美國父母中國養(yǎng)女，一段上海迪士尼的奇妙旅行
電話在早上六點響起。巴斯光年叫我們起床拯救銀河系。
The call, from an animated character, was the day’s first reminder that my family and I were staying at the Toy Story Hotel, at the new Shanghai Disney Resort. After lifting our eyelids, extra heavy with jet lag, we saw other signs. The walls of our room were painted with clouds. The carpet was decorated with Saturns and sheriff stars. In the courtyard, a statue of Woody, the cowboy-doll hero of the “Toy Story” movies, towered over the vegetation. Sketches of Woody’s friends adorned the shower curtain.
這個來自動畫人物的電話，是今天的第一個提醒，告訴我和我的家人，我們此刻身在全新的上海迪士尼度假區(qū)內(nèi)的玩具總動員酒店?？头康膲ι袭嬛撇省５靥荷嫌型列呛途L星。伍迪的塑像聳立于草木繁茂的庭院中，也就是“玩具總動員”系列電影里那個牛仔玩偶主角。浴簾上有伍迪的朋友們的圖案。
The minibar was filled with nothing.
迷你酒吧塞滿了沒意思的東西。
As we set down a corridor whose end we could barely see, we felt like toddlers lurching toward their destinations. At last we reached the elevator. Woody’s voice hooted, “First floor,” in English and Mandarin.
我們走在一條幾乎看不到盡頭的走廊上，自覺像蹣跚走向目的地的嬰兒。終于到了電梯。伍迪的聲音響起，用英語和普通話說，“一層。”
What were we doing in this three-dimensional cartoon, where the lobby columns were imperfectly aligned building blocks that seemed to have been stacked by giant babies? Where the reception desk was constructed with marbles the size of grapefruit?
我們到這個三維卡通片里干什么?在這里，大堂的柱子和建筑構(gòu)件沒有完美對齊，看上去就像一些巨嬰搭起來的東西。前臺由柚子大小的大理石構(gòu)成。
My husband, Ernest, and I were rewarding our 10-year-old daughter, Shan, for her stamina and good humor. In the past four days, she had endured a 14-hour plane ride from New York to Shanghai and the embarrassment of watching her parents use clumsy hand gestures to communicate with the locals.
這是我和丈夫歐內(nèi)斯特(Ernest)給今年10歲的女兒姍的獎勵，表彰她的堅忍和正能量。過去四天里，她熬過了從紐約到上海的14小時航班，還要忍辱負(fù)重，看著她的父母用笨拙的手勢與當(dāng)?shù)厝藴贤ā?/p>
And then there was the emotional strain of visiting the country of her birth. It had been nine years since we adopted Shan from China at the age of 14 months. This was our first return trip, and Shanghai was the air lock we were passing though after leaving the mother ship of the West. Soon we would travel to a small city in Jiangxi Province to visit the orphanage where our daughter spent her first year. We would go to the Jinggang Mountains, where Mao Zedong retreated in the 1920s and organized the Red Army. Eventually, there would be Sichuan Province, hot pots and pandas.
然后就是重回出生地的情感壓力。九年前我們在中國領(lǐng)養(yǎng)了14個月大的姍。這是我們第一次回來。離開西方世界的母艦后，上海是我們途經(jīng)的一個氣密過渡艙。我們將很快前往江西省一座小城，拜訪她出生那一年待過的孤兒院。我們會去井岡山，毛澤東曾在上世紀(jì)20年代撤退到那里，并組建了紅軍。最后還有四川省、火鍋、大熊貓。
Before this, Shan had occasionally asked us to take her to Disneyland, and we had always turned her down flat. I thought of Disney theme parks as unnaturally clean and cheerful places. To Ernest, who was raised as a somewhat observant Jew, Disneyland was like Christmas — something other people enjoyed.
在這之前，姍不時提出要去迪士尼樂園，遭到我們的斷然拒絕。我認(rèn)為迪士尼主題公園是個干凈而歡快得不自然的地方。而歐內(nèi)斯特從小受到的教育就是要做一個多少有點原則的猶太人，迪士尼樂園在他看來就像圣誕節(jié)——不是該他去享受的樂子。
But Disneyland in Shanghai? That would be different. The park, with its familiar characters, would reintroduce Shan by comfortable degrees to China. And Ernest and I would find it worth the price of a day’s admission to the theme park (about $230 for the three of us) to see Mickey and company translated by a country that had long resisted Disneyfication.
