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前两天无意从网上看到《读库》丛书0704期刊登的《遍走长城》一文，作者何伟，写的他的朋友石彬伦与长城的情缘。石斌伦即小站网友阿伦（alun）。全文共九节，其中第七节主要讲阿伦和小站的事，诗书的大名屡屡提到。何伟的文风很有意思，值得一读。可惜网上找到的节选只到第四节。
今天从卓越买到了这书，这里也替卓越打个广告，30元的原价实际售价16.8，而且不论书价统统免费送货，值就一个字。而且从各方面来看，《读库》丛书都是满不错的，也顺道向大家推荐一下。
先把网上找到的前四节转帖在这，第七节等我明天有空的时候再录入。
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遍走长城
作者：何伟（Peter Hessler）译者：张泠
一．
当天气晴好，或我厌倦了面对七百万邻居，我会从北京的闹市区驱车向北而去。一个半小时后，可到三岔，一个宁静的小村。我在那里租了所民房。大路在小村便到了尽头，但有条羊肠小道通往山上。小径有两个岔口，沿布满胡桃和橡树林的陡坡直上，约一英里后消失于中国的长城脚下。
一次我带着帐篷，从小村向上而去，在城墙上向东跋涉了两天，未见一个人影。游客极少涉足此地，城墙高踞山脊之上，遗世独立。城墙由石头、砖及灰浆建成；墙顶有垛口和箭眼，及高耸二十多英尺的空心敌台。最高的一座被当地人称作“东大楼”，楼子附近有一块刻有文字的石碑。类似的石碑曾有很多，但目前在北京地区长城上仅存不到二十座，这便是其中之一。碑上写着：万历四十三年（公元1615年），两千四百名兵士建此段城墙，长五十八丈零五寸（约合六百五十英尺）。碑上的官文冰冷精确，在这被遗忘的角落更显孤寂。
2005年十一月，我与两位来自纽约的朋友远足至东大楼。至楼子后，我们向南蜿蜒而下。这段路可谓险情迭起，因为很多处垛墙已然坍塌。就在我小心翼翼下山时，乱石中有件东西吸引了我的视线。此物呈白色——太白，不像是砖；太大，亦不可能是灰浆。我将它挖出来，看见四行整齐的雕刻文字。
这是另一座石碑的残片。我只能辨认出部分词句：似乎是“六尺高”，还有什么“两丈”。全以我未学过的文言文写成，且表面已严重损坏，字迹难以辨识。
“你觉得它被埋在这里多久了？”一位朋友问。
“不知道，”我说。但我知道有个人或许可以告诉我答案。我和朋友们用散砖掩盖住这古物，并记住此地点。一个月后，我与石彬伦（David Spindler）一同回来。
二．
石彬伦身高六呎七，与很多又高又瘦的男人一样含蓄少言。数年来，我偶尔在北京的社交场合遇见他，每次他都是安稳地坐着。他三十九岁，淡棕色短发，容长脸，眼神柔和。他说话时斟词酌句。自2002年起，他成为全职研究长城的独立学者。尽管不属于任何学术机构，也无外来经费，他还是成为最出色的长城研究者之一。
一个冰冷的十二月早晨，我与石彬伦出发去找那块大理石石碑。在北京城里，石彬伦行为打扮低调，避免注意力。但在山里，他穿一件红格羊毛猎人衫，一顶松垂的白色Tilley牌遮阳帽，高端专业La Sportiva牌登山鞋，芝加哥的 J. Edwards公司为外线工设计的大鹿皮手套。他看起来如由特殊装备组成的稻草人——部分肢体准备好了要做重体力劳动，另一部分则为了纯粹的消遣。多年经验总结，石彬伦发现这套行头最适合爬荆棘遍布的长城。面罩呢，他从秋裤上剪掉一条裤腿， 掏个圆洞， 套在头上。（“这可以保护脖子。”） 他穿L.L. Bean牌有聚氨酯涂层的猎裤，这裤子还被小区裁缝加固过。牛仔布补丁点缀着裤子，如连结了弗里波特市【L. L. Bean总部所在地美国缅因州一城市】和北京的友谊被。
我们沿着城墙向东而行。城墙每隔几百码左右就有一座空心敌台。高拱的天花板和箭窗虽已成断壁残垣，仍十分壮观。石彬伦不时指出一些细节：某处的门曾被封过，某个壁龛曾镶嵌过石碑。
“敌台和墙不是同时建的，”他说，“先搭的砖楼，当时墙体用的只是毛石。后来他们又改进了墙体。这就是这些楼子看起来有点别扭的原因。”
他指出一个细节：一个城墙垛口和一座敌台的箭窗撞了车——这种情况在你用两个不同的施工队时会发生。东大楼附近，一部分墙已完全倒塌。石彬伦认为1615年的工程到这个悬崖边就结束了，他用楼子附近石碑上的数据和实际测量，证明了这点。“这些家伙把下一队建墙人搞惨了，”他说，“他们能怎么办呢？从这儿开始建墙太难了。”
我来这儿大约不下五十次了，但从未注意过这些建筑上的细节。我以为这就是长城——完整而近乎永恒。对石彬伦而言，这是不同的片段和季节的作品。修墙一般在春天进行，此时天气晴和，而蒙古袭击者还不太活跃。“蒙古人南下全靠膘肥体壮的马，” 石彬伦说，“寒冬过后他们没这条件，所以春天不是进攻的好季节。夏天太热了。他们不喜欢酷暑，也不喜欢蚊虫。蒙古人的弓弦是兽皮做的，湿气让弓弦无力——这些都记载在明代文献里。劫掠突袭大多发生在秋季。”
我们来到这残破的石碑处，他在寒冷中蹲下来，以手指抚摸这些镌刻的文字。他立刻认出这是万历四十二年（公元1614年）一块石碑的一部分。县文物局在1988年记录了这些碑文，但未记录它在城墙的原始位置，自那时起它就消失了。大约被一些盗卖文物者所毁坏。
“它记载了墙的高度，包括垛墙的高度，”他解释，“还有这些官员的名字。幸好在它被毁坏之前有人把它记录下来了。”
石彬伦用卷尺测量残片，计算字间行距，迅速估计出了原始尺寸。他缓缓延墙走回，寻找残片曾经的安身之处。他测量了一个用砖砌边的壁龛：完全合适。对于这小段城墙，他现在知道了关于十七世纪一十年代两次修墙的大致情形。离开前，我们将这个残片放回原处。
我们在那儿时，一位当地人从南面走上来。他在猎野物；肩上松松地挎着铁丝圈。面对这位戴松软帽子和鹿皮大手套的六呎七的外国巨人，他泰然自若。他问我们有无多余的水，石彬伦给了他一瓶。次年，我与石彬伦一同走过几个村子，每次当地人都几乎不能区分我们两人。石彬伦的一位朋友、在澳大利亚新南威尔士大学（The University of New South Wales）教中国历史的费嘉炯（Andrew Field）曾告诉我，一个高得不同寻常的人在中国可能比在美国更自在。“在中国，的确，他是个怪物，” 费嘉炯说，“但我们老外不都是吗？”
三．
公元前221年，秦始皇成为中国历史上第一个称帝的统治者。政权巩固后，他下令修建了三千英里横穿广袤北方的长城。这个词可被翻译成“long wall”或“long walls”——中文名词不分单复数——这些屏障由夯土构成。接下来的几个世纪，历代都面临着秦朝面对的同样难题：北方大片开阔的平原使他们不堪被聚居此处的游牧民族如蒙古和突厥部落侵扰。游牧民族的威胁在某些时期更为紧张，中国的历朝历代以不同策略应对。自公元618至907年统治中国的唐朝，基本上没修城墙，因为皇家有部分突厥血统并长于应付中亚冲突和外交。即使有些朝代修建城墙，他们也未必都称它为“长城”；对这些城墙的称呼多达十几个。
