丹麥小美人魚到訪上海
【英文原文】
A Mermaid in Shanghai
Denmark's Little Mermaid traveled abroad for the first time to spend six months in Shanghai, where she made her debut Sunday at the World Expo.
The surprisingly small 96-year-old statue--just 5 feet, or 1.5 meters tall--is the centerpiece of the Denmark Pavilion. It sits in a pool of water, also lugged all the way from Copenhagen.
The statue, created by Danish sculptor Edvard Eriksen after the fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen, is Denmark's most popular tourist attraction, and while she is in Shanghai, a video installation by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is replacing her at her home perch in Copenhagen's harbor.
While she is revered in Denmark, the Little Mermaid has seen her share of domestic violence and has been the subject of repeated attacks by vandals. She has been decapitated, had her arm cut off, been painted as well as blown off her rock. A few years ago, she was draped in a burqa.
In addition, replicas of her have popped up across the world, including in Greenville, Michigan, where it forms part of the town's annual Danish Festival, along with a statue of Andersen--made of Lego pieces, a product that originated in Denmark.
Xinhua news agency reported that Denmark's Minister of Taxation Troels Lund Poulsen said at a ceremony to unveil the statue Sunday that the mermaid had been brought to Shanghai to show his country's dedication to China.
Although the ceremony was a closed event, hundreds of Chinese visitors crowded outside the Danish Pavilion, though they could only see the statue's back.
Yue Yufei, 10, from Jiangsu province, told Xinhua that she has read the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, and also saw a picture of the statue taken by her mother, who visited Denmark in 2005.
'It's so exciting to see it with my own eyes. I've been longing for that since I saw the picture and it's great that I can see it without going abroad,' she said, according to Xinhua. Her mother, Chen Xiaolan, said they may come back to visit the 'Little Mermaid' again after the World Expo opens on May 1.
Bjarke Ingels, chief architect of the Danish Pavilion, said, 'It's almost like a piece of Danish culture being integrated into Chinese culture,' Xinhua reported.
Andersen's works were introduced to China in the early 1900s and are still widely read by Chinese children. In his tale, as in the 1989 Walt Disney movie, the mermaid is a sea king's daughter who falls in love with a human prince. But unlike the movie, the Andersen tale has no singing crab and, worse, the mermaid's Faustian bargain to trade her fishtail for legs doesn't quite work out as planned.
【中文譯文】
丹麥的小美人魚雕像第一次到海外旅行。週日，她在上海世博園舉行了揭幕儀式，並將在這裏展出六個月。
小美人魚雕像在上海世博園丹麥館展出這個已有96年曆史的雕像是丹麥館的核心展品。她出奇得小，僅1.5米高，她的周圍環繞着不遠萬里從哥本哈根運來的一池碧波。
這尊雕像由丹麥雕刻家艾瑞克森(Edvard Eriksen)根據安徒生(Hans Christian Andersen)的童話創作，是丹麥最受歡迎的旅遊景點。小美人魚雕像在上海展出期間，中國藝術家艾未未的一件影像裝置作品將在哥本哈根的海港中代替她迎接遊人的目光。
儘管小美人魚雕像在丹麥受人尊敬，但也見證了國內的暴力並多次受到破壞。她的頭和胳膊曾被人砍落，曾被人塗上顏色，也曾被從雕像底座的岩石上吹落。幾年前，她還被蒙上了伊斯蘭服飾布卡。
此外，她的複製品出現在世界各地。在美國密歇根州格林維爾鎮一年一度的丹麥節上，小美人魚雕像的複製品和由樂高積木（Lego）搭成的安徒生雕像相伴出現。樂高積木同樣原產于丹麥。
新華社報道稱，丹麥稅務部部長波爾森(Troels Lund Poulsen)在週日的揭幕儀式上表示，把小美人魚雕像帶到上海是爲了表達丹麥對中國的尊敬。
雖然揭幕儀式不對公衆開放，仍有數百名中國遊客圍在丹麥館外觀望，儘管他們只能看到這尊雕像的背面。
10歲的嶽雨菲來自江蘇省，她告訴新華社記者她讀過《安徒生童話》，而且母親2005年去過丹麥，因此她從照片上看到過小美人魚雕像。
據新華社報道，嶽雨菲說，能親眼見到她我特別開心。見到照片之後我一直盼着這一天，今天不用出國就能見到她太好了。嶽雨菲的媽媽陳曉蘭說，等上海世博會5月1日正式開幕後，她們或許會再來參觀小美人魚雕像。
新華社報道稱，丹麥館的總建築師英厄爾斯(Bjarke Ingels)說，這幾乎像是把一部分丹麥文化融入到了中國文化之中。
安徒生的作品於上世紀初傳入中國，中國兒童至今仍在廣泛閱讀。正如1989年迪斯尼的電影中所述，小美人魚是海的女兒，卻愛上了人類的王子。但與電影不同的是，在安徒生的童話中沒有會唱歌的螃蟹，而且更糟糕的是，小美人魚用魚尾換人腿的浮士德式交易最終並未取得計劃中的成功。
