跨國領(lǐng)養(yǎng)與身份認(rèn)同
“她們知道自己是被領(lǐng)養(yǎng)的嗎?”有八年時間，我們這個奇特的家庭——一個步入老年的美國白人母親與兩個異常年幼的漂亮亞裔養(yǎng)女——生活在一個曾遺棄了她們的國家：中國。那些年里，我遇到的中國出租車司機(jī)、修腳師傅、環(huán)衛(wèi)工人都忍不住問我，兩個孩子是否知道我不是她們的親生母親。
Even the old Shanghainese lady eating Swedish meatballs in the Ikea cafeteria in Shanghai had to have the whole story of their lives — abandoned at birth, on a Chinese roadside, in winter, adopted by a single parent in her mid-forties, taken to live in Shanghai at age seven and eight — before she could get on with her supper. Always, the questions came sotto voce, in case the children had perhaps not noticed up to then that their hair was straight and black while mine was curly and grey, and our skin tones could not possibly have been produced by the same gene pool. Cross-racial adoption isn’t the kind of thing that anyone can keep secret for long, but most of China seemed willing to believe that I had somehow managed it.
甚至在上海宜家(Ikea)的餐廳享用瑞典肉丸的上海老婦人都想了解她們生命的全部故事——出生即遭遺棄在中國的馬路邊，那是個冬天，被一個40多左右的單身母親收養(yǎng)，七八歲的時候被帶到上海生活——聽完之后她才能接著享用自己的晚餐。提問者總是說得很小聲，似乎就怕孩子們那時還沒有注意到自己的頭發(fā)是直的、黑的，而我的頭發(fā)是卷曲、灰色的，我們的膚色也不可能來自同一血統(tǒng)?？绶N族收養(yǎng)這事兒誰也不可能瞞多久，但多數(shù)中國人似乎愿意相信我成功做到了這一點(diǎn)。
Families like ours may look different but we are far from unique: everyone seems to know somebody who at least knows somebody who adopted a child of a different race. China alone sent well over 100,000 children, most of them girls, into overseas adoptions, mostly in the first decade of this century.
我們這樣的家庭可能看起來特殊，但遠(yuǎn)非罕見：每個人似乎都有某個熟人的熟人領(lǐng)養(yǎng)了一個不同種族的孩子。僅中國就送出了10多萬兒童(大部分是女孩)給外國人收養(yǎng)——大多數(shù)發(fā)生在本世紀(jì)頭10年。
These children — my daughters, Grace, 18, Lucy, 16, and babies like them, left on their own Chinese roadsides — are a unique accident of history, part of one of the world’s biggest baby migrations. Now they are coming of age, in parallel with the country that could not raise them. In the course of their lifetime, China’s fortunes have been transformed: from a nation so poor it had to export babies to an economic hyperpower. China’s orphans straddle that divide. But bridging that gap — in their hearts, in their families, and in the societies that raised them — is no small challenge. Grace and Lucy are always presumed Chinese until proven otherwise: in America, they are constantly complimented for how well they speak English, even though it is their native language; in China, they are expected to speak Mandarin perfectly, though for them it is a foreign tongue.
這些孩子——包括我那兩個一出生就被遺棄在中國某處路邊的兩個女兒，如今已經(jīng)18歲的格雷絲(Grace)和16歲的露西(Lucy)——是歷史上的一場獨(dú)特意外，是世界最大規(guī)模的一場嬰兒移民的一部分。如今，她們已經(jīng)長大成人，那個遺棄了她們的國家也日漸強(qiáng)盛。在她們成長的過程中，中國的命運(yùn)已經(jīng)徹底改變：從一個窮到不得不將嬰兒送給外國人撫養(yǎng)的國家，變成了一個經(jīng)濟(jì)超級大國。中國的孤兒們橫跨在這一鴻溝之上。但是，彌合這一鴻溝——存在于她們的內(nèi)心、家庭以及養(yǎng)育她們的社會——是一項(xiàng)相當(dāng)大的挑戰(zhàn)。格雷絲和露西總是被認(rèn)為是中國人，直至事實(shí)證明不然：在美國，她們經(jīng)常被夸贊英語說得太好了，雖然這是她們的母語;在中國，人們期望她們說一口流利的普通話，雖然普通話對她們來說是一門外語。
They constantly surprise people, and sometimes disappoint them, because they do not look like what they are. Are they American? Or Chinese? Or both? Or neither? Who wants to delve into such existential questions, over Shanghainese Swedish meatballs, or over Starbucks? But in a world where the boundaries of identity, race and culture increasingly go wonky in many families, these questions aren’t easily ignored. We can’t just pretend we all look alike. Even if we did, the rest of the world might not buy it — especially at a time when race and immigration are as contentious as I remember in my lifetime.