明朝通常称他们的城墙为“边墙”——本朝成为中国历史上最引人注目的城墙修建者。明政权始于1368年，忽必烈建立的短命的元朝覆灭之后。明朝廷在北京附近区域修建砖石结构的大型防御工事——这些标志性建筑（部分被重建和修复）在游客的照片中无限蜿蜒逶迤。明朝是唯一以如此耐久的材料大兴土木修建城墙的朝代，明城墙的很多部分绵延数里。但“边墙”彼此连接成网而非一个简单的结构，一些区域的防御工事有四线贯通。
1644年，国内起义风起云涌，直至皇城，明朝皇帝自尽。绝望之下，一个驻守东北的将领将一个重要“边墙”关口向满族人敞开，指望他们可以挽回皇家败局。满族人却建立了自己的朝廷——清朝，持续到1912年。这些城墙对于清朝失去意义，很快被荒废。
十八世纪，西方探险家和传道士涌进中国，他们游览明长城遗址并将之与秦始皇万里长城的故事混为一谈。这些外国人认为北京周遭那些砖造防御工事是那条在广大北方屹立了两千年的连续防线的一部分。1793年，一位英国人约翰"巴罗（John Barrow）爵士见到北京附近的一段长城，按其尺寸推断，全部城墙所用的石头足以绕赤道建两座略小一点的墙。（鲜有西方人涉足中国的西部，那里的多数城墙由夯土所造。）那时，外国人通常称它为“汉墙”（the Chinese Wall），但到十九世纪末，夸大之词日积月累，最后成为“the Great Wall of China”（直译“中国的伟大的墙”）。1923年2月，一篇《国家地理》（National Geographic）中文章如此写道，“依天文学家所言，在月球上肉眼可见的唯一一件人类作品是中国的长城。”（在1923年时从月球上并不能看见它，今日依然。）
最终，这些误解传到中国。在外国强权威胁下，中国领导人如孙中山和毛泽东意识到一个统一的防御工事的宣传价值。“长城”成为“the Great Wall”的对等物，一个涵盖所有北方防御工事的名词，不分地区和朝代。它本质上描述了一个想象中的建构——一座千年城墙。
今日，长城的概念如此宽泛，无法正式界定。我在北京遇见学者或主张保护城墙的人，便问他们“长城”该如何被界定，我从未听到过重样的回答。有的说如想确定一段城墙是长城的一部分，它必须至少一百公里长；有的则认为任何一段边防工事都可被视为长城的一部分；还有的强调它一定要被汉人所建；而有的将非汉人所建的也归入长城。无人能给出长城相对精确的长度，因为从未有过系统性的测量和调查。去年，《中国日报》（China Daily）的不同文章分别描述长城为三千九百英里、四千五百英里和三千一百英里长。
世界上任何一所大学都没有专门研究长城的学者。在中国，历史学家一般专注于政治体系研究，而考古学家则致力于挖掘古墓。长城在传统学术领域中找不到自己的位置，甚至对于某个独立的专题——如，明长城——严谨的学术研究成果也凤毛麟角。这些防御工事疏于保护，过去很多建在低处的城墙被拆掉去当建筑材料，尤其在文革时期。在上世纪80年代，一位名叫林蔚（Arthur Waldron）的哈佛大学博士生对汉人和游牧部落的关系产生兴趣。“我去图书馆，以为能找到一本包括长城所有方面知识的中文或日文的大厚书，”他最近告诉我，“可是没有。我觉得很奇怪。于是我开始编纂一个参考书目，但过了一段时间我发现这没给我们目前对长城的印象添加任何东西。”
1990年，林蔚出版了《中国的长城：从历史到迷思》（The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth）。林蔚没有做什么实地考察，而是利用了很多明代文献。在书中他描述了明朝筑墙的几个要点。他也提及现代人对长城的很多误解，包括“它是单一建筑物”的说法。这是本有突破意义的书，应该已为进一步学术研究奠定了基础。但自那之后除了一个考察队写了一本描述明长城东部的中文书（《司马台古长城》）之外，并未出现其他在考古和历史方面有重要学术价值的著作。（另一本书于去年出版，《长城：中国对抗世界，公元前1000年至公元2000年》（The Great Wall: China Against the World, 1000 B.C. – A.D. 2000），作者茱莉亚"洛弗尔（Julia Lovell），一位剑桥大学的研究者，基本上关注于城墙作为中国人世界观的象征意义。她将古代长城与当今政府的网络防火墙相提并论。）
成大林是中国最著名的长城专家之一。他不是学者，而是位退休的摄影记者。退休之前，他花了二十多年时间专门给新华社拍摄长城的照片。在闲余时间，他研究历史，并已出版八本集图片和研究成果于一身的书。“长城触及太多学科——政治，军事，建筑，考古，历史，”他告诉我，“分门别类地说，太小。如果综合研究呢，又太大。关于长城的资料散落在各种古籍里，没有汇总在一本书里。也没人资助你做这个研究！你靠什么吃饭？一个人怎么能花十年时间读所有这些书？”
四．
石彬伦第一次爬长城是在1994年，那时他是北京大学历史系唯一的美国籍研究生。他素来好运动——在达特茅斯（Dartmouth）读书时，他就参加过大学赛艇队和越野滑雪队。他视远足为逃避城市生活的完美调剂。在北京大学，他的硕士论文以中文写成，论述的是董仲舒——一位公元前二世纪、西汉时期的哲学家。获得学位后，石彬伦决定不去学术界。他读研究生之前曾在CNN驻京办事处作助理，后来又成为特纳广播公司（Turner Broadcasting）的中国市场分析师。但新闻界和商界似乎都不是他兴趣所在，多年来唯一未变的兴趣是远足长城。
1997年，他上了哈佛大学法学院。那是真正的回归故里——他本在马萨诸塞州的林肯长大。虽身在家乡，他的心却在北京。他设法分神儿（“我劈了很多柴，”他告诉我。）在第一个假期他就回中国爬长城去了。那时，他已有利用业余时间写本关于明长城的书的想法，并开始阅读历史典籍。毕业后，他在麦肯锡（McKinsey & Company）公司北京分部做咨询工作；每逢周末闲暇，他不是远足长城便是研读明代文献。在麦肯锡工作一年多以后，他离开咨询行业，把全部时间用来做研究。他的目标是走遍北京地区的每段长城，读遍写于明代的与此建构相关的每个词句。
石彬伦还清了读法学院的贷款，还剩六万美元的积蓄。他计划用一两年时间完成实地考察工作。他踏足一段段的城墙，做笔记，列表记录细节。他常望见远方还有更多城墙，他把它们的位置记下来，以便下次再来考察。这名单随每次考察而加长。1985年的一次中国卫星调查认为北京地区有三百九十英里的长城，但石彬伦发现的要比这一数字长得多。
他时常光顾中国国家图书馆，读《明实录》（Ming Veritable Records，一部明代逐日历史的翔实记录），找明代官员的奏章。有时他会找到一本关于长城防御的明代专著。有些书只能在别处找到，他只得花几个星期四处奔波。在南方，一个冰冷的图书馆，他找到一本详尽阐述重要防御工事的明代指南；就他所知，这本书自1688年起就不曾被引用过。他飞去日本，专为研读一本由明代兵部职方司郎中尹耕著于十六世纪中叶的鲜为人知的中国史书。石彬伦在东京待了三周，只在餐馆吃过两次晚饭。其他时候，他自己做意大利面，加白菜和西红柿酱，并浇上些酸奶——“这比奶酪便宜”。用石彬伦的话说。在北京，他在一栋破旧的楼里租了间房，房租每月两百二十五美元。密云公共汽车站离各段长城都不远，这里的面包车司机吆喝着问候他，“北甸子，六元！”北甸子是个村子，六元是石彬伦费尽口舌侃成的价钱。
