先翻一段吧
When Anar Sabit was in her twenties and living in Vancouver, she liked to tell her friends that people could control their own destinies. Her experience, she was sure, was proof enough.
二十多岁的阿娜尔-萨比特住在温哥华时经常跟她的朋友们说,人可以掌控自己的命运。她认为她的经历足以证明这一点。
She had come to Canada in 2014, a bright, confident immigrant from Kuytun, a small city west of the Gobi Desert, in a part of China that is tucked between Kazakhstan, Siberia, and Mongolia. “Kuytun” means “cold” in Mongolian; legend has it that Genghis Khan’s men, stationed there one frigid winter, shouted the word as they shivered. During Sabit’s childhood, the city was an underdeveloped colonial outpost in a contested region that locals called East Turkestan. The territory had been annexed by imperial China in the eighteenth century, but on two occasions it broke away, before Mao retook it, in the nineteen-forties. In Beijing, it was called New Frontier, or Xinjiang: an untamed borderland.
她2014年移民加拿大。这位聪明而自信的移民,来自戈壁沙漠以西的一个小城市--奎屯,它位于中国的一个夹在哈萨克斯坦、西伯利亚和蒙古之间的地区。"奎屯"在蒙古语中是 "寒冷 "的意思;传说成吉思汗的部下在一个寒冷的冬天驻扎在那里,他们一边发抖一边喊着这个词。这座位于被当地人称为东突厥斯坦的争议地区的城市,在萨比特的童年时代是一个欠发达的殖民前哨站。这块领土在十八世纪被大清吞并,但此后两次独立,直到十九世纪四十年代被毛泽东政权重新接管。在北京,它被称为"新疆"也就是“新的边疆”——一个未被驯化的边境地区。
Growing up in this remote part of Asia, a child like Sabit, an ethnic Kazakh, could find the legacy of conquest all around her. Xinjiang is the size of Alaska, its borders spanning eight countries. Its population was originally dominated by Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other indigenous Turkic peoples. But, by the time Sabit was born, Kuytun, like other parts of Xinjiang’s north, had dramatically changed. For decades, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps—a state-run paramilitary development organization, known as the bingtuan—had helped usher in millions of Han Chinese migrants, many of them former revolutionary soldiers, to work on enormous farms. In southern Xinjiang, indigenous peoples were still prevalent, but in Kuytun they had become a vestigial presence.
成长于亚洲的这片偏远地区,像萨比特这样的哈萨克族孩子,能在周围找到数不尽的被征服的痕迹。新疆的面积相当于阿拉斯加的面积,其边界横跨八个国家。新疆人口原本以维吾尔族、哈萨克族和其他土著突厥族为主,但是,到萨比特出生的时候,奎屯早就和新疆北方其他地区一样发生了巨大的变化。几十年来,新疆生产建设兵团--一个被称为"兵团"的国营准军事化发展组织--为当地带来了数百万汉族移民,其中许多是老红军,在规模庞大的农场工作。在新疆南部,土著人口仍然占大多数,但在奎屯,他们的存在感已经很低了。
As a child, Sabit imbibed Communist Party teachings and considered herself a committed Chinese citizen, even as the bingtuan maintained a colonialist attitude toward people like her. Han residents of Kuytun often called Kazakhs and Uyghurs “ethnic persons,” as if their specific culture made no difference. Sabit accepted this as normal. Her parents, a doctor and a chemistry professor, never spoke of their experiences of discrimination; they enrolled her in schools where classes were held in Mandarin, and they taught her to embrace what she learned there. When Sabit was in elementary school, she and her classmates picked tomatoes for the bingtuan. In middle school, she picked cotton, which she hated: you had to spend hours bent over, or else with your knees ground into the dirt. Her mother told her that the work built character.
小时候,萨比特接受了共产党的教诲,认为自己是一个忠诚的中国公民,即使兵团对她这样的人保持着殖民主义的态度。奎屯的汉族居民经常把哈萨克族和维吾尔族都称为"少民",仿佛他们各自的文化没有区分的意义。萨比特接受了这一点,觉得这很正常。她的父母分别是医生和化学教授,从不谈论他们被歧视的经历;他们送她去用普通话上课的学校,并让她学会接受在那里学到的东西。萨比特上小学的时候曾经跟同学们一起,帮兵团采摘西红柿。中学时,她摘过棉花,但她讨厌这种工作:你要么弯几个小时的腰,要么就得把膝盖跪在土里。母亲告诉她,劳动能培养人的性格。
Sabit excelled as a student, and after graduating from high school, in 2004, she moved to Shanghai, to study Russian, hoping that it would open up career opportunities in other parts of the world. She loved Shanghai, which thrummed with the promise of glamorous, fast-paced living. But she was still an “ethnic person.” If she told a new acquaintance where she was from, it usually derailed the conversation. Some people, believing that “barbarians” lived in Xinjiang, expressed surprise that she spoke Mandarin fluently. Just before she completed her degree, the tech company Huawei hosted a job fair, and Sabit and her friends applied. She was the only one not offered an interview—because of her origins, she was sure.
