我们不是成龙，也别叫我们林书豪

For a long time, playing pickup basketball as an Asian-American guy involved the considerable likelihood that someone would call you Yao Ming.

很长一段时间以来，只要是亚裔美国人打篮球，就有可能会被叫作姚明。

Yao is Asian. You’re Asian. That was the joke.

姚明来自亚洲。你也来自亚洲。这就是笑点了。

That formulation began to fade, though, about four years ago, when Jeremy Lin, a Taiwanese-American point guard from Palo Alto, Calif., playing at the time for the Knicks, became a household name in a blinding, monthlong metamorphosis still referred to today as Linsanity.

尽管如此，大约四年前，这种表达方式开始消失，当时来自加利福尼亚州帕洛阿尔托的台湾裔美国控球后卫、纽约尼克斯队球员林书豪(Jeremy Lin)，一夜之间成了家喻户晓的人物，他在那一个月的表现，至今仍然被称为“林来疯”(Linsanity)。

I felt things shift about two weeks into his rise. I was covering spring training baseball in Port St. Lucie, Fla., that month for The New York Times. One afternoon, I drove to a public basketball court to find a game.

在他崛起的大约两周之后，我就感到事情在发生变化。当时我在弗洛拉港的圣露西港为《纽约时报》报道篮球春训。一天下午，我开车去一个公共篮球场打场比赛。

“Jeremy Lin is here,” someone announced.

“林书豪来了，”有人宣布。

At one point, I caught a pass on the move, juked to my left, then hopped to the basket for a layup.

有一次我接球向左做了个假动作，然后起跳上篮。

“He’s nice like Lin, too,” somebody joked.

“他也像林书豪一样棒，”有人开玩笑。

This is how it’s going to be now, I guessed. And I was right: Weeks later, back home in Manhattan, I held the door open for a man at a bank, and instead of saying thank you — the two-word phrase we’re conditioned to expect in that situation — he looked at me and said, “Jeremy Lin.”

我猜，这种情况现在就会持续下去了。我没猜错：几周后，我回到曼哈顿，在一个银行里，我帮一个男人拉了一下门，他没有说出这种情况下通常会用的那两个词——“thank you”(谢谢)，他看着我说，“Jeremy Lin”。

It’s common as an Asian-American to feel like an unwilling participant in society’s lazy word association game: See someone Asian, say something Asian.

亚裔美国人常常觉得很不乐意，不得不参与这个社会的代用词游戏：看到一个亚裔人士，就说点关于亚洲的事情。

An absence of reference points for Asian identity in popular culture has helped create a perpetual stream of hackneyed encounters, for men and women, children and adults.

在大众文化中缺乏亚裔身份的参考点，已经给男人和女人、儿童和成年人带来了无休止的烦人遭遇。

“In elementary school, it was Jackie Chan,” my friend Daniel Sin, a fellow hoops addict and Korean-American, told me about playing pickup ball. “In high school, it was Yao Ming. At the gym now, it’s Jeremy Lin. When it first happened, around Linsanity, I thought: Nice. At least I’m a guard now.”

“在小学的时候，大家说的是成龙，”我的朋友丹尼尔·申(Daniel Sin)说，他是韩裔美国人，也是篮球迷，他跟我讲起平时打球的事。“在高中，大家说你是姚明。现在在健身房，大家说你是林书豪。林来疯时期第一次出现这种事的时候，我想：还不错。至少现在我是后卫了。”

Lin has returned to the public eye here in New York as he prepares to begin his first season as a member of the Nets. His narrative continues to resonate with Asian-Americans, in part, because of the way his skin color has shaped the substance of his life.

在首次作为布鲁克林篮网队球员备战新赛季期间，林书豪再度成为纽约的公众人物。他的讲述一再引起亚裔美国人的共鸣，部分原因是他的肤色影响了他的实际生活。

During a talk at the New Yorker festival this month, Lin recalled that as a little-known high school basketball player he dreaded the moments before games when he knew he’d hear those familiar taunts from people in the stands: “Yao Ming, Yao Ming.”

在本月纽约客节(New Yorker festival)的一次座谈中，他回忆说，作为一个不知名的高中篮球运动员，他在比赛前有时候会感到害怕，他知道自己将会听到观众席上那些熟悉的嘲讽声：“姚明，姚明。”

Nicknames on a court, of course, can be wielded with affection or respect, and rhetorical sparring can be one of basketball’s auxiliary pleasures.

当然，在球场上的昵称也可能是在表达喜爱或尊重，虚夸的骂战也可以是篮球运动的附带乐趣。

But as Ren Hsieh, the Taiwanese-American commissioner of the Dynasty League, a recreational basketball organization in Chinatown, pointed out, the intent of words is usually pretty clear. “I’m a 5-foot-9 point guard,” Hsieh said, laughing. “If you call me Yao Ming, I know what you’re saying.”

但正如华埠康乐篮球组织皇朝联赛(Dynasty League)负责人、台湾裔美国人谢仁(音)所说，这种说法的意图通常是很清楚的。“我是一个5英尺9英寸(约合1.75米)高的控卫，”谢仁笑着说。“如果你叫我姚明，我知道你是什么意思。”

Lin may be too famous today for those proper-noun taunts. But he remains a magnet for abuse.

林书豪的名气可能已经大到不适用那些使用专名的嘲讽了。但他仍然是很多言语羞辱的对象。

“Even now, to this day, you go to N.B.A. arenas, guys will say racist things, ‘chicken lo mein’ or whatever, which is a really good dish, by the way, but I don’t like being called that,” Lin said at the New Yorker event.