离开麦肯锡后的四年内，石彬伦靠偶尔讲课赚了六千两百美元。2003年，他向美国国家人文基金会申请资助，此基金会有时会资助独立学者的研究项目。申请由一群不具名的学者评估，结果被否。有人写道，“此申请人无人文学科研究背景。”另一位评论说，“项目完成之可能性：不明。”翌年，经已是大学教授的昔日同窗指点，石彬伦再递申请。从八股文般的评语来看，此次的评估结果还算积极。（评估小组成员1：“我认为[此书]会成为阐释人文学科之高质作品。”）但这次申请仍被拒绝了。
石彬伦在法学院上学时曾交往过一位女友，是当时的同学，现在西门子公司任职。“她很支持我，”他说，“我非常满足。”但他不断发现更多段边墙和更多明代文献；最终，他们在2005年分道扬镳。他说，“分手的原因之一，是她看不到尽头。”
我们第一次同去爬长城时，石彬伦已做了九年研究，最后四年为全职投入。但他还未发表过关于长城的只言片语，也未与学术界有任何正式接触。他非常谨慎，部分源于他已逐渐习惯于独自工作。他将实地考察和文献研究结合进行到如此深度，至今无人能比（对于身处美国和欧洲的学者来说绝无可能）。他的研究方法与他的登山装备一样异常严谨而独特。在他看来，他的日程表里还有一百多天的考察工作尚未完成，此时动笔毫无意义。
这些数字占用了他全部精力。我们同去东大楼时，他说这是那年他在长城上度过的第八十天。2005年，他有了新女友，K. C. 斯万森（K. C. Swanson），一位住在北京的美国人。“石彬伦喜欢用爬长城的日子做时间参照，”她说，“一天他告诉我，‘今天是我们相识一周年纪念日，’他说我们是在他某次长城之行后两天开始约会的，有点像原始人根据火山爆发时间来标注日期。”
2006年，石彬伦开始做更多讲座——主要客户是Abercrombie & Kent，一个高端旅行社——他的收入增加到两万九千美元。他没有其他业余爱好，书架几乎完全奉献给研究长城的书。他只有五张CD。他在这座城市密友不少，有中国人也有外国人，但能理解他嗜好的朋友寥寥无几。他从不将长城浪漫化，一直以一个律师和企业管理咨询师的精准态度来讲述它的历史。（石彬伦在讲述十六世纪发生的一系列对长城的袭击时，告诉我说一个蒙古首领曾采用了一种“会被麦肯锡公司的人们称为‘跟风战略’的策略”。）“几次我试图问他到底为什么会如此着迷，”斯万森说，“或许从感性角度看比较容易理解，但石彬伦不是这样的人。他非同寻常地理性，却做着一件根本非理性的事。”
本帖由 carmen 于2008-04-10 23:32:09发表
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本帖由 驴皮 于2008-04-14 22:56:42发表
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| 钦佩“他非同寻常地理性，却做着一件根本非理性“的事。”” | | [关闭] [编辑] [删除] [管理] [树状]
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阿伦这两年好像极少在小站发帖了，也许是他的研究到了另一个层次，愿一切都好。
本帖由 一世无城 于2008-04-12 01:34:53发表
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| 拜读了,谢谢你. | | [关闭] [编辑] [删除] [管理] [树状]
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本帖由 司令 于2008-04-11 00:06:59发表
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| 谢谢介绍，此文最初发表在美国《纽约人》杂志上 | | [关闭] [编辑] [删除] [管理] [树状]
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img_file=/photo/upload/2008/04/12078435610.jpg
本帖由 诗书 于2008-04-11 00:06:01发表
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Chinese universities may not have produced Great Wall specialists, but a small community of wall enthusiasts has developed outside academia. They tend to be athletic--a rare quality among the Chinese intelligentsia. And the Great Wall attracts obsessives. Dong Yaohui, a former utility-line worker, left his job in 1984 and doggedly followed wall sections on foot for thousands of miles across China. After writing a book about the experience, he helped found the Great Wall Society of China, which publishes two journals and advocates preservation of the fortifications. Cheng Dalin, the retired Xinhua photographer, graduated from a sports academy. William Lindesay, a British geologist and marathoner, came to China in 1986 and spent nine months running and hiking along the wall. He settled in Beijing, published four wall-related books, and founded International Friends of the Great Wall, a small organization that also focusses on conservation.
