上海的月亮: CN — LARRY ROMANOFF: 了解中国-第8部分 — 上海日记 — Understanding China – Part 8

了解中国-第8部分 — Understanding China – Part 8

上海日记– Shanghai Diary

拉里罗曼诺夫 — By Larry Romanoff

翻译：珍珠

One of the many water towns near Shanghai.

上海附近的众多城镇之一。

中国的一些事实 — Some China Facts

事物的规模 — The Scale of Things

中国的新年-烟花爆竹 — Chinese New Year – Fireworks and Firecrackers

中国皮革制品 — Chinese Leather Goods

按摩院 — Massage Parlors

英语、坏英语和中国英语 — English, Bad English, and Chinglish

一个关于中国菜的说明 — A Note on Chinese Food

市民假日 — Civic holiday

在中国什么也没什么好笑的 — Nothing is Funny in China

我的新阿姨 — My new Ayi

上海电话簿 — Shanghai Telephone Book

中国没有肥胖 — China has no Obesity

中国的一些事实 — Some China Facts

14亿人口（可能更多）– 1.4 billion population (maybe more)

7.5亿就业人口 — 750 million employed people

80个+民族 — 80+ ethnic groups

86%的识字率 — 86% literacy

2.6亿学生 — 260 million students

1100万教师 — 11 million teachers

1000所大学 — 1,000 universities

26万所中学 — 260,000 secondary schools

55.5万所小学 — 555,000 primary schools

20万所幼儿园 — 200,000 kindergartens

666个城市 — 666 cities

3240个电视台 — 3,240 TV stations

9亿手机用户 — 900 million mobile phone users

3.5亿条固定线路（电话） — 350 million land lines (phone)

8亿互联网用户 — 800 million internet users

486个机场 — 486 airports

15个国家的边界 — Borders on 15 countries:

事物的规模 — The Scale of Things

建筑规模 — The Building Scale

The size and scale of the apartment complexes in China is startling at first. There are many of these with anywhere from 5 or 6 to 40 buildings each, all with parks, swimming pools and playgrounds interspersed, and sometimes there are 10 of these complexes in close proximity to each other. Each of these can easily house 5,000 to 10,000 families. There are “villas” as well – single homes, but not so common and a much more expensive use of land.

中国的公寓楼的规模和规模一开始都令人吃惊。这里有许多这样的建筑，各有5到6到40栋建筑，到处都点缀着公园、游泳池和操场，有时也有10个这样的建筑群彼此靠近。每个家庭都可以轻松容纳5000到10000个家庭。这里也有“别墅”——独栋住宅，但不那么常见，土地的使用也要昂贵得多。

The quality of the apartments in these complexes ranges from very acceptable to gorgeous, with commensurate pricing. In Shanghai, it is possible to buy a very nice one-bedroom or two-bedroom apartment for $200,000 or less, the prices rising with proximity to the downtown core. At the high end, one complex of four high-rise buildings in Shanghai was constructed with each floor being one apartment of about 500 square meters, or nearly 6,000 square feet, and a price between US$10 million and $20 million. The buildings in North America look mighty small and impoverished compared to these. In the photo below, the different styles represent different housing projects.

这些综合体的公寓质量从非常可接受的到华丽的，价格也是相应的。在上海，你可以花20万美元或更少的价格买到一套非常漂亮的一居室或两居室公寓，而靠近市中心的价格也在上涨。在高端，上海有一个由四栋高层建筑组成的综合体，每层一套公寓约500平方米，或近6000平方英尺，价格在1000万美元到2000万美元之间。与这些建筑相比，北美的建筑看起来非常小和贫困。在下图中，不同的风格代表了不同的住宅项目。

The scale and volume of housing construction that occurs in China is striking.

在中国发生的住房建设的规模和数量是惊人的。

The scale and volume of housing construction that occurs in China is striking. Each year, China builds enough new homes for about 25 – 30 million people – which means more or less an entire Canada is being created in new housing stock every year. The city of Shanghai alone builds as many new homes and apartments as are built in Canada in a year. Similar for Beijing, Guangzhou … It staggers the imagination to contemplate such a vast scale. China has more than 100 cities that have a population of over 1 million people.

在中国发生的住房建设的规模和数量是惊人的。每年，中国都要为大约2500-3000万人建造足够的新房，这意味着整个加拿大或多或少每年都在创造新的住房存量。仅上海市在一年内就建造了比加拿大最多的新房和公寓。类似于北京，广州..。思考如此大的规模会缺乏想象力。中国有100多个城市，人口超过100万。

And everything works. Services and utilities are fine, transportation is great, the developments are full of shopping centers that make Western malls look like baby toys, and those centers are full of shoppers. The large cities in China all have single department stores or malls that fill an entire square block – sometimes several of them all next door to each other.

