一场讲述“中国如何成为中国”的展览
在讲述史诗方面，谁也比不上大都会艺术博物馆(Metropolitan Museum of Art)。去年春天，它把帕加马带到了纽约，在宏大和微妙之间取得了平衡。它还把中世纪的耶路撒冷空运到了这里，完整地呈现它庞大的多元文化。现在，在“帝国时代：中国古代秦汉文明”(Age of Empires: Chinese Art of the Qin and Han Dynasties[221 B.C.-A.D. 220])展览中，它以宏大的画面向我们展示中国成为中国的过程，如同生活一样奇特而温暖。
We love life, of course, all the details: sparrows in the forsythia; books and lamps and late-night coffee; the voice of a friend on the phone. The ancient Chinese loved it, too, and wanted it to last forever. China’s first emperor believed it might.
我们当然热爱生活，热爱它的所有细节：连翘枝头的麻雀;书籍、台灯和深夜的咖啡;电话里一位朋友的声音。中国古代人也热爱生活，想让它永远继续下去。中国的第一位皇帝相信那是有可能的。
He viewed death as a kind of power nap, from which he’d awake refreshed in a tomb that was like an earthly home, but better, more fun. He designed his mausoleum as an underground Mar-a-Lago, with countless pavilions, great feng shui and a major security force. For light, there were candles, the most expensive money could buy, guaranteed to keep burning after he’d moved in — he died in 210 B.C. — and the doors had shut for the last time.
他将死亡视为一种恢复力量的小睡，自己会在陵墓中醒来，充满活力。他的坟墓和尘世的家一样，只不过更好、更有趣。他把自己的陵墓设计得好像一座地下马阿拉歌庄园(Mar-a-Lago)，拥有无数的亭台、极佳的风水和强大的武装力量。至于照明，它用的是蜡烛，那是当时能买到的最昂贵的照明工具，保证在他搬进去之后能一直燃烧。他死于公元前210年，那时，陵墓的门最后一次被关上。
Those lights are still burning in the Met’s hypnotic, glow-in-the-dark exhibition of 160 objects from 32 museums in China, which opens on Monday. Of the museum’s several presentations of Chinese antiquities over the past 20 years, this one is probably the most dramatic visually and the most accessible emotionally. There’s a certain amount of the type of art the Met is too comfortable with: imperial bling. But here even this material feels purposeful, because it dates from a time in China when the idea of empire and corporate branding through art was experimental.
在周一开幕的大都会博物馆的这场展览上，黑暗中闪烁着光芒，令人如痴如醉，展出的160件物品来自中国的32家博物馆。在过去20年里该博物馆对中国古代文物的几次展览中，这一次很可能是视觉上最具冲击力的，也是情感上最可亲近的。有一种艺术类型是大都会博物馆最擅驾驭的：皇家珠宝。但是这一次，就连这些东西也显得目的性十足，因为在它所追溯的中国的那个时代，通过艺术推广帝国和企业品牌的概念还处于实验阶段。
By the third century B.C., the long-lived Zhou dynasty had run its course, and turf wars broke out among smaller regional states. One of those states, the kingdom of Qin (pronounced CHIN), overcame all rivals and brought much of China under one rule for the first time. It did this partly through armed strength, but also through a sort of management savvy taught in business schools today.
到公元前3世纪，年迈的周朝走完了自己的旅程，诸侯国之间不断爆发争夺地盘的战争。其中的秦国打败了所有的对手，第一次统一了中国的大部分地区。这在一定程度上靠的是武力，但也是通过一种如今的商学院所教授的管理智慧。
The Qin ruler, born Ying Zheng, decided that the most effective means of control was to promote team spirit: Get everyone on the same civic page, and keep them there. To that end, he instituted a unified currency and a single standard of weights and measures. He decreed the use of a universal written script, which let him control the political conversation. And he initiated construction of the Great Wall, a brick-and-mortar statement of Us versus Them.
秦朝的统治者名为嬴政，他认定，最有效的控制手段是宣扬团队精神：让所有人拥有同样的公民身份，并保持那样的身份。为此，他统一了货币和度量衡。他下令使用统一的书写文字，这让他控制了政治话语权。他开始修建长城，用砖块和灰浆宣告“我们”和“他们”的对立。
The effect of all this was to create a rudimentary sense of shared identity within a diverse population; a sense of Qin-ness or — to use a modern English word that may derive from Qin — Chinese-ness.