她們總是讓外人大吃一驚，有時也會令他們失望，因?yàn)樗齻兯坪?ldquo;表里不一”。她們是美國人?還是中國人?兩者皆是?還是兩者皆非?誰會想在吃上海宜家里的瑞典肉丸或喝星巴克(Starbucks)的時候，探究這些關(guān)乎一個人存在之本的問題呀?但在一個身份、種族、文化的邊界在許多家庭里越來越曖昧不明的世界，這些問題無法被輕而易舉地忽略。我們無法假裝我們有相似的長相。即使我們這樣做，世界其他地區(qū)的人或許也不會買賬——尤其是在種族和移民成為我有記憶以來最具爭議話題的時候。
So, about 10 years ago, I had the bright idea that moving my children to China would help them answer these questions once they got older. I had thought long and hard before adopting children of a different race, knowing that at the heart of every Chinese adoption is a tragedy beyond measure. I knew that in the moment they were placed in my grateful arms, they would gain a mother who would always adore them — but they would lose another mother whose breasts still leaked milk for them on the day they were abandoned.
因此，大約10年前，我靈機(jī)一動想到：讓孩子們回中國居住，可以在她們大一點(diǎn)的時候幫助她們回答這些問題。在收養(yǎng)異族孩子之前，我曾長時間地認(rèn)真思考過，我知道每一個被領(lǐng)養(yǎng)的中國孩子，背后都有一個莫大的悲劇。我知道，當(dāng)她們被放入我心懷感激的臂彎里時，她們會得到一位永遠(yuǎn)愛她們的母親——但她們將失去另一位在她們被遺棄之際仍為她們流著乳汁的母親。
I thought it was possible they would lose more than I could ever replace just by loving them. Brothers and sisters, ancient ancestors, all stripped off the family tree fractured by their abandonment. Name, birth date, nationality, ethnic identity, and family medical history, all gone, along with even the faintest memory of the past, the culture, the history they were born with.
我當(dāng)時想到，我的愛能夠給予她們的，可能永遠(yuǎn)都無法彌補(bǔ)她們失去的東西。在被遺棄的那一刻，她們的“家庭樹”就被折斷了，她們失去了兄弟姐妹、祖宗先人。姓名、出生日期、國籍、民族以及家族病史，連同對過去、文化和歷史與生俱來的記憶，都消失得一干二凈。
We moved to China in 2008 to try to make up for all that. So that two Chinese infants who became accidental Americans in the instant of their adoption could get the Orient deep into their bones. So that their white mother could restore to them at least a shred of their cultural identity.
我們在2008年搬到了中國，以圖彌補(bǔ)這一切。這樣，兩名在被領(lǐng)養(yǎng)時意外成為美國人的中國嬰兒，可以弄懂蘊(yùn)含在她們血液里的東方文化。這樣，她們的白人母親至少可以幫助她們恢復(fù)對自己文化的一點(diǎn)點(diǎn)認(rèn)同。
I went at the familial cultural revolution project with a vengeance, determined to introduce Grace and Lucy to “the real China” — by which I apparently meant: China with all its cultural differences from the west on maximum display. On school holidays, when their international school classmates went to Bali or Paris, I dragged Grace and Lucy off to a town in southern China where every restaurant only sold dog meat. By that time, most of the rest of China had given up eating canines but I found the one place where dog was still a delicacy, and paraded Lucy past the wok full of simmering puppy paws at the door, to a table of brown dog hotpot. Grace, thinking of our own brown puppy, Dumpling, refused to come inside. The things I did, in the name of acculturation.
我發(fā)起了一場大規(guī)模的“家庭文化革命”，決心將“真實(shí)的中國”介紹給格雷絲和露西——我的意思當(dāng)然是：在最大程度上展示中國與西方的文化差異。學(xué)校放假期間，當(dāng)她們的國際學(xué)校同學(xué)去巴厘島或巴黎旅行時，我?guī)е窭捉z和露西去了中國南方的一個小鎮(zhèn)，那里的每家餐館只賣狗肉。那個時候，中國其他地方大都已經(jīng)放棄吃狗肉，但我找到了這個仍視狗肉為美味的地方;我?guī)е段髯哌^餐館門口一口燉著滿滿一鍋小狗爪子的大鍋，走向一個擺放著棕色狗肉火鍋的桌子。想起我們家名叫“餃子”(Dumpling)的棕色小狗，格雷絲拒絕進(jìn)屋。我以“文化適應(yīng)”為名都做了些什么呀。
We visited their Chinese hometowns on multiple occasions, guests of the Chinese government, which threw lavish “welcome home” parties for overseas adoptees, to expiate the cultural shame of having had to send them overseas in the first place. Grace came back from Yangzhou, her mainland hometown, laden with a pink teddy bear bigger than she was — and with memories of visiting her orphanage in the company of former cotmates who now live with their adoptive families in America. Lucy’s orphanage director waltzed her through the “social welfare institute” that she called home for the first year of her life, under a vast LED screen that proclaimed her welcome.