但上海的迪士尼樂園就不一樣了。這座主題公園里有那么多熟悉的角色，會讓姍頗為舒適地重新接觸中國。而且我和歐內(nèi)斯特會發(fā)現(xiàn)，購買一日門票(我們?nèi)丝偣不ㄙM約230美元)，去看經(jīng)由一個曾長期抵制迪士尼化的國家詮釋的米奇及其伙伴，是很值得的。
Disneyland Shanghai had been open less than a month when we showed up on a Saturday in July last year. After dropping our bags at the Toy Story Hotel, a low, blue-glass building surrounded by asphalt and crew-cut grass that reminded Ernest of a tech company campus in Silicon Valley, we boarded a bus to the park.
我們于去年7月的一個周六現(xiàn)身上海迪士尼樂園時，它開張還不到一個月。我們把行李留在玩具總動員酒店——那是一棟低矮的藍(lán)色玻璃幕墻建筑，周圍則是瀝青地面和修剪得短短的草坪，讓歐內(nèi)斯特聯(lián)想起硅谷一個科技公司園區(qū)——隨后上了一輛前往主題公園的大巴。
Our fellow passengers, all of whom appeared Asian, included hip young couples (Ray-Bans, porkpie hats), parents bookending single children and a few families with more than one offspring. Could they be Chinese? The country’s one-child policy, begun in the 1970s, had been recently rescinded. As it relaxed, some Chinese couples were allowed to have two children, and here they apparently were. Had Shan noticed them? After all of our conversations about the desperate conditions that forced Chinese parents to give up their babies, was she confused? Aggrieved? She has a face made for seven-card stud. It was impossible to read her thoughts.
同車的乘客看上去都是亞裔，其中包括時髦的年輕伴侶(戴雷朋[Ray-Bans]太陽鏡和豬肉派帽)，把僅有的一個孩子夾雜中間的家長，還有一些家庭帶著不止一個孩子。他們會是中國人嗎?這個國家始于1970年代的一孩化政策最近已經(jīng)被取消了。此前隨著政策的松動，一些中國夫婦可以有兩個孩子，我們面前的人似乎就是這種情況。姍注意到他們了嗎?在我們多次談及迫使中國父母放棄孩子的絕望境況之后，眼前的情形是否會讓她感到困惑?委屈?她有一張適合玩撲克的不動聲色的臉。你很難猜透她的心思。
At the park entrance, we found maple trees and a Starbucks. Thick strands of fountain water waved like boiling pasta, and the air was steaming hot. It took a long time to be admitted. Guards were searching through bags and confiscating contraband food. Visitors had to patronize the park’s restaurants or starve. We stood around with an adult tour group wearing orange baseball caps and a little boy with Bermuda shorts and a fauxhawk, playing with his mother’s cellphone. A striking number of people wore black-and-white horizontally striped shirts.
在主題公園入口處，我們看到了楓樹以及一家星巴克(Starbucks)。噴泉噴出一波波很粗的水流，像是沸水里的意大利面;天氣炙熱難當(dāng)。進(jìn)門要花很長時間，警衛(wèi)正在檢查包裹，沒收違禁食物。游客只能光顧園區(qū)的餐廳，要不就得餓著。我們站在一個統(tǒng)一戴橙色棒球帽的成人旅游團(tuán)旁邊，一個穿百慕大短褲、留著仿莫西干發(fā)型的小男孩在玩他媽媽的手機(jī)。很多人都穿著黑白兩色橫紋襯衫。
The crowd looked back at us with equal intensity, curious about our Chinese daughter and her pasty companions. On our first morning in Shanghai, a woman approached Shan on the street, while I was a few yards away, buying breakfast at a dumpling stand. She rattled off questions in her own language, gesturing toward me. Was I Shan’s mother? Her minder? Her abductor? My daughter, who speaks only English, wasn’t sure what she was saying, but ever since had been hanging a foot or two behind Ernest and me, close enough to keep us in sight but far enough (or so she hoped) to deflect attention.
