旅行中過分追求真實有意義嗎

In a globalized age — when a McAloo Tikki is just as Indian as the Taj Mahal — has the very word lost its meaning?

今天的旅行幾乎總是要費盡周章地追尋“真實”。然而在全球化的時代，當麥當勞薯餅漢堡和泰姬陵一樣很印度，“真實”這個詞是不是失去了意義？

I once spent an unforgettable day in the traveler’s treasure-house that is Sana’a, capital of Yemen. Stained-glass windows glittered from thickets of high tower-houses as night began to fall, and khat-chewing men with daggers at their sides haggled furiously in the Salt Market. Clay walls surrounded one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements on the planet, where groups of turbaned shopkeepers headed toward 1,400-year-old mosques as the call to prayer echoed through the dusk. It wasn’t hard to feel, amid the dusty lanes of a large section of town that’s now a Unesco World Heritage Site, that nothing had changed since the Prophet’s time; here, I decided, was the Old World, all slowness and prayer and tribal custom, in stark opposition to the fast-forward, hyperconnected, young society I know in California.

我曾在堪稱旅行者寶庫的也門首都薩那度過了難忘的一天，夜幕降臨時，在憧憧矗立的塔樓上，彩色的玻璃窗閃着亮光。在販賣香料的“鹽市場”(Salt Market)，彆着匕首的男人們一邊嚼卡塔葉(khat)，一邊激烈地砍價。這裏是地球上人類連續居住歷史最久的地點之一，城市四周有土牆環繞。宣禮聲響徹黃昏時，一羣羣裹着頭巾的店鋪主人，走向有着1400年曆史的清真寺做禮拜。這座城市如今是聯合國教科文組織指定的世界遺產，城裏很多地方的道路都塵土飛揚，讓人很容易以爲這座城市從先知穆罕默德在世時就不曾改變過。我斷定，這裏無疑是舊世界，生活緩慢、時常禮拜、延續着部落習俗，與我在加州所熟悉的那種倉促、高度互聯的年輕社會大相徑庭。

And yet the single most revealing moment I spent in Yemen came not in Old Sana’a, but in the bombed-out, headline-ridden port of Aden. The ‘‘true Yemen,’’ I realized inside a crowded Internet cafe, was the sound of ‘‘La Cucaracha’’ playing loudly as a truck driver sounded his horn outside. It was the melancholy half-Yemeni, half-British man who buttonholed me one afternoon and invited me to see the cemetery where most of his family was buried. It was the Ching Sing restaurant nearby that had been serving moo shu shrimp through nearly 40 years of warfare, and boasted a menu startlingly similar to the one I’d seen at the Chinese Cascade Restaurant (an ‘‘Authentic Chinese Restaurant’’) in southern Oman, not far away — run and frequented entirely by Indians.

然而對我而言，也門最發人深省的時刻，並不是在薩那老城，而是遭到轟炸滿目瘡痍，備受媒體關注的港口城市亞丁。我在一所擁擠的網吧裏意識到，所謂“真正的也門”，是一個卡車司機在網吧門外按着喇叭，車上大聲播放着墨西哥民歌《小蟑螂》(La Cucaracha)。是一天下午，一個也門和英國混血的男子拉着我講話，邀請我到一塊墓地參觀，他的家人多半埋葬在那裏。是附近的誠興餐館(Ching Sing)，儘管它經歷了近40年的戰火，但一直在供應木須蝦仁，這裏的菜單與我在另一家餐館看到的菜單驚人地相似——那家店是烹製“正宗中國菜”的瀑布中餐館(Chinese Cascade Restaurant)，位於距此不遠的阿曼南部，由印度人經營，也只有印度人光顧。

Our notion of places — which is to say the romances and images we project onto them — are always less current and subtle than the places themselves. That’s why we work to screen out the many shopping malls and signs for McAloo Tikki in Varanasi as we search for dead bodies near the ghats; it’s why my Kyoto-born wife, visiting the U.S., looks aghast when I take her to an authentic-seeming Vietnamese restaurant in Orange County or that Ethiopian market my friends in D.C. have been raving about.

我們對地點的期許，也就是說我們向地點投射的浪漫和印象，永遠都不會比那些地點本身更微妙、更屬於當下。因此，我們在恆河畔的瓦拉納西(Varanasi)仔細尋找河邊臺階上的死屍時，一直努力忽視路上許許多多的購物中心和麥當勞薯餅漢堡(McAloo Tikki)的廣告。也正是因此，我生於日本京都的妻子來美國後，我帶她到橙縣一家看似正宗的越南餐館，她卻驚呆了。後來我又帶她到了我華盛頓的朋友都很喜歡的埃塞俄比亞市場，她也驚呆了。

She longs instead for Universal Studios, a ghost town that evokes the ‘‘macaroni Westerns’’ she grew up on, the ‘‘real America’’ as devoured by the world on ‘‘Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.’’ Cosmopolitan and refined as she is, she knows that travel is, deep down, about the real confirmation of very unreal dreams.