一切都成功了。服务和公用设施很好，交通很好，这里到处都是购物中心，让西方的购物中心看起来像婴儿玩具，这些中心也挤满了购物者。中国的大城市都有单一的百货商店或购物中心，它们占据了整个广场街区——有时有几家都彼此相邻。

上海深水港 — Shanghai’s Deep-Water Port

Westerners are constantly dumbfounded by the scale of things in China. So many places, events, items are almost beyond comprehension. As one example, Shanghai built a new deep-water port in the city to handle the largest container ships in the world. That doesn’t sound exceptional, but a port this size requires hundreds of thousands of workers, so Shanghai built an entire new city (within the City of Shanghai) to house the people who would be working at the port. A new city of 800,000 people just rising out of the mud on the waterfront, complete with houses, parks, a little inland lake, shopping, transportation systems, libraries, everything. A city within a city, just to accommodate the marine traffic at the port. In the West, we could hardly conceive of something like this, but the Chinese just make a decision and do it. Decide today, and tomorrow you have 600 backhoes and 400 dump-trucks, and the ready-mix people are already lining up to pour foundations. They not only built the largest deep-water port in the world, but a new city for nearly one million people to support it. It was all finished and occupied within a year. We can’t fail to be impressed.

西方人经常被中国事物的规模所震惊。如此多的地方、事件、项目都几乎无法理解。举个例子，上海在该市建造了一个新的深水港，以处理世界上最大的集装箱船。这听起来并不特别，但如此规模的港口需要成千上万的工人，所以上海建造了一个全新的城市（在上海市内）来容纳将要在港口工作的人。这座拥有80万人口的新城刚刚从海滨的泥泞中升起，里面有房屋、公园、一个小内陆湖、购物中心、交通系统、图书馆等一切。城市中的一个城市，只是为了容纳港口的海上交通。在西方，我们很难想象这样的事情，但中国人只是做了一个决定，然后去做。今天决定，明天你有600台挖土机和400辆自卸卡车，现成的人已经排队打地基了。他们不仅建造了世界上最大的深水港，而且还建造了一个能容纳近100万人的新城市。这一切在一年之内就完成了。我们不能印象深刻。

在武汉建造一所医院 — Building a Hospital in Wuhan

At the onset of the COVID pandemic, as the numbers of infections rose beyond the capacity of local hospitals, Wuhan needed additional hospital capacity, so they planned, designed, and built two large new hospitals. These were not “flimsy bare-bones barracks” as described in the Western media, but were identical to any fully-equipped modern hospitals. They were modular concrete units designed for rapid assembly, in a manner similar to setting shipping containers side by side, with full accommodation for A/C, heating, ventilation, negative pressure, abundant electricity, and more. Once assembled, these units function as a whole, and are a regular hospital with all the equipment and facilities one would normally see in any hospital.

在新冠肺炎大流行开始时，随着感染人数的增加超出了当地医院的能力，武汉需要额外的医院能力，因此他们计划、设计并建造了两家大型新医院。这些医院并不是西方媒体所描述的“脆弱的简陋营房”，而是与任何装备齐全的现代化医院完全相同。它们是模块化的混凝土单元，设计用于快速组装，类似于将集装箱并排放置，可提供空调、供暖、通风、负压、充足的电力等。一旦组装好，这些单位就作为一个整体发挥作用，是一个普通医院，拥有通常在任何医院看到的所有设备和设施。

The first was built in ten days by 16,000 men, with three shifts working 24 hours a day.The second hospital was larger, and completed in only 6 days. To clear and level the site and lay the substructure, there were 240 pieces of construction equipment working on the same site at the same time – also 24 hours per day. The Chinese media posted time-lapse videos of the construction process, which were astonishing to watch. Such hospitals were built in several cities in Hubei Province.

第一座建筑由16000名工人在10天内建造，三班工作，每天24小时工作。第二家医院规模更大，仅用了6天就完成了工作。为了清理和平整场地和铺设下部结构，有240台施工设备同时在同一地点进行工作——同样是每天24小时。中国媒体发布了建筑过程的延时视频，令人震惊。在湖北省的几个城市都建立了这样的医院。

中国国家假日 — Chinese National Holiday

You may have seen the celebrations for China’s 60th anniversary, one of the most impressive sights being the precision of the parade. The photo below shows various contingents, each containing a group of around 30 rows of 50 people each, walking and performing in perfect lines, keeping perfect time in unison for such a long distance that it seemed impossible. It was the same with the military vehicles and other content. They were all moving at exactly the same speed and were all so perfectly lined up that it seemed they must be physically connected together.

