旅游指南之丽江

丽江

Deep in the far northwest of China’s Yunnan Pro-vince lies an ancient town.
The inhabitants of this remote region are primarily Naxi (Narshi), the descendants of Tibetan nomads. This is immediately recognizable as their faces are rather oblong-shaped and their skin is tanned and weathered from the extremes of temperature experienced at an altitude of 3,000 metres. Their kinship system is matriarchal making the women visible on the streets of the ancient town as they attend to daily activities and chores.
When I left Kunming for Dali I had two days maximum to spare. Dali was nice, with fantastic mountain-scapes and incredibly picturesque scenery, yet it seemed to be lacking something. Its innocence had gone, a resistance to Western and modern ways had not succeeded — it lacked isolation. I had heard of, and had seen a documentary on Lijiang before I left for China but I did not think I could get there because I was already covering such a large distance in a mere two weeks. As the urge to make the six hour bus trip between Dali and Lijiang grew, I found through inquisition that it was possible to fly back from Lijiang to Kunming, therefore saving 24 hours of bone-jarring bus time. This clinched it for me!
在中国云南省的西南部，座落着一个古老的小镇。
这个偏远地区的居民，最初是纳西族，他们是藏族游牧部落的后代。这一点通过他们方形的脸庞和皮肤就能够判断出来，他们的皮肤受到海拔3,000米的温度的影响，变成棕褐色，并且饱经风霜。他们还属于母系社会，在这个古镇的路上可以看到妇女参加日常活动和处理家务杂事。
离开昆明去大理时，我最多有两天时间。大理非常美，有奇异的山脉和美不胜收的风景。但是，它好像缺少些什么。它的那种纯洁已经没有了，对西方和现代生活方式的对抗没有得到延续，从而缺少一种隔绝感。来中国之前，我曾经听说并读过一篇关于丽江的文章，但我没想到自己能够来这里，因为这一周我已经走了很远的距离。然而从大理乘六个小时的车到丽江的想法不断萌生，我发现可以从丽江飞回昆明，这样可以节省24个小时颠簸的乘车时间。因此，我就决定来了丽江。
Lijiang is half new town and half old town. The new town is simply another dusty Chinese city, the old town is where backpackers congregate and the increasingly ubiquitous tour passes. The old town sits quite apart from the new, with no cars, trucks, nor motorbikes, and only the occasional pushbike is led through the old town’s stony pedestrian streets.
Yellow Hill Section is the name of the side of the mountain on which the town rests, and directly opposite this at 5,500 metres, just 30 kilometres away, is Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. Its stunning peak is annually snow-covered and on a clear blue-sky day, like the day I arrived, you can’t help but think that you have died and gone to heaven.
As you make it past the entrance of Lijiang’s old town, you immediately get an overwhelming feeling of historical significance as your eyes absorb the 1,000 year-old cobbled streets and the ancient wooden and stone houses. As you watch the minority culture of the Naxi pass-by with produce and babies strapped to the women’s backs, their dress is completely traditional and each one’s face tells a thousand stories.
丽江是一个半新半旧的小城。新城只不过是另外一个尘土飞扬的中国小城，而古城里则聚集了各种背包旅行的人，游客团随处可见，且日益增多。古城与新城截然分开，这里没有汽车、卡车，甚至也没有摩托车，只是偶尔有自行车行进在这个古镇的石头路上。
黄山区是由黄山得名，小城就座落在这座山上，正对面大约5,500米，30公里的地方，就是玉龙雪山。山顶常年积雪，如果能遇到像我来时这样蔚蓝的天空，你禁不住会以为自己已经升天，来到了天堂。
走进丽江古城，映入眼帘的是有千年历史的鹅卵石街道和古老的木制或石头结构的房子，这时你会感觉到这里深厚的历史底蕴。你会看到纳西族人背上背着农产品或孩子，穿着传统的服饰，每个人脸上都仿佛蕴含着千万个故事。
The Naxi women wear blue blouses and trousers covered by blue or black aprons. The T-shaped traditional cape not only stops the wicker basket always worn on the back from chaffing, but also symbolizes the heavens. Day and night are represented by the light and dark halves of the cape; seven embroidered circles symbolize the stars. Two larger circles, one on each shoulder, are there to depict the eyes of a frog, which until the 15th Century was an important God to the Naxi. With the decline in animist beliefs the frog’s eyes fell out of fashion, but the Naxi still call the cape by its original name: frog-eye goatskin.
The Naxi also created a written language over 1,000 years ago using an extraordinary system of pictographs, or Naxi hieroglyphics. The most famous Naxi text is the Dongba classic. The Creation and ancient copies of it and other texts can still be found in Lijiang. There are also some copies in the archives of United States universities. Dongba were Naxi shamans who were the caretakers of the written language and mediators between the Naxi themselves and the spirit world.
