第十一章 旅行的乐趣(1)

I. ON GOING ABOUT AND SEEING THINGS 论旅游观光

TRAVEL used to be a pleasure, now it has become an industry. No doubt there are greater facilities for traveling today than a hundred years ago, and governments with their official travel bureaus have exploited the tourist trade, with the result that the modern man travels on the whole much more than his grandfather. Nevertheless travel seems to have become a lost art. In order to understand the art of travel, one should first of all beware of the different types of false travel, which is no travel at all.

以前，旅行是一种娱乐，现在却变成了产业。的确，现在的旅行条件较之一百年前好了许多，政府与其所设的旅行部门开发了旅游贸易。从整体上来看，现代人旅行途径比他们的祖辈们多了很多。可是，现在的旅行似乎已无艺术可言。要理解什么是旅行的艺术，我们首先要提防各种虚假的旅行，这样的旅行根本不算旅行。

The first kind of false travel is travel to improve one's mind. This matter of improving one's mind has undoubtedly been overdone. I doubt very much whether one’s mind can be so easily improved. Anyway there is very little evidence of it at clubs and lectures. But if we are usually so serious as to be bent upon improving our minds, we should at least during a vacation let the mind lie fallow, and give it a holiday. 

第一种虚假的旅行是称之为“改善思维”的旅行。这种“改善思维”的旅行其实是把旅行的作用言重了。我很怀疑，人的思维是否就能如此容易地就改善了呢？无论如何，有关俱乐部关于“改善思维”的活动和演讲都没有证据表明思维可以这样被改善。但是，如果我们总是这样严肃地决心要改善我们的思维的话，我们至少应该让我们的大脑有时间休息，给它一个假期。

This false idea of travel has given rise to the institution of tourist guides, the most intolerable chattering kind of interfering busybodies that I can imagine. One cannot pass a square or a bronze statue without his attention being called to the fact that So-and-So was born on April 23, 1792, and died on December 2, 1852. I have seen convent sisters escorting school children to a cemetery, and as the group stopped before a tombstone, reading to them from a book the dates of the deceased, the age at which he married, the name and surname of his wife, and such learned nonsense, which I am sure spoiled the pleasure of the entire trip for the children. The grown-ups themselves are turned into a group of school children being vociferously lectured to by the guide, and in the case of travelers of the more studious type, also taking notes very assiduously like good school children.

        这种虚假的旅行观衍生了导游机构，这种叽叽喳喳的干扰他人的行当，我认为最叫人难以忍受。经过一个广场或铜像时，你就必须听他讲述某某人生于
1792年4月23日，死于1852年12月20日等。我曾见过修女带学生去墓地的事，让孩子们站立于墓碑前，拿出书来给孩子念死者的死亡时间、结婚年龄、太太姓名等诸如此类的学究式废话。我敢断定，这种废话绝对让孩子十分扫兴。成年人在导游吵吵闹闹的讲解中，也变成了这样的儿童，至于那些更加好学的旅游者，他们还会像好学生那样记录这些讲解。

Chinese tourists suffer like American tourists at Radio City, with the difference that Chinese guides are not professional, but are fruit-sellers, donkey drivers and peasant boys, whose information is less correct, if their personalities are more lively. Visiting Huch'iu Hill at Soochow one day, I came back with a terrible confusion of historical dates and sequence, for the awe-inspiring bridge suspended forty feet over the Sword Pond, with two round holes in the stone slabs of the bridge through which a sword had flown up as a dragon, became, according to my orange-selling boy, the place where the ancient beauty Hsishih attended to her morning toilet! ( Hsishih's "dressing table" was actually about ten miles away from the place. ) All he wanted was to sell me some oranges. But then I had a chance of seeing how folklore was changed and modified and "metamorphosed." 

