这篇文章的原作者是数次来邵工作的一个英国作家。名字叫Justin Hill
他以一个外国人的视角，用文字，视屏，声音，图片记录了他对邵阳的理解。
附上我的译文，有些晦涩难懂的地方请英语专业的朋友和对中国典故深刻了解的朋友斧正。

原文： Under the Gantang Tree

There’s no reason to visit Shaoyang.

It’s far away from the mega-cities of Shanghai or Beijing or Hong Kong-Shenzhen-Guangdong, and at least an overnight train trip to anywhere worth visiting. Visitors think it dangerous, locals think it's dirty, but it’s almost entirely undistinguished. And it's exactly because there is nothing particularly special about Shaoyang that it makes the perfect town within which to sum up China’s odd and traumatic process of changing from communist to capitalist giant and beyond.

Shaoyang is an ancient place. The first mention of it is over two thousand years old, an odd line which says, ‘Where the Zijiang and Shaoshui Rivers meet Earl Zhao held court under the gantang tree.’ No one knows what a gantang tree is anymore, but the rivers still meet, and over the modern skyline stand a couple of pagodas, a few temples with their handfuls of monks and nuns.

Twenty years ago the river banks were still lined with stilt houses. There was a house of many rooms that friends and I used to sit in and eat and drink in summer. But now you have to search hard to find the last scraps of the old town: narrow alleys and tiled roofs and rustic toilets. That restaurant, with its wooden walls and rickety flooring has, like the old town and old China, been demolished. In their place are parallel queues of white-tiled and dirt-streaked flats. And the speed of change is daunting, even Maoist China is a faint memory now, well-buried under pop stars and supermarkets and shoe shops.

In 1989 the Tiananmen Square Incident was a clear message to the young people of China that they should focus their energies not on political reform but on business and money and consumerism. But by 1999, when I left Shaoyang, it was clear to many young Chinese people that consumerism was not what they wanted from life, and many young people were looking back to ancient Chinese culture for their inspiration. In short they were looking to before Communism to discover what it meant to be Chinese. This process was what I went on to write about in The Drink and Dream Teahouse.

Upon my return, speeding from Changsha on a two-hour motorway trip, my initial impression of Shaoyang was a little disappointing. Not much seemed to have changed. There was a McDonalds now and a KFC, but the city-scape was pretty much the same, litter piled up on the steep river banks, lost people in crowds, the buildings still tiled and still dirty.

But whereas 1998 Shaoyang seemed to still be teetering on the brink, unwilling to quite let go of Communist securities, in the seven years since, it and a thousand cities across China, have let go and pushed off from the edge. Maoist Thought is still a compulsory subject in schools but there is no way back to Maoist days. The new rich are the bureaucrats and the party leaders. Like an infected host, the old communist system has been devoured from the inside. Which begs the question, the unspoken hub of capitalist China: what is the Communist Party for?

There are many other changes in Shaoyang. The children I saw rushing to and from school have grown up quite unlike previous generations. These are the lone children of the One Child Policy: spoiled darlings of their parents, used to luxuries that people outside the West could never have dreamt of not long ago: private bedrooms, personal televisions, pc games, boyfriends and girlfriends - and of course Klondike lure for capitalism: a disposable income.

Teen culture of the West has been mirrored in China. There are fashions and music and footwear, mobile phones and opportunities in work that students couldn’t dream of just ten years ago. A Pop-Idol look-alike, called Supergirl, is the current ratings rave. People talk openly in a way that is new: about their love-lives; working abroad, business. Comparing this Asian tiger with the Celtic variant, IKEA plan to open in China before Ireland. Old arcane topics of conversation, all tied in with the communist system, like work-units and hukou – the old residence restrictions, have disappeared. The greeting is no longer 'Have you eaten?' because food is no longer scarce. University students here typically spend their holidays in Shenzhen factories earning pocket money or paying for tuition rather than going back to their villages and helping gather in the rice harvest. In fact, in many villages, farmers have abandoned the land in favour of a factory life. Like many countries around the world, the gap between rich and poor is accelerating fast and each week a couple of peasants stray into town, skeletal thin, too old to work, and pick through the fly-blown garbage.

But Shaoyang hasn’t changed in one respect, the future is still uncharted and unknown territory, and change keeps coming thick and fast.