你可能已经见过庆祝中国成立60周年的活动，其中最令人印象深刻的景象之一是这次游行的精确性。下面的照片显示了各种各样的队伍，每一个都包含大约30排50人，以完美的线条行走和表演，在如此长的距离中保持完美的时间，这似乎是不可能的。军用车辆和其他内容也是如此。它们都以完全相同的速度移动，而且都排列整齐，似乎它们一定是物理连接在一起的。

Beijing built a practice location to prepare for this event, with people practicing for 5 to 8 months. One newscast claimed that soldiers and others each wore out three pairs of shoes during the practices. The red flag in the photo is composed of cards held by people marching in the group, and on occasion, they flip the cards to reveal a new picture. The precision of everything was just astonishing, and fascinating to watch.

北京建立了一个练习场所来准备这个活动，人们练习了5到8个月。一个新闻节目称，士兵和其他人在训练中每人穿了三双鞋。照片中的红旗是由集体游行的人手持的卡片组成的，有时，他们会翻动卡片来展示一张新的照片。一切事物的精确度都是惊人的，而且令人着迷。

China’s 60th anniversary. They were all moving at exactly the same speed and were all so perfectly lined up that it seemed they must be physically connected together.

中国的60周年纪念。它们都以完全相同的速度移动，而且都排列整齐，似乎它们一定是物理连接在一起的。

China’s 70th anniversary. Satellite images of the parade moving through Beijing’s streets gave an idea of its vast scale. Source

中国70周年纪念。游行在北京街头移动的卫星图像显示了游行的巨大规模。根源

中国的新年-烟花爆竹 — Chinese New Year – Fireworks and Firecrackers

Firecrackers and fireworks are a staple of Chinese New Year, a dramatic way to welcome the New Year. These are not so widely available today as in the past, perhaps pollution and the occasional fire dampening the enthusiasm of city officials. But even in the large cities there are still areas where these pyrotechnics can be enjoyed without limit, and this is certainly true of the smaller centers and all the rural areas. Midnight is the magic moment.

鞭炮和烟花是中国新年的主要内容，是迎接新年的戏剧性方式。这些在今天不像过去那样广泛使用，也许是污染和偶尔的火灾抑制了市政府官员的热情。但即使是在大城市，也有一些地区可以无限地享受这些烟火，小中心和所有农村地区也是如此。午夜是一个神奇的时刻。

But first, let’s see what we are dealing with. Fireworks come assembled in a cardboard box with the rockets arranged vertically, and all the fuses interlinked and timed so they detonate in a set order and with a programmed delay between rockets. Small fireworks might be in a smallish box containing 5X5, so 25 small rockets. The larger ones are maybe 60 cm high and are in a 10X10 box, so 100 large fireworks. You sometimes see larger boxes with 200 or more, all firing in sequence, one every few seconds. The larger boxes have larger tubes, bigger rockets that go higher and have a bigger explosive bang and an increasingly beautiful light display.

但首先，让我们看看我们在处理什么。烟花装在一个纸板箱里，火箭垂直排列，所有的保险丝都相互连接，定时引爆，所以它们按固定的顺序引爆，火箭之间有预定的延迟。小烟花可能放在一个装有5X5的小盒子里，所以有25枚小火箭。较大的可能有60厘米高，装在一个10X10的盒子里，所以有100个大烟花。你有时会看到更大的盒子有200或更多，每几秒钟一个。更大大的盒子有更大的管，更大的火箭更高，爆炸和越来越漂亮的灯光显示。

The firecrackers are another matter entirely. This is a bit difficult to describe, so the pictures will help. The firecrackers are laid on a large central fuse, with the fuse of each individual firecracker twisted around that central fuse. See the first photo below.

放鞭炮则完全是另一回事了。这有点难以描述，所以这些图片会有所帮助。鞭炮被放置在一个大的中央保险丝上，每个爆竹的保险丝都围绕在中央保险丝上。见下面的第一张照片。

That long strip is then rolled into a wheel, which is generally unwound and rolled out for detonation, as you can see in the second photo.

然后，这个长条被卷成一个轮子，这个轮子通常是展开并滚出来进行爆炸，正如你在第二张照片中看到的那样。

Thus, when you light one end, the burning fuse eventually detonates all the firecrackers in turn. A small wheel might contain only a few thousand firecrackers while a large one can contain 15,000 or more. The photos will give you an idea of the extent. Here is a brief video of the extent of firecrackers used in some communities. [1] (Click on the “x” at the top right corner of the pop-up, to remove it and see the video.)