纳西族妇女穿的是蓝色的上衣和裤子，外面是蓝色或黑色的围裙。T字形的传统斗篷，不仅可以使背上的柳条篮不至于漏，而且它还代表着天。白天和黑夜在斗篷上，由亮点和暗点表示。七个绣的圆环代表星星。在两边肩膀上各有一个大的圆环，用于表示青蛙的眼睛。青蛙自15世纪开始，便成为纳西族最伟大的神明。随着有神论的衰落，青蛙的眼睛已经不再流行，但是纳西族人依然称他们的斗篷为：青蛙眼睛山羊皮。
纳西族在1,000多年前就创造了书面语言。他们使用一种特殊的象形文字，或者叫做纳西象形文字。最着名的纳西文献是《东巴经》。这一文献以及其他文献的原创版本和古版本在丽江依然能够见到。在美国大学的档案室也有一些副本。东巴是纳西的巫师，他们是当时书面语言的管理者，也是纳西族人与神灵世界的中保。
I met a modern day Dongba by the name of Yang Mingyi from Lower Yellow Hill Section in Lijiang’s old town’s residential area. A man who is somewhere between 80 and 90 years of age and who is a ball of energy and exuberance as he energetically shows foreign guests his collection of translations of Naxi poetry and propheticism, which has all made him something of a star in Lijiang. He gave me a transcript of his account of the 1996 February earthquake that damaged a significant part of Lijiang’s old town.
The transcript is written in Chinese, Naxi and English. On the Richter Scale the quake measured a whopping 7.2 yet Yang Mingyi writes, “earthquakes cannot push down Lijiang. Jade Dragon Snow Mountain still rises above the clouds. The United Nations have approved and evaluated the rebuilding of Lijiang, such an ancient town with its historic buildings and culture, it’s rare in the world”, signed Yang Mingyi, Naxi Race. The Naxi pictographs tell most simply and, in part, vaguely, the story of the earthquake. Nevertheless, Yang Mingyi is a master of language, whose wisdom will be lost as modern times encroach on a culture once so pure.
我遇到过一位现代的东巴，他的名字叫杨明毅，来自黄山区丽江古城的居民区。他约有八九十岁了，但精神依旧饱满，身体很健康。他兴致勃勃地向外国游客展示了自己收藏的纳西诗歌和预言的翻译文本，这已经使他成为丽江的名人了。他送给我一份他对1996年2月地震的记录的副本。那场地震破坏了丽江古城的大部分。
这个副本分别由汉语、纳西语和英语所写成。尽管地震的强度达到了里克特震级7.2级，但是杨明毅写道：“地震无法毁掉丽江。玉龙雪山依然直插云霄。联合国已经批准了丽江的重建工作，并对其进行了估量。丽江这样一个拥有众多历史建筑和悠久文化的古城在世界上都是非常罕见的。”署名为纳西族杨明毅。纳西族的象形文字非常简单地对地震经过做了大概的部分叙述。然而，杨明毅是一位语言大师，随着现代社会对纯正的传统文化的蚕食，他的智慧也将被淹没。
The ancient town of Lijiang is a most wonderful sight. As you wake in the morning it is all quiet bar the chatter of two Naxi women, or perhaps it’s the morning market I can hear coming to life? Breaking the peacefulness, all of which stands in great contrast to many other places in China where you wake to the traffic, the fumes, and the continual honking of car horns.
As you wander from your guesthouse you dream of a time long before as the history of the streets, the trickle of the water in the moat, and the ancient houses and walls together envelope you. With the morning mist rising, and as sparkles of sunlight push the cold, crisp mountain air away you could truly believe that peace is at hand.
It was with great regret that so soon my time was up, and there was never a place during my travels that I wished I could have stayed longer than the ancient Naxi town of Lijiang.
丽江古城是最着名的名胜。当你清晨醒来的时候，外面一片寂静，只有纳西妇女的谈话声，或是早市开始忙活了。而在中国其他地方，当你醒来时，打破寂静的往往是那些嘈杂的人群、难闻的气味，以及汽车不停的喇叭声。
当你走出旅馆，漫步在街上的时候，街道的历史气味，护城河流水的声音，还有周围的房屋和城墙一齐向你扑来，使你感觉仿佛回到了从前。随着晨雾慢慢升起，阳光驱走了寒冷，清爽的山间空气，使你能够真正感觉到平静就在身边。
真希望时间能够过得慢一点。在我的旅途中，除了纳西族的丽江古城，还没有一个地方能使我留连忘