那群人回過頭來，帶著同樣濃厚的興趣打量我們，好奇于我們的中國女兒以及她身旁皮膚蒼白的同伴。我們抵達(dá)上海的第一個早上，當(dāng)我在幾米開外的餃子攤前買早點的時候，一個女人在街頭湊近我的女兒。她一邊用自己的語言快速發(fā)問，一邊朝我這邊指了指。我是姍的母親?看護(hù)人?還是誘拐者?我女兒只會說英語，不明白她是什么意思，但隨后一直待在我和歐內(nèi)斯特身后半米的地方，近到足以把我們置于視線之內(nèi)，但又遠(yuǎn)到足以避免受到關(guān)注(或者說她希望如此)。
Past the park’s entry gate, the Mad King Ludwig spires of the Enchanted Storybook Castle soared in the distance, and speakers burbled music from “The Nutcracker.” Shan admired the shops on Mickey Avenue (a renamed Main Street U.S.A.), which in the tradition of Disneyland retail seemed to draw equal inspiration from the Ponte Vecchio and Keebler Elf country. She had yet to learn that the entrances opened onto a single interconnected mall selling Disney merchandise. (When she did, she would not be disappointed.)
走過公園入口處，可以看到遠(yuǎn)處奇幻童話城堡(Enchanted Storybook Castle)的瘋王堡(Mad King Ludwig)尖頂，揚聲器中傳來《胡桃夾子》(The Nutchracker)的音樂。姍喜歡米奇大道(就是換了個名字的美國小鎮(zhèn)大街[Main Street U.S.A.])上的商店，它們是迪士尼樂園傳統(tǒng)的零售店，靈感似乎來自維奇奧橋(Ponte Vecchio)和Keebler小精靈。之后她又發(fā)現(xiàn)這些入口全部都通往一個販賣迪士尼商品的商場。(這個發(fā)現(xiàn)沒有讓她感到失望。)
A fairy tale schloss. A Potemkin village shopping strip. Elevator Tchaikovsky. It felt like Disneyland as usual, but Shanghai Disneyland broke from the template in crucial ways. We had learned from newspaper reports that there would be no It’s a Small World ride smacking of cultural imperialism. No Space Mountain invoking our interstellar dreams. But there would be Chinese zodiac gardens, each featuring one of a dozen Disney creatures like Thumper (Year of the Rabbit), and a teahouse called the Wandering Moon.
一個童話城堡。一個波將金(Potemkin)村莊式的購物帶。播放柴可夫斯基音樂的電梯。感覺和普通的迪士尼樂園沒什么兩樣，但是上海迪士尼樂園在某些重要的方面擺脫了模板，脫穎而出。我們從報紙上了解到，這里不會有帶有文化帝國主義色彩的“小小世界”(Small World)之旅。也沒有激發(fā)星際夢想的“飛躍太空山”(Space Mountain)。但是，這里有中國的十二生肖園，每個園子里都會有十二個迪士尼動物中的一種，比如小兔桑普(Thumper)，代表兔年，還有一個名叫“漫月食府”(Wandering Moon)的茶館。
Other attractions were related to some of the Walt Disney Company’s acquisitions, including Marvel Comics and the “Star Wars” franchise.
其他景點與沃爾特·迪士尼公司的一些收購有關(guān)，包括漫威電影和《星球大戰(zhàn)》(Star Wars)特許商品。
Officials quoted in the newspapers we read explained that the demographic disruptions of the one-child policy meant that the average visitor’s age would be older than it would be at other Disney parks. From what we saw, Shanghai Disneyland catered in no special way to grown-ups apart from a sign that advised us to seek out “cast members” — the term for Disney park employees — for assistance in finding a place to smoke. Another sign noted that wheelchairs could be found near the area where strollers were rented out.
