Chapter1.5 渴望新生|New lives and a new zest for living1

The buildings just weren’t anymore.

所有建筑物都消失了。

Almost all we’d seen from the car window, hour after hour, day after day, was kilometer after kilometer of tents and rubble, followed by tents and rubble — and more tents and more rubble.

一天又一天，一个小时又一个小时，透过车窗，我们看到的只有绵延数公里的废墟和帐篷，然后还是废墟和帐篷，更多的废墟和帐篷。

It was post-apocalyptic.

这是一个末日浩劫之后的世界。

The heaps of knotted rebar and concrete nuggets seemed endless during my first visit to the Wenchuan quake zone in 2008, about half a year after the disaster left nearly 90,000 dead or missing.

2008年我首次赴汶川灾区采访时，距离那场导致近9万人死亡或失踪的大地震已有半年，而一路上扭曲的钢筋和大块的水泥仍然堆积成山。

“Missing” means that those roughly 18,000 people were buried so deeply that if they’re ever found, it’ll likely be by archaeologists.

“失踪”的意思是那近18000人至今仍被深埋地下，如果他们还能被找到的话，最有可能找到他们的是未来的考古学家。

I realized there was no way media reports could convey the scope of the destruction. It had to be seen in person to comprehend.

我意识到，无论媒体怎样报道，都无法完整再现这场灾难的全貌，只有亲身去到现场才有可能理解此事。

The quake zone looked like a war zone. Years later, I’d see videos of Syrian cities devastated by air strikes and ground fighting and think: “That looks like Sichuan.”

震区看上去就像个战场。多年以后，看到视频中饱受空袭和地面战蹂躏的叙利亚，我不由得想：“这太像四川了。”

Perhaps war and natural disasters are the conditions closest to hell that exist on Earth.

在地球上，也许战争和自然灾害是最接近于地狱的状况。

The primary difference, it seems, is that the suffering endured during wars originates from human malevolence, whereas disasters unleash natural violence.

而它们之间的主要区别，也许是战争中的苦难源于人类的邪恶，而灾害则释放了自然的狂暴。

Wenchuan is one of the most extreme temblors ever measured.

汶川地震是有记载以来最剧烈的地震之一。

It annihilated millions of buildings and left millions of people homeless.

它摧毁了数百万座房屋，让数百万人无家可归。

It traumatized tens of millions more.

它更给数千万人留下巨大的创伤。

In the ruins of Pingwu Middle School, I saw a blue placard with white letters that read: “Peaceful classroom”.

在平武中学的废墟上，我看到一块蓝色的牌子，上面写着几个白色的字：“平安班级”。

The crinkled sign rested against a chipped brick flung far from the debris when the earthquake toppled the building, scattering concrete chunks like the porcelain shards of a dropped vase.

这块皱巴巴的牌子靠在一块碎砖上。地震摧毁教学楼时，砖块和水泥被远远地抛了出来，就像一个瓷瓶被砸时碎片四处飞溅。

Over 180 students were injured. But all survived.

这里有180多名学生受伤，所幸无人遇难。

Classrooms collapsed in nearly all of Pingwu’s 146 schools, killing 344 students and 13 teachers. The disaster affected 31,079 pupils and 2,631 instructors in the county, Pingwu’s education bureau said.

平武县的146所学校中，几乎全都有教室倒塌，共有344名学生和13名老师遇难。据平武县教育局说，地震影响了31079名学生和2631名教师。

Nearly six months later, workers with reed baskets strapped to their backs were scuttling around Pingwu Middle School’s debris, sorting and clearing, sorting and clearing.

大约半年过后，背着箩筐的工人们仍在平武中学的废墟上忙忙碌碌，日复一日地清理和分拣。

The thuds of their sledgehammers thwacking against concrete and the rattling of knotted wire being lobbed into truck beds echoed hauntingly through the mountain valley.

山谷中回荡着铁锤敲击水泥和一团团扭曲的钢筋被扔上卡车的钝响，久久萦绕耳畔挥之不去。

A few minutes’ drive away, about 1,300 surviving middle school students studied and lived in a compound of makeshift metal classrooms and dorms.

几分钟车程以外，大约1300名幸存的学生正在一片临时搭建的金属教室和宿舍里生活和学习。

They had no showers or warm water. But they did have electricity, a canteen and study supplies.

这里不能洗澡，连热水也没有。但他们有电，有食堂，也有学习用具。

“Our new school is a good place to study, but we don’t have a big enough playground to play basketball,” second-grader Nie Min complained.