The most active Great Wall researcher at Peking University is a policeman named Hong Feng. As a child, he enrolled in a sports school--he became a sprinter and a long jumper--but he always enjoyed reading history. After barely missing the cutoff for admission to college, he entered the police academy, and was eventually assigned to the city's unit at Peking University. In the mid-nineteen-nineties, he began hiking recreationally and was disappointed with contemporary books about the wall. "They make too many mistakes," he told me. "So I started reading the original texts."
I met Hong Feng in the Peking University police station, where he was working a twenty-four-hour shift. He is the station's supervisor, and uses his days off for hiking trips. At forty-five, Hong is tall and extremely fit, although he suffers from a chronically sore right elbow, which was injured when he fell while researching. He often visits the university library, but he has never discussed his research with professors. "Scholars in the archeology and history departments just aren't interested in the Great Wall," he told me.
During his hikes, Hong Feng noticed a puzzling fifteen-mile gap in fortifications to the northwest of Beijing. Modern writers had claimed that the landscape was so rugged that it didn't require defenses, which made no sense to Hong. He had visited other areas that were much steeper yet heavily fortified, so he turned to the Ming Veritable Records. He discovered that the Ming believed the region contained an important longmai, or dragon vein, just north of their ancestral tombs. A dragon vein is a ridgeline critical to feng-shui, so the Ming went to the trouble of building elaborate walls farther north, on terrain that was naturally less defensible.
Hong Feng published an article about his findings on www.thegreatwall.com.cn, which has become home to the most vibrant community of Chinese wall enthusiasts. The site was launched by Zhang Jun, a software engineer, on May 8, 1999--the day that the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was bombed by NATO. (NATO said that the attack was a mistake.) Members of the Web site have regular dinners in Beijing, and at one of the events I asked Zhang Jun why he had been inspired to found the Web site on that particular date. "You can say that the Great Wall was built to protect China," he said, choosing his words carefully.
The Web site has five thousand members, many of whom are interested in the wall for a combination of patriotic and recreational reasons, although there's also a small community of serious researchers. David Spindler joined in 2000. Like everybody else, he adopted an online name--Spindler's is Ah Lun, a derivative of the Chinese name that he was given by a language teacher--and he frequently corresponds with others in Chinese. But he doesn't attend functions, and he has never identified himself as a foreigner. Starting last fall, he posted two long Chinese articles on the Web site, describing the construction history of specific sections of wall. He told me that he would eventually write his book in English, but for initial articles it made sense to write in Chinese, because the Web site is the only community that cares about such discrete topics.
Spindler had asked me not to identify him to the other members of the Great Wall Web site, and I didn't, but they quickly brought up Ah Lun on their own. Hong Feng, the policeman, spoke admiringly of Ah Lun's research, assuming that he was Chinese. "He doesn't write very much, but what he writes is deep," Hong said. "He must be some kind of graduate student or scholar. I don't ask, and he doesn't tell."
Eventually, Spindler planned to "come out" as a foreigner, but he had always been wary of the site's nationalism. And he remembered the way he felt after defending his thesis at Peking University. "My professor said, 'In the rules for foreigners, we usually give them a little more latitude,' " Spindler told me. "If I had had more presence of mind, I would have said, 'Well, I've been here for the experience, and I'll be happy to walk away without a degree.' " He continued, "I want my work to be evaluated on these stand-alone terms. Who it's written by, whether he's Chinese or foreign, shouldn't matter."
Because Spindler was worried that he wouldn't get the credit he deserved for his work, he published under a pseudonym--it seemed contradictory, like many of his actions. He was extremely cautious, but somehow he had risked everything--financial stability, relationships, personal safety--for his research. He had confidence in his ideas about the wall, and described them with perfect clarity, but he refused to start writing his book before the spreadsheets satisfied him. At times, it seemed quixotic--the single-minded pursuit of a strangely ambitious structure--but beneath it lay a deep commitment to rationality. He believed that the wall had been built for a military reason, and that he was researching it in the best way possible. He hated any symbolic use of the Great Wall, especially for something as complex as Chinese culture. For Chinese, the wall usually represents national glory, whereas foreigners often see it as evidence of xenophobia. Spindler believed that neither interpretation was useful. "It's just one manifestation of what China has done," he said. "It's just a way they defended themselves."
Of all the people I met, Hong Feng had a viewpoint that reminded me the most of Spindler's. Hong's online name is Shi Shu, which means "to reach the end of the books." "People in China always describe the Great Wall as a symbol of ethnic pride," Hong told me. "But that's an exaggeration. It wasn't supposed to be a great monument like the Pyramids. It was built in response to attacks."
At the end of December, I accompanied Spindler on his three-hundred-and-fortieth trip along the wall. During a previous visit to Miyun, north of the city, he'd seen some high ridges that he believed might contain towers of piled stone. Slowly, we climbed to the ridges: nothing. But it was another day to be checked off on the to-do list.
Although I had never liked the bushwhacking, during the past year I had come to appreciate the distinctive rhythm of the trips. Every journey had it all: good trails, bad trails, hellish thorns, spectacular views. No matter the landscape, I could always see Spindler up ahead, his white hat bobbing above the thickets.
On the way down, we found a dead roe deer in a trap. The loop snare had caught the animal around the neck; it must have strangled itself. Just beyond that, we reached a long section of wall where most ramparts had crumbled away. As I walked atop the structure, my boot got caught in a hole. I tripped and fell down a short ledge, pitching head first toward a ten-foot drop. Somehow--things happened very fast--I threw myself down against the wall. I slammed to a stop with my head peering over the edge.
"Nice save," Spindler said, after he had rushed over. I rose slowly, and tried to walk, and knew that my left knee was badly hurt. But we were miles from help, and the temperature was well below freezing; the only option was to keep moving.
During the descent, I leaned on Spindler whenever possible. It took three hours, and I remember every minute. The next morning, I went to the hospital for X-rays. The doctor told me that I'd broken my kneecap and I'd be on crutches for six weeks; and that was the last time I walked on the Great Wall of China.
The day after the accident, Spindler stopped by my apartment. He asked if there was anything I needed, and I could tell that he felt bad about what had happened. He mentioned that he had made a quick analysis of the spreadsheets, which showed that mine was only the second casualty to be sustained in approximately twelve hundred and fifty person-days of hiking. Later, he confirmed that the exact figure was twelve hundred and forty-five.