中国游客在旅游城市遭遇导游的烦扰，跟美国游客在无线电城遭遇的一样，所不同的是中国导游不是专职导游，而是水果商贩、赶驴人和乡下人，尽管他们的性格开朗，但是他们的讲解不准确。一天，我去游览苏州虎丘山，回来的路上，满脑子混乱不堪的历史时间和历史事件。因为我看到的剑池，被给我做导游的卖橘子小孩说成是古美人西施的晨妆处（其实西施的梳妆台远在十里之外）。剑池，是使人肃然起敬的地方，池上横跨一坐四十尺长的桥，桥的石板上有两个洞，一剑如飞龙般穿越其间。但由于这小孩想向我兜售他的橘子，居然使我有幸看到民间传说会怎样地远离事实而变得荒诞不经。

The second kind of false travel is travel for conversation, in order that one may talk about it afterwards. I have seen visitors at Hup'ao of Hangchow, a place famous for its tea and spring water, having their picture taken in the act of lifting tea cups to their lips. To be-sure, it is a highly poetic sentiment to show friends a picture of themselves drinking tea at Hup'ao. The danger is that one spends less thought on the actual taste of the tea than on the photograph itself. This sort of thing can become an obsession, especially with travelers provided with cameras, as we so often see on sight-seeing buses in Paris and London. The tourists are so busy with their cameras that they have no time to look at the places themselves. Of course they have the privilege of looking at them in the pictures afterwards when they go home, but it is obvious that pictures of Trafalgar Square or the Champs Elysees can be bought in New York or in Peiping. As these historical places become places to be talked about afterwards instead of places to be looked at, it is natural that the more places one visits, the richer the memory will be, and the more places there will be to talk about. This urge for learning and scholarship therefore impels the tourist to cover as many points as possible in a day. He has in his hand a program of places to visit, and as he comes to a place, he checks it off with a pencil on the program. I suspect such travelers are trying to be efficient even on their holiday.

第二种虚假的旅行是为积累谈话资料而做的旅行，这是为了事后可以夸夸其谈。杭州虎跑的茶和泉水很有名，我曾在那里看到游客如何摆出喝茶的姿势照相的情景。当然，给朋友看自己在虎跑喝茶的照片确实极富诗意，但这势必由于专注于照相而牺牲了品茶的乐趣。这种事会变成一种强迫症，尤其对那些带相机的游客来说更是这样，正如我们在巴黎和伦敦的观光车上看到的那样，这些游客太专注于拍照而无暇欣赏美景。当然，这方便事后回家欣赏这些照片，但特拉法加广场和香榭丽舍大道的照片在巴黎和北平都能买到。由于历史古迹变成了夸夸其谈的资料而不是游览圣地，自然，一个人跑的地方越多，他记下的东西就越多，就会有更多的东西用来作为夸谈话题。这种对学习和知识的渴求，会迫使游客在一天里尽量多的安排游玩的地方，手里拿着观光日程安排，每到一处就用铅笔划去这个地方。我怀疑，这样的游客即使是在假期，也会千方百计讲究效益。

This sort of foolish travel necessarily produces the third type of false travelers, who travel by schedule, knowing beforehand exactly how many hours they are going to spend in Vienna or Budapest. Before such a traveler departs, he makes a perfect schedule for himself and religiously adheres to it. Bound by the clock and run by the calendar as he is at home, he is still bound by the clock and run by the calendar while abroad. In place of these false types of travel, I propose that the true motives of travel are, or should be, otherwise.

第三种虚假的旅行，即按计划表旅行。这种愚蠢的旅行注定会产生第三类型的虚假旅行家，他们出行前就知道维也纳、布达佩斯需要几个小时。这类旅行者在启程前先制定一个完美的时间表，旅行中认真地照计划执行。这种人在家受钟点约束，看日期行事，在外面仍然受钟点约束，看日期行事。要替代这种的错误旅行，我建议旅行者要有，或者应该有旅行的真实目的。

                                                   选自林语堂《生活的艺术》

译者：林子