叔叔、水牛和大米的故事 A tale of an uncle, a water ox and rice

One evening in May, while spending a summer break at my in-laws' home in their rural Zhejiang village, I returned from a walk around the village to discover a dusty brown water ox tied to a tree just outside the gate of their house.

五月，我在浙江农村的公婆家中度假。一天晚上，我在村里散步后回家，发现家门口的一棵树下拴着一头满身泥浆的褐色水牛。

It stood perfectly parallel to the road, much like a parked vehicle, apart from grazing the grass at its hooves and eyeing me with a stony gaze that suggested I best keep my distance.

它矗立在路边，身体和路面平行，要不是它在嚼着蹄子旁的草，我还以为是一辆停着的汽车。它冷眼凝视着我，似乎在暗示我最好保持距离。

The water ox signaled to me, long before I even entered the house, that we would have dinner that evening with a distant relative long appointed as my husband Jun's godfather, a man I simply referred to as "uncle". A tiger in the Chinese zodiac, this uncle often joked of how much he embodied the sign, calling himself "fierce".

水牛的到访，说明这天晚上会有一个远房亲戚来吃晚饭。他是我丈夫骏的干爹，我称他为叔叔。他属虎，经常开玩笑说他自己很好地体现了老虎“凶悍”的特点。

But you could believe it, given his thunderous voice that even the ox minded, his ability to move beehives, and the fact that he made a living slaughtering livestock, with some dubbing him the finest butcher in town.

他那洪钟般的、连牛都会为之一震的声音，他搬动蜂箱的本事，以及他以屠宰牲畜为生，都会让你相信为何他被一些人称作是镇上最好的屠夫。

Upon settling into my stool at the table, I soon learned why the uncle had brought along his bovine companion. He had spent the afternoon leading the water ox through my in-laws' square plot of land in the terraced fields, plowing it in preparation for growing rice.

在桌边坐下后，我很快就知道了为什么叔叔带着牛赴宴。他花了一下午的时间，牵着水牛在我公婆的方形梯田里犁地，准备种植水稻。

This uncle never shied away from grueling tasks, such as working the rice fields, and his face bore witness to this "fierce" side to him, weathered and tanned from years of labor outdoors, in all sorts of conditions.

这位叔叔从不逃避艰苦的农活，比如在稻田里干活，他的脸庞见证了他“凶悍”的一面。常年在各种条件下从事户外劳作，饱经风霜，皮肤因此晒得黝黑。

Watching him and the water ox trundle through the sunny fields, as I did later on, proved fascinating. The ox, strapped with a harness fitted with a large, metal V-shaped plow, trudged forward through the muddy plot.

看着他和水牛在阳光明媚的田野中缓慢地移动，正如后来我做的那样，这确实很有意思。水牛系着挽具，拖着一个巨大的金属V型犁，在泥泞的地里艰难前行。

The uncle, barefoot with his pants rolled up above his knees, followed behind as he steered the animal back and forth, part of the slow, timeless dance of man and beast in agriculture.

叔叔光着脚，裤腿卷到膝盖以上，跟在水牛后面，来回引导着它。人类和牲畜在农业生产中悠然而永恒地共处着。

This scene actually represented only one of the multiple, arduous steps for cultivating rice. The process also involves irrigating the field, transplanting rice plants into the land, fertilizing, weeding, removing pests, cutting the golden stalks in the fall, extracting and winnowing the grains, sun-drying the grains prior to storage, and then polishing the grains into rice at a processing station. Each stage demands a large amount of time and painstaking efforts.

这个场景实际上只是种植水稻的多个艰难步骤之一。整个过程还包括灌溉、移植、施肥、除草、除虫、收割、提取和碾碎谷物，在储存前将谷物晒干，然后在加工站将谷物抛光成大米。每个阶段都需要大量的时间和不懈的努力。

It's no wonder that the process of growing rice has become a metaphor for the hardship behind every great accomplishment, immortalized in the line from the legendary poet Li Shen. Shui zhi pan zhong can, li li jie xinku: How many know that every grain in a dish results from hard labor?

毫无疑问，种植水稻已经成为每一项伟大成就艰辛付出的代名词。诗人李绅不朽的诗句“谁知盘中餐，粒粒皆辛苦”，意思是有多少人知道，餐桌上的每一粒米都是辛苦劳作得来。

Through observing this uncle and his water ox in the fields, I've gained more of an appreciation of what it takes to supply us with some of the most common and yet vital things in our lives, like rice.

观察这位叔叔和他的水牛在稻田里的耕作，我更加感激这些人们为我们提供生活中最常见但又最重要的东西，比如大米。

When we come to understand that much of our world has been built through intense labor, we're more willing to work harder — and won't just give up when life challenges us to "plow ahead".

当我们逐渐认识到这个世界都是通过辛勤劳动而建立的时候，我们会更努力地工作，在生活中遇到挑战时，不会轻言放弃。

And if you can do that, it won't matter whether you're a tiger. You'll be fierce too.

如果能做到这一点，那么你是不是老虎并不重要，你一样会很“凶悍。”