“她们知道自己是被领养的吗?”有八年时间，我们这个奇特的家庭——一个步入老年的美国白人母亲与两个异常年幼的漂亮亚裔养女——生活在一个曾遗弃了她们的国家：中国。那些年里，我遇到的中国出租车司机、修脚师傅、环卫工人都忍不住问我，两个孩子是否知道我不是她们的亲生母亲。
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)的餐厅享用瑞典肉丸的上海老妇人都想了解她们生命的全部故事——出生即遭遗弃在中国的马路边，那是个冬天，被一个40多左右的单身母亲收养，七八岁的时候被带到上海生活——听完之后她才能接着享用自己的晚餐。提问者总是说得很小声，似乎就怕孩子们那时还没有注意到自己的头发是直的、黑的，而我的头发是卷曲、灰色的，我们的肤色也不可能来自同一血统。跨种族收养这事儿谁也不可能瞒多久，但多数中国人似乎愿意相信我成功做到了这一点。
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.
我们这样的家庭可能看起来特殊，但远非罕见：每个人似乎都有某个熟人的熟人领养了一个不同种族的孩子。仅中国就送出了10多万儿童(大部分是女孩)给外国人收养——大多数发生在本世纪头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.
这些孩子——包括我那两个一出生就被遗弃在中国某处路边的两个女儿，如今已经18岁的格雷丝(Grace)和16岁的露西(Lucy)——是历史上的一场独特意外，是世界最大规模的一场婴儿移民的一部分。如今，她们已经长大成人，那个遗弃了她们的国家也日渐强盛。在她们成长的过程中，中国的命运已经彻底改变：从一个穷到不得不将婴儿送给外国人抚养的国家，变成了一个经济超级大国。中国的孤儿们横跨在这一鸿沟之上。但是，弥合这一鸿沟——存在于她们的内心、家庭以及养育她们的社会——是一项相当大的挑战。格雷丝和露西总是被认为是中国人，直至事实证明不然：在美国，她们经常被夸赞英语说得太好了，虽然这是她们的母语;在中国，人们期望她们说一口流利的普通话，虽然普通话对她们来说是一门外语。
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.
她们总是让外人大吃一惊，有时也会令他们失望，因为她们似乎“表里不一”。她们是美国人?还是中国人?两者皆是?还是两者皆非?谁会想在吃上海宜家里的瑞典肉丸或喝星巴克(Starbucks)的时候，探究这些关乎一个人存在之本的问题呀?但在一个身份、种族、文化的边界在许多家庭里越来越暧昧不明的世界，这些问题无法被轻而易举地忽略。我们无法假装我们有相似的长相。即使我们这样做，世界其他地区的人或许也不会买账——尤其是在种族和移民成为我有记忆以来最具争议话题的时候。
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，大约10年前，我灵机一动想到：让孩子们回中国居住，可以在她们大一点的时候帮助她们回答这些问题。在收养异族孩子之前，我曾长时间地认真思考过，我知道每一个被领养的中国孩子，背后都有一个莫大的悲剧。我知道，当她们被放入我心怀感激的臂弯里时，她们会得到一位永远爱她们的母亲——但她们将失去另一位在她们被遗弃之际仍为她们流着乳汁的母亲。
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.
我当时想到，我的爱能够给予她们的，可能永远都无法弥补她们失去的东西。在被遗弃的那一刻，她们的“家庭树”就被折断了，她们失去了兄弟姐妹、祖宗先人。姓名、出生日期、国籍、民族以及家族病史，连同对过去、文化和历史与生俱来的记忆，都消失得一干二净。
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.
我们在2008年搬到了中国，以图弥补这一切。这样，两名在被领养时意外成为美国人的中国婴儿，可以弄懂蕴含在她们血液里的东方文化。这样，她们的白人母亲至少可以帮助她们恢复对自己文化的一点点认同。
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.
我发起了一场大规模的“家庭文化革命”，决心将“真实的中国”介绍给格雷丝和露西——我的意思当然是：在最大程度上展示中国与西方的文化差异。学校放假期间，当她们的国际学校同学去巴厘岛或巴黎旅行时，我带着格雷丝和露西去了中国南方的一个小镇，那里的每家餐馆只卖狗肉。那个时候，中国其他地方大都已经放弃吃狗肉，但我找到了这个仍视狗肉为美味的地方;我带着露西走过餐馆门口一口炖着满满一锅小狗爪子的大锅，走向一个摆放着棕色狗肉火锅的桌子。想起我们家名叫“饺子”(Dumpling)的棕色小狗，格雷丝拒绝进屋。我以“文化适应”为名都做了些什么呀。
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.
我们多次作为政府的客人到访她们在中国的家乡，当地政府为被送往海外接受领养的孩子举行了“欢迎回家”的盛会，以“弥补”先前不得不把她们送到海外的文化愧疚。格雷丝从她的家乡扬州回来，带着一只比她本人还大的粉红色泰迪熊，还有与其他被美国家庭收养的小伙伴一起参观幼时所待过的孤儿院的记忆。露西所在的孤儿院的院长带她参观了这个她生命头一年时间里称为家的社会福利院，一块巨大的LED屏播放着热烈欢迎的字样。
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.
我时而焦虑地问她们，她们在内心如何对待这一切。但或许因为领养一直是她们生活中一个如此显而易见的事实，她们明确表示不会对此大惊小怪。她们在意我的年龄大到可以当她们的祖母了，她们有点在意自己没有父亲，但是领养，而且是被一个白人领养呢?她们认为这是正常的：毕竟，她们的许多好朋友也都是跨种族领养的。
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.”
关于领养，格雷丝和露西唯一不喜欢的一点是：其他人似乎把这当成一件奇怪的事。她们到上海一家中英双语学校上学的第一天，老师问每个孩子来自哪里。“其他的孩子说，‘一半来自中国，一半来自芬兰’之类的，轮到我了，我说，‘我不知道，可以说是被领养的华裔美国人，我猜?’”露西说，“每个人的反应都是，‘嗯，这有点奇怪，’然后又转到下一个小朋友，说自己就是‘法国人’。就好像应该有一个正确答案，但我不知道那个答案是什么。”
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.
现在，我们又回到了美国中西部，这里是我的家乡，女孩们在一个绝对不是“纯白”的地方完成了高中学业。我们回来时正好赶上总统选举，选出的这位总统肯定不喜欢美国变成一个多肤色、让生活其中的我的孩子们感到受欢迎的地方。
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.
在准备迎接2018年时——格雷丝将在这一年离家去上大学，露西也将申请大学——她们面临着诸多问题，比如在申请大学时是否承认自己是亚洲人。两个女孩都听说过美国存在对亚洲学生的偏见，尤其是较好的大学。头顶格雷丝、露西•沃尔德迈尔(Lucy Waldmeir)这样的名字，她们可以在这样做有利的时候作亚洲人，在不利的时候就卸下这层文化身份。但是她俩都对一件事很确定：她们决定自己的大学论文要写关于去年夏天回中国、在孤儿院当志愿者的事情。她们一眼就能看出这是一个感人的、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，我家的这场“文化革命”最终结果如何呢?有可能通过把某人带到中国、去吃狗肉来教他(她)成为中国人吗?生为一个种族的人、又由另一种族的人抚养成人意味着什么?或者说，在今天的美国当一个亚裔(或任何裔)的美国人意味着什么?我的孩子们正在一个有两个大国的世界中长大，在这个世界里，两边都越来越重视自身的国家身份。两个国家间的民族主义对决是会让她们左右为难、置身事外，还是会让她们坚定地尽一己之力帮助我们其他人弥合两个国家之间的鸿沟呢?
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.
格雷丝和露西在这方面经常变换自己的想法，究竟变过多少次，我都数不清了。这又怎么能怪她们?身份并不是固定的——无论是民族身份还是其他任何身份。我只能自信地说，我可能永远也不会真的知道她们对自己的中国人身份有何感想。我只是希望她们最终能想明白。也许这就是为什么她们要了23andMe DNA检测工具作为刚刚过去的这个圣诞节的礼物，以及为什么一个女儿说她想永久地把自己的中文名字纹在脚踝上。在中国生活过在她们身上打下了永久的烙印。学会跟自己的中国人身份共处：这将是一生的课题——这是对她们而言，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.
我很高兴我让我的孩子们接触到她们作为中国人的那部分自己(并教她们中文)，不管这是否是她们想要的。更让我高兴的是，我发现，我身上也将永远有一部分是中国的。我们都是美国人、还是中国人，还是既是美国人又是中国人，抑或既不是美国人也不是中国人?我不会再纠结于这个问题了。或许这就是我们这场意外缘分最恰当的结局：不管我们是哪国长相，我们都意外地一道成为了中国-美国人。
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’
杨蓓蓓(Patti Waldmeir)是英国《金融时报》驻北美记者，著有《Chinese Lessons: An American Mother Teaches her Children how to be Chinese in China》
