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2010年9月3日, 星期五
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最新消息：
2009年11月14日 08:46
From Guangzhou to Oakland: Freedom is Worth Choosing
Ying Ma
A month before President Barack Obama’s first state visit to China, my parents and I returned together to Guangzhou, China for the first time. It has been nearly twenty five years since our family immigrated to the United States. It was difficult not to wonder whether our departure was worth the cost. Guangzhou now basks in the glitter of a city that has undergone three decades of neck breaking economic growth. On the other hand, Oakland, California, our adopted home in the United States, gave us nightmares that we could have never imagined.
Like so many other Chinese cities, Guangzhou has changed drastically. It is now bigger, more modern and more affluent. Districts and neighborhoods that once barely registered on the map now stand tall and proud. The Tianhe District, once a blur in any Guangzhou resident’s consciousness, now boasts some of the city’s swankiest shopping malls, most expensive real estate and tallest skyscrapers. Familiar and unremarkable streets of the past, such as Beijing Road and Shang Xia Jiu Street, now feature wide pedestrian shopping strips under the glitter of neon lights and the allure of red lanterns. The city, once patrolled by bicycles and buses, now offers world class metro trains that speed along with the efficiency and cleanliness that New York City’s subway riders do without.
My family’s journey away, all those years before Guangzhou got its facelift, was a journey from authoritarianism to freedom, from post-Mao China to inner-city America in Oakland, California. But our story is not a typical China story about freedom. It does not involve any Chinese political or religious dissidents who challenge the Chinese state, suffer from the brutality of political repression and then arrive in the United States to breathe the fresh air of liberty. Instead, we were regular Chinese citizen who did not see the Chinese government as our mortal enemy or freedom as our cause. When we left China for America, the first things we encountered were not the blessings of liberty but the ghastly realities of crime, poverty and racism in a free society. Our journey away was nasty, jolting and at times even violent.
As residents of Guangzhou, we lived in poverty by Western standards. Our dwelling had no running hot water, no refrigerator, no telephone, no color television and no flush toilets. Yet we lived a comfortable life by Chinese standards. Unlike a vast majority of the country’s population, my family lived in an urban metropolis, not in the countryside where we had to perform back-breaking farm labor. Unlike numerous other Chinese citizens, I never once starved or went without food.
Nevertheless, America beckoned. On the day that I discovered that my family would move to America, I was the happiest child in the world. I could not have been more excited about the prospect of better ice cream, tasty hamburgers, more fashionable clothing and an endless slew of goods that only a modern, wealthy society could offer.
We did not need to leave, however, to obtain the material goods we lacked. The reform policies undertaken by China for the past three decades may not have granted Chinese citizens political franchise but they made possible a better lifestyle for many of the country’s residents. Today, Guangzhou is no stranger to modernity or a dizzying array of Western food, products and technology offerings from KFC to Adidas to Microsoft.
The land of the free, on the other hand, was the crime-filled ghetto, the impoverished inner city, at least in my new hometown of Oakland, California. It was also rampantly racist. In Oakland, freedom’s dark side surfaced in the form of crumbling schools, unsafe streets and ignorant people. Black, brown and yellow people threatened, stole from and discriminated against each other. As it turned out, we showed up in one of the poorest and most unsafe American cities. Even many years later in 2009, Oakland still has a murder rate that is five times the national average and a robbery rate that is six times the national norm. Rape occurs here 2.5 times more often than it does on average elsewhere in the country.
When we first arrived, my family lived poorly and desperately compared to the rest of the country, even though we now enjoyed many of the basic amenities we lacked in China. During the early years, my parents worked twelve to sixteen-hour jobs at sub-minimum wage. Our names became “Ching Chong,” “Chow Mein” and Chinamen.” Gunshots persistently rang outside of our house and drug dealing and gangbanging occurred daily within viewing distance from our front porch. To avoid being threatened, assaulted or killed in the cross fires, not once did I take a stroll in my neighborhood or sit on the front porch of my house in Oakland after dark.
We could have avoided it all. Guangzhou today may not be able to stack up against San Francisco or New York, but many of Guangzhou’s residents now sport the swagger that rightfully belongs to China’s ever more confident urban class. Never will they discover the ugliness of racism, and many will never again see the indignities of poverty.