In February, before leaving on a research trip to Taiwan, he visited me again. He planned to study some Ming maps and memorials that were held in Taipei's National Palace Museum. He still hadn't written anything in English, but additional Chinese articles were in the works, and he seemed to be thinking more about the future. He planned to start writing the book within a year or so; after it was finished, he'd find a way to continue researching the wall. Maybe he'd start a Ph.D. program, or perhaps he'd remain independent, supporting himself with lectures and books. "I'll need to learn other languages in order to get academics to give me the time of day," he said. "You really get written off if you don't know Japanese, if you don't know Mongolian. There are others that would be helpful. Probably the next one would be Russian, and possibly German. I guess it would be helpful to learn some Manchurian. A little Tibetan. But those are further down the list."
I hopped on crutches to the door and said goodbye. He had an early flight; in order to save money, he'd booked a ticket with a seven-hour layover in the Macao airport. When I'd asked how many Beijing hiking days were left, he didn't hesitate. "Eighty-six," he said.
COPYRIGHT 2007 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
本帖由 carmen 于2008-04-10 23:45:45发表
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本帖由 老普 于2008-04-10 23:45:16发表
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David Spindler first started hiking the Great Wall in 1994, when he was the only American studying for a master's degree in history at Peking University. He had always been athletic--as a student at Dartmouth, he'd rowed varsity crew and was on the cross-country ski team--and he saw hiking as the perfect break from city life. At Peking University, he wrote a master's thesis in Chinese about Dong Zhongshu, a philosopher in the Western Han dynasty, in the second century B.C. After receiving his degree, Spindler decided against pursuing a career in academia. For a spell, he worked as an assistant in CNN's Beijing bureau, and then he became a China market analyst for Turner Broadcasting. But neither journalism nor business felt right, and the only constant in those years was hiking the Great Wall.
In 1997, he entered Harvard Law School. It was a homecoming--he'd grown up in Lincoln, Massachusetts--but he missed Beijing and found himself searching for distractions. ("I split a lot of wood," he told me.) During his first vacation, Spindler returned to China to hike. By then, he had the idea that in his spare time he could write a book about the Ming-dynasty Great Wall, and he began reading histories. After graduation, he accepted a consulting job in the Beijing office of McKinsey & Company; every free weekend, he hiked or studied Ming texts. Finally, after two years at McKinsey, he quit in order to pursue his research full time. His goals were ambitious: to hike every section of the Great Wall in the Beijing region and to read every word about the structure that was written during the Ming dynasty.
Spindler had paid off his law-school loans, and he had sixty thousand dollars in savings. He expected that it would take him a year or two to complete his field work. He hiked to wall sections, took notes, and recorded details on a spreadsheet. Often, he saw more wall in the distance, and he marked these sitings on another database, which identified future research trips. The to-do list seemed to get longer with every journey. In 1985, a Chinese satellite survey had identified three hundred and ninety miles of wall in the Beijing region, but Spindler found that the fortifications were actually much longer.
He became a fixture in the National Library of China. He read from the Ming Veritable Records, a day-to-day history of the dynasty, and he tracked down the reports of various Ming officials. Sometimes he found a specialized work dedicated to wall defense. Some books could only be located elsewhere, so he spent weeks on the road. In a freezing library in Guangzhou, he read a detailed Ming guide to key wall fortifications; as far as he could tell, the book had not been quoted since 1688. He flew to Japan in order to read an obscure Chinese history written by Yin Geng, an official who served in the Ministry of Defense during the mid-sixteenth century. Spindler spent three weeks in Tokyo, and during that time he ate dinner in a restaurant twice. The other nights, he cooked pasta, cabbage, and tomato sauce and poured yogurt on top. ("It's cheaper than cheese.") In Beijing, he rented a small apartment in a run-down building for two hundred and twenty-five dollars a month. At the Miyun bus station, which is close to many sections of wall, the minivan drivers began greeting him by shouting, "Beidianzi, six yuan!" Beidianzi is a village, and six yuan is the deal Spindler struck after an epic bargaining session that has become part of Miyun minivan lore.
Over four years, he earned a total of six thousand two hundred dollars from the occasional lecture or consulting job. In 2003, he applied for a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which occasionally funds projects by independent scholars. A panel of anonymous academics assessed the proposal, and they were withering. One wrote, "The applicant has no track record as an interpreter of the humanities." Another remarked, "Likelihood of completion: Not clear." The following year, with guidance from former classmates who had become professors, Spindler applied again. This time, the evaluations were positive, at least in the terms of a jargon that is nearly as formalized as classical Chinese. (Panelist 1: "I feel that [the proposed book] would be a quality interpreter of the humanities.") But the application was still rejected.
In Beijing, Spindler dated a former law-school classmate who had become an executive at Siemens. "She was very supportive," he told me. "I couldn't have asked for anything more." But he kept finding more Great Wall and more Ming texts; finally, in 2005, they parted ways. "It's certainly the reason we broke up," he said. "She couldn't see an end to it."
At the time of our first hike, Spindler had been researching for nine years, with the past four devoted entirely to the project. But he had yet to publish one word about the wall, and he had no formal contact with academia. He was extremely cautious, in part because he had grown accustomed to working in isolation. Nobody had ever combined field and textual research in this depth--it would have been impossible for any academic based in the United States or Europe--and his methodology had become as demanding and idiosyncratic as his hiking gear. In his mind, it was pointless to begin writing while his to-do spreadsheet still listed more than a hundred days of hiking.
The numbers consumed him. During our trip to the Great Eastern Tower, he commented that it was the eightieth day he'd spent on the wall that year. Since 2005, he has dated K. C. Swanson, an American freelance journalist who lives in Beijing. "David tends to remember days in relation to his wall hikes," she told me. "One day he told me, 'This is our one-year anniversary,' and he said that we had started dating two days after a certain trip he took. It's like primitive cultures where people date things by when the volcano erupted."
In 2006, Spindler began giving more lectures--his main client was Abercrombie & Kent, a high-end travel service--and his income rose to twenty-nine thousand dollars. He has no hobbies to speak of, and his bookshelf is devoted almost entirely to wall research. He owns five CDs. He has always had many close friends in the city, Chinese and foreign, but few understand his obsession. He never romanticizes the wall, telling its history with the precision one would expect of a lawyer and a consultant. (In describing a series of attacks on the wall in the sixteenth century, Spindler told me that a Mongol leader adopted "what people at McKinsey would call a 'me-too strategy.' ") "A couple of times I've tried to ask why it really gets him," Swanson said. "Maybe it could be easily explained in an emotional way, but that's not how David is. He's an eminently rational person doing what is basically an irrational thing."
In October, I accompanied Spindler on his three-hundred-and-thirty-first journey into the field. By public bus and hired minivan, we travelled to a remote village called Shuitou. In 2003, while visiting the wall here, Spindler had seen some high ridges that he thought might contain more fortifications. In the village, he had also studied a Ming wall tablet that was now kept in a peasant's home. Last year, the Chinese government passed the first national law protecting the Great Wall, and Ming artifacts cannot be bought or sold, but the remoteness of many sections has made enforcement difficult.