Sabit学业出色,她2004年高中毕业后来到上海学习俄语,为出国发展创造机会。她很喜欢上海,那里充满了迷人的快节奏生活。但她仍然是一个"少民"。如果她告诉一个刚认识的人她家乡在哪里,通常会导致谈话偏题。有的人认为新疆住的都是"野蛮人",对她能说一口流利的普通话表示惊讶。就在她完成学业之前,科技公司华为举办了一场招聘会,萨比特和她的朋友们都去应聘。她是唯一一个没有得到面试机会的人--她相信这是肯定是因为她的出身。
Sabit brushed off this kind of prejudice, and became adept at eliding her background; when circumstances allowed, she fibbed and said that she was from some other region. She found a well-paying job with an investment company. The work was exciting—involving travel to places like Russia, Laos, and Hong Kong—and she liked her boss and her colleagues.
Sabit拂去这种偏见,同时变得善于隐瞒自己的背景;只要情况允许,她就撒谎说自己来自其他地区。她在一家投资公司找到了一份高薪的工作。工作充满激情--需要去俄罗斯、老挝和香港等地旅行。她喜欢她的老板和同事。
While Sabit was in Shanghai, her parents immigrated to Kazakhstan. They urged her to move there, too, but she resisted their pleas, believing that China was a more powerful country, more forward-leaning. She had spent most of her life striving to be a model citizen, and was convinced that her future lay with China—even as the politics of her homeland grew more fraught.
Sabit还在上海的时候,她的父母移民到了哈萨克斯坦。他们劝她也搬过去,但她拒绝了他们的请求,认为中国是一个更强大、更具有前瞻性的国家。她一生中的大部分时间都在努力做一个模范公民,她坚信她的未来就在中国--即使这个国家的政治正在越来越充满变数。
In 2009, a fight broke out in a toy factory in the southern province of Guangdong. Amid the melee, two Uyghur employees were killed by a Han mob. The next month, hundreds of Uyghurs took to the streets of Xinjiang’s capital city, Ürümqi, waving Chinese flags and chanting “Uyghur”—a call to be seen by the country’s leadership. The police cracked down, and riots erupted. Hundreds of people were injured or killed, and hundreds were arrested. More than forty Uyghurs were presumed disappeared. Dozens were later sentenced to death.
A year after the riots, Sabit was travelling to Kyrgyzstan with a group of co-workers. While trying to catch a connecting flight in Ürümqi, she was pulled aside by the authorities and told that, because she was from Xinjiang, she needed special permission to proceed. As her colleagues went ahead, she had to spend a day at a bureau for ethnic and religious affairs, getting the papers that she needed.
2009年,南方省份广东的一家玩具厂发生斗殴事件。两名维吾尔族员工在混战中被汉族暴徒杀害。次月,数百名维吾尔人走上新疆首府于鲁木齐的街头,挥舞着中国国旗,高呼 "维吾尔"--这是在向国家领导人喊话。警方进行了镇压,随后爆发了骚乱。数百人受伤或死亡,数百人被捕。据报道四十多名维吾尔族人失踪,其中的几十人后来被判处死刑。
骚乱发生一年后,萨比特与一群同事前往吉尔吉斯斯坦。当她试图在乌鲁木齐转机时,她被当局拉到一边,并被告知,因为她来自新疆,所以需要特别许可才能前往。她的同事先走一步,而她不得不在民族和宗教事务局花一天时间办理所需证件。
Having absorbed the Party’s propaganda, she believed that such measures were necessary. Still, she began to feel a deep alienation. No matter where she went in China, she remained an outsider. One day, back in Shanghai, she looked up at the city’s towering apartment buildings and asked herself, “What do they have to do with me?”
Not long afterward, she talked with a friend who had moved to Vancouver. Sabit flew over for a visit and was drawn to the openness and opportunity that she found; whenever she told a Canadian that she was from Xinjiang, the response was warm curiosity. She enrolled in a business-diploma program, and that summer she returned and found an apartment and a roommate. She landed a job as a junior accountant in a Vancouver company. She fell in with a circle of friends. She had met a man whom she loved. Her life was on a course that she had set, and it was good.
由于接受过党的宣传,她当时认为这种措施是必要的。但她还是开始感到深深的疏离感。无论走到中国哪里,她都是一个局外人。终于有一天,回到上海,她抬头望着这座城市高耸入云的公寓楼,对自己说:"这是我想要的生活吗?"
不久后,萨比特认识了一位移民温哥华的朋友。飞过去参观之后,她被这里的开放和机会所吸引,每当她告诉加拿大人她来自新疆,得到的回应都是热情和好奇。她报名参加了一个商业文凭课程,同年夏天,她回到温哥华,跟室友合租了一套公寓。她在温哥华一家公司找到了一份初级会计的工作。她融入了一个朋友圈。她遇到了一个她爱的男人。她的人生走上了自己设定的轨道,而且很美好。