The Chinese government, for its part, likes to condemn the United States for what it perceives as America’s human rights follies: widespread poverty, rampant drug use and pervasive racial discrimination. My family’s story in the United States could easily serve as Exhibit A to China’s critique.
Thankfully, freedom is more complicated than what authoritarian bureaucrats imagine. In a free society, criminals can choose to steal and rob; racists can choose to threaten and discriminate; men and women can choose to deal drugs rather than work for minimum wage. But a child emigrant from Guangzhou who did not speak English also got to choose, to decide what to believe in and who she wanted to be, and to walk away from some of the worst attributes of a free society into its finest virtues. Today, she may choose to write the articles she wishes to write without being subject to government censors, to openly and persistently denounce the policies of the President of her country without losing her job and to vote for the political party that is out of power without fearing for her life.
In a journey from Guangzhou to the ghetto, freedom has been profoundly unkind, unfriendly and impersonal. In the middle of Guangzhou’s trendiest neighborhoods and most impressive storefronts, freedom also appears to have been excruciatingly expensive. Nevertheless, freedom, by definition, gives people the opportunity to choose, and for that reason, it will always be worth choosing.
(The author would like to dedicate this article to the late James R. Lilley, former U.S. Ambassador to China and the Republic of Korea.)
回應:
Ms. Ma is a New York-based visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. She immigrated to the United States in 1985. She visited Guangzhou with her parents in October 2009.
She wrote this piece for hkej.com. 11月14日 08:46
每一個大城市都肯定有陰暗面，香港一樣，籠屋已經係其中之一，呢個壇好多自稱愛港愛國，骨子裡一樣歧視新移民，但移民他國，所考慮又點止係咁上下因素，如果移民前真係唔考慮清楚，事後後悔都係自已問題 11月14日 14:18
昨日聽一個朋友說，有一個亞洲移民搬到北美洲某處，在一個白人社區內買了一間約港幣二三仟萬的房子，他遷入後麻煩便開始出現，門窗經常給人打爛，垃圾一地都是，很明顯是一些歧視行為，結果他終於遷出，並把該房子送給當地照顧流浪漢同幫助戒毒機構。 這樣都好呀，天下太平。 11月14日 16:54
香港的黑暗面表面是籠屋那些貧窮問題，實際是一些有權力的人仕不想其他人與他們競爭，用一切方法把有可能增加公平的機會封殺，例如每人都應該有的選票、製造什麼功能組別把他們不喜歡的聲音壓下去、…..『選舉時間表』便把時間拖延得有禁耐得禁耐；還有那些工資高到不合理的高官同公務員，普遍市長想要多少福利就話什麼養懶人，結果是高官同公務員慢慢蠶食市民的儲備，在位時將市民的資產低價賣給財團，退休後又以佰萬或仟萬年薪到財團的公司打工同時享有極高的政府退休福利….等等，這些是我見到的黑暗面。 11月14日 17:34
....Ms Ma has the misfortune of becoming a Visiting fellow of Hoover Institute in NY from Canton. And she writes freely 11月14日 18:05
...In Detroit or cities in the Rust Belt (former industrial area ), there are advertised foreclosed house for sale at around US$30,000 in problem neighborhoods. 11月14日 18:07
Ma Ying's story was interesting, but marred by her self-serving acccusations of racism against the American society that took her in. So what if people called her "Ching Chong"? She shouldn't forget that mass immigration is the program of the US elite; the American people have never asked to become a minority in their own homeland. Does she think the people of Guangzhou would like it if the Chinese government decided that the Chinese people should become a minority in Guangzhou by allowing in millions of Africans, Indians and others? If she thinks the Chinese would not call them names, she has never read the Story of Ah Q or the Ugly Chinaman, and has indeed forgotten what Chinese society is like. There is nothing in the US like the unthinking prejudice against Tibetans and Uighurs in China.