我們讀到的報道中引用了相關(guān)官員的話，他們解釋說，獨生子女政策給人口結(jié)構(gòu)造成的干擾意味著上海迪士尼游客的平均年齡會比其他迪士尼公園游客大。照我們看來，除了有一個標(biāo)志建議我們，要尋找吸煙場所，可向“演員”(也就是迪士尼公園的員工)求助之外，上海迪士尼樂園沒有其他特別方式來滿足成年人的需求。另一個標(biāo)志上寫著，輪椅可以在出租嬰兒車的地點附近找到。
Moving deeper into the park, we discovered that the wide boulevards were much less crowded than the streets of Shanghai. This must mean we could leap into any activity and cover vast tracts of the six themed sections, we thought. We were wrong. The posted wait time for the Become Iron Man entertainment at Marvel Universe, where we could virtually try on Iron Man suits, was 50 minutes. Boarding the spidery Jet Packs ride at Tomorrowland would take 75 minutes; riding the Tron Lightcycle Power Run roller coaster, 90 minutes.
進(jìn)一步深入園區(qū)，我們發(fā)現(xiàn)，比起上海的街道，這里寬闊的林蔭大道不那么擁擠。我們覺得，這意味著我們可以快速前往任何活動，走遍六個主題園區(qū)的寬敞道路。但我們錯了。在漫威英雄總部(Marvel Universe)可以試穿鋼鐵俠套裝的“變身鋼鐵俠”(Become Iron Man)項目入口處，告示上的等待時間是50分鐘。在明日世界(Tomorrowland)登上細(xì)長的噴氣背包飛行器(Jet Packs)需要等候75分鐘;乘坐創(chuàng)極速光輪(Tron Lightcycle Power Run)過山車需要等候90分鐘。
Ernest and I offered to take turns standing in line. We were not being entirely selfless. Marvel Universe, a black, wart-shaped pavilion where boys were running around shrieking, “Wow,” was air-conditioned. But Shan’s nature is to scan from the periphery before committing to any adventure. So we wandered.
我和歐內(nèi)斯特提出輪流排隊。我們不是完全無私的。漫威英雄總部是一個黑色瘤狀亭式建筑，男孩們到處亂跑，大聲尖叫，這里有空調(diào)。但是，姍的性格是進(jìn)行任何冒險之前都先要在周邊看看。所以我們徘徊了一陣子。
Soon we hustled to the side of Mickey Avenue to watch a gorgeous parade pass by. An all-female band wearing caps drooping long red feathers stood on the back of a dragon float. The women hammered kettledrums and struck a gong suspended from a pagoda. Flames burst from the pagoda’s top. “Mulan,” Shan explained.
很快，我們匆忙趕到米奇大道的路邊，觀看華麗的游行隊伍經(jīng)過。一個女子樂隊頭戴拖著紅色長羽毛的帽子，站在一輛龍形彩車的后面，敲著從寶塔上懸掛下來的鑼鼓。寶塔頂部噴出火焰。“木蘭，” 姍解釋說。
At the Camp Discovery attraction at Adventure Isle, a 13-year-old Chinese boy wearing aviator sunglasses introduced himself as Rivers and asked to practice his English with us.
在冒險島的營地發(fā)現(xiàn)景點，一個戴著飛行員墨鏡的13歲中國男孩說自己叫里弗斯(Rivers)，想跟我們練英語。
“How old are you?” he asked my husband. “你多大了?”他問我丈夫。
We enjoyed reading people’s shirts. “Clothes Are Genderless” announced a small boy’s white tee. (Mao would have approved; Walt Disney, probably not.) Other T-shirts said “Moschino,” “Miu-Miu” and “1-800-I-Love-You.” A man in his 20s in hot tangerine Nikes wore a shirt that said “Born to Try.” A woman in her 20s wore one that said “Everything Better.”
我們喜歡看別人T恤上的字。一個小男孩的白色T恤上寫著：Clothes Are Genderless(意思是：服裝是沒有性別的——譯注。毛主席可能贊同這個觀點，但沃爾特·迪士尼[Walt Disney]很可能難以茍同)。還有些T恤上寫著：Moschino、Miu-Miu、1-800-I-Love-You。一名穿著橘色耐克鞋的20多歲的男子穿的T恤上面寫著：Born to Try(為嘗試而生)。一個20多歲的女子穿的T恤上寫著：Everything Better(一切更好)。
Disneyland’s propensity for turning dark, anxious European fairy tales into shiny, bulbous entertainments had long struck me as odd. With China in the picture, it was positively surreal. At Pinocchio Village Kitchen, the décor was wipe-down Tyrolean, and the menu included pork ramen and seafood lasagna. The walls were illustrated with vignettes from Disney’s 1940 “Pinocchio,” a scrubbed version of the 1883 saga by the Italian writer Carlo Collodi, who clearly saw the worst in young boys. Not merely mischievous, the original Pinocchio murders the talking cricket that tries to give him wise advice and later abuses his ghost.