因此，当你点燃一端时，燃烧的保险丝最终会依次引爆所有的鞭炮。一个小轮子可能只装几千个鞭炮，而一个大轮子可以装15000个或更多。这些照片会让你了解这个程度。这是一些社区使用鞭炮程度的简短视频。[1] （点击弹出窗口右上角的“x”，删除它并查看视频。）

It is possible to ignite the fireworks without unrolling the wheel, as the woman in the third photo is doing, but this is something a sane person will do only once. When unrolled, the firecrackers ignite in pairs, and quite quickly too but, if left as a wheel, the fire will very quickly spread through all the fuses and detonate all the firecrackers. If you have not actually witnessed this, you cannot conceive of the amount of noise and volume of smoke created by 15,000 large firecrackers detonating within 30 seconds.

就像第三张照片中的女人那样，你可以在不打开轮子的情况下点燃烟花，但这是一个理智的人只会做一次的事情。当打开时，鞭炮成对点燃，而且也相当快，但如果留下作为一个轮子，火会很快蔓延到所有的保险丝，引爆所有的鞭炮。如果你还没有亲眼目睹这一点，你就无法想象在30秒内，15000个大型鞭炮在30秒内爆炸所产生的噪音和烟雾量。

Here is one story of many similar I could tell. I spent a Chinese New Year’s Eve with a family in Shanghai who live in a community compound containing maybe 40 apartment buildings of varying heights, from 12 to 40 stories, interspersed among small walkways, rivulets, gardens. I calculated roughly at the time that the community contained around 5,000 families.

这里有一个我能讲到的许多类似的故事。我和上海的一个家庭度过了一个中国新年前夜，他们住在一个社区小区里，里面大概有40栋不同高度的公寓楼，从12层到40层不等，散布在小走道、小溪和花园中。我大概计算出当时这个社区大约有5000个家庭。

And at midnight – the magic moment – all the 5,000 families from all the 5,000 apartments went outside into the walkways and simultaneously lit all their fireworks and firecrackers. Very quickly it was impossible to hear anything, for the noise. And soon it was also impossible to see anything, except incessant flashes of light, for all the smoke. You honestly cannot imagine this without actually experiencing it. The show lasted for 20 minutes or more, after which the ground was covered with a layer of red firecracker paper 2 or 3 inches thick. What an experience; Thousands of fireworks launching at one time, repeatedly for 20 minutes. And millions of firecrackers exploding at the same time.

在午夜——这个神奇的时刻——来自5000套公寓的5000户家庭走到人行道上，同时点燃了他们所有的烟花和鞭炮。很快，因为噪音，什么也听不见。很快，除了不停的闪光，什么也看不见。你不能想象没有真正经历它。演出持续了20分钟或更久，之后地面被一层2或3英寸厚的红色爆竹纸覆盖。多么美妙的体验；成千上万的烟花同时发射，重复播放20分钟。和数以百万计的鞭炮同时爆炸。

I did a rough calculation at the time that we likely had 5,000 boxes of fireworks of varying sizes, but assuming a modest average size, that would have been about 250,000 fireworks rockets. And every family would have had at least one roll of firecrackers. Again, assuming a modest average of only 5,000 per household, this would give us a total of 25 million firecrackers. Try to imagine all this detonating within 20 minutes or less, in a rather small and confined area. Now, imagine this occurring simultaneously in every one of the tens of thousands of similar communities in Shanghai. Now multiply all this by 1.5 billion people in thousands of cities and rural areas. And people ask me what I want for Christmas.

当时我做了一个粗略的计算，我们可能有5000盒不同大小的烟花，但假设平均大小适中，大约是25万枚烟花火箭。每个家庭至少会有一卷鞭炮。同样，假设每个家庭平均只有5000个，这将使我们总共得到2500万个鞭炮。试着想象一下，这一切会在20分钟或更短的时间内，在一个相当小的封闭区域内爆炸。现在，想象一下这种情况同时发生在上海成千上万的类似社区中。现在，把这一切乘以数千个城市和农村地区的15亿人。人们问我圣诞节我想要什么。

中国皮革制品 — Chinese Leather Goods

The West is inundated with denigrating nonsense about “cheap Chinese goods”, but the reality is far from this. China makes consumer and other goods of very high quality. Most of the products of the so-called “luxury brands” – LV, Hermes, Gucci, and so on – are made in China. The truth is that Chinese factories are capable of making whatever a buyer demands, to the very highest quality levels. There are no Chinese salesmen traveling to the US with offers to sell cheap frying pans that will self-destruct in 6 months. The reason Wal-Mart in the West sells only that cheap junk is because that is precisely what Wal-Mart ordered from the factory.

