American Space, Chinese Place

                                             by Yi-Fu Tuan

Americans have a sense of space, not of place. Go to an American home in exurbia,
and almost the first thing you do is drift toward the picture window.How curious that the first compliment you pay your host inside his house is to say how lovely it is outside his house! He is pleased that you should admire his vistas. The distant horizon is not merely a line separating earth from sky, it is a symbol of the future. The American is not rooted in his place, however lovely; his eyes are drawn by the expanding space to a point on the horizon, which is his future.

By contrast, consider the traditional Chinese home. Blank walls enclose it. Step behind the spirit wall and you are in a courtyard with perhaps a miniature garden around the corner. Once inside the private compound you are wrapped in an ambiance of calm beauty, an ordered world of buildings, pavement, rock, and decorative vegetation. But you have no distant view: nowhere does space open out before you. Raw nature in such a home is experienced only as weather, and the only open space is the sky above. The Chinese is rooted in his place. When he has to leave, it is not for the promised land on the terrestrial horizon, but for another world altogether along the vertical, religious axis of his imagination.

The Chinese tie to place is deeply felt. Wanderlust is an alien sentiment. The Taoist classic Tao Te Ching captures the ideal of rootedness in place with these words: "Though there may be another country in the neighborhood so close that they are within sight of each other and the crowing of cocks and barking of dogs in one place can be heard in the other, yet there is no traffic between them; and
throughout their lives the two peoples have nothing to do with each other." In theory if not in practice, farmers have ranked high in Chinese society. The reason is not only that they are engaged in the "root" industry of producing food but that, unlike pecuniary merchants,they are tied to the land and do not abandon their country when it is in danger.

Nostalgia is a recurrent theme in Chinese poetry. An American reader of translated Chinese poems may well be taken aback,even put off, by the frequency, as well as the sentimentality of the lament for home. To understand the strength of this sentiment, we need to know that the Chinese desire for stability and rootedness in place is prompted by the constant threat of war, exile, and the natural disasters of flood and drought. Forcible removal makes the Chinese keenly aware of their loss. By contrast, Americans move, for the most part, voluntarily. Their nostalgia for hometown is really longing for childhood to which they cannot return: in the meantime the future beckons and the future is "out there," in open space. When we criticize American rootlessness we tend to forget that it is a result of ideals we admire, namely, social mobility and optimism about the future. When we admire Chinese rootedness, we forget that the word “place” means
both location in space and position in society: to be tied to place is also to be bound to one's station in life, with little hope of betterment. Space symbolizes hope, place, achievement and stability.

美国人的空间和中国人的地域

    美国人有很强的空间感，但地域感较弱。每当拜访美国城郊住户时，一进门你就会不由自主地走到窗前，欣赏窗外美景。明明在别人家里，却首先称赞屋外的景色，岂不怪哉！但屋主闻言往往心花怒放，因为你竟然懂得欣赏这房屋的远景设计。那遥远的地平线不再只是天地的分界线，更是未来的象征。美国人不会扎根在某地，不论那儿多么舒适：他们的目光越过广袤的天地，落在地平线上的一点，那儿是他们的未来。

    再来看看传统的中式房屋吧：清一色的围墙环绕四周，院子的角落里也许会有一个精巧别致的花圃。当你踏入这样一个私人院落时，立刻会被一种宁静和谐的气氛所笼罩，亭台、曲径、奇石和花草一一点缀其中，错落有致。然而，你却无法看到远处的风景：除了头顶的天空外，再没有任何开阔的空间。中国人一旦扎根，就会认定这片地域。

    中国人崇尚落地生根，不喜四海为家。道教经典《道德经》中曾这样描述理想中的安居乐业：邻国相望，鸡犬之声相闻，民至老死，不相往来。从理论上来说，中国农民的社会地位应该颇高。究其原因，不仅在于他们掌握国之根本——粮食生产，还在于他们和商人不同，总是坚守在自己的土地上，即时身陷险境，也绝不背弃家国。

    “乡愁”这一主题在中国诗歌创作中经久不衰。美国读者在阅读中国诗歌的英译文本时，往往会惊诧于这种频繁出现的思乡愁绪，甚至会产生反感。要想充分理解这种感伤，就必须知道，中国人之所以如此渴望安定，是由于他们饱受战乱、背井离乡和旱涝等自然灾害的威胁。无法抗拒的颠沛流离使他们对失去的事物更加敏感。与之相反，美国人搬家大多出于自愿。他们对家乡的眷恋，其实是怀念那一去不返的童年时光：未来正向他们招手，它就在眼前，在那广阔的天地。当我们批评美国人的“无根性”时，却忘了这是我们在追求理想——社会流动和乐观面对未来时产生的偏见；当我们推崇中国人的“扎根性”时，又忘了“地域”一词不仅指地理位置，还指社会地位——植根于某地就等于限制了生活状态，意味着没有改善生活的欲望。空间，象征希望；地域，代表成就和稳定。

谢谢赏阅，欢迎留下您宝贵的建议，共同进步。