迪士尼樂園把黑暗、令人焦慮的歐洲童話故事變成閃亮、歡快的娛樂的能力一直都讓我感到奇怪。在中國這個環(huán)境中，更是顯得頗為超現(xiàn)實。匹諾曹鄉(xiāng)村廚房(Pinocchio Village Kitchen)的裝飾完全是提洛爾風(fēng)格的，菜單包括豬肉拉面和意式海鮮千層面。墻上畫著來自迪士尼1940年影片《木偶奇遇記》(Pinocchio)的裝飾圖案。那部影片是根據(jù)意大利作家卡洛·科洛迪(Carlo Collodi)1883年的傳奇故事改編的兒童電影?？坡宓锨逦乜吹搅四贻p男孩最糟糕的一面。原版故事中的匹諾曹不只是淘氣，還殺死了試圖給他提供明智建議的會說話的蟋蟀，后來更是虐待了他的鬼魂。
Shan ordered pizza with fresh tomatoes, basil and balsamic vinegar (85 yuan, about $12.50, with a Pepsi). The dumplings I bought on the street in Shanghai, by contrast, cost 3 yuan (44 cents). We paid a cashier, who wore lederhosen and a straw hat, and took our food to an outdoor patio hung with Chinese lanterns. A Chinese instrumental version of “Let It Go” from “Frozen” played on the sound system. A boy next to us ate cut-up pizza with chopsticks.
姍點了披薩，上面有新鮮番茄、羅勒，放了香醋(85元，約合12.5美元，包括一瓶百事可樂)。我在上海街頭買的餃子只要3元(44美分)。我們把錢交給收銀員，她穿著背帶皮短褲，戴著草帽，把我們的食物端到掛著中國燈籠的戶外露臺上。背景音樂放的是用中國樂器演奏的《冰雪奇緣》(Frozen)的主題曲《隨它吧》(Let It Go)。坐在我們旁邊的一個男孩用筷子夾著切開的披薩吃。
When we returned late that afternoon to the Toy Story Hotel, we found children gathered around a lobby television watching old Mickey Mouse cartoons with no volume. Cast members were twisting balloons into animals and flowers and handing them out. Shan asked for a rose. After noting the park’s bells and whistles, we expected the hotel to be more technologically impressive, with video games and animatronic characters.
那天下午晚些時候我們回到玩具總動員酒店時，發(fā)現(xiàn)孩子們聚集在大堂的一個電視機(jī)周圍，觀看老版的《米老鼠》(Mickey Mouse)動畫片，電視調(diào)成了靜音。演藝人員把氣球擰成動物和花朵，分發(fā)給孩子們。姍要了一支玫瑰。在注意到公園的鐘和口哨之后，我們期待這個酒店在科技方面令人耳目一新，有電子游戲和電子動畫人物。
We forgot about the nostalgia of “Toy Story.” Set in a postwar American suburb, the movies reveal an ache for the past and not just through the grumblings of old-fashioned playthings that compete for the attention of Andy, their growing boy-owner. The longing is baked into the midcentury décor. With its International-style architecture, Charles and Ray Eames-ish plywood seats and Eero Saarinen-sort-of mushroom-shaped tables, the hotel immersed us in the idea of “Toy Story” — a lost suburban golden age — as effectively as if we were handed virtual-reality headsets.