西方被诋毁“廉价中国商品”的废话所淹没，但现实远非如此。中国生产非常优质的消费品和其他产品。大多数所谓的“奢侈品牌”的产品——LV、爱马仕、古驰等——都是在中国制造的。事实是，中国的工厂有能力满足买家的要求，达到最高的质量水平。没有中国销售人员到美国提出出售6个月后自毁的廉价煎锅。西方的沃尔玛之所以只销售廉价的垃圾食品，是因为这正是沃尔玛从工厂订购的东西。

I frequently purchase shoes that are made in China with an impressive level of quality. The pair pictured here are beautifully made, with real leather soles, and cost only 275 RMB which is about $35. These and others are so well-made they show little or no signs of wear after several years of use. The quality of consumer goods available in China is truly impressive.

我经常购买中国制造的质量上乘的鞋子。这双鞋制作精美，采用真皮鞋底，售价仅为275元人民币，约合35美元。这些和其他的都制作精良，在使用几年后很少或几乎没有磨损的迹象。中国现有消费品的质量确实令人印象深刻。

As another example, I bought a leather travel bag that is also beautifully made, and of fine leather. It’s a perfect size for a simple overnight bag, and easily carries a laptop and all the essentials, and is also cleverly designed with handles, backpack straps and shoulder straps. I purchased this bag about 15 years ago and it is still as nice as when purchased. It cost 500 RMB – about $65 at the time.

另一个例子，我买了一个皮革旅行袋，也很漂亮，皮革很好。这是一个完美的过夜袋的简单大小，轻松携带笔记本电脑和所有必需品，也巧妙地设计了把手、肩带和肩带。这个包是我大约15年前买的，现在仍然和购买时一样好。它需要500元人民币，—当时大约是65美元。

A third leather item is a sheepskin bomber jacket which I had custom-made for me by a factory in Haining – a small city about 1 hour from Shanghai. The jacket is of lambskin, with a removable rabbit fur collar and lining. All my requests and instructions were perfectly incorporated, and the workmanship was just excellent, with many small high-quality details and many pockets. It is exceptionally warm, impervious to wind and cold. I paid 2,000 RMB (about US$250). A similar jacket in a Western high-end shop would have cost ten times that price.

第三件皮革物品是一件羊皮轰炸机夹克，这是我在海宁的一家工厂为我定制的，这是一个离上海大约1小时车程的小城市。该夹克是羔羊皮，有一个可拆卸的兔皮衣领和衬里。我所有的要求和说明都是完美地结合起来的，工艺非常好，有许多小的高质量的细节和许多口袋。它非常温暖，不受风和寒冷。我付了2000元人民币（约250美元）。在西方高端商店买一件类似的夹克的价格是它的十倍。

按摩院 — Massage Parlors

Massages are deeply integrated into Chinese society and culture, a normal part of a normal day. It necessarily follows that massage parlors are common and plentiful. What does not necessarily follow is that massage parlors in China are precisely (and only) what they purport to be. Massage parlors in most Western countries, and certainly in North America, are seedy establishments with no trained or professional staff, and are most often a front for prostitution. Not so in China. It is very common for anyone, after an exhausting day at work, to go for a full body massage and then have dinner. With friends, two or three of us will often be in the same room, carrying on long conversations during the massage.

按摩深深融入中国社会文化，是正常生活的一部分。由此可见，按摩院是很普遍和丰富的。不必要的是，中国的按摩院正是（也是唯一的）他们所声称的那样。在大多数西方国家，当然也是在北美，按摩院都是没有受过培训或专业的工作人员的破旧场所，而且通常是卖淫的幌子。中国则不是这样。对任何人来说，在一天的工作之后，去做全身按摩，然后吃晚餐是很常见的。和朋友，我们两个或三个经常在同一个房间，在按摩期间进行长时间的交谈。

In most good hotels it is possible to call for a masseuse to one’s room, and this is purely for a professional massage; nothing illicit or untoward takes place. The cost is about US$20. Foot massages are also very popular in China, with many establishments offering these, and costing $10 or less.

在大多数好的酒店里，都可以叫一个按摩师到自己的房间，这纯粹是为了专业的按摩；没有任何非法或不良的事情发生。费用大约是20美元。足部按摩在中国也很受欢迎，许多机构都有提供，售价为10美元或更低。

I recall one news item (on CNN if I recall correctly), stating that a Chinese government office was located on a street “near multiple massage parlors”, taking advantage of public ignorance of the above facts and trying to portray that government department as some kind of sexually-perverted establishment. Not very nice.