Her own article shows that she lived in a high-crime city. Crime figures show that ethnic minorities, particulary blacks and Hispanics, are overwhelmingly the source of crime. That is why she would hear gunshots ringing out around her. Why does she think that Americans should welcome that crime? After all, to refuse to recognize how wonderful ethnic diversity is ranks as "racism" in her book - but Americans have witnessed growing levels of crime in their country by people not like them - why should they welcome that? Had she looked at the problem more intelligently, she would have seen that official promotion of anti-racism and diversity lay behind the high crime she experienced. Honestly, does she think it was white Americans who were "gangbanging" outside her door? Read the newspapers!
I doubt she was ever the butt of real racism in America. More likely a member of a cosseted privileged minority. As she knows, Americans have to be careful what they say to ethnic minorities, because the authorities will always side with ethnic minorities against Americans in any altercation. Reading between the lines, she came to a country where the government is constantly talking about racism, and cynically snatched up the issue to justify her presence in other people's country. Reading Ma Ying's article, I became aware of the ugliness of anti-racism, and how minority people arriving in the US cynically exploited the goodness of white Americans by making accusations of racism.
Ma Ying enjoys living in a society where she can write articles criticizing the policy of the president without losing her job. Fine. What about members of the historic American nation (89% white in late 1950s)? They CAN lose their jobs for writing the "wrong thing" about multiculturalism and diversity. What Ma Ying experiences as freedom for her, as part of an officially privileged ethnic group, is actually a withdrawal of freedom from Americans. Nowhere in the article does she say why she thinks America should open its doors to the people of Guangzhou. China does not allow immigration. She is ultimately just a scrounger who barged her way into the US. If her accusations of racism were true, she would not be visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution today. Does she think the Uighurs of China can advance in China the way she has done in America? What an utterly deceitful and self-serving article. 11月14日 21:18
xz Your comments are fair, if a Hoover visiting fellow is worth the title. The comments would have been harsh, if the fellowship were less than as expected. 11月15日 00:45
XZ:
Read more carefully. Ying Ma did not claim that the racism she experienced was only from white Americans. It should be obvious from the article that she is writing about the racism of "Black, brown and yellow people threatened, stole from and discriminated against each other". That is certainly 'real racism' she experienced, the kind that can lead to violent death.
Your comments about political correctness should be rethought in light of this; I don't think she (or anyone else at Hoover) would disagree with the facts you cited and your opinions about PC culture and immigration policy.
Perhaps what was missing from the article is any mention of the implicit and institutionalized racism from white Americans. She does not explicitly mention this, but if you consider it to constitute 'real racism', I am certain she has experienced it throughout her life in the US. Or perhaps you do not consider that to be racism, since you seem to think it is perfectly legitimate for a majority race, whether white or Han Chinese, to act in its own interests. 11月15日 04:48
DanielXX說得好，XY和s的反應真的很令人R頭，他們可能真的覺得it is perfectly legitimate for a majority race to act in its own interests。 11月15日 07:10
這是我10多年前聽說的：
一位台灣人在美國買了個房子。之后想在現有的房子上再多加蓋一層樓。該加層計劃最后被社區（即鄰居們）拒絕，而不得實行。該台灣富豪一怒之下，把房子捐給了當地照顧流浪漢同幫助戒毒機構。其結果自然是造成所在社區的real estate downhill ;-)
[ Big Mac 昨日聽一個朋友說，有一個亞洲移民搬到北美洲某處，在一個白人社區內買了一間約港幣二三仟萬的房子，他遷入後麻煩便開始出現，門窗經常給人打爛，垃圾一地都是，很明顯是一些歧視行為，結果他終於遷出，並把該房子送給當地照顧流浪漢同幫助戒毒機構。 這樣都好呀，天下太平。] 11月15日 10:25
新加坡式的威權不是納粹式或共黨式用赤裸裸的軍警加特工力量打壓，而是像一個嚴父，可以無微不致照顧仔女，但仔女去邊，去夜少少，同邊個去街都干涉，本港常常提倡新加坡式威權的人往往 "湊巧" 忘記了新加坡那種真正像富裕但嚴格的大家長式"照顧"仔女 11月15日 13:28
《從廣州到奧克蘭，自由是個值得的選擇》
（自由的代價）
Ying Ma馬英
A month before President Barack Obama’s first state visit to China, my parents and I returned together to Guangzhou, China for the first time. It has been nearly twenty five years since our family immigrated to the United States. It was difficult not to wonder whether our departure was worth the cost. Guangzhou now basks in the glitter of a city that has undergone three decades of neck breaking economic growth. On the other hand, Oakland, California, our adopted home in the United States, gave us nightmares that we could have never imagined.