In Shuitou, we asked about the tablet, and a woman told us that the owner was out of town.
"Do you want to buy it?" she asked.
Spindler declined, and then told me, "They offered to sell it last time, too."
The harvest was nearly finished, and the wind rustled stalks of corn that stood dead in the fields. Beyond the village, we climbed a steep section of wall, where thousands of Mongols had attacked in 1555. Spindler said that the typical Chinese defense relied on crude cannons, arrows, cudgels, and even rocks. "There were regulations about how many stones you were supposed to have, and how you were supposed to bring them to the second floor of the tower if there was an attack," he said. Later, he pointed out a circle of loose stones that had been carefully arranged atop the wall. Four and a half centuries later, they were still waiting for the next attack.
The Mongols liked to come at night. They travelled on horseback, usually in small groups. Near enemy territory, they followed ridgelines, because they feared ambushes. They were not occupiers. They penetrated Chinese lands, gathered booty, and returned home as quickly as possible. They liked to steal livestock, valuables, household goods, and Chinese people. They carried the men and women back to the steppes and forced them to form families. Then they sent the men south to gather information on Chinese defenses, using their wives and children as hostages.
The most vivid accounts of the Mongols were provided by Chinese officers who served in the north. Yin Geng, the author of the book that Spindler read in Japan, had particularly intimate contact with Mongols during the mid-fifteen-hundreds. ("They like to fornicate, paying little attention to whether it's day or night or whether there's anyone watching.") Like most Ming writers, he calls them lu--barbarians. ("Every barbarian family brews alcohol and all of them like to drink; the barbarians drink like cattle, not even stopping to breathe in the process.") His account is a dark sort of anthropology, written in the hope that the reader will come to both know and hate the enemy. ("Barbarians like to spear babies for sport.")
Arthur Waldron identified three basic Ming strategies for dealing with the northerners. In the early Ming, the Chinese often took the offensive, pushing Mongol settlements away from the frontier. The second approach was buying off key Mongol leaders with gifts, official titles, or opportunities for trade. But some Ming emperors refused to negotiate with people they believed were savages. The third option was building defensive walls--an ineffective tactic, in Waldron's view, and one that he compares to the Maginot Line. Wall building became the trademark of the later Ming, he writes, because the dynasty had become too weak to fight and too proud to conduct diplomacy.
Spindler believes that the late-Ming response was less rigid than that. In his reading, he has found that the Chinese tactics varied locally, depending upon specific threats. And wall building was often coordinated with offensive and accommodationist strategies. In any case, he is convinced that no Chinese policy could completely resolve their problems with the Mongols, whose internal power struggles contributed to the raiding. In Mongol culture, legitimate leadership was supposed to be confined to the direct heir of Genghis Khan, and to pass only to the firstborn son of each generation. Outside that narrow line, ambitious contenders often found that the easiest opportunities to gain status lay to the south.
In the fifteen-forties, Altan Khan was frustrated by his genealogical standing--he was the second son of a third son--and so he attempted to improve his lot by establishing trade relations with the Chinese. The reigning Ming emperor, Jiajing, refused. On September 26, 1550, the night of the mid-autumn festival, Altan Khan led tens of thousands of Mongols on a surprise attack northeast of Beijing. They breached the crude stone wall there and pillaged for two weeks, killing and capturing thousands of Chinese. After that, the Ming began using mortar on a large scale to improve the fortifications.
The oldest son of Altan Khan, known as the Yellow Prince, tried a different strategy. He married dozens of women from important Mongol families as a means of solidifying his alliances with them. But he began to have financial problems, which he solved by sending the women back. Accompanied by their families, the ex-wives began visiting Chinese wall garrisons, demanding support. In 1576, after one such appeal was rejected, a raiding party penetrated a gap in a remote part of the defense network. The region was so rugged that the Ming believed that no wall was necessary, but the Mongols got through, killing twenty-nine Chinese. The Ming responded with another major wall-building campaign, this time using brick, which allowed construction on even the steepest terrain. Spindler calls the incident of 1576 "the raid of the scorned Mongol women"--a failed harem that helped to inspire the stunning brick fortifications of Beijing.
Historians generally portray the Great Wall as a military failure and a waste of resources. Spindler disagrees, noting that the improved wall held back major attacks in the sixteenth century. At Shuitou, where we hiked, the Chinese defeated thousands of Mongols. For the Ming, the wall was only part of a complex foreign policy, but, because it's the most obvious relic, it receives disproportionate blame for their fall.
"People say, was it worth it?" Spindler said. "But I don't think that's how they thought at the time. You don't get a nation-state saying, 'We're going to give up this terrain' or 'We're going to sacrifice x number of citizens and soldiers.' That's not a calculus they used. An empire is always going to try to protect itself."
In the afternoon, we bushwhacked. On his hikes, Spindler sometimes followed game trails, and often he walked atop wall sections, where the brush is less dense. But occasionally there was no option other than to pursue a ridge straight through the brambles. He called this "hiking like a Mongol," and I hated it. I hated the thorns, and I hated the bad footing. I hated how my clothes got torn, and I hated the superiority of Spindler's bizarre wall regalia. I hated how branches that were chest-high for him hit me in the face. Mostly, I hated the Mongols for hiking this way.
When we reached the ruins of an old stone fort atop a ridge, it felt as if we had emerged from a long swim underwater. To the east, the view opened for twenty miles. Only a single settlement was visible--the village of Zhenbiancheng, still surrounded by the high stone walls of a Ming garrison. Looking down on the walled settlement, Spindler remarked that it had been a hardship post, where commanders had requested that soldiers be paid in grain rather than in silver. "There was bad inflation during the Ming," he said. "It was connected to the discovery of silver in the New World."
The next morning, after camping for the night, we discovered faint traces of another stone fort with a sight line to the ridge. Spindler theorized that they had both been used to send signals to Zhenbiancheng. (Chinese used gunpowder blasts to communicate along the fortifications; Mongols used smoke signals.)
Spindler was skilled at deconstructing the wall, but eventually he would have to create something out of all the pieces. The facts were scattered in remote places, on high ridges, and in lost books, and they could be as distracting as a thorn in the face. "Because David is not ensconced in academia, he's got a lot more freedom to develop his own line of inquiry," his friend Andrew Field told me. But there was a risk to the isolation. "I'm trying to urge him to seek closure," Field said. "But, the way David's mind works, he has an amazing ability for detail."
The bushwhacking was intensely time-consuming, and it could also be dangerous. During our hike above Zhenbiancheng, Spindler said that in 1998 a friend had fallen off a tower and broken his wrist. They worried about descending late in the day, so they spent the night on the wall. In retrospect, Spindler regretted not descending immediately.