我记得有一条新闻（如果我没记错的话，在CNN上）说，一个中国政府办公室位于“靠近多家按摩院”的街道上，利用公众对上述事实的无知，试图把那个政府部门描绘成某种性行为扭曲的机构。不是很好。

英语、坏英语和中国英语 — English, Bad English, and Chinglish

A great many people in China speak English acceptably well, many being perfectly fluent. But equally, there are still many who do not, sometimes with humorous results in signage and other things. I frequently encounter charming expressions that are worthy of cataloguing, and there are the signs containing fractured English which I sometimes enjoy sending to friends. With some of these, it is easy to understand how the error was made. Like the sign at an airport that directs ‘inconvenient passengers’ to a particular place.

很多中国人的英语说得很好，许多人都非常流利。但同样地，也有许多人没有，有时在标牌和其他事情上有幽默的结果。我经常遇到值得编目的迷人的表情，还有一些包含破碎的英语的符号，有时我喜欢寄给朋友。有了其中的一些错误，我们就很容易理解这个错误是如何产生的。比如在机场上指示“不方便的乘客”前往特定地点的标志。

Some of the errors are simple spelling mistakes, like the door in a hotel that said ‘STUFF ONLY’ instead of ‘STAFF ONLY. Sometimes the meaning can be incomprehensible, like the sign that tells you to ‘close the door omnivorously’. Often, this happens where someone with a dictionary finds a meaning represented by many different words and has no way of knowing which words are in common usage for that meaning. Like the shop named ‘Unsightly and Peculiar’, or the ‘Very Suspicious’ supermarket. I imagine the first shop wanted to refer to odd or unusual things you don’t see very often. I can’t imagine what the ‘suspicious’ was. And if ‘complimentary’ means ‘free’, then ‘uncomplimentary’ must mean you have to pay.

有些错误是简单的拼写错误，比如酒店的门上写着“只有东西”而不是“只写员工”。有时它的意思可能是难以理解的，比如那个告诉你“彻底关门”的标志。通常，这种情况发生在一个有字典的人发现了一个由许多不同的单词所代表的意思，而无法知道哪些单词是这个意思的共同用法。比如一家名为“难看而奇特”的商店，或者一家“非常可疑”的超市。我想第一家商店想指一些你不经常看到的奇怪或不寻常的东西。我无法想象这个“可疑的”是什么。如果“免费”意味着“免费”，那么“不免费”就意味着你必须付钱。

But all these are merely errors with a foreign language. True Chinglish is a literary treasure that deserves to be ensconced as a UN Heritage Language, catalogued, and preserved. It is not only delightful but possesses a persistent charm all its own, with expressions like “I will back soon”, or “We will always together”.

但所有这些都只是一门外语上的错误。真正的中国英语是一种文学财富，值得作为一种联合国遗产语言加以保存，并被编目和保存。它不仅令人愉快，而且还拥有一种持久的魅力，比如“我很快就会回来”或“我们将永远在一起”。

一个关于中国菜的说明 — A Note on Chinese Food

China has the largest collection of different foods of any nation in the world. There must be at least hundreds of thousands of different Chinese dishes. Each province has dishes unique to that province, as does each major city. But within those locations, the number of different foods is too large to even contemplate counting. And these dishes are either totally different from all others, or are prepared so differently they bear little or no resemblance to a similar food in another location.

中国拥有世界上不同食品收藏量最多的国家。必须至少有数十万种不同的中国菜。每个省都有该省特有的菜肴，每个主要城市都有。但在这些地方，不同食物的数量太大了，甚至无法考虑计数。这些菜要么与其他菜完全不同，要么做得非常不同，与其他地方的类似食物几乎没有相似之处。

One of the sad things about living in a large city is that restaurants and bakeries disappear with a disappointing frequency. I have so often discovered a dish in a restaurant that was so delicious I would want to continue eating even if I was already too full. But the next week I discover that the restaurant has either closed its doors or moved somewhere, or changed the chef, and the search begins again.

生活在大城市的一个悲哀的事情是，餐馆和面包店消失的频率令人失望。我经常在餐馆里发现一道非常美味的菜，即使我已经吃饱了，我也会想继续吃下去。但下周，我发现这家餐厅要么关门了，要么搬到了某个地方，要么换了厨师，于是搜索又开始了。

市民假日 — Civic holiday

As something that would never occur in the West, Shanghai occasionally has an unexpected civic holiday. On one occasion, there was a huge conference in the city on a Wednesday, and the local government thought the traffic problems might prevent too many people from getting to work on time, so it declared a holiday. For this, most companies had their people work on the prior weekend – Saturday and Sunday – and take off two days after the Wednesday holiday. Thus, everyone worked through to Tuesday evening, then were free until the next Monday morning, the four-day weekend to compensate for the prior working days. Great idea.

