富人的滄桑故事 A Ragged Tale Of Riches大綱

THE Chinese, President Grover Cleveland proclaimed in 1888, are "an element ignorant of our constitution and laws, impossible of assimilation with our people, and dangerous to our peace and welfare." That decade, with its acts excluding fresh Chinese immigrants and even blocking re-entry to those Chinese who had temporarily returned home, broke the myth that the United States was an all-embracing haven for the world's huddled masses. But what of the story of the Chinese in America themselves?

1888年，美國總統格羅弗•克利夫蘭聲稱："中國人是一幫不懂美國憲法和法律的人，他們根本不可能和我們的人民融洽相處，還會對我們的和平與財富造成威脅。"在那十年期間，美國驅逐新來的中國移民，甚至阻止那些已經居住在美國，但只是暫時返回家鄉的中國人；這一切都使美國是個包容世界上一切顛沛流離之人的天堂這個神話不攻自破。那麼，那些美籍華人又有着怎樣的酸甜苦辣呢？

Because of anti-Chinese hysteria-from the race riots in western mining towns in Cleveland's time to the nasty late-1990s witch hunt by the Clinton administration and the New York Times of Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese-American scientist at Los Alamos who was falsely accused of passing nuclear warhead technology to China-the Chinese in America have generally chosen to keep a low profile. It is time their story was given a wider airing. The strength of Iris Chang's book is that she is steeped in her subject, but it has weaknesses.

在克利夫蘭任期內，西部的礦業城鎮的種族暴亂中反華情緒盛行。在道德敗壞的20世紀90年代末期，克林頓政府對華人進行政治迫害。1999年紐約時報報道：美籍臺灣科學家李文和在洛斯阿拉莫斯被不實地指控向中國泄露核彈頭技術。面對以上種種，美籍華人通常都只會選擇保持低調。如今，是時候讓更多的人知道他們的故事了。張純如女士的著作的優點在於她全心鑽研書的主題，但其中仍有一些不足之處。

Narrative history often paints individual lives with too epic a sweep. The turmoil in China that has so often been the backdrop to emigration in the past 150 years is described rather too broadly here to be of much help. The importance among new Chinese arrivals of local clans and identities back in mainland China is not sufficiently emphasised. Why, for instance, do the wealthy snakeheads who organise much of the illegal immigration into America come from one small district in Fujian province? Ms Chang does not travel there-or not obviously even to New York's Chinatown-to find out.

敘事體歷史經常傾向用一種偉大的方式去講述個人的故事。在過去的150年裏，中國的混亂形勢一直是移民的一大背景，但張女士的書對這個背景的描述卻過於概括，對讀者的理解幫助不大。那時剛剛到達美國的中國家庭與個人又被送回中國大陸，但這本書卻沒有給予這件事足夠的重視。還有例如，爲什麼那些組織中國人非法移民去美國的富有蛇頭無一不來自福建省的小地方？張女士並沒有親自去福建省探個究竟，她甚至連紐約的唐人街也沒有去過。

Her descriptions of the early Chinese in America battling blizzards, mudslides and mistreatment in the mining and railroad camps have the flavor of an old newsreel. It is not a format for insight, or irony of the intended sort. Thus, where the reader wants to know more about the consequences of the sexual frustration of all-male Chinese communities far from home (there was prostitution and violence, of course, but also an intriguing round of Chinese-Irish marriages), Ms Chang's vagueness is unintendedly funny. "Entrepreneurs in the world's oldest profession," she writes, "rode furiously on horsebock from camp to camp, trying to fit as many clients as possible into their schedules."

書中寫到：早期的美籍華人在煤礦和鐵路上與暴風雪、泥石流、虐待行爲頑強抗爭——張女士的描述就像舊式新聞影片一樣。那不是什麼深刻的見解，也並非有意的諷刺。早期的美籍華人全都是男性，所以，讀者們很想知道他們經歷了性方面的挫折後出現了何種後果（當然，他們可以叫妓女或侵犯其他婦女，而當時華人與愛爾蘭人聯姻潮也是個有趣的現象），而張女士對此的含糊其詞則出乎意料地妙趣橫生。"那些賣淫者，"她寫到，"他們快馬加鞭地從一個陣營趕往另一個陣營，試圖儘可能招攬更多的客人。"

Similarly, she fails to look closely at the role of the Chinese in America in the growth, if not of globalization, then of a ring of economic connections and population shifts that have turned the Pacific into a flourishing and unified economic space. What of Chinese-America's equivalent of Yip Sang, an early example of what Felipe Fernandez-Armesto calls "Pacific man"? In the late 19th century he left Fujian province for San Francisco and then Vancouver, where he became an agent of the Canadian Pacific Railroad; by the early 1900s, his own company had a flourishing international trade between San Francisco, Vancouver, Yokohama and Hong Kong.

與此類似，她沒有仔細研究美籍華人爲當地發展所作的貢獻，即使他們對全球化沒有什麼積極影響，但也促進了一系列經濟關係的發展，改變了人口分佈格局，這些都使太平洋地區如今成爲了一個繁榮統一的經濟體。阿壽就是菲利普•費爾南多-阿梅斯托稱之爲"太平洋偉人"的早期例子之一，像他這樣美籍華人又有怎樣的故事呢？19世紀末，阿壽離開中國福建省前往美國舊金山，之後又去了加拿大溫哥華，在那裏他成爲了加拿大太平洋鐵路的一個代理商。到了20世紀初，他的公司已經在舊金山、溫哥華、橫濱和香港之間發展起繁茂的國際貿易。

Ms Chang does not delve into the Pacific ties that might have made such a man. She does say that, during the gold rush, many Californians shipped their laundry to be cleaned in Hong Kong, at $1 a shirt. If this is true-and it is a staggering proposition, given that the Pacific Mail Steamship Company made just a dozen sailings a year, taking 33 days-then the subject deserves a chapter, not just the briefest of mentions.

但張女士卻不曾深入研究過能造就出阿壽這等人物的太平洋地區各國間的關係。不過她說過，在淘金熱時期，很多加利福尼亞州人都將髒衣服用船運往香港給別人洗，價錢爲每件1美圓。如果她說的沒錯的話，那這個話題可十分驚人！因爲那時太平洋郵船公司每年都會作12次航行，每次大約33天，光是這個內容就可以用一個章節的篇幅大寫特寫，而不是三言兩語草草了事。