一個月前，美國巴拉克.奧巴馬總統首次對中國進行國事訪問，我父母和我一起第一次回到廣州，回到中國。自我們全家移民美國至今已經近二十五年。這很難不懷疑我們離開的成本是否值得。廣州現在沉湎於對一個已經經歷了30年打破瓶頸獲得經濟增長的城市輝煌。而另一方面，加州奧克蘭，我們被收養的美國的家中，給了我們從未且難以想像的噩夢。
Like so many other Chinese cities, Guangzhou has changed drastically. It is now bigger, more modern and more affluent. Districts and neighborhoods that once barely registered on the map now stand tall and proud. The Tianhe District, once a blur in any Guangzhou resident’s consciousness, now boasts some of the city’s swankiest shopping malls, most expensive real estate and tallest skyscrapers.
Familiar and unremarkable streets of the past, such as Beijing Road and Shang Xia Jiu Street, now feature wide pedestrian shopping strips under the glitter of neon lights and the allure of red lanterns. The city, once patrolled by bicycles and buses, now offers world class metro trains that speed along with the efficiency and cleanliness that New York City’s subway riders do without.
像許多其他中國城市，廣州有了很大的改變。現在更大，更現代化，更富裕。區，街道，一旦註冊在地圖上現在幾乎都揚眉吐氣，感到自豪。天河區，在任何廣州居民的意識裏，現在號稱擁有一些城市最炫耀的購物中心，最昂貴的房地產和最高的摩天大樓。過去平凡而熟悉的，如北京路，上下九路，現在是寬闊的在霓虹燈和具魅力的紅燈籠閃耀下的行人購物帶。這個城市，曾經被自行車和公共汽車擁擠著，現在可以提供世界一流的地鐵列車的速度與效率，清潔。這些，紐約市的地鐵乘客都不能享受得到。
My family’s journey away, all those years before Guangzhou got its facelift, was a journey from authoritarianism to freedom, from post-Mao China to inner-city America in Oakland, California. But our story is not a typical China story about freedom. It does not involve any Chinese political or religious dissidents who challenge the Chinese state, suffer from the brutality of political repression and then arrive in the United States to breathe the fresh air of liberty. Instead, we were regular Chinese citizen who did not see the Chinese government as our mortal enemy or freedom as our cause. When we left China for America, the first things we encountered were not the blessings of liberty but the ghastly realities of crime, poverty and racism in a free society. Our journey away was nasty, jolting and at times even violent.
我的家庭離開了，所有這些年前的廣州的面目改變了，是從專制到自由的旅程，從後毛澤東時代的中國，到美國內陸加利福尼亞州的奧克蘭市。但是，我們的故事不是一個典型的中國關於自由的故事。它不涉及任何政治或宗教中持不同政見者誰挑戰中國國家，從殘酷的政治壓迫，受苦，然後在到達美國自由的呼吸新鮮空氣。相反，我們是普通的中國公民，從不認為中國政府是我們的死敵，或是為了我們的自由。當我們為赴美國而離開中國，我們遇到的第一件事是不是自由的祝福，而是可怖的社會犯罪現實，在自由社會的貧困和種族主義的可怕現實。我們的遠離中國所遇是骯髒，顛簸，有時甚至是暴力。
As residents of Guangzhou, we lived in poverty by Western standards. Our dwelling had no running hot water, no refrigerator, no telephone, no color television and no flush toilets. Yet we lived a comfortable life by Chinese standards. Unlike a vast majority of the country’s population, my family lived in an urban metropolis, not in the countryside where we had to perform back-breaking farm labor. Unlike numerous other Chinese citizens, I never once starved or went without food.