作为在西方永远不会发生的事情，上海偶尔会有一个意想不到的公民节日。有一次，周三在该市举行了一个大型会议，当地政府认为交通问题可能会阻止太多的人按时上班，所以它宣布去度假。为此，大多数公司都让员工在前一个周末——周六和周日工作，并在周三假期后的两天内休假。因此，每个人都一直工作到周二晚上，然后就可以自由工作到下一个周一早上，即为期四天的周末，以补偿之前的工作日。好主意。

在中国什么也没什么好笑的 — Nothing is Funny in China

Well, that’s not really true. Chinese people smile and laugh as much as any other, but what is true is that there seems to be no word in Chinese for ‘funny’ or ‘humorous’. I’ve asked many friends and received many answers (all different), none of which reflect the exact sentiment in English. People often use a word that means ‘interesting’, and there are apparently many words that might mean ‘amusing’, but they vary much by the specific situation.

这并不是真的。中国人和其他人一样会笑，但事实是，汉语中似乎没有关于“有趣”或“幽默”的词。我问过很多朋友，收到了很多答案（都不同），没有一个反映出确切的英语情绪。人们经常使用一个意思是“有趣”的词，显然有很多词可能意味着“有趣”，但它们因具体情况有很大不同。

我的新阿姨 — My new Ayi

I have had multiple housekeepers during my years in China, but one in particular stands out in my mind. If Rembrandt had been there to paint a picture of her, he would have called it “A study in slow motion”. Being paid by the hour had a particular meaning for this woman, her work magically expanding to fill all the time she planned on being paid for.

在中国的这些年里，我有过多个管家，但在我的脑海中特别突出。如果伦勃朗在那里给她画了一幅画，他会称之为“慢动作的研究”。对这个女人来说，按小时支付有一个特殊的意义，她的工作神奇地扩大，以填补她计划支付的所有时间。

It was particularly irritating to watch her iron my shirts. Eventually my patience wore a bit thin, and I suggested 5 minutes was more than enough for one short-sleeved shirt. She argued eloquently that she needed at least 10 minutes, but she didn’t know that a surprise awaited her. I took the iron from her hand, laid out a damp shirt, and showed her that it could be ironed in two minutes flat. Big surprise. She had no idea I knew how to iron a shirt. Demonstration followed by a brooding silence, then shirts done in less than 5 minutes.

看着她熨烫我的衬衫，真是特别令人恼火。最后，我的耐心有点不足了，我觉得5分钟只需穿一件短袖衬衫就足够了。她雄辩地争辩说，她至少需要10分钟，但她不知道等待她的是一个惊喜。我从她手里拿过铁，放下一件湿衬衫，让她看两分钟内就可以平熨烫了。大惊喜。她不知道我知道怎么熨一件衬衫。示威之后是沉思的沉默，然后在不到5分钟内完成了衬衫

Well, not all silence. She grumbled quite a lot, actually. And on the way out, she informed me that many of her friends also worked for foreigners and were paid 10 RMB per shirt. But, if I recall correctly, she was being paid only 15 RMB per hour, which was a good salary at the time, about the same as a new university graduate might obtain. Had I agreed to her proposition, her shirt-ironing would have jumped from 3 to 30 per hour. I sadly had to inform her that her ‘flat rate’ was 5 minutes.

好吧，不是所有的沉默。事实上，她经常抱怨。在出去的路上，她告诉我，她的许多朋友也为外国人工作，每件衬衫的工资是10元。但是，如果我没记错的话，她每小时只有15元人民币，这在当时是一个不错的薪水，和一个新大学毕业生的薪水差不多。如果我同意她的提议，她的衬衫熨烫量会从每小时3增加到30个。我很遗憾地告诉她，她的“固定费率”是5分钟。

上海电话簿 — Shanghai Telephone Book

Most Western countries today have ceased publishing telephone books because of the Internet, but this is really a quite recent development. The books contained your full name, address, and phone number, for all businesses as well as individuals and, for all the prior decades, a phone book was an indispensable reference resource in the West, certainly in North America.