我們多次作為政府的客人到訪她們在中國的家鄉(xiāng)，當(dāng)?shù)卣疄楸凰屯Ｍ饨邮茴I(lǐng)養(yǎng)的孩子舉行了“歡迎回家”的盛會，以“彌補(bǔ)”先前不得不把她們送到海外的文化愧疚。格雷絲從她的家鄉(xiāng)揚(yáng)州回來，帶著一只比她本人還大的粉紅色泰迪熊，還有與其他被美國家庭收養(yǎng)的小伙伴一起參觀幼時所待過的孤兒院的記憶。露西所在的孤兒院的院長帶她參觀了這個她生命頭一年時間里稱為家的社會福利院，一塊巨大的LED屏播放著熱烈歡迎的字樣。
I anxiously interrogated them from time to time, as to how all this was sitting with their psyche. But, maybe because adoption has always been such an obvious fact of life for them, they professed not to give a hoot about it. They cared that I was old enough to be their grandmother, they cared a bit that they had no father, but adoption, and by a white person? They considered that normal: after all, many of their best friends were cross-racially adopted.
我時而焦慮地問她們，她們在內(nèi)心如何對待這一切。但或許因?yàn)轭I(lǐng)養(yǎng)一直是她們生活中一個如此顯而易見的事實(shí)，她們明確表示不會對此大驚小怪。她們在意我的年齡大到可以當(dāng)她們的祖母了，她們有點(diǎn)在意自己沒有父親，但是領(lǐng)養(yǎng)，而且是被一個白人領(lǐng)養(yǎng)呢?她們認(rèn)為這是正常的：畢竟，她們的許多好朋友也都是跨種族領(lǐng)養(yǎng)的。
The only thing Grace and Lucy didn’t like about adoption was the fact that other people seemed to find it strange. On their first day at their bilingual Chinese-British school in Shanghai, the teacher asked where each kid was from. “The other kids were saying, ‘Half Chinese and half Finnish’ or whatever, and they got to me, and I said, ‘I dunno, Chinese-American-adopted sort of, I guess?’?” said Lucy. “Everyone was like, ‘OK, that’s a bit weird,’ and moved on to the next, who just said ‘French’. It was like there was supposed to be one right answer, but I didn’t know what it was.”
關(guān)于領(lǐng)養(yǎng)，格雷絲和露西唯一不喜歡的一點(diǎn)是：其他人似乎把這當(dāng)成一件奇怪的事。她們到上海一家中英雙語學(xué)校上學(xué)的第一天，老師問每個孩子來自哪里。“其他的孩子說，‘一半來自中國，一半來自芬蘭’之類的，輪到我了，我說，‘我不知道，可以說是被領(lǐng)養(yǎng)的華裔美國人，我猜?’”露西說，“每個人的反應(yīng)都是，‘嗯，這有點(diǎn)奇怪，’然后又轉(zhuǎn)到下一個小朋友，說自己就是‘法國人’。就好像應(yīng)該有一個正確答案，但我不知道那個答案是什么。”
And now we are back in the American Midwest, my original home, as the girls finish high school in a place that is, appropriately, anything but lily-white. We got back just in time for the election of a president, who is certainly no fan of the kind of colour-blind American future that would make my children welcome.
現(xiàn)在，我們又回到了美國中西部，這里是我的家鄉(xiāng)，女孩們在一個絕對不是“純白”的地方完成了高中學(xué)業(yè)。我們回來時正好趕上總統(tǒng)選舉，選出的這位總統(tǒng)肯定不喜歡美國變成一個多膚色、讓生活其中的我的孩子們感到受歡迎的地方。
As they prepare for 2018 — a year in which Grace will go away to college and Lucy will apply to do the same — they are facing questions such as whether to admit to being Asian on college applications. Both girls have heard that there’s a bias against Asian students, especially in the better universities. With names like Grace and Lucy Waldmeir, they can assume the cultural mantle when it suits them — and shrug it off when it does not. But both of them are quite sure about one thing: they decided to write their college essays about returning to China last summer to volunteer at an orphanage. They know a good cultural sob story when they see one.