"Was he in pain?" I asked.
"Yeah," Spindler said. "He was in a lot of pain."
Spindler always told friends where he was hiking, and he almost never made overnight trips alone. His most frequent companion is Li Jian, a classmate from Peking University who now works in the rare-books division of the National Library. Her first expedition with Spindler, in 2000, was a three-day hike. "I had always had problems with insomnia," she told me. "But when I got back from that hike I slept really well!" Since then, she has spent a hundred and eighty-five days on the wall with Spindler.
In time, Li Jian acquired an L. L. Bean wool hunting shirt, a white Tilley hat, La Sportiva mountaineering boots, and elk-leather line-worker gloves from J. Edwards of Chicago. She cut off a pair of long underwear at the knee and scissored a round hole for her face. In the field, she's a five-foot-two Chinese double of Spindler, following him through the brush.
In June of 2003, they set off for a three-day hike in the wilds of Mentougou, in the western Beijing region. The mountains there are weirdly shaped; the high peaks are easy to negotiate, but the lower flanks deteriorate into unexpected cliffs. Hiking like a Mongol, Spindler got lost, and every attempt to go down ended at a sheer drop. They ran out of food after three days. Fortunately, it had rained, so they drank water that had settled in the hollows of rocks. Friends organized a search party and drove out from Beijing. Five days after Spindler and Li Jian had set off, they finally found a trail and made it back, meeting the search party en route. Today, Li Jian continues to hike the wall as therapy for insomnia.
本帖由 carmen 于2008-04-10 23:44:34发表
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原文：
Walking the Wall.(Great Wall of China)
The New Yorker May 21 , 2007
When the weather is good, or when I'm tired of having seven million neighbors, I drive north from downtown Beijing. It takes an hour and a half to reach Sancha, a quiet village where I rent a farmhouse. The road dead-ends at the village, but a footpath continues into the mountains. The trail forks twice, climbs for a steep mile through a forest of walnut and oak, and terminates at the Great Wall of China.
Once, I packed a tent, hiked up from the village, and walked eastward atop the wall for two days without seeing another person. Tourists rarely visit this area, where the wall is perched high along a ridgeline, magnificent in its isolation. The structure is made of stone, brick, and mortar; there are crenellations and archer slits, and guard towers that rise more than twenty feet high. The tallest one is known locally as the Great Eastern Tower, and just before it an inscribed marble tablet sits on the wall. Originally, there were many such tablets, but this is one of fewer than ten that are known to remain on the wall in the Beijing region. The inscription notes that in 1615 A.D. a crew of two thousand four hundred soldiers built a section of the wall which was fifty-eight zhang and five cun long. That's about six hundred and fifty feet, and the bureaucratic precision of the inscription, in this forgotten place, seems as lonely as words can be.
In November of 2005, I hiked to the Great Eastern Tower with two friends who were visiting from New York. After reaching the tower, we began the long descent to the south. This stretch can be treacherous: many of the brick ramparts have collapsed. I was picking my way downhill when something in the rubble caught my eye. It was white--too white to be brick, too big to be mortar. I dug it out and saw four neat rows of carved characters.
It was a fragment of another marble tablet. I could make out some of the words: something was six chi high, and something else was two zhang. But the writing was in classical Chinese, which I've never studied, and the surface was badly scarred.
"How long do you think it's been buried here?" one of my friends asked.
"I have no idea," I said. But I knew one person who might be able to tell me. My friends and I covered the artifact with loose bricks, and I memorized the location. A month later, I returned with David Spindler.
David Spindler stands six feet seven, and he is reserved in a way that is characteristic of many men who are very tall and thin. For years, I'd seen him occasionally at social gatherings in Beijing, where he always seemed to make sure that he was sitting down. He is thirty-nine years old, with short sandy hair, a long face, and gentle eyes. He chooses his words very carefully. Since 2002, he has worked full time as an independent scholar of the Great Wall, and although he has no academic affiliation or outside funding, he has become one of its leading researchers.
On a cold December morning, Spindler and I set off to find the marble tablet. In the city, everything about his appearance had seemed chosen to avoid attention. But in the mountains he wore a red-checked wool hunting shirt, a floppy white Tilley safari hat, high-end La Sportiva mountaineering boots, and large elk-leather gloves designed for utility-line workers by J. Edwards of Chicago. He looked like a scarecrow of specialty gear--some limbs equipped for hard labor, others for intense recreation. Over the years, Spindler had determined that this was precisely the right ensemble for the Great Wall, where thorns and branches are common. For a face mask, he'd cut a leg off a pair of sweatpants, scissored a round hole, and pulled it over his head. ("It covers your neck.") He wore polyurethane-coated L. L. Bean hunting trousers that had been reinforced by his neighborhood tailor. Denim patches covered the pants, like a friendship quilt linking Freeport and Beijing.
We followed the wall east. Every hundred yards or so, it connected to a tower. These structures were crumbling but still impressive, with high vaulted ceilings and arched windows. Periodically, Spindler pointed out details: a place where a door used to be barred, a brick frame that had once held an inscribed tablet.
"The towers and the wall were totally different projects," he said. "First, you had the brick towers, and the wall was just local stone. And then they came and improved the wall. That's why these towers look a little funny."
He pointed out a place where the wall's crenellation ran into the open window of a tower--the kind of thing that happens when you use two different contractors. Near the Great Eastern Tower, one section of wall had fallen down entirely. Spindler believed that the construction project of 1615 had ended right there, at the edge of a short precipice. He had measured it once, using the details found on the marble tablet near the tower. "These guys really hosed the next construction crew," he said. "What could they do? It's really hard to build from that point."
I had hiked this section perhaps fifty times, but I had never noticed the details of construction. In my mind, it was simply the Great Wall--complete and virtually timeless. For Spindler, though, it was a work of pieces and seasons. Construction generally took place in the spring, when the weather was good but Mongol raiders weren't active. "Energy in the Mongol world was fat on the horses," Spindler said. "They didn't have that after the winter, so the spring was not a good season for raiding. Summer was too hot. They didn't like the heat; they didn't like the insects. The Mongol bowstrings were made of hide, and with the humidity they supposedly went flat--this is described in Ming texts. Most raids took place in the fall."
We came to the smashed tablet, and he crouched in the cold, running a finger along the carved characters. He recognized it immediately as a piece of a tablet that dated to 1614. The county antiquities bureau had recorded its inscription in 1988, but not its original location on the wall, and since then it had disappeared. Some looter had probably broken it.
"It's saying the height of the wall, including the crenellations," he explained. "And then it starts in with all the names of the officials. God, it's good that somebody got this down before it was destroyed."