今天，大多数西方国家已经停止出版电话簿，但这确实是一个最近的发展。这些书包含了你的全名、地址和电话号码，为所有的企业和个人服务，在过去的几十年里，电话簿是西方不可或缺的参考资源，当然也是在北美。

To my best knowledge, China has never had any telephone books, and it certainly has none today. No White Pages, no Yellow Pages. No nothing. How, you may ask, was that possible? Well, let’s think of Shanghai alone, with a population nearly as large as Canada. If we were to collect all the telephone books from every city, town and village in Canada and stack them on top of each other, we would have a book perhaps two meters in height. Now, imagine that you are in Shanghai and that all the people listed in that book are named Wang or Chen. Now, find your friend.

据我所知，中国从来没有任何电话簿，今天当然也没有。没有白页，也没有黄页。什么都没有。你可能会问，这是怎么可能的吗？好吧，让我们单独想想上海，其人口几乎和加拿大一样多。如果我们从加拿大的每个城市、城镇和村庄收集所有的电话簿，然后堆叠在一起，我们就会有一本大约两米高的书。现在，想象一下你在上海，那本书中列出的所有人都叫王或陈。现在，找到你的朋友。

中国没有肥胖 — China has no Obesity

One of the strongest impressions I receive whenever I travel to North America (especially the US, but also Canada), is the sight of so many obese people everywhere. And this is not slightly overweight; it is one person containing the bulk of two or even three people. China has none of that. Anywhere in China, I see almost no one who is overweight. Some mothers and grandmothers force-feed their children because they believe that being a bit chubby is healthy and a sign of prosperity but, aside from the occasional chubby kid, we could say there are no fat people anywhere in China. In a normal month in Shanghai, I would not see even one fat person. I cannot know for certain, but I believe it’s the diet. Chinese food is healthy, and the Chinese do not eat the packaged foods that are ubiquitous in the West.

每当我去北美（尤其是美国，还有加拿大），我最强烈的印象之一就是各地都有这么多肥胖者。这并不是轻微超重；一个人有两个甚至三个人。中国根本没有拥有这些东西。在中国的任何地方，我几乎看不到体重超标的人。一些母亲和祖母强迫他们的孩子，因为他们相信有点胖乎乎是健康的，是繁荣的标志，但是，除了偶尔胖乎乎的孩子，我们可以说在中国任何地方都没有胖的人。在上海的一个正常的一个月里，我甚至看不到一个胖子。我不能确定，但我相信这是饮食。中国的食品是健康的，而中国人不吃在西方无处不在的包装食品。

Media pundits today blame the obesity on “junk food” like hamburgers, potato chips, soda drinks, and so on, but this accusation is false. As far back as the 1940s and 1950s every kid ate hamburgers and potato chips, drank sodas, and we had no obesity anywhere. The “junk food” diet has not materially changed during my lifetime. The big change in the West was the huge shift to packaged foods that contain (perhaps minute) amounts of large numbers of chemicals. The manufacturers claim that the amount of chemicals in a single package is so small as to be inconsequential. That may be true for one package, but 5 or 6 packages a day for 40 years is a very different computation. And my conviction is that the rampant and extreme obesity is due to these chemicals. I am aware of no other dietary change that could account for it.

今天，媒体专家将肥胖归咎于汉堡包、薯片、苏打水饮料等“垃圾食品”，但这种指控是错误的。早在20世纪40年代和50年代，每个孩子都吃汉堡包和薯片，喝苏打水，我们在任何地方都没有肥胖。在我的一生中，“垃圾食品”的饮食并没有发生实质性的改变。西方国家的巨大变化是向含有（可能是少量）大量化学物质的包装食品的巨大转变。制造商声称，单一包装中的化学物质数量很小，因此无关紧要。这可能对一个包是正确的，但40年每天5或6个包是一个非常不同的计算。我的信念是，猖獗和极端的肥胖是由于这些化学物质。我知道没有其他的饮食变化可以解释这一点。

Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 34 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chap. 2 — Dealing with Demons).

罗曼诺夫的作品已被翻译成34种语言，他的文章发表在30多个国家的150多个外语新闻和政治网站上，以及100多个英语平台上。拉里·罗曼诺夫是一名退休的管理顾问和商人。他曾在国际咨询公司担任高级行政职务，并拥有一家国际进出口业务。他曾是上海复旦大学的客座教授，向高级EMBA课程展示国际事务方面的案例研究。罗曼诺夫先生住在上海，目前正在撰写一系列的十本大致与中国和西方有关的书籍。他是辛西娅·麦金尼的新选集《当中国打喷嚏》的特约作者之一。家伙对付恶魔)。

His full archive can be seen at

他的完整文章库可以在以下看到

https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ + https://www.moonofshanghai.com/

He can be contacted at: 他的联系方式：

2186604556@qq.com

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