在準(zhǔn)備迎接2018年時——格雷絲將在這一年離家去上大學(xué)，露西也將申請大學(xué)——她們面臨著諸多問題，比如在申請大學(xué)時是否承認(rèn)自己是亞洲人。兩個女孩都聽說過美國存在對亞洲學(xué)生的偏見，尤其是較好的大學(xué)。頭頂格雷絲、露西•沃爾德邁爾(Lucy Waldmeir)這樣的名字，她們可以在這樣做有利的時候作亞洲人，在不利的時候就卸下這層文化身份。但是她倆都對一件事很確定：她們決定自己的大學(xué)論文要寫關(guān)于去年夏天回中國、在孤兒院當(dāng)志愿者的事情。她們一眼就能看出這是一個感人的、有文化背景的好故事。
So how did our cultural revolution work out in the end? Is it possible to teach someone to be Chinese, by carting them off to China and taking them to dog diners? What does it mean to be born into one race and raised by another? Or, for that matter, what does it mean to be Asian-American in the United States today? Or Anything-American? My children are maturing into a two-power world where both sides are ever more virulently attached to their own identity as a nation. Will they feel caught in a no man’s land between duelling nationalisms or stand strongly with a foot in each camp and help the rest of us straddle that divide?
那么，我家的這場“文化革命”最終結(jié)果如何呢?有可能通過把某人帶到中國、去吃狗肉來教他(她)成為中國人嗎?生為一個種族的人、又由另一種族的人撫養(yǎng)成人意味著什么?或者說，在今天的美國當(dāng)一個亞裔(或任何裔)的美國人意味著什么?我的孩子們正在一個有兩個大國的世界中長大，在這個世界里，兩邊都越來越重視自身的國家身份。兩個國家間的民族主義對決是會讓她們左右為難、置身事外，還是會讓她們堅定地盡一己之力幫助我們其他人彌合兩個國家之間的鴻溝呢?
Grace and Lucy have changed their tune on this stuff so often that I’ve lost track. And why shouldn’t they? Identity isn’t a fixed thing, ethnic or any other kind. I can only confidently say that I may never really know how they feel about being Chinese. I just hope they will figure it out, eventually. Maybe that’s why they asked for 23andMe DNA testing kits for Christmas this year and why one daughter announced she wants to tattoo her Chinese name on her ankle in perpetuity. Living in China marked them forever. Coming to terms with Chineseness: that will be the work of a lifetime. But for them, not me.
格雷絲和露西在這方面經(jīng)常變換自己的想法，究竟變過多少次，我都數(shù)不清了。這又怎么能怪她們?身份并不是固定的——無論是民族身份還是其他任何身份。我只能自信地說，我可能永遠(yuǎn)也不會真的知道她們對自己的中國人身份有何感想。我只是希望她們最終能想明白。也許這就是為什么她們要了23andMe DNA檢測工具作為剛剛過去的這個圣誕節(jié)的禮物，以及為什么一個女兒說她想永久地把自己的中文名字紋在腳踝上。在中國生活過在她們身上打下了永久的烙印。學(xué)會跟自己的中國人身份共處：這將是一生的課題——這是對她們而言，而非我。
I’m glad I gave my children access to that Chinese part of themselves (and taught them Mandarin), whether they wanted it or not. I’m even more pleased that I discovered there would always be a Chinese part of me, too. Are we all Americans or Chinese or both or neither? I’m not going to stress about that any more. Perhaps that’s the most fitting end to our unlikely love story: that we all get to be accidental Chinese-Americans together, no matter what we look like.
我很高興我讓我的孩子們接觸到她們作為中國人的那部分自己(并教她們中文)，不管這是否是她們想要的。更讓我高興的是，我發(fā)現(xiàn)，我身上也將永遠(yuǎn)有一部分是中國的。我們都是美國人、還是中國人，還是既是美國人又是中國人，抑或既不是美國人也不是中國人?我不會再糾結(jié)于這個問題了?；蛟S這就是我們這場意外緣分最恰當(dāng)?shù)慕Y(jié)局：不管我們是哪國長相，我們都意外地一道成為了中國-美國人。
Patti Waldmeir is the FT North America correspondent and author of ‘Chinese Lessons: An American Mother Teaches her Children how to be Chinese in China’
楊蓓蓓(Patti Waldmeir)是英國《金融時報》駐北美記者，著有《Chinese Lessons: An American Mother Teaches her Children how to be Chinese in China》
