Chapter1.4 特殊的生日|Birthdays at a mass grave

A mass grave.

一片坟场。

That’s where I’ve spent many birthdays in China — marking the anniversary of my birth among death.

这就是我在中国多次过生日的地方——在死亡面前庆祝我的降生。

Watching parents claw at the earth and scream at the sky in savage sorrow because their children will never celebrate the passage into another year of age.

我眼看着悲痛欲绝的父母们刨着泥土，悲号声响彻天宇，而他们的子女再也不能迎来下一个生日了。

Many years, I’ve returned to the mass grave in Sichuan’s Yingxiu, where 6,000 people died in the Wenchuan earthquake. Hundreds of the town’s children perished when the school imploded.

很多年来，我总会在清明节回到四川映秀。这里有6000多人死于汶川大地震，镇上有数百名学生在学校建筑垮塌时丧生。

My birthday often falls around the lunar calendar’s TombSweeping Day. Few experiences make you think about meaning like entering into another year of life surrounded by death.

我的生日经常与农历的清明节重合。在死亡的环抱中迎来新的一年，没有哪种经历更能促使你思考生命的意义。

Authorities had to swiftly inter the bodies for fear of epidemic. So, they buried them in a cornfield.

为避免震后疫情暴发，政府不得不将遗体尽快掩埋，那是一大片玉米地。

I returned year after year to what became known as the May 12 Wenchuan Major Earthquake Victims Cemetery to report on the annual mourning ceremonies.

年复一年，我总是回到这里的“5·12”汶川特大地震遇难者公墓，报道清明祭奠仪式。

On my birthdays, colleagues would buy me a fish and “longlife” noodles, traditional symbols of longevity.

每当我过生日时，同事们总会送我鱼和长寿面，这都是长寿的象征。

In 2016, I instead spent my birthday hiking sheer cliffs to host a documentary about farmers in a drought-afflicted village in Guizhou province. Out of desperation and through persistence, they’d dug a long irrigation channel across vertical precipices by hand.

2016年过生日时，我转道贵州，攀爬在悬崖之上主持了一部纪录片，讲述的是一个长年缺水的小山村，身处绝境的村民们徒手在峭壁上修筑了一条引水槽。

They’d overcome another kind of geological hazard on their own by banding together to overcome shared suffering at great risk.

村民们团结一致，冒着极大的危险，走出了另一种地理条件造成的困境。

I sometimes clung to vertical rock faces while balancing on the thin rim of the channel that clutched the karsts’ sharp sides.

有时我只能死死把着引水槽薄薄的边缘，才能在棱角锋利的峭壁上勉强维持平衡。

One wrong step would be the last.

这时，一失足将成千古恨。

And I’ve had a fear of heights since childhood.

而我自小就有恐高症。

My mortal apprehension brought my mind to what I’d learned about life by spending previous birthdays at the mass grave.

恐惧迫使我的大脑集中于以往在映秀那片墓地过生日时学到的经验。

Falling is a different terror than being buried. 

对摔死和被活埋的恐惧其实各有不同。

Then, the songs arrived by WeChat — in English, Chinese and Tibetan.

这时，微信里传来了祝我生日快乐的歌曲，英语、汉语，还有藏语。

First, my wife and daughter sent a video of them singing Happy Birthday in Beijing.

先是我的妻子和女儿在北京唱的《生日快乐》小视频。

Then came another rendition by the staff at the hospital in Jiangsu province’s Wuxi, where my father was undergoing surgery after a traffic accident.

然后是江苏无锡一家医院的医生护士们发来的视频，我父亲因为遭遇车祸刚刚在那里做了手术。

Later that evening came two videos from Qumarleb’s students and teachers.

那天晚上，青海玉树曲麻莱的师生们也给我发了两个视频。

Finally, my wife sent me a time-lapse video of the sunset from our balcony as a “gift”.

最后，我妻子又送了我一件礼物，从我们北京的家阳台上延时拍摄的日落。

That’s because she knows I’ve tried to — when I can — stop what I’m doing to watch the sun glide beneath the mountain peaks, especially from our balcony in Beijing. I gaze, concentrating and contemplating, until dusk inks out the heavens like blotting paper.

她知道，每天的这个时刻，只要有可能，我总会停下手头的工作，注视夕阳渐渐隐入西山，排空纷繁的思绪，遁入冥想，直至苍穹尽染，夜幕降临。

It’s not only centering but also a reminder of the heavens’ sublimity and the evanescence of life on Earth.

这个习惯不仅有助于集中注意力，更提醒着我天堂的神圣，以及地球上万物的生死幻灭。

We often take the sky for granted.

我们总是把天空视为平常。

How many times in an average person’s life do they stop to really — I mean really — look up, rather than forward, for more than a fleeting moment?

每个人的一生中，会有几次驻足，真正停下脚步，哪怕花上短暂的一秒钟去抬头仰望，而不是一味地盯着前方？

Indeed, my birthdays now often make me deliberate mortality beyond ceremoniously marking one year closer to my last.

现在，每当又一个生日临近，除了在我最后一个生日到来前划掉一格，我更经常思考的问题是死亡。

They evoke the meaningfulness of existence.

这让我更能体会到活着的意义。

Many women in the quake zone had new babies, who I met — sometimes at their firstborns’ unspecified gravesides on my birthdays.

映秀的不少母亲后来又有了孩子。我在她们的第一个孩子没有标记的墓地边遇到过很多这样的母亲。

In 2016, Dad’s clavicle shattered into four pieces. But he survived.

2016年的那次车祸中，我父亲的锁骨裂成四片，但他活了下来。

Days later, my only brother ’s lung collapsed. He, too, recovered.

几天之后，我唯一的弟弟得了气胸。他也已完全恢复。

I didn’t plummet from the precipice of the water channel.

那一天我没有摔下那个修了引水槽的悬崖。

And I received many good wishes — some unexpectedly moving — that birthday.

而且我收到了众多生日祝福，有许多格外感人。

Philosophers have said the point of life is to die well.

哲人们说，生命的意义在于死得其所。

I intend to.

这也正是我的心愿。

I wouldn’t claim to know how. But what I have figured out, I’ve figured out in China.

我不能说自己已经知道怎样做到这一点，但我所知道的一切都源于中国。