Spindler took a tape measure to the fragment, calculated the space between lines, and quickly computed the original dimensions. Slowly, he walked back along the wall, looking for a place where it could have been mounted. He measured an empty brick-bordered ledge: perfect fit. For this small section of the wall, he now knew the basic story of two construction campaigns in the sixteen-tens. Before leaving, we returned the fragment to the spot where I had found it.
While we were there, a peasant hiked up from the south. He was trapping game; a dozen wire snares were looped over his shoulder. If the presence of a six-foot-seven foreigner in a floppy hat and elk-leather gauntlets surprised the man, he didn't show it. He asked if we had extra water, and Spindler gave him a bottle. During the following year, Spindler and I hiked through several villages together, and each time locals hardly seemed to distinguish between the two of us. Andrew Field, a friend of Spindler's who teaches Chinese history at the University of New South Wales, once told me that an unusually tall person might feel more comfortable here than in America. "In China, sure, he's a monster," Field said. "But aren't we all?"
In 221 B.C., Qin Shihuang became the first ruler in Chinese history to declare himself emperor. After consolidating power, he commanded the construction across the north of roughly three thousand miles of changcheng. The term translates as either "long wall" or "long walls"--Chinese doesn't differentiate between singular and plural--and the barriers consisted of hard-packed earth. Over the centuries, many other dynasties faced the same basic problem as the Qin: the wide-open frontier of the northern plains made them vulnerable to the nomadic Mongol and Turkic tribes that inhabited these lands. The nomadic threat was more intense in some periods than in others, and Chinese dynasties responded with different strategies. The Tang, who ruled from 618 to 907 A.D., built virtually no walls, because the imperial family was part Turkic and skilled in Central Asian warfare and diplomacy. Even when dynasties constructed walls, they didn't necessarily call them changcheng; more than ten terms were used to describe the fortifications.
The Ming usually called theirs bianqiang--"border wall(s)"--and they became the greatest wall builders in Chinese history. They came to power in 1368, after the collapse of the Yuan, a short-lived Mongol dynasty that had been founded by Kublai Khan. The Ming constructed
large fortifications of quarried stone and brick in the Beijing region--these are the iconic structures (some of them rebuilt and restored) that seem to continue endlessly in tourist photographs. They were the only dynasty to build extensively with such durable materials, and many sections of Ming wall ran for miles. But the bianqiang was a network rather than a single structure, and some regions had as many as four distinct lines of fortifications.
In 1644, domestic rebels stormed the capital, and the Ming emperor committed suicide. In desperation, a military commander in the northeast opened a major bianqiang gate to the Manchus, a northern tribe, in the hope that they would restore the ruling family. Instead, the Manchus founded their own dynasty, the Qing, which lasted until 1912. The Qing had little use for the walls, which were abandoned to the elements.
As Western explorers and missionaries began to penetrate China in the eighteenth century, they toured the Ming ruins and confused them with stories of Qin Shihuang's three-thousand-mile wall. Foreigners assumed that the Beijing region's trellised brick fortifications were part of an unbroken line that had stretched across the north for two thousand years. In 1793, an Englishman named Sir John Barrow saw a section of wall near Beijing and, extrapolating from its measurements, declared that the entire structure must have contained enough stone to build two smaller walls around the equator. (Westerners rarely visited China's west, where most walls were made of tamped earth.) At that time, foreigners usually called it "the Chinese wall," but by the end of the nineteenth century, as the exaggerations accumulated, it had become the Great Wall of China. In February of 1923, a National Geographic article began, "According to astronomers, the only work of man's hands which would be visible to the human eye from the moon is the Great Wall of China." (It wasn't visible from the moon in 1923, and it still isn't.)
Eventually, the misconceptions made their way back to China. Under threat of foreign domination, leaders like Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong realized the propaganda value of a unified barrier. Changcheng became the equivalent of "the Great Wall," a term that encompassed all northern fortifications, regardless of location or dynastic origin. It delineated what was, essentially, an imaginary structure--a single, millennia-old wall.
Today, the concept of the Great Wall is so broad that it resists formal definition. When I met with scholars and preservationists in Beijing, I asked how changcheng should be defined, and I never heard the same thing twice. Some said that in order for a structure to qualify as part of the Great Wall it had to be at least a hundred kilometres long; others believed that any border fortification should qualify. Some emphasized that it had to have been built by ethnic Chinese, whereas others included walls built by non-Chinese tribes. Nobody could give an accurate length estimate, because there has never been a systematic survey. Last year, various articles in China Daily described the Great Wall as thirty-nine hundred miles, forty-five hundred miles, and thirty-one thousand miles long.
There isn't a scholar at any university in the world who specializes in the Great Wall. In China, historians typically focus on political institutions, while archeologists excavate tombs. The Great Wall fits into neither tradition, and even within a more discretely defined topic--say, the Ming wall--there's almost no scholarship. The fortifications have been poorly preserved, and in the past many sections of low-lying wall were plundered for building materials, especially during the Cultural Revolution. In the nineteen-eighties, a Harvard Ph.D. student named Arthur Waldron became interested in the relationship between Chinese and nomadic groups. "So I went to the library and thought I would find a big book in Chinese or maybe Japanese that would have everything about the Great Wall," he told me recently. "But I didn't. I thought that was strange. I began to compile a bibliography, and after a while I said, 'This does not add up to the image that we have.' "
In 1990, Waldron published "The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth." Drawing on Ming texts--he didn't conduct significant field research--Waldron described key aspects of wall building during that dynasty. He also identified many modern misconceptions about the wall, including the notion that it's a single structure. It was a breakthrough book, and one that should have provided a foundation for further scholarship. But since then there hasn't been another work of significant new archeological or historical research, apart from one Chinese book by a surveying team that describes a six-hundred-mile series of Ming fortifications in the east. (Another book, published last year, "The Great Wall: China Against the World, 1000 B.C.-A.D. 2000," by Julia Lovell, a fellow at Cambridge, is primarily concerned with exploring the wall as a symbol for the Chinese world view. She draws a parallel, for example, between the ancient wall and the current government's Internet firewalls.)
In China, one of the best-known experts, Cheng Dalin, is not an academic but a retired photographer. For more than twenty years, Cheng specialized in taking pictures of the wall for the Xinhua News Service. In his spare time, he studied history, and he has published eight books, combining photographs and research. "The Great Wall touches on so many subjects--politics, military affairs, architecture, archeology, history," he told me. "Within each specialty, it's too small. And taken as a whole it's too big. You have to find little bits in so many different books; it's not concentrated in one place. And nobody will pay you! How will you eat? How can a person spend ten years reading all these books?"
本帖由 carmen 于2008-04-10 23:43:51发表
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