所有这些的作用是在不同的人群中创造了一种基本的共同身份感，一种秦人的身份感——或者用可能源自“秦”的现代英语的说法，一种中国人的身份感。
The M.B.A. thinking worked, or did for Ying Zheng himself. He became the first Chinese ruler to assume the heaven-kissed title of emperor — Qi Shihuangdi, or First Emperor of Qin — and built a tomb near Xian, in northwestern China, to match its grandeur. We have only written accounts of what’s in the tomb (the pavilions, the candles; it’s never been excavated). But its presence yielded one of the late-20th-century’s great art historical finds when, in 1978, on a tip from local farmers, archaeologists uncovered an army of some 7,000 life-size terra-cotta figures buried nearby.
这种工商管理硕士的思路奏效了，或者说对嬴政本人奏效了。他成了中国的第一位皇帝，给自己封了一个至高无上的称号——秦始皇——并在中国西北部的西安附近修建了一座陵墓，以彰显自己的显赫。至于墓里有什么，只有文字记载(亭台、蜡烛等，它从未被发掘)。但是，它的存在造就了20世纪晚期的一项伟大的艺术历史发现。1978年，考古学家根据当地农民的指引，发现了陵墓附近埋葬的一支由约7000尊真人大小的陶制士兵组成的军队。
Five of those figures, four standing, one kneeling, open the Met show (along with two modern reproductions of buried chariots found with them). They, or their like, have been endlessly circulated for display, but they’re still magnetic, with their blocklike bodies and personable faces, mold-cast and customized. Even more striking, and less familiar, is another figure found in a different part of the tomb site, this one a beefy court entertainer, nude to the waist, with every fold of flesh and swell of muscle precisely rendered.
其中五个——四个站立，一个跪着——揭开了大都会博物馆这场展览的序幕(以及和他们一起被发掘出来的两辆被埋藏的战车的现代复制品)。他们或者他们的同伴被不停地巡回展出，但依然充满魅力——结实的身体，个性化的面孔，是用模具造出来的，但又有所变化。更令人震惊的是在墓地另一部分发现的一个不太常见的人物雕塑，那是一个强壮的宫廷艺人，上身袒露至腰部，肉体的每一个褶皱，肌肉的每一处膨胀都被精细地呈现了出来。
There was no precedent in China for any of this, the scale, the naturalism. So what was the source? Historians point to a likely one: the Hellenistic art that was introduced by Alexander the Great to Asia — at Pergamon, for example — and filtered over trade routes to China. Whatever its origins, the new sculpture adds another facet to the profile of Qin-ness: cosmopolitan taste. But for all its innovations, or maybe because of them, Qin rule was brief, 15 years. The emperor spent a lot of time on the road, surveying his domain but also on a quest for life-extending elixirs. His sudden death unleashed an opera-worthy drama of assassinations, suicides and civil war, until another imperial power, called Han, took its place, and held it more than four centuries.
它的大小和自然主义风格在当时的中国是前所未有的。那么它的来源是什么呢?史学家们指出了一个可能的来源：亚历山大大帝(Alexander the Great)带入亚洲(比如到了帕加马)、而后经商路渗入中国的希腊艺术。不管起源是什么，这件新雕塑展现了秦人风貌的另一个侧面：世界性的品味。但是，尽管它有这么多创新，或许也正是因为这些创新，秦的统治十分短暂，只有15年。这位皇帝花了大量时间去旅行，巡视自己的疆土，但也是为了寻找不死仙丹。他的猝死引发了戏剧性的暗杀、自杀和内战，堪比一出大戏，直到另一个名为汉朝的皇权取代了秦朝，并延续了四个多世纪。
Han artists built on Qin precedents in art, but with adjustments. For a while they maintained an interest in realism, but seemed to shift the emphasis from the human figure to the natural world. The big personalities in Han sculpture in the show are animals: horses as majestic as gods; elephants, foreign to China, closely observed. Even common barnyard creatures — chickens, goats and pigs — are portrayed with empathy; you can almost hear them clucking and snuffling.
汉代艺术家追随秦代先人的步伐，但也有所调整。有一段时间，他们保持着对现实主义的兴趣，不过似乎将重点从人转向了自然界。本次展出的汉代雕塑中的最具个性的作品是动物：像神一样雄伟的马;栩栩如生的大象，虽然它对中国来说属于外来物种。甚至连常见的家畜家禽——鸡、山羊和猪——也都用移情手法进行描绘;你几乎能听见它们在咯咯叫或呼哧呼哧喘气。
The Han further refined the policy of centralized imperial rule and expanded its reach outward, globally, evident in the steady increase in material richness and variety seen as you move through the show, past granulated gold work, amethyst necklaces and luxury textiles brought overland and by sea from Afghanistan, India, Persia, nomadic Eurasia and the Mediterranean.