其實，她最想去的是環球影城(Universal Studios)，雖然那明明是一座假城，但卻能讓她想起從小就耳濡目染的“通心粉西部片”(macaroni Westerns)，想起《比弗利嬌妻》(Real Housewives of Beverly Hills)讓全世界人都陷入癡迷的“真實的美國”。儘管她優雅又見聞廣博，但她明白，旅行最深處的意義是讓很不真實的夢，得到真實的印證。

I know, I know: It’s the heart, the very soul, of vacation travel — especially luxury travel — to serve up the atypical. Tour companies aspire to introduce us to what isn’t ordinary, to what can’t be found back home, to what is in fact as far from the everyday lives of locals as possible. When we settle into our $500-a-night suite in a Taj hotel, surrounded by oil lamps and bangled dancers, the room glittering with tiny mirrors, we couldn’t be further from the ‘‘real India’’ outside, which struggles to get by on $1 a day. Our backpacking kids scorn us for our distance from real life as they settle into a fleapit in Old Delhi, a ‘‘real India’’ compounded of bedbugs and stomach cramps and equally ‘‘authentic’’ travelers from Düsseldorf and Malmo.

我明白，我明白：度假旅行，尤其是奢華旅行的核心實質在於，向遊客獻上非典型的體驗。旅行企業渴望向我們展示非同尋常的，回到家後就再也看不到的景象，實際上那與當地人的日常生活也無限遙遠。我們在一家泰姬陵酒店入住500美元一晚的套房，身旁縈繞着油燈和戴着手鐲腳鐲的舞者，房間裏小鏡子璀璨發亮，而這時我們距離外面日均生活費僅有1美元的“真實的印度”再遙遠不過了。揹包旅行的我們的孩子，在住進舊德里滿是跳蚤的角落時，是抵達了“真實的印度”。他們會遭遇牀上的臭蟲、胃痙攣，還有來自德國杜塞爾多夫、瑞典馬爾默的同樣“正宗”的旅行者。那一刻，我們的孩子會譏笑我們，與現實生活距離遙遠。

The ‘‘reality’’ we crave, in short, is itself a fantasy. During the rare weeks when I can afford a holiday, I don’t want to immerse myself in the chaos, the commotion, the hand-extended poignancy of the ‘‘real India’’; humankind, as T.S. Eliot had it, cannot bear very much reality. It’s the unreal India, the surreal India we seek out as holiday-makers, a reality as Photoshopped and curated as a picture in a hotel brochure.

簡而言之，我們渴望的“真實”本身，就是一種幻想。在我難得擠出的幾周假期裏，並不想沉浸在“真實的印度”那種混亂、喧囂、伸手乞討的苦楚之中；就像T·S·艾略特寫過的，人類沒辦法承受太多現實。我們作爲度假者，追求的是不真實的印度、超現實的印度，我們追求的現實，彷彿是經過Photoshop調整，精心編排到酒店宣傳冊裏的圖片。

Yet these days that disconnect is even more acute because so many travelers have been everywhere (if only on-screen), which in turn means that reality — all that is unmediated and nonvirtual — holds a greater premium than ever. Today, we crave ‘‘realness’’ as never before, and in response, the travel industry is trying even harder to provide it. Expert guides take ever more pains to lead us to artisanal secrets in the local marketplace, and fancy restaurants claim to use only what has been grown in the fields nearby. Six-star hotels aspire to resemble the villages around them — though their guests may be comfortable only in proportion to the degree in which they fail.

但如今，這種脫節遠比以往更尖銳，因爲有很多遊客已經到過了所有地方（哪怕只是在屏幕上），這反過來就意味着，未經調整的、非虛擬的現實，擁有了前所未有的附加價值。我們從來不曾像今天這樣渴求“真實”，爲了迴應這種需求，旅遊業也付出了更大的努力，爲我們提供“真實”。專業導遊付出前所未有的努力，指引我們瞭解當地市場上匠人們的祕密，告訴我們哪些光鮮的餐館號稱只選用附近田地裏種植的原材料。六星級的酒店期望能像它周圍的村莊一樣——儘管越想讓客人舒適，它們就越不能真的像旁邊的村子。

This increasingly fevered quest for the authentic can in truth be a mug’s game, if only because the visitor’s ‘‘reality’’ is sometimes a local’s canny business plan. That dance in Ubud that’s so hauntingly indigenous might well have been created for (and even by) the tourist market. Those red-robed monks practicing ritual debating — on the nature of reality, no less — at the Drepung monastery in Lhasa are in fact doing so at the behest of their rulers in faraway Beijing, happy to encourage old customs so long as those will bring in dollars. You may encounter a craftsman patiently stitching gold tilla embroidery into an elegant shawl on the back streets of Srinagar, but there’s no less ancient craft involved in his brother down the street beckoning you toward his shop selling ‘‘authentic fake Rolexes.’’