身為廣州市的居民，我們生活在西方的標準的貧窮中。我們的寓所沒有自來水熱水，沒有冰箱，沒有電話，沒有彩色電視，也沒有抽水馬桶。然而，我們經歷著以中國家標準來說舒適的生活。與該國人口的絕大多數，我的家人住在都會，並非在農村而不必履行艱辛的農場勞動。不像許多其他中國公民那樣，我一次也沒有餓個半死或沒有食物。
Nevertheless, America beckoned. On the day that I discovered that my family would move to America, I was the happiest child in the world. I could not have been more excited about the prospect of better ice cream, tasty hamburgers, more fashionable clothing and an endless slew of goods that only a modern, wealthy society could offer.
然而，美國招手。一天，我發現我的家人將搬到美國去，我是世界上最幸福的孩子。我不可能比這更興奮這意味著能有更好的霜淇淋，可口的漢堡，更時尚服裝和無限的好東西，只有現代，富裕的社會能提供的。
We did not need to leave, however, to obtain the material goods we lacked. The reform policies undertaken by China for the past three decades may not have granted Chinese citizens political franchise but they made possible a better lifestyle for many of the country’s residents. Today, Guangzhou is no stranger to modernity or a dizzying array of Western food, products and technology offerings from KFC to Adidas to Microsoft.
我們沒有必要離開，無論如何，以獲取我們所缺乏的物質財富。在過去30年中國的改革採取了的政策可能不會允許中國公民的政治權，但他們在可能讓該國的許多居民有一個更好的生活方式。今天，廣州已不稀罕現代或令人眼花繚亂的一系列西方食品，產品和技術來自肯德基等的產品，從阿迪達斯直到微軟。
The land of the free, on the other hand, was the crime-filled ghetto, the impoverished inner city, at least in my new hometown of Oakland, California. It was also rampantly racist. In Oakland, freedom’s dark side surfaced in the form of crumbling schools, unsafe streets and ignorant people. Black, brown and yellow people threatened, stole from and discriminated against each other. As it turned out, we showed up in one of the poorest and most unsafe American cities. Even many years later in 2009, Oakland still has a murder rate that is five times the national average and a robbery rate that is six times the national norm. Rape occurs here 2.5 times more often than it does on average elsewhere in the country.
在自由的土地，另一方面，是犯罪充滿聚居區，貧困的城市中心，至少在我的加利福尼亞州奧克蘭市的新故鄉。猖獗的種族主義者。在奧克蘭，自由的黑暗面，出現在學校的崩潰，不安全的街道和愚昧的人們。黑色，棕色和黃種人的威脅，偷竊和相互歧視。結果，我們揭露出最貧窮和最不安全的美國城市之一。即使很多年後的2009年，奧克蘭仍然有謀殺率是國家平均率的5倍，以及搶劫率是6倍於國家標準。強姦案發生在這裏往往一樣比在該國其他地區的平均率多2.5倍。
When we first arrived, my family lived poorly and desperately compared to the rest of the country, even though we now enjoyed many of the basic amenities we lacked in China. During the early years, my parents worked twelve to sixteen-hour jobs at sub-minimum wage. Our names became “Ching Chong,” “Chow Mein” and Chinamen.” Gunshots persistently rang outside of our house and drug dealing and gangbanging occurred daily within viewing distance from our front porch. To avoid being threatened, assaulted or killed in the cross fires, not once did I take a stroll in my neighborhood or sit on the front porch of my house in Oakland after dark.
當我們剛到時，我的家庭生活和全國其他地區相比比較差，儘管我們現在享受著我們在中國缺乏的許多基本設施。在最初幾年，我的父母工作12到16小時，在獲取低於小時分最低的工資下工作。我們的名字變成了“清倉”，“炒麵”和“華人”。我們的房子外面持續響起槍聲，毒品交易和輪奸等團夥犯罪發生在我們的前廊每天可見的距離。為了避免受到威脅，毆打或罪惡交火死亡，天黑之後我從來不漫步在我家附近或坐在我奧克蘭家門口門廊。
We could have avoided it all. Guangzhou today may not be able to stack up against San Francisco or New York, but many of Guangzhou’s residents now sport the swagger that rightfully belongs to China’s ever more confident urban class. Never will they discover the ugliness of racism, and many will never again see the indignities of poverty.