汉朝进一步完善了中央集权的帝国统治，对外向全球扩张疆域。这一点在参观展览的过程中能明显看出来，物质的丰富性和多样性在不断增长，比如经陆地和海洋从阿富汗、印度、波斯、欧亚大陆的游牧地区和地中海带来的镶金首饰、紫水晶项链和奢华的纺织品。
Some of the most exotic items are from China itself. An eye-stopping, fantastically sophisticated bronze cowrie shell container, swarming with tiny figures in what looks like a raucous Bruegelesque market scene, was produced by the Dian culture in what is now Yunnan province, people that Han court records referred to as “southwestern barbarians.”
一些最奇特的作品来自中国本身。一件引人注目的精美青铜宝螺容器上镶满小巧的人物，很像勃鲁盖尔画中的喧闹集市景象，它是滇文化的产物，在如今的云南省，汉代宫廷记录将那里的人称为“西南蛮人”。
Was that imperialism or provincialism speaking? They can be the same thing. And they can equally motivate people to shape an exclusive group identity. The Han were intent on doing so, though this didn’t prevent them from borrowing heavily from other cultures, including their immediate predecessors.
这是帝国主义还是地方偏狭观念在作祟呢?它们可能是一回事。它们都能激励人们塑造一个排他的团体身份。汉朝人就是这样打算的，尽管这并未阻止他们大量借鉴其他文化，包括前代先辈。
As with the Qin, Han society, at least at elite levels, focused on the hereafter. Most items in the Met show came from graves. Many objects were specifically for funerary use. Like much art everywhere, the underlying inspiration was political and personal. Art promoted and shored up the hierarchies on which a culture was built. It also answered to a human need to keep life going.
和秦代人一样，汉代人，至少是上层社会的人，把注意力放到了来世上。这场展览的大部分物品来自坟墓。许多物品是专门用于殡葬的。和世界各地的很多艺术一样，基本的灵感包括政治和个人两个方面。艺术宣扬和强化了文化的根基，也就是等级制度。它也回应了人类想要长生不老的心理需求。
The Han elite spared no expense to ensure their continuance. The survivors of a Han princess named Dou Wan encased her corpse in a jumpsuit made from 2,000 jade plaques linked with gold threads, jade being a stone thought to have preservative properties. The suit is in the show, and as we approach through a passageway in Zoe Florence’s theatrical exhibition installation, it looks like a sleeping extraterrestrial, a space traveler patiently waiting to be beamed up. Yet everything in the surrounding galleries seems designed to anchor the traveler to life on earth: a little hand-warmer in the form of a carved jade bear; a silk pillow woven with the words “extend years”; a vogueing earthenware dancer with ankle-length sleeves; and a jeroboam-size wine jar that, when discovered in 2003, still held Han wine. There’s even a luxury high-rise, or a model of one, and lamps to light it, including one shaped like a tree sprouting ducks and dragons like spring buds.
汉代的精英不惜花费重金，以确保自己能够存续下去。一个名叫窦绾的汉代王妃的亲属将她的尸体装进一件连体衣中，它是用2000颗用金丝连起来的玉块做成的，玉石当时被认为具有防腐作用。本次展览展出了这件连体衣，我们穿过佐伊·弗洛伦斯(Zoe Florence)戏剧化的展览装置作品的通道时，那件连体衣看起来像一个沉睡的外星人，一个耐心等待被唤醒的时空旅行者。然而，周边展厅里的一切似乎都是为了安置这位旅行者在地球上的生活：刻成玉熊的小暖炉;绣着“延年益寿”字样的丝质枕头;一个正做着舞蹈动作的袖子长及踝部的陶制舞者;一个大酒坛子，它2003年出土时里面还盛放着汉代的酒。甚至还有一幢豪华的高大建筑，或者说建筑模型，以及可以照亮它的灯具，其中一盏灯像一颗树，它像春天发芽那样长出了鸭子和游龙。
At the end of the show — organized by Zhixin Jason Sun, a curator of Chinese art at the Met, assisted by Pengliang Lu, a curatorial fellow — there’s a low closed door, carved from stone, made for a tomb, and painