俞文峰转自纽约时报中文网
Unlike the Russian acronym “gulag,” the Chinese word “laogai” has not been incorporated into English, although the system of “reform through labor” that it describes functions on a far larger scale than the Soviet camps did and continues to thrive. So even if Liao Yiwu’s memoir of his time as a prisoner in that system were a dry recitation of statistics, it would be performing a necessary service.
俄文缩略语“古拉格”早已被英语吸收，但它的中文同义词“劳改”却不然，尽管这个自称“通过劳动去改造”的体系远比苏联劳改营规模要大得多，而且还在持续发展。所以，就算廖亦武关于自己在劳改系统中囚禁生涯的回忆录只是干巴巴的统计数据，也十分有必要。
But Mr. Liao is a poet — he was, in fact, jailed because two poems he wrote in reaction to the massacre of unarmed students in Tiananmen Square in 1989 offended the Communist Party — with a poet’s observant eye and soaring imagination. As a result, “For a Song and a Hundred Songs” is a compelling and harrowing read, full of details about the laogai system and stuffed with portraits of those subjected to it, from politically naïve and idealistic students and Christians to murderers, rapists, thieves and embezzlers.
但廖亦武是个诗人，有着诗人的敏锐观察力和高涨的想象力，事实上，他入狱是因为写了两首关于1989年在天安门广场上手无寸铁的学生惹怒共产党而遭受屠杀的诗。因此，他的回忆录《一首歌和百首歌》（For a Song and a Hundred Songs，中文名《证词》——译注）读来令人悲伤，同时又引人入胜，充满对劳改系统的细节描写，为监禁于其中的人描绘了一幅幅画像：从政治上天真而理想主义的学生到基督徒，乃至谋杀犯、强奸犯、小偷和贪污犯。
Mr. Liao, who is now 54 and living in Berlin, makes clear that until his incarceration he had no interest in politics and was something of a bohemian, wastrel and womanizer. “I was influenced by the American Beat writers like Jack Kerouac and fantasized about aimless wandering,” he writes, a fascination that led both to a penchant for one-night stands and a job as a truck driver on the Sichuan-Tibet highway.
廖亦武54岁，现居柏林。他澄清说，入狱之前自己一直对政治不感兴趣，只是一个波西米亚主义者、浪子和好色之徒。“我受杰克·凯鲁亚克(Jack Kerouac)等美国垮掉派作家影响，幻想漫无目的的游荡，”他写道，这种生活的魅力使他追求一夜情，并在川藏公路上做卡车司机的工作。
But the Tiananmen Square massacre galvanized him, and trouble for which he was unprepared soon followed. Arriving at his first detention center, he is shocked and apprehensive when handed a booklet that lists “108 Rare Delicacies,” a menu of torture “dishes” that are “cooked” for recalcitrant prisoners. In “Noodles in a Clear Broth,” for example, “strings of toilet paper are soaked in a bowl of urine, and the inmate is forced to eat the toilet paper and drink the urine.”
但天安门屠杀事件刺激了他，始料未及的麻烦也很快接踵而至。被关进第一个拘留所时，他得到一个小册子，上面列举了“108道山珍”，令他又震惊又惶恐。这是一份酷刑的“菜单”，专门为拒不服从的囚犯“烹制”，比如“清汤挂面”就是“将手纸撕成细条，浸泡在一碗尿里，逼迫犯人吃厕纸，喝尿”。
The title of Mr. Liao’s book derives from a later act of highly personalized torture, one not included on that menu. After a particularly sadistic guard caught him singing quietly to himself without authorization, Mr. Liao was ordered to sing 100 songs as punishment; when his voice gave out before he could fulfill that quota, the guard sodomized him with an electric baton.
廖亦武的书名来自于后来受到的一次特别惩罚，没有被包括在那个菜单里面。一个虐待狂狱警抓到廖亦武在没获得许可的情况下自己悄悄唱歌，便要他唱100首歌作为惩罚；他唱到嗓子哑了，也没唱满这个数目，警卫用电棍插入他的肛门。
“I screamed and whimpered in pain like a dog,” Mr. Liao recalled. “The electric current coursed through my flesh and burst out from my neck. I felt like a duck whose feathers were being stripped.” To spite his tormentor, Mr. Liao somehow summoned enough strength to sing a Communist Party anthem.
“我大叫起来，因为疼痛，像狗一样哀叫，”廖亦武回忆，“电流通过我的肉体，在我的脖子上燃烧。我就像一只被拔光了毛的鸭子。”为了激怒施刑者，廖亦武勉强攒够了力气，唱起一首赞美共产党的歌。
He repeatedly underlines the inhumanity of the situation prisoners face by using similes comparing them to animals. When the police arrested him, “they dragged me along in the mud like an eel”; his cellmates eat in a hurry, “stretching their necks like crowing roosters to help swallow”; one prisoner is so famished that he runs to a corner of a courtyard to gulp down glue, “hunching down like a big prawn lurking in coral”; a victim of a beating by a guard “wiggled his way into the crowd like a worm” to escape.
