外籍作家馬語琴談外國人和外地人

In 2008, the murder of Canadian model Diana O'Brien in her Shanghai stairwell rocked the city's Chinese and expat community. Years later, author Mara Hvistendahl revisited the story, interviewing the family of the victim and accused killer, police investigators and other models working in China.

2008年，加拿大模特戴安娜•奧布賴恩(Diana O'Brien)在上海居民樓內遇害，在上海中外社區引發了震動。幾年後，作家馬語琴(Mara Hvistendahl)回顧了這一事件，對受害者家庭、被控殺人者、警方調查人員和其他在中國工作的外籍模特進行了採訪。

Her new book, 'And The City Swallowed Them,' looks at the world that brought two different kinds of newcomers together--foreigners, including young models fighting for emerging opportunities in high fashion, and China's own migrants, including those traveling from poor villages who were willing to go to desperate measures to scrap together their own living.

她的新書《And The City Swallowed Them》（意爲：他們被城市吞沒）探究了一個將兩類不同的外來者聯繫起來的世界。其中一類是外國人，包括爲獲得高端時尚業的機遇而努力的年輕模特，另一類是外地人，包括那些來自貧困農村、不得不在絕望時用極端手段謀生的人。

Ms. Hvistendahl has lived in Shanghai for eight years. Her first book, 'Unnatural Selection,' was a 2012 Pulitzer Prize finalist. China Real Time sat down with the author to talk about her latest story. Edited excerpts:

馬語琴在上海生活了八年。她的第一本書《非自然選擇》(Unnatural Selection)是2012年普利策獎(Pulitzer Prize)入圍作品。中國實時報欄目與馬語琴探討了她的新書。以下是經過編輯的訪談摘錄：

You were living in Shanghai at the time of the murder, also a young single woman. What was your reaction at the time?

那起謀殺案發生時你在上海，也是一名年輕單身女士。當時你的反應是什麼？

When the crime happened, I lived in a pretty low-end apartment, a six-floor walkup, a gong fang, cement building with no security. It never occurred to me living there and sometimes coming home late at night that Shanghai could be unsafe. I would walk home from the subway carrying keys in my hand. Like a lot of foreigners, I thought it was pretty shocking somebody had been killed in the center of the city, and that there didn't seem to be an immediate reason for it. The victim wasn't involved in crime or anything nefarious.

在罪案發生時，我住在一座非常低端的居民樓中，那是一座六層的樓房，沒有電梯，是所謂的公房，沒有任何安保。我住在那裏，有時會很晚回家，從沒想到上海可能是不安全的。我會從地鐵站步行回家，手中拿着鑰匙。與許多外國人一樣，我也認爲有人在市中心被害、卻似乎無法立即找出原因的情況是非常令人震驚的。受害者並未參與犯罪活動，也沒有任何極端惡劣的行爲。

Both international and local media jumped to cover the story. What kind of insight did you draw from their coverage?

中國本地媒體和海外媒體均對此事進行了報道。你從他們的報道中獲得了什麼靈感？

After the murder happened, the Chinese press didn't report on it for a few days. Probably because there wasn't good reporting coming out of China, all kinds of rumors circulated among foreign press. It was reported that Diana was killed on Chongming Island, rather than her building, and that she was a bar dancer, a go-go dancer.

謀殺案發生後的最初幾天，中國媒體並未報道此事。或許是因爲中國沒有好的報道，因此外媒有了各種各樣的傳言。有外媒報道說，戴安娜是在崇明島而不是在她居住的樓內遇害，還說她是酒吧的舞女。

In the end, the PSB [Shanghai's Public Security Bureau] issued a notice on its website that allowed Chinese reporters to take up the story. By the time the trial happened, the coverage was pretty detailed. But for a few days, there was a lot of speculation. You saw the local reporters really following the PSB's lead or really waiting for their signal. I don't know if there was a specific censorship directive or not. My guess is there more likely was self-censorship.

