重回1981

By Laurence Brahm 譯/諶融

還記得1981年我初到北京時值春末夏初，機場熱得像一個大烤爐，身處其中的我汗流不止。機場里沒有行李傳送帶，只能依靠人工拋接。

我記得那時機場的天花板上裝飾有紅色五角星圖案，我走出機場時碰見的每一個人，不論男女，都穿著綠色的軍褲或者藍色的工裝褲，再加上一件短袖襯衫。我試著用蹩腳的漢語問路，但沒有人回答我，他們只是盯著我。這讓我感覺自己像是一個從太空掉落的外星人。

1美元一罐進口可樂

從首都機場通往北京市區(qū)的道路又窄又破，我乘坐的大巴一路上壞了好幾次，這段路途由此顯得格外漫長。

與大多數(shù)外國人一樣，我在北京的第一站是友誼商店，一家專門接待外國人的五層百貨商店。當(dāng)時，它是長安街上最高的建筑。在友誼商店里，我花了1美元買了一罐進口可樂。我的中國老師得知我花了1美元買了一罐進口可樂后都驚呆了，他們覺得我太墮落了，就連當(dāng)著我的面也是這樣說。在那個年代，中國普通老百姓不能進友誼商店。當(dāng)然，也沒幾個人買得起一罐進口可樂。

那時候，大多數(shù)中國人根本無錢可用，因為1981年中國的貨幣流通量極其有限。即便有人手里有錢，他們也沒有什么東西可買。除了友誼商店之外，大多數(shù)政府運營的商店經(jīng)常貨架空空，或是僅有藍色或綠色的褲子出售。

Editor’s note: Laurence Brahm, first came to China as a fresh university exchange student from the US in 1981 and he has spent much of the past three and a half decades living and working in the country. He has been a lawyer, a writer, and now he is Founding Director of Himalayan Consensus and a Senior International Fellow at the Center for China and Globalization.

It was late spring when I first arrived in Beijing in 1981. The airport felt like an oven, it was baking in a stifling flat heat. I was sweating. There was no conveyer belt for luggage.

I remember walking out of the cavernous Soviet era airport with art deco red stars on the ceiling, right into Beijing’s broiling summer heat. Everyone in the crowd waiting outside wore either green army or blue worker pants. Men and women alike wore a short sleeve shirt . I tried speaking some broken Mandarin to find my way. Nobody answered. They simply stared at me.

One dollar for a Coke

The old narrow road from Capital Airport into Beijing seemed long. There were poplar trees lining both sides. The bus broke down several times. Each time, everybody got out talking all at once and tried to fix it.

My first stop like most foreigners in those days was the Friendship Store, a five story cavernous department store reserved for foreigners. It was then the tallest building on Chang An Avenue. I bought a Coke. It was imported and cost one dollar.

龍安志（圖中）與他的同學(xué)和老師們在南開大學(xué)，照片拍攝于1981年

My Chinese teachers were distraught that I paid one dollar for a Coke thinking I was totally decadent, and told me so to my face. In those days, ordinary Chinese citizens were not permitted to enter the Friendship Store. And of course, nobody could afford an imported Coke.

簡言之，中國人面對的是“匱乏經(jīng)濟”。

身為一名大學(xué)交換生，我心懷遠(yuǎn)大理想，一心想要改善中國的經(jīng)濟狀況。同時這也是驅(qū)使我每天用一個廉價的白色錫杯灌下一杯口味奇特的上海產(chǎn)速溶咖啡的主要動力所在。但很快，我改成了喝茶。每天，我肩上斜挎著一個綠色的軍用包去上漢語課，我相信它將開啟化解中國困境的一道大門。

當(dāng)年，我站在友誼商店里喝可樂時，完全無法想象得到，20年后中國物質(zhì)匱乏的狀況會得到徹底扭轉(zhuǎn)，30年后它成為世界第二大經(jīng)濟體、成為僅次于美國的最強大經(jīng)濟體。

那年的自行車經(jīng)濟

我到中國的第一年，花了好幾個月的時間在天津南開大學(xué)學(xué)習(xí)中文。這座古老的工業(yè)城市曾在鴉片戰(zhàn)爭時期遭外國列強侵占，被迫開放為通商口岸。因此，天津市內(nèi)的主要街道均為歐式建筑風(fēng)格。

我們班的交換生是1979年中美兩國正式建立外交關(guān)系后赴華學(xué)習(xí)的第二批學(xué)生。當(dāng)時，中國的大門剛剛打開，我們感覺自己像是先驅(qū)者。中國處于計劃經(jīng)濟時代，每一個人的穿著打扮都非常相似：薄而寬松白襯衫，以及綠色軍褲。很快，我也入鄉(xiāng)隨俗，穿上了綠色軍褲。

Most Chinese did not have access to money because in 1981 China hardly had any money in circulation. And even if someone had money, there were few commodities to buy.Aside from the Friendship Store, most state-run department stores had empty shelves, or just blue and green pants.

It was an economy of scarcity.

I was a fresh university exchange student, and very idealistic.The idea of improving China’s economic condition started as a vision and quickly became an obsession. It was the main thing that motivated me each day as I filled up a cheap white tin cup with sticky venomous Shanghai produced instant coffee. Soon I learned to drink tea. Slinging a green army bag over my shoulder I went to Mandarin class each day. Determined to learn this language, I was convinced it would be the key to opening up the Pandora’s box that was this nation’s predicament.

Within two decades China would shift from a position of complete scarcity to one of over-supply of virtually every product and service. Three decades later it would become the second largest economy in the world, the most powerful economic force to be reckoned with next to the United States.

To me it was unimaginable that this would happen so quickly.

Bicycle Economics

During my first year in China, I spent a few months in Tianjin studying Mandarin at Nankai University. The old industrial city was one of the treaty ports carved up by foreign colonial powers after the Opium Wars during the Qing Dynasty(1644-1911). So the main streets were European.

Our class of exchange students was only the second wave of Americans to study in China. We felt like pioneers. President Jimmy Carter had just normalized relations with China two years earlier in 1979. Everything was just opening.

It was still a command economy .Everyone wore the same clothes: baggy white shirts so thin you could see through them and green army pants. Soon, I was wearing green army pants.

I bought a bicycle. While a classmate and I were fixing our bikes and replacing another broken part, he pointed to an old farmer, who rode up to the bicycle repair stand. His bicycle was completely assembled from rubbish, tied and soldered together. This frugal ingenuity of the Chinese people struck me, their ability to survive and engineer with so little in

That bicycle was my first glimpse of China’s potential to financially leverage industrial reconstruction. It became my metaphor of where this place was going.

There would be streams of bicycles riding alongside the river that wound through Tianjin’s center. I would be one among everyone riding together. There were traffic lights. We all had to stop our bikes at intersections for the traffic lights. One day I was not paying attention and rode my bike right though the light. Within seconds, my bike was impounded with some kind of really simple bike cuff. The police asked me to make a public confession before all the other bike riders as I had disobeyed a traffic rule. For me this was a de fining moment of cultural identity. I realized that by saying sorry and acknowledging one’s mistake to everyone else, that one earns a different kind of respect. Moreover, it is a more practical way to just get on with other things and make friends out of those that you may have inadvertently offended.

Riding through the streets of Tianjin and going to stores that had no commodities , it occurred to me that money had less meaning in that society. It was hardly in circulation after all.A higher morality in fluenced the way people thought. They cared about respect. That is what that bike incident was all about, a greater social respect than my individual attitude.

Once I paid one mao(ten Chinese cents) more than the stated price for something I bought. The vendor chased me all over the city to give back the change. He finally showed up at the door of my dormitory at Nankai University apologizing for the oversight.

Another time dust entered my contact lens while riding my bike in the crowded street. So I stopped at a little shop and used their broken dirty mirror to re fit the contact lens. In the mirror, over my shoulders, I could see a huge crowd of onlookers had gathered to see what I was doing. Someone asked if it was another magic trick taking my eye out and putting it back.

But such innocence would not last long.After my Mandarin classes were finished, it came time to leave Nankai University. When the school held a banquet for us foreign students,teachers took home the leftovers in tiny metal boxes they had brought with them in baggy green army bags, shouldered over their flimsy shirts that never seemed to fit.

The thought did not even occur to me, as I sold my bike – on the freshly emerging black market. I was not aware that over the next three decades, I would watch China grow out of those army bags and replace them by Prada and Louis Vuitton apparel. （The article was first published on China Daily website on May 31）

我買了一輛自行車。某天，我和一個同學(xué)正在修理我們各自的自行車，他突然指向一個正在朝我們騎來的中國農(nóng)民，他的自行車完全是用撿來的“垃圾”拼湊而成。中國人的節(jié)儉和聰明打動了我，他們在逆境里求生存的能力、資源匱乏仍能進行發(fā)明創(chuàng)造的能力，更令我驚嘆。

那輛自行車讓我第一次看到中國進行工業(yè)重建的潛能。在我眼中，它成為這個國家前行方向的隱喻。

那時，天津街頭汽車很少，只有壯觀的自行車“洪流”，我也是自行車大軍中的一員。街上有交通燈，在十字路口我們需要停車等待交通燈轉(zhuǎn)換。有一天，我騎車不小心闖了紅燈，很快被交警攔下，他要求我就違反交通規(guī)則公開認(rèn)錯。對我而言，這是關(guān)乎文化認(rèn)同的決定性時刻。我意識到當(dāng)眾認(rèn)錯會獲得一種別樣的尊重，它甚至還可以讓你與曾經(jīng)無意中冒犯的人重新做朋友。

騎著自行車穿過天津的大街小巷、逛逛沒有什么貨品可賣的商店，這讓我覺得身處在那樣一個社會，金錢的意義實在不大。道德左右人們的思想，他們在意的是尊重。這也是自行車被攔事件給我的啟示，社會尊重大于個人態(tài)度。

記得有一次我買東西時多付了1毛錢，售貨員硬是穿過整座城市、找到我在南開大學(xué)的宿舍，為他的工作失誤向我道歉，并把多收的錢退還給我。還有一次，我騎車時隱形眼鏡進灰了，于是我進了街邊一家小店，借用他們的鏡子來調(diào)整隱形眼鏡。在鏡子里，我看到自己的身后聚集了一大群路人，他們都滿眼好奇地想看看我在做什么。有人問我，我是不是在變魔術(shù)，把自己的眼球拿出來又塞回去。

但類似的情景并沒有持續(xù)太久。中文課程結(jié)束后，我們這群外國交換生要離開南開大學(xué)了。學(xué)校為我們辦了一場送別宴會，宴會上剩下的食物被老師們裝進小小的鋁飯盒，塞到綠色軍用包里，挎在永遠(yuǎn)也不合身的松垮白襯衫上帶回家。

我在黑市上賣掉了自行車，當(dāng)時的我完全想象不到未來30年，自己會親眼見證中國人肩上的綠色軍用包如何演變成了Prada和LV。