我們忘了《玩具總動員》的懷舊性質(zhì)。故事發(fā)生在戰(zhàn)后的美國郊區(qū)，那一系列電影展現(xiàn)出對過去的渴望，不只是通過老式玩具的嘟囔，他們努力爭奪不斷成長的男主人、小男孩安迪(Andy)的關(guān)注。這種渴望體現(xiàn)在20世紀(jì)中葉的裝飾風(fēng)格上。這家酒店的國際風(fēng)格建筑，查爾斯(Charles)和雷·埃姆斯(Ray Eames)風(fēng)格的膠合板座椅，以及埃羅·沙里寧(Eero Saarinen)那種蘑菇形餐桌，讓我們沉浸在《玩具總動員》的理念中——一個逝去的郊區(qū)黃金年代——就像給我們戴上了虛擬現(xiàn)實眼鏡。
The oversize playroom theme, evoking the toys’ point of view in the films, represented another kind of golden age: childhood. But here the hotel broke with its model. Youth through the lens of Pixar, which Disney bought in 2006, is no picnic. The joke of “Toy Story” is that Woody and his buddies only pretend to be inanimate when people are around. They are secretly alive, which means that just like real humans experiencing real development, they are hurtling toward death, painfully picking up lessons in maturity along the way. In the movies, the toys are roughed up by mean children and threatened with incineration, whereas the hotel, being a service business that charges upward of $125 a night, offered nothing but comfort and love. A crowd of cast members cheered us simply for entering the restaurant.
超大游戲室的主題還原了玩具們在電影中的視角，代表著另一種黃金時代：童年。但是，這家酒店打破了它的模式。皮克斯動畫公司(Pixar)鏡頭下的年輕人并不輕松愉快——2006年迪士尼買下了皮克斯。《玩具總動員》的有趣之處在于，伍迪(Woody)和他的伙伴們只在周圍有人時假裝不是活的。在私下里，他們是活著的，那意味著，就像真人經(jīng)歷真實的發(fā)展一樣，他們也在沖向死亡，在慢慢成熟的過程中不斷吸取痛苦的教訓(xùn)。在電影中，玩具們遭到頑劣孩子們的粗暴對待，受到焚燒的威脅，而這家收費最低每晚125美金的服務(wù)型酒店除了舒適和愛，沒有其他東西。哪怕只是進(jìn)入餐廳，也會有一群演員對我們歡呼。
There, Chinese kites shaped like Buzz Lightyear and Slinky Dog hung from the ceiling; Chinese ideograms identified the different kinds of pastry. But everywhere the language of Disney superseded all others. The carrots floating in Shan’s bowl of chicken noodle soup were circles with mouse ears. The movies on tap in our room were all produced or released by you-know-who.
餐廳的天花板上懸掛著形似巴斯光年(Buzz Lightyear)和彈簧狗(Slinky Dog)的中國風(fēng)箏，中國表意文字標(biāo)明不同的面食種類。但是，不管在哪里，迪士尼的語言蓋過了所有其他語言。姍的雞肉湯面里漂浮的胡蘿卜做成了帶有老鼠耳朵的圓圈。我們房間里隨時可以點播的電影都是迪士尼出品和發(fā)行的。
Shan and I curled up with “The Incredibles” (Pixar, 2004). In this animated story of a depressed family of superheroes who are forbidden to use their powers, we again saw midcentury styles. The movie’s flashy cars and swooping furniture were throwbacks to an age of power, not impotence. They referred to the time of Superman, James Bond and tight nuclear families like the Cleavers, which were all part of the pastiche.
我和姍選擇了《超人總動員》(The Incredibles，皮克斯，2004年)。這部動畫片講述的是一個郁悶的超級英雄家庭，他們被禁止使用超能力。我們再次看到20世紀(jì)中葉的風(fēng)格。那部電影中華麗的汽車和線條流暢的家具再次把我們帶回一個充滿力量的時代，而不是無能的時代。它是超人、詹姆斯·邦德(James Bond)、以及克利弗一家(Cleavers)那種緊湊的核心家庭的時代。
We were strangers lodging in a strange American fantasyland wrapped in the enigma of Asia, watching a family of misfits come to grips with their oddities and unite in triumph at the end. We laughed like hyenas and fell asleep.
我們是臨時住在被亞洲的神秘所包圍的奇特美國夢幻樂園中的陌生人，看著一個怪誕角色組成的家庭努力對抗自己的怪異，最后勝利地團(tuán)結(jié)在一起。我們像土狼一樣大笑，然后睡去。