最後，上海公安局在其網站上發佈了一則公告，允許中國記者採訪報道此事。到案件開庭時，媒體報道已經相當詳盡。但是在案件剛剛發生的那幾天，流言滿天飛。當時，本地記者真的很相信公安局，等待公安局的消息。我不知道是不是上頭有專門的審查命令。我猜，可能更多地是媒體的自我審查。

In China, the police often write their own news. A story that comes out with a lot of detail on a case or investigation often originates from the police. In this case, a lot of the detail that I had of the investigation came from a lengthy feature article published by a publication that was affiliated with the police.

在中國，警方通常會自己發佈消息。關於某起案件或調查、有着大量細節的報道通常都來自警方的消息。在這起案件中，我瞭解到的關於調查的許多細節都來自一篇長篇特寫，發表特寫的媒體與警方有聯繫。

What's changed about the modeling industry in Shanghai since this case?

這起謀殺案發生後，上海的模特業有了哪些變化？

If anything, the conditions for models here have gotten worse. There are more and more small, fly-by-night modeling agencies. It's harder to keep track of how many there are and their names. As models flood the market, wages have gone down as well. One model I talked to who worked on and off in China, used the phrase 'bottom of the barrel.'

如果說有什麼改變的話，那就是模特們的生存狀況變得更糟糕了。不可靠的小型模特機構如雨後春筍般冒了出來，想要追蹤有多少家、各叫什麼名字也越發困難。隨着大量模特涌入市場，其薪資也跟着下降。我與一位在中國時斷時續工作的模特交談時，她說自己的狀況已經跌至谷底。

When Diana was here, Shanghai was a pretty lucrative place to work. It was grueling--the hours were long and conditions on the job weren't great--but you could still make good money. Now, there are agencies here that can get models good jobs, but it's not Paris or Milan.

戴安娜在的時候，上海還是一個非常有利可圖的市場。模特一行確實很累人，需要一連工作數個小時，條件也不怎麼好，但收入頗豐。而現在，上海確實也有一些機構能給模特找到不錯的工作，但比不上巴黎、米蘭。

Diana and her killer came from different backgrounds, traveling to Shanghai from two completely different corners of the world. The victim was from idyllic Salt Spring, one of Canada's Gulf Islands, and the killer was an 18-year old migrant worker from a remote village in Anhui province. But your book suggests parallels between the two characters. What are they?

戴安娜和殺死她的兇手有着完全不同的背景，從兩個天差地別的世界角落來到上海。戴安娜來自加拿大海灣羣島(Gulf Islands)中具有田園風情的小島鹽泉島(Salt Spring)，兇手則是一個來自安徽省偏僻山村、年僅18歲的農民工。但你的書中寫了這樣的兩個人物之間也有平行線，是什麼？

In 2008, Shanghai was in transition, in the lead up to the Olympics and the Expo. The city was being remade overnight. You had two populations flooding in--the expats and immigrants.

2008年，上海還處在過渡時期，爲了迎接北京奧運會(Olympics)和世博會(Expo)，幾乎在一夜之間，上海的面貌就發生了天翻地覆的變化。有兩種人大批涌入：外國移居者和中國農民工。

People often think of expats as foreigners on packages for two to three years, who have drivers and lots of expendable income. In this case, I was interested in foreigners with temporary visas who work short-term jobs, often for very low wages, the people who end up as waiters, models, DJs or promoters. The migrant workers who come here face some of the same employment issues. They often don't have real papers, or a hukou [household registration], that would qualify them for social services. They also work without contracts.

人們通常將外國移居者視作暫且在中國居住兩到三年的“老外”，擁有專職司機和大把大把的鈔票。在我所指的是那些打短期零工、持臨時簽證的外國人，他們拿的薪水通常極低，乾的是侍應生、模特、DJ或促銷員這樣的工作。而來到上海的中國農民工也面臨着一些相同的問題。好多人都沒有戶口，無法享受社會福利。他們的工作也沒簽合同。

The migrants have it much worse off than the foreigners, but I could see parallels between their two experiences. The city is pretty oblivious to both groups, yet relies on a constant flow of Chinese migrants and foreigners coming in to revitalize. Models were especially important to the image that Shanghai was trying to represent--an international city and of place where foreign faces graced whatever products were on billboards.