我們本來可以避免這一切。廣州市今天可能無法比擬三藩市或紐約了，但廣州的許多居民現在可以炫耀性地大搖大擺走並且正當地屬於越來越有信心中國的城市類。他們永遠也不會發現醜陋的種族主義，許多人將永遠不會再次看到貧困的侮辱。
The Chinese government, for its part, likes to condemn the United States for what it perceives as America’s human rights follies: widespread poverty, rampant drug use and pervasive racial discrimination. My family’s story in the United States could easily serve as Exhibit A to China’s critique.
中國政府，就其本身而言，喜歡譴責它作為美國的愚蠢人權感知美國：普遍貧窮，猖獗的毒品使用和普遍的種族歧視。對中國的批評來說，我的家人在美國的故事可以很容易地作為典型A。
Thankfully, freedom is more complicated than what authoritarian bureaucrats imagine. In a free society, criminals can choose to steal and rob; racists can choose to threaten and discriminate; men and women can choose to deal drugs rather than work for minimum wage. But a child emigrant from Guangzhou who did not speak English also got to choose, to decide what to believe in and who she wanted to be, and to walk away from some of the worst attributes of a free society into its finest virtues. Today, she may choose to write the articles she wishes to write without being subject to government censors, to openly and persistently denounce the policies of the President of her country without losing her job and to vote for the political party that is out of power without fearing for her life.
謝天謝地，自由是複雜得多，並不是想像的專制官僚。在一個自由社會，罪犯可以選擇偷竊和搶劫;種族主義者可以選擇威脅和歧視，男性和女性可以選擇販毒，而不是最低工資工作。但是一個孩子從廣州移民他不說英語也都可以選擇，決定相信什麼，想成為誰，並離開了一個自由社會的最糟糕的一些屬性而到其最好的美德。今天，她可以選擇寫她希望想寫的文章而不受政府的審查，並堅持公開譴責她的國家總統的政策而不會失去她的工作以及投票給政黨而不必擔心她的生命。
In a journey from Guangzhou to the ghetto, freedom has been profoundly unkind, unfriendly and impersonal. In the middle of Guangzhou’s trendiest neighborhoods and most impressive storefronts, freedom also appears to have been excruciatingly expensive. Nevertheless, freedom, by definition, gives people the opportunity to choose, and for that reason, it will always be worth choosing.
一個移民之旅從廣州到貧民區，自由成為了深遠的無情，不友好及非人性。在廣州最熱鬧的街區中，印象最深刻的店面，自由，似乎也已難以忍受地昂貴。然而，自由，根據定義，讓人們有機會選擇，而且由於這個原因，它總是值得選擇。
(The author would like to dedicate this article to the late James R. Lilley, former U.S. Ambassador to China and the Republic of Korea.)
（作者願將這篇文章奉獻給已故前美國駐中國和韓國大使李潔明。）
鑒於許多華人未必能直閱英文，姑且快譯成此，還請高手們多多指教。閱畢感歎曰：“家鄉難割捨，舒適價更高，若為自由故，二者皆可拋。” 11月15日 16:56
自由的定義、定位可以是很廣的, 也可以很狹窄； 它因人、因時、因地而有不同的著眼點與重量. 每個人都有他在自由的層次上、先後上追求的決擇權力. 怎能相提並論而定優劣?!
論者往往佔高地而下壓, 毋視別人的時勢因素; 就算在理論、道德上全對, 那又如何?! 11月15日 17:35
Obama and Freedom in China
Ying Ma
President Barack Obama, unlike his predecessor George W. Bush, has not made promoting freedom abroad his cause. When he arrives in China on November 15 for his first state visit, however, he will not be able to ignore freedom's latest, most momentous development: the Chinese government has divorced economic freedom from political freedom for the past three decades and has largely made it work.
In Beijing and Shanghai, Obama may continue to mull over the necessity and wisdom of a troop surge in Afghanistan, but in the long run, the legitimacy and attractiveness of the liberal democracy that he has sworn to protect will face as much, if not more of, a challenge from the contentment of Chinese citizens living under authoritarianism as it does from the fear and loathing propagated by radical Islamic terrorism. Will Obama stand listless before Chinese authoritarianism?... 11月16日 00:23