“我们的新学校是个学习的好地方，就是操场太小，打不了篮球。”一位叫聂敏（音译）的学生说。“我们每天都很忙，要学好所有课程不容易。”

“We’re busy every day now. It’s hard to learn all my lessons.”

“我们每天都很忙，要学好所有课程不容易。”

Hou Li, an 18-year-old senior from Pingwu’s rural Nanba township, wished he could see his family more.

来自平武县南坝镇的18岁高三学生侯力（音译）则希望他能更经常见到家人。

“When I’m home, I wash clothes for my mom and also help her wash vegetables in the field,” he said.

“回家时，我帮妈妈洗衣服，还帮她浇菜地。”他说。

“I’m still hopeful.”

“我当然还有梦想。”

Min said she wanted to become a translator when she grew up.

聂敏说她的梦想是长大后当一名翻译。

“I’ll try to make my dream come true. I believe nothing can take the place of persistence.”

“我要努力实现梦想。我相信什么也代替不了坚持。”聂敏说。

In an in-class activity I hosted with the kids in 2008, the overwhelming majority wrote that they believed they would realize their ambitions through perseverance.

2008年，我在平武这所临时学校里主持了一个活动。绝大部分学生都写道，他们相信只要努力和坚持，就能实现梦想。

They talked of dreams to become doctors, translators, singers, world travelers. They wanted to take care of their parents because of the sacrifices their mothers and fathers — mostly poor farmers — had made for them.

他们中有的想当医生，有的想当翻译或者歌唱家，还有的想去环球旅行……他们都想照顾好父母——大多数都是一贫如洗的农民，因为父母为了他们付出了太多太多。

Sophomore Xue Chen summed up the students’ ethos: “We must keep moving and never give up!”

高二学生薛晨总结了大家的决心：“我们必须向前走，绝不放弃！”

Xue wanted to master English and become a tour guide to meet people from around the world and show them his country, although he himself had scarcely left his hometown. I was the first foreigner he and his classmates had met.

薛晨的梦想是学好英语，当一名导游，带世界各地的人参观他的祖国，尽管那时他还从未走出过小镇。我是他和同学们第一次见到的老外。

Xue realized this dream. His favorite excursions are taking foreigners through the relatively underdeveloped Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and ancient Silk Road.

如今薛晨已经实现了他的梦想。他最喜欢的行程就是去尚待开发的青藏高原和古老的丝绸之路。

“I had a dream,” he messaged me about a decade after I first met him.

“我有一个梦想。”我们初次见面将近十年后，他给我发来的短信说。

“I studied and worked hard … I love my job.”

“我努力学习，努力工作……我热爱我的工作。”

He invited me to his wedding.

他还邀请我去参加他的婚礼。

“I can better cherish my friends and family after I’ve seen there are so many people even poorer than us,” Xue told me then.

“看到这么多人生活得比我们还穷困，我更加珍惜我的朋友和家人。”薛晨告诉我。

He wrote, in English, on his tour-guide profile: “Some people go to a totally new place, trying to find themselves after getting lost in life.”

在他的导游简介上，薛晨用英语写道：“一些人去一个全新的地方，是为了找回迷失在生活中的自我。”

I don’t think anyone in the quake zone in 2008 didn’t feel disoriented. I don’t know how anyone could have not.

我想，2008年地震灾区的人当中，没有谁不会迷失方向。我想不出会有人不是这样。

Xue wrote to me years later: “However, I have thought twice about traveling. For me, traveling should be a story or a documentary. A story about myself, a story spreading the warmth of the world, a story telling my own experiences. For this story, I leave my family and friends, crossing the pastures and climbing the snow-covered mountains, from Chengdu to Lhasa.”

多年后，薛晨在来信中说：“不过，我再次考虑了旅行。对我来说，旅行应当是一个故事，或者一部纪录片，这是个关于我的故事，传播这个世界温暖的故事，讲述我的经历的故事。为了这个故事，我将离开家人和朋友，从成都到拉萨，翻雪山过草地。”

Indeed, his story is one of the nightmares of 2008 that turned into dreams come true.

的确，薛晨的故事是走出2008年的那场噩梦并最终实现梦想的故事之一。

In January 2020, he told me he was also running his new hotpot restaurant, Xiangding Fang, in Chengdu.

2020年1月，他告诉我说，他已经在成都开起了自己的火锅店香鼎坊（音译）。