而從中國其他地方來到上海生活的外地人境遇遠不如這些外國人。但我還是可以看到他們之間的相似之處。上海對這兩個羣體都很冷漠，儘管這個城市需要外地人和外國人源源不斷地流入才能保持活力。模特對於上海的城市形象特別重要，上海希望以國際城市的形象示人，希望這個城市的商品廣告牌上處處有外國人的面孔。

What was most surprising in writing the book?

在寫這本書的過程中最讓你感到意外的是什麼？

I went into it with assumptions about how China's criminal justice system worked, thinking like many people who were in Shanghai at the time, that the police had just found and arrested someone who was not the murderer.

在我寫這本書的時候，我曾經對中國刑事司法系統如何運行有過種種猜想，當時我和很多在上海生活的人一樣，認爲警察可能抓錯了人。

By the end, the situation became a lot more complex. I didn't expect the degree to which the police involved Diana's parents in the investigation. The parents were consulted on the sentence for their daughter's killer. They didn't want the death sentence and that opinion had an impact on the outcome.

但最終的情況要複雜得多。我沒有料到警察會讓戴安娜的父母參與到調查中來。在對殺害女兒的兇手的量刑問題上，警方曾徵詢過戴安娜父母的意見。他們並不希望判處兇手死刑，這個意見影響了最終結果。

Did that give you hope for China's justice system?

這件事是否讓你看到了中國司法系統的希望？

I'm not sure. I also learned a lot of discouraging things about the Chinese justice system--the confession rate is really high, suspects can be detained up to 37 days without being formally arrested. Allegations they are tortured and wrongful convictions are common. In one recent case, a man who had been convicted of murder was released after the victim turned up alive.

這我不太確定。我也瞭解到有關中國司法系統的不少負面的東西，例如認罪率相當的高、嫌疑人可以在沒有正式被逮捕的情況下被扣押最多37天。也經常聽到有關嫌疑人遭到刑訊逼供以及誤判的事情。近期就有一宗案例，一個人被判犯有殺人罪，但之後被殺的人卻活着回來了，在這種情況下此人才被釋放。

There is hope that the system is changing. Voices that are calling for reform and the number of executions has declined. Still, the system is not not changing as fast as some people would like.

中國司法制度有改變的希望。司法改革的呼聲很大，死刑執行的數量也有所下降。但司法改革的推進速度仍沒有達到一些人的期望值。

The book is the first story published by a digital platform that you helped start called Deca. Why choose an e-book format?

這本書是你幫助發起的稱作“Deca”的數字平臺出版的第一本書。爲什麼選擇以電子書的形式出版？

No one's really figured out a good word for these sort of pieces. They're short books, long-form pieces, or singles. They are somewhere in between a magazine article and full-length book, that seem to work well on an e-reader, Kindle or iPad.

還沒有人真正爲這類作品想出一個好名字。可以叫短書，也可以叫長文章，或者叫單行本，介於雜誌文章與足本書籍之間，似乎用Kindle或iPad等電子閱讀設備看最合適。

Initially, one of the big surprises of digital publishing was that people were reading long stories. There was a fear that people would just stop reading. Instead, pieces that were driven by narrative took off.

最初，電子出版領域一個出人意料的現象是，人們都在讀長篇文章。有人擔心過段時間大家就不會再讀了。而實際上，敘述體的作品獲得了飛躍式發展。

The writers that started Deca are all experienced magazine writers. We've seen the feature world shrinking. The number of pages devoted to full length features has declined over the past few years, as have the number of outlets that we can publish in. Meanwhile, digital publishing has emerged. The margins are actually better for writers as well. I'm pretty hopeful about it.

發起Deca的作者都是富有經驗的雜誌寫手。我們發現，特寫創作正出現萎縮。過去幾年，標準長度的特寫所佔頁面數量出現下降，刊發這類特寫的出版物的數量也在減少。而與此同時，數字出版業務則應運而生。實際上，數字出版給作者帶來的利潤率也更高。我對此還是抱着很大希望的。