人們日益熱切地追求真實，但實際上可能只是費力不討好，一個很重要的原因就是，遊客看到的“真實”，有時只是當地人精明的商業企劃。在烏布，那場極具當地色彩的舞蹈很可能是爲（甚至是由）旅遊行業創作出來的。在拉薩哲蚌寺，身穿絳紅僧袍的喇嘛們儀式性地辯論經文奧義——何爲“真實”的本質，巧不巧——他們這樣做實際上是迫於執政者的要求，只要能賺到美元，後者就樂於鼓勵舊習俗。在印度斯里那加的一條僻巷，你能看到一個手藝人往一塊典雅的披肩上，耐心地刺繡金邊。但在巷尾，他的哥哥招攬你走進銷售“正宗仿勞力士”的店鋪，也同樣是一門古老的技藝。

For nearly every traveler, in any case, the prize souvenir from any trip will be the memory of an encounter with (let’s say) a Chinese guide armed with a story not so easily found in Chinatown back home. Very often that story will involve a highly unglamorous childhood in a village, a ‘‘real China’’ that might be the product of manufactured nostalgia and now has become the chance, through a visitor, to draw a little closer to Stanford. To wish that it were otherwise — to hope that the Chinese everywoman you meet wants to live the same ‘‘unspoiled,’’ often imprisoning existence as her father, without the iPhones and Audis and frappuccinos that we find so indispensable — is to practice a kind of imaginative colonialism. Let the rest of the world remain picturesque and quaint — ‘‘authentically’’ undeveloped — so that we can come away with some killer selfies!

幾乎對每一個旅行者來說，無論如何，一段旅程中最有價值的紀念品，就是一段特殊的記憶。比如，從一位中國導遊那裏聽到一段在美國的華埠裏不能輕易找到的故事。那段故事常常涉及一個村莊裏度過的慘淡童年，那個“真實的中國”或許是人爲製造的懷舊產物，而如今成爲了一種機遇，通過旅行者拉近了講述者與斯坦福大學的距離。盼望相反的情景——比如，希望你遇到的普普通通的中國女子，也想住在與她父親的生活相同的“純粹”環境裏，儘管那種環境禁錮着人們，也沒有我們認爲不可或缺的iPhone、奧迪(Audi)和星冰樂(frappuccino)——就相當於踐行某種幻想層面的殖民主義。讓世界上的其他地方都保留風景如畫的古樸樣貌吧，保留在未經開發的“純粹”環境裏吧，這樣我們走的時候就能炫耀一些超酷的自拍照了！

When Pierre Loti arrived in Nagasaki in 1885, he commented to a friend, ‘‘Where are we in reality? In the United States?’’ Once he took on a local mistress, he likely realized he wasn’t in Kansas anymore — and that authenticity, like beauty (like truth) lies very much in the eye of the beholder. I hear the same sentences these days when friends disembark in Kyoto’s futuristic train station, to confront a city twice as populous as Detroit, though with fewer sushi bars in evidence.

皮埃爾·羅蒂(Pierre Loti)在1885年抵達長崎時，向一個朋友評論道，“我們實際上在哪，在美國嗎？”等他找到了一個本地的情婦後，他可能意識到，自己已經不在堪薩斯了——而且，所謂正宗，像美（也像真相）一樣，很大程度上取決於觀察者的眼光。如今，我的朋友們來到京都時，無一例外地也會講出同樣的話。他們從京都那頗具未來色彩的火車站下車，看着這座人口兩倍於底特律的城市，卻發現壽司店比底特律少。

In response, I’ll sometimes take them to a nearby Golden Arches where my chic Japanese stepdaughter in her Paul Smith dress is sipping iced Earl Grey and eating the special Chicken Tsukimi (or ‘‘Moon-Viewing’’) burger that McDonald’s serves up in September in honor of the harvest moon. The ancient capital is supple and sophisticated enough to update its sense of authenticity with every season. The only visitor who’ll come away disappointed is one whose dreams of the Other refuse to take in the Other’s (no less reasonable) dreams of him.

作爲迴應，我有時會帶他們去附近的一家“金黃雙弧”，我那時尚的日本繼女會穿着保羅·史密斯(Paul Smith)的裙裝，喝冰伯爵紅茶，吃限時供應的雞肉月見堡(Chicken Tsukimi)。這是麥當勞爲了慶祝豐收季的月亮，在9月份推出的。這座古老都城足夠靈活也足夠世故，可以隨着季節的變化更新它對“正宗”的感覺。進店後感到失望的，只有那些對“他者”懷有幻想，但又不肯接受“他者”對自己的幻想的人，畢竟後者的幻想也同樣合情合理。