关掉电视和游戏通过文字去旅行 Turn off the TV and travel through time and space

One of the many good things I have experienced since I moved to China has been an invigorated interest in reading. With my favorite television programs harder or impossible to access, I turned to the electronic pages of an e-reader.

我来到中国后最美妙的体验之一便是爱上了阅读。喜欢的电视节目要么不能收看，要么需要大费周章才行，索性我便打开了电子书。

Since I was eager to learn all about my new home, I turned to Chinese authors as well as foreign authors, including those of the Chinese diaspora. I had read a biography of early revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen when I was about 12, long before I ever imagined living here.

刚到中国，对这里的一切都很好奇，于是我开始阅读中外作家的作品。虽然早在12岁时，我就读过中国革命先驱孙中山的传记了，但那个时候完全不曾想过我会在这里生活。

One of my early favorites when I arrived in China was US writer and journalist Peter Hessler, who took the name of 何伟 (He Wei) in China. His River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, about his introduction to China in 1996 as an English teacher in Fuling, Sichuan province — now part of Chongqing — is an excellent primer for newcomers. His descriptions of day-to-day life are insightful, and he captures an interesting point in time as China opened up.

彼得·赫斯勒 （Peter Hessler）是我来到中国后最先喜欢的作家。他的中文名叫何伟，来自美国，除作家之外他还是一名记者。作品《江城》通过1996年他在四川涪陵（现属于重庆）当英语老师的经历，介绍了中国，对初次来华的外国人来说是一本极好的入门书。当时恰逢中国改革开放时期，他将生活中的点滴记录了下来，视角独特，认识深刻。

I devoured two other well-known Hessler books about China, Oracle Bones and Country Driving. I also read Mo Yan's Red Sorghum, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature, Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China, novels by Pearl S. Buck and Amy Tan and many more.

我还阅读了赫斯勒另外两本关于中国的作品，《甲骨文》和《寻路中国》。还有2012年诺贝尔文学奖得主莫言的作品《红高粱》，埃德加·斯诺（Edgar Snow）的《红星照耀中国》，还有赛珍珠和谭恩美（Amy Tan)的小说等等。

Lately I have returned to reading books about Latin America, a region that was my first foreign love. 

最近我开始重新阅读南美文学。我人生的外国初体验就是南美洲。

I am now reading Love in the Time of Cholera by Colombian Nobel Prizewinner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who was a master of magical realism.

目前我正在读的是《霍乱时期的爱情》，作者加夫列尔·加西亚·马尔克斯是哥伦比亚诺贝尔奖得主，魔幻现实主义大师。

The book is set roughly in the period from 1880 to 1930 in a Caribbean port based loosely on Cartagena, Colombia. 

这本书的故事大致设定在1880到1930年间，地点位于加勒比海的一个港口，哥伦比亚的卡塔赫纳海港。

The book, first published in 1985, centers on a young couple. The woman, Fermina Daza, goes on to marry a blue-blood doctor, while the man, Florentino Ariza, tries to lose himself in affairs while pining away for her for 50 years.

本书于1985年首次出版，故事围绕一对年轻夫妇展开。书中名叫费尔米纳·达萨（Fermina Daza）的妇女嫁给了一名贵族医生，而在这位费洛伦蒂纳·阿里萨（Florentino Ariza）医生50年的婚姻中，他一边挣扎，一边又沉迷于婚外情。

But it is far from a flowery romance novel, and incorporates death, the meaning of life and how "happily ever after" is never so simple. Cholera is compared with love, in that both can strike quickly, destroy lives and respect neither class nor race.

但本书绝不只是一部华丽的爱情小说，它还包含着“死亡”，“生命的意义”，以及“永远的幸福”等如此深刻的主题。作者将霍乱比作爱情，这两者有着共同的特点：可以迅速袭来，摧毁生命，不顾阶级地位，不论种族差异。

His depictions of an insular, stratified society in a crumbling colonial city being dragged into the modern age are vivid. Garcia Marquez describes a scene in which Fermina disappears for a time: "No one knew anything in a city where everything was known, and where many things were known even before they happened, above all if they concerned the rich."

加西亚马尔克斯将一个分崩离析的殖民城市的阶层社会拖进在现代展开叙述，栩栩如生，娓娓道来。其中有一段描写费尔米纳·达萨消失的句子：“在这座城市里，一切都不能保密，甚至有许多事，尤其是富人的事，在发生之前就满城风雨了，唯独这件事竟无人知晓。”

I also have been reading the works of another Nobel Price winner, Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru, who often ties his works more directly to history. His War of the End of the World revolves around an uprising in 19th century Brazil motivated by a messianic cult. Death in the Andes portrays the gritty reality of Andean towns caught amid the Shining Path terror of the late 20th century.

其他诺贝尔奖得主，我也有所了解，比如马里奥·巴尔加斯·略萨（Mario Vargas Llosa），他是秘鲁作家，其作品常与历史相关。他的作品《世界末日的战争》讲的是19世纪的巴西，因为对救世主的崇拜而展开的一场起义的故事。而《安地斯山脉上的死亡》一书则描述了被20世纪晚期的光辉道路恐怖事件笼罩的安地斯镇的残酷事实。

The Feast of the Goat is a masterful story of the Trujillo years in the Dominican Republic, complete with courage, cowardice and cruelty and set in the penetrating humidity of the Caribbean country.

《山羊的盛宴》的故事背景发生在多米尼加共和国特鲁希略，整个故事笼罩着加勒比海国家的蒙蒙雾气，其中充斥着勇气，怯懦与残忍。

My wife and I have not totally foresworn the screen — Beijing has some very nice movie theaters, and we enjoy videos on DVD and Youku.com.

北京有许多很好的电影院，所以妻子和我并没有完全舍弃荧幕作品，不过有时我们也会看光碟或者在优酷视频看电影。

But movies usually pale beside the pictures that master writers can conjure in your head. You can go as fast as you want or slow down and savor a scene.

但是电影，与大师的文字能够传达的画面相比，还是稍显逊色。阅读时，你尽可匆匆掠过，亦可放慢速度，细细品读。

I have heard that reading has been declining as electronic devices make access to streaming and video games possible virtually anywhere. But my hope is that young people don't lose the pleasure of reading.

我听说因为电子设备的出现，人们可以在任何地方使用流媒体，随时随地进行视频游戏，这样以来使得阅读量一直处于下降趋势。但是我非常不愿看到的是，年轻人由于电子设备而失去了阅读的乐趣。

As Garcia Marquez once said, "The duty of the writers is not to preserve the language but to open the way for it in history."

正如加西亚·马尔克斯曾说，“作家的职责不是保护语言而是为文字开辟道路。”