou（菊豆）, Raise the Red Lantern（大红灯笼高高挂）, To Live and Shanghai Triad before the two broke off their professional and personal relationship in the mid-1990s. Zhang and Gong are working together again with Curse of the Golden Flower（黄金花的诅咒，也有叫“满城尽带黄金甲”的，显然我不喜欢这样翻译，感觉有些词不达意）, which co-stars Chow Yun-Fat（周润发，发哥也） in a tale of palace intrigue in ancient China scheduled for U.S. release in December. Gong’s other films include Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine（霸王别妾，应该叫“霸王别姬”）, Wayne Wang’s Chinese Box（情人盒子） and Wong Kar-wai’s （王家卫）2046.
Speaking through a translator , Gong chatted with The Associated Press about Miami Vice, working in Hollywood and the more permissive stance Chinese censors
now take toward films.
Q: You’ve turned down offers from Hollywood before. Why was now the right time?
A: In the past, people have approached me before to play,
for example, a girl in James Bond movies, things like that. So in the past, they were characters I wasn’t really excited about. They were just kind of a pretty face, perhaps, kind of a pretty Asian woman, so there didn’t seem to be very much substance
there for me to really develop the character.
Nowadays, there are fewer offers  like that and more of these
serious ones, where the script is much better developed and the character is full.

Q: You and Colin Farrell take some fast-boat rides in Miami  Vice. What was that like?
A: It was pretty scary. I’d never been in a fast boat like that before, so I was a little bit scared at first. But afterwards, you realize that’s just the way it is. There’s nothing to be scared of.

Q: Did you get to drive the boat?
A: They wouldn’t let me do it.
They wouldn’t let me drive. It was actually pretty dangerous.

Q: What was it like working again with Zhang Yimou after so
many years?
A: It hasn’t really changed that much in 10 years. We went back, and it was very easy for us to communicate about how to make the film, what he wanted, what we both wanted. What he loves most is the movies, so it’s quite easy for us to communicate about it.

Q: Do Asian actors have more opportunities in Hollywood  nowadays?
A: I don’t think I would go so far as to say it’s a trend. I hope it’s not a passing fashion for a new kind of face, like Asian faces. What’s important is for this kind of interaction as artists.
It doesn’t really matter who you are, what your racial or ethnic background is. Everybody around the world can communicate in this way. So what I hope for is longer-term cooperation in working together. - The Associated Press

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