他把囚犯们比作动物，一再强调他们所面临的非人处境。警察拘捕他的时候“他们像拖泥鳅一样在泥里拖着我”；他的狱友们匆匆忙忙地吃饭，“像打鸣的公鸡一样伸着脖子往下咽”；一个囚犯太饿了，跑到院子的一个角落里吞吃浆糊，他“弯着腰，像伏在珊瑚礁里的大虾”；一个逃避狱警痛打的人“像蛆虫一样蠕动着挤进人群”。
It is highly instructive to compare Mr. Liao’s account with earlier memoirs from China’s prisons, like Harry Wu’s “Bitter Winds,” about the 19 years he was jailed during the Maoist era. In some ways the coercive essence of the laogai system has not changed at all: starvation, torture and psychological manipulation continue to be used to break down the prisoner’s will, force him to confess to “crimes” he did not commit and beg the state’s forgiveness.
把廖亦武的作品和更早期在中国坐牢的人的回忆录相比是很有意义的，比如吴宏达的《昨夜雨骤风狂》(Bitter Winds)，是关于他在毛泽东统治时代入狱19年期间的经历。在某些程度上，劳改体制的核心并没有任何改变：饥饿、折磨与精神操纵仍被用来摧毁囚犯的意志，逼着他们承认自己并没有犯下的“罪行”，并乞求国家的原谅。
Nor has the Chinese state’s disregard for the rule of law, including its own constitution and the international human rights agreements it has signed, abated. Mr. Liao describes incident after incident in which prison officials, judges and prosecutors scoff, mock and punish him or other prisoners when anyone dares to remind them that they are violating constitutional guarantees.
中国政府对法治的漠视依然没有改善，包括它自己的宪法与它曾签署的国际人权公约。廖亦武在书中描述，和其他囚犯们提醒狱警、法官和公诉人，他们的行为违背了宪法，但却一次次遭受嘲笑和惩罚。
“Chinese laws are like a rubber band,” he tells another prisoner. “The judge can stretch it or shrink it back to its original state. It all depends on if he likes you or not.”
“中国的法律就像根皮筋，”他告诉另一个囚犯，“法官可以随意伸缩它们。全部取决于他对你的好恶。”
But by the time Mr. Liao is jailed, Maoism has been abandoned, and the prisons have become just another outpost of state capitalism, with guards proudly announcing that “we are going to implement a market-oriented competitive mechanism,” even as they continue to require prisoners to sing “Socialism Is Good.” Thus Mr. Liao finds himself first assigned to assemble medicine packets in his cell — the quota was 3,000 units a day — and later allocated to an iron foundry that makes car parts.
但在廖亦武入狱期间，毛泽东思想式微了，监狱也成了国家资本主义的一个前哨，狱警们骄傲地宣称，“我们要引进市场竞争机制”，但同时又要求囚犯们高唱《社会主义好》。廖亦武被分配了在囚室里制作药品包装的任务，生产定额是每天3000份，后来他又被分到铸铁厂去制作汽车部件。
“In 1992 senior Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping had issued his call to deepen China’s economic reform,” he explains. “The whole country was mobilized to ‘get rich fast.’ Prison personnel never missed a beat and were quick to take advantage of the free labor to fatten their wallets.”
“1992年中国高级领导人邓小平要求深化中国的经济改革，”他解释，“整个国家都被‘先富起来’所驱动。监狱的工作人员绝不错过机会，很快就抓住时机，利用囚犯的免费劳力让自己的腰包鼓起来。”
With time, Mr. Liao comes to see the laogai system as mimicking basic features of everyday life in China. “In my cell, which was no bigger than 220 square feet for 18 men, the rulers had created an exact replica of the state bureaucracy outside,” one in which “those in power enjoyed unlimited privileges,” he relates.
随着时间过去，廖亦武看出劳改制度是对中国日常生活基本特征的模仿，“我的牢房只有不到20平方米，关着18个人，头领创造出一个外面国家官僚体系的复制品，”在这里，“有权力的人享有无限特权。”
But in Mr. Liao’s estimation, the reverse also holds true. “China remains a prison of the mind: prosperity without liberty,” he writes. “Our entire country might as well be gluing medicine packets all day. This is our brave new world.”
但廖亦武猜想，外面的社会也同样很像监牢。“中国一直都存在思想的牢狱：没有自由的繁荣，”他写道，“我们的整个国家可能整天都在粘装药的口袋。这就是我们的美丽新世界。”
After release, Mr. Liao also reports, many of his fellow political prisoners “abandoned their artistic and political aspirations, and joined the rest of the country in the relentless pursuit of money.” But he proved more stubborn: when the Public Security Bureau minders who continued to watch him learned he had written his memoir and intended to have it published, he was invited to a teahouse for a frank talk.
廖亦武还写道，被释放后，许多和他同狱的政治犯“放弃了他们的艺术与政治抱负，和这个国家的其他人一起无止境地追求金钱”。但他却变得更加顽固：国家安全局的人知道他写了回忆录，并谋求出版，便开始了对他的持续监视，他被邀请到一家茶室去进行了一场坦率的谈话。
If he didn’t abandon his plan, he could easily be made to “disappear for quite a while,” warns a police officer who simply can’t understand why Mr. Liao refuses to be just like everybody else. “Why can’t you write books about harmless romances, and we can get them published here and make you rich?” Fortunately for anyone interested in contemporary China, Mr. Liao ignored that advice.
如果他不放弃自己的计划，要让他“消失一段时间”很容易，一个警官告诫说，他不理解廖亦武为什么就是不肯和其他人一样。“你为什么就不能写点无害的言情小说，可以出版，你也能发财呢？”廖亦武没有听从他的建议。任何关心当代中国的人，真该为此感到庆幸。
本文最初发表于2013年7月3日。
翻译：董楠
