关于中国那起可怕的“碾童\"案

译者 一林

I've deliberately stayed away from the story that has dominated the Chinese mass media for the past week. It concerns a two-year old girl in Foshan, in southern China. She was hit by a van, as captured in a video so gruesome that I'm not providing a link. Then she lay in the road for a period of minutes, injured but alive, as a total of 18 other people walked or bicycled by and ignored her -- until another vehicle came by and ran over her again. Eventually a street-cleaning woman stopped to tend to her and get help, but the girl was declared brain-dead in the hospital. If anybody had bothered to pull her out of the street after she was hit the first time she presumably would have survived.

对于中国广大媒体上周大肆报道的那件事我是惟恐避之而不及。这是关于华南佛山的一个两岁的小姑娘的故事。一个视频拍到，她被一辆大货车撞倒，场面太残忍了，我不打算提供这个链接。然后，后面的几分钟，她就躺在地上，受着伤但是还活着，而大约总共有18个或步行或骑车路过的路人将她完全忽略-----直到又有一辆车辆过来从她身上碾了过去。最后一个扫大街的妇女停下来走过去，并求助，但是这个女孩到医院的时候被证实脑死亡。如果在她被第一辆车撞了之后，有任何一个人把她从街上拉开的话她可能还能生还。

This horror has provoked an uproar in China that reminds me of the - over the Kitty Genovese* case when I was a kid. Genovese was a young woman in Queens who was stabbed to death outside an apartment house, none of whose residents came downstairs to see what the screaming was about. On the other hand, that was in the middle of the night as opposed to the middle of the day.

这件可怕的事在中国反响颇大，它让我想起了Kitte Genoverse案件，当时我还是个孩子。Genovese是一个住在皇后大街的年轻姑娘，她在一间公寓前被刺死，而没有一个人出来看看惊声尖叫的原因。换句话说那种情况正好跟大白天的情况相反。

Every foreigner in China has heard the cliche about how people there are conditioned to steer clear of the complications of others' misfortunes, and so will not stop to help someone who is hurt or troubled in a public place. Twice in the past five years I saw the cliche come to life. Once with my wife, and another time when traveling on my own, I saw a person lying in the middle of a road and no one stopping to do anything about it. In one case, the person was obviously already dead. In another, our guess was that he was passed out (a peasant, on a four-lane rural highway in Yunnan), but on a road so busy that he was certain eventually to be hit. We couldn't persuade the Chinese people driving the taxi, in one case, or the rented car in another to stop.

在中国的每个外国人都听说了这样一种陈词滥调，那就是关于人们在公共场合下相机而动以避开那些“倒霉蛋”，而且也不去解救被伤害的人或者处在难处的人。在过去的5年间，我在生活中见证了这样荒谬的情况两次。一次，一个人明显已经死了。另外一次，我们的猜测是他昏过去了（一个农民，在云南的一个四车道的乡间高速路上），但是在一个车这么多的路上他肯定要被撞的。第一种情况下，我不能说服开出租车的中国人，第二次则是同样不能说服那个租来的车的司机停下来。

I raise the issue now because Lijia Zhang, author of the wonderful Socialism is Great, has an article in the Guardian that is very much worth reading about the case and its implications. For instance:

我之所以现在提出这样的问题是因为 张利嘉（译者注：音译，其英文名为Lijia Zhang），《社会主义好》的作者，关于这样的例子，及其现实情况，她在卫报上有一篇文章很值得一读，例如：

When interviewed by a journalist, one of the passersby, a middle-aged man riding a scooter, said with an uncomfortable smile on his face: "That wasn't my child. Why should I bother?"

当记者采访其中一个路人的时候，一个骑着单车的中年男子，一脸不太自在的笑容：“那又不是我的孩子，我为什么要多管闲事？”

[Similarly,] last month an 88-year-old man fell over face down at the entrance of a vegetable market near his home. For almost 90 minutes, he was ignored by people in the busy market. After his daughter found him and called an ambulance, the old man died "because of a respiratory tract clogged by a nosebleed". If anyone had turned him over, he might have survived.

同样的，上个月，一位88岁的老人迎面跌倒在他家附近的菜市场入口处。将近90分钟的时间里，他一直被忙碌的市场里的人们所忽略。他女儿发现了之后赶紧叫了救护车，但是这位老人仍然因为鼻血堵塞呼吸道而窒息去世。如果哪怕是有一个人把他翻过来，他都会幸免的。

Both cases, the death of Yueyue [the little girl] in particular, have provoked much public outrage and a nationwide discussion about morality in today's China.... Astonishingly, a large percentage of [online commenters] said they understood why the onlookers did not lend a helping hand. Some admitted they would do the same - for fear of getting into trouble and fear of facing another "Nanjing judge".

这两起事件，特别是小月月的死，掀起了众怒，引起了全国范围内人们对今日中国道德的讨论。让人惊讶的是，很大的一部分网络评论说他们理解那些不愿伸出援手的旁观者。有的人承认他们也会这样做的------害怕被撤进去，害怕面临像“南京审判"的那样的局面。

Let me explain the story of the muddle-headed Nanjing judge. In 2006, in the capital of Jiangsu province, a young man named Peng Yu helped an old woman who had fallen on the street and took her to a hospital and waited to see if the old woman was all right. Later, however, the woman and her family accused Peng of causing her fall. A judge decided in favour of the woman, based on the assumption that "Peng must be at fault. Otherwise why would he want to help?", saying that Peng acted against "common sense"....

让我先来解释下那个让人一头雾水的南京审判的故事吧。2006年的时候，江苏南京，一个叫彭宇的年轻人在街上帮助了一个跌倒的老太太，并把她送到了医院还等着看看老太太是不是一切安好。后来老太太及其家人控告彭宇把她撞倒。法官偏向了老太太，原因是彭肯定是有过失的，否则的话他为什么要帮忙，并称彭的行为有违“常识”.............

The fundamental problem, in my view, lies in one word that describes a state of mind: shaoguanxianshi, meaning don't get involved if it's not your business. In our culture, there's a lack of willingness to show compassion to strangers. We are brought up to show kindness to people in our network of guanxi, family and friends and business associates, but not particularly to strangers, especially if such kindness may potentially damage your interest.

在我看来最近本的问题还在于一个词，它描写了人们思想的状态：“少管闲事”，意思就是说，不是自己的事就不要插手。在我们的文化中，人们不愿向陌生人施于怜悯之情。我们从小就被教育要对我们关系网内的人要善，对家人，朋友以及商业伙伴但不是陌生人，特别是当这种善意损害你自己的利益的时候。