译文： 甘棠树下

我们没有理由访问邵阳。

这是个远离大城市例如上海、北京、香港、深圳的地方，也不是花上一通宵火车

车程抵达值得一游的地方。来访的人觉得它危险，当地人也认为它肮脏，它几乎

默默无闻 。可以说这个毫无特色的邵阳，却反映出中国从共产主义巨头向资本主

义巨头变化中痛苦而令人费解的过程。

邵阳是一个古老的地方。首先让人提及的是它二千多年的悠久历史，一个古老的

传说是这么解释的：“资江和邵水汇聚处有一棵甘棠树，召公曾于此甘棠树下休

息议政。 ”（注：召公-邵伯,相传西周姬奭，封地在召，史称召公或召伯，古召

同邵）现在没有人知道什么是甘棠树了，但两条河汇聚于此，一如往昔，伴随它

们的是地平线上矗立的两座古塔和几处寺庙。

20年前，河岸边密布着吊脚楼。夏天，我和朋友常常在其中一间有很多房间的宅

子里喝酒吃饭小憩（据笔者提供的照片，这间房子应该是水壶庙）。但现在你得

花很大精力才能找到老城过去的残垣断壁：窄小的巷子、铺满瓦片的屋顶和粗陋

的厕所。那家带有摇摇晃晃的木质墙壁和吱吱呀呀的地板的餐厅，就像老城区和

过去的中国一样，被拆毁了。旧址上堆满了平整的直条白瓷砖和粘着泥垢的地砖

。变化的速度是如此巨大，过去的毛时代的中国已经被淡忘，埋没在充斥着流行

歌星和超级市场和鞋类商店的现在。

1989年xx门事件给年轻人一个明确的信息，那就是他们不应该将精力放在政治改

革上，而是应该去关注商业、金钱和消费。但到1999年，当我离开邵阳的时候，

，许多中国的年轻人明白了消费主义并不是他们生活所追求的，很多人回顾过去

的文明古国，希望从传统的中国文化中获得精神慰籍。简而言之他们在探究共产

主义对中国到底意味着什么。这个过程在我所著的《The Drink and Dream

Teahouse醉梦茶坊》一书中有所叙述。

从长沙返回邵阳只需两个小时，一路都奔驰在高速公路上，这次我对邵阳的初步

印象却有点令人失望。似乎没有太大的改变。是的，现在这里有了麦当劳和肯德

基，但这个城市景观几乎和过去一样，垃圾依旧堆积在陡峭的河岸，人们迷茫的

在人群中来来往往，建筑物仍然平铺没有层次，街面依旧很脏。

1998年的邵阳似乎接近崩溃边缘，它极不情愿完全放开共产主义意识形态的保护

，7年来，它和中国其他1000多个城市一样，已经放开，并被推离边缘。毛xx思想

仍然是大多数学校里学生们的一个必修课，但无奈的是现在已经没有办法再回到

毛时代。官僚和政党领导人已成新贵。就像一个受感染的宿主，旧的共产主义制

度从内部吞噬肌体。由此引出的问题-资本主义中国不言而喻的焦点：共产党到底

为了什么？

邵阳有许多其他的改变。我看到急匆匆上学放学的孩子们已经长大，而且完全不

不同以往的几代人。这些就是独生子女政策下成长的孩子们：父母对其极尽宠爱

，理所当然的习惯使用那些奢侈品-西方国家的人们很久以前都从不敢梦想拥有的

：私房，个人电视，电脑游戏，男朋友和女朋友-当然还包括克朗代克式吸引资本

主义的结果：可支配收入。（注：克朗代克指一夜暴富的黄金国）

西方的多元文化已反映在中国。有学生们10年前不敢梦想的时装，音乐和鞋类，

移动电话和工作机会。一个冒似快速打造偶像的节目，所谓的超女，是当前的热

评话题。人们公开谈论他们的爱情生活、在国外工作和生意。对比这只亚洲虎和

凯尔特人（注，指爱尔兰）的不确定性，宜家计划优先于爱尔兰在华开展业务。

过去秘而不宣的话题，所有的联系着共产主义制度的问题-如工作单位和户口（旧

的居住限制政策），已经消失。人们之间的问候不再是"吃了吗，您？" 因为食品

短缺已成过去。这里的大学生一般利用假期在深圳工厂打工赚取点零花钱或支付

学费，而不是像过去一样回到自己的农村老家帮助父母收割庄稼。事实上，在许

多乡村，农民们将土地闲置，更愿意进工厂谋生。如同世界上许多国家一样，贫

富差距正在加速拉大，每个星期都有一批批骨瘦的农民夫妇进入城市，由于年纪

太大找不到合适工作，就选择在风飞的垃圾场寻找破铜烂铁。

邵阳仍然没有令人重视的改变，今后仍然是没有规划的未知领域，但变化将纷踏

而至。