“即使是现在，到了今天，你去NBA赛场，还是有人会说种族主义言论，‘鸡肉捞面’之类的，鸡肉捞面很好吃，但我不喜欢别人管我叫这个，”林书豪在纽约的座谈中说。

Likewise: Jeremy Lin is a good player, but we don’t like being called that.

同样：林书豪也是一个很好的球员，但我们不喜欢被叫做林书豪。

Eddie Huang, the Taiwanese-American chef, writer, and television host, recalled an interaction three years ago, on St. Patrick’s Day, in which a group of men emerged from a bar near his restaurant on 14th Street and shouted to him, “Yo, Jeremy Lin.” Huang felt tempted to throw a punch before checking himself.

台湾裔美国名厨、作家、电视节目主持人黄颐铭(Eddie Huang)回忆起了三年前的圣帕特里克节的经历。一群男子走出他第14街上的餐厅旁边的一家酒吧，朝他喊，“喂，林书豪。”他想给他们一拳，但后来克制住了。

“I don’t want nobody calling me Jeremy because it reminds me of being called Long Duk Dong or reminds me of being called things like Jackie when I was a kid,” Huang said. “I don’t like that. I’m Eddie Huang, you know what I mean?”

“我不想被人叫林书豪，因为这让我想起小时候被人叫Long Duk Dong或成龙，”黄颐铭说。“我不喜欢这样。我是黄颐铭，你懂我的意思吧?”

This was the landscape of Linsanity. Along with whatever euphoria Lin’s unexpected success engendered among Asians, we remember, too, all the residual messiness as people around us betrayed an inability, or a lack of desire, to treat him with basic decency.

林来疯也是这种情况。在林书豪出人意料的成功让亚裔兴高采烈的同时，我们也记得身边的人暴露出无法或不愿以基本的礼貌对待他。

As his name was added to the shortlist of famous Asian people invoked in racist taunts, it was an uncomfortable evidence again of the dearth of Asian representation in media and popular culture.

当他的名字被列入引发种族歧视奚落的亚裔名人名单时，这是另一个令人不安的证据，表明媒体和流行文化中缺乏亚裔代表。

I started covering the N.B.A. for this newspaper a year and a half after Linsanity — Lin was playing for the Houston Rockets at that point — and it took precisely three games for a stranger at an arena to call me Jeremy Lin.

我开始为本报报道NBA新闻时，林来疯现象已经过去了一年半——那时，林书豪已效力于休斯顿火箭队——三场比赛下来，已经有陌生人在球场管我叫林书豪了。

I was leaving the visitors’ locker room that night in Orlando, where the Magic had just hosted the Nets. A big crowd of autograph seekers perked up as they sensed me approaching and deflated again when they realized who it was.

那天晚上在奥兰多，魔术队主场对阵篮网队的比赛刚结束。我正离开客队更衣室，一大群索要签名的人在感觉到我向他们走去后很是振奋，但很快他们意识到我是谁，于是又泄了气。

But a second or two later, there it was: “It’s Jeremy Lin!” someone yelled, making the crowd laugh.

但过了一两秒钟，有人喊道：“是林书豪!”人群发出了笑声。

“That’s racist,” I said, halfheartedly.

“这是种族歧视，”我冷冷地说。

“He said, ‘That’s racist!’ ” someone said, and everyone laughed again.

“他说，‘这是种族歧视!’”有人说。大家再次笑了起来。

(This is as good a time as any to write: If you think Lin and I look alike, you may be the type of person who thinks all Asian people look alike.)

(这句话怎么说都不嫌多：如果你觉得我和林书豪长得像，那你大概就是那种认为所有亚洲人看起来都一样的人。)

A few weeks later, I walked into the Nets’ locker room in Houston as they dressed to play the Rockets. Lin was on the injured list for Houston that night. Seeing me, one Nets player could not resist: “I thought Jeremy Lin was out tonight,” he said, feigning surprise.

几周后在休斯顿，当我走进篮网队的更衣室时，他们正在换衣服，准备对阵火箭队。当晚，林书豪在篮网队的伤员名单中。看到我的时候，篮网队的一名球员没忍住：“我以为林书豪今天晚上不上场呢，”他假装惊讶地说。

I gave the player an incredulous stare. He broke the silence. “You aren’t going to tweet about that are you?” he said, suddenly serious.

我难以置信地盯着那名球员。他打破了沉默。“你不会发推说这件事的，对吧?”他说，突然严肃了起来。

Racism has far more dire consequences than asinine name-calling, but it will serve always as a barefaced reminder of the extent to which we remain alien in people’s minds.

种族歧视的影响远比乱叫名字更严重，但它永远都可以作为一个毫无遮拦的提醒，让我们知道自己在人们心中依然多么格格不入。

Respite from this, realistically, feels far-off.

实事求是地说，这种现象的缓解感觉遥遥无期。

So you stare ahead. You laugh things off. You don’t lash out because do you really want to spend your days lashing out?

于是你目视前方。一笑了之。你不会破口大骂，因为你真的愿意把时间花在破口大骂上吗?

You wait for another Yao Ming, another Jeremy Lin, and another, and another, until maybe the names begin to lose their meaning.

你要等着另一个姚明，另一个林书豪，另一个，另一个，直到这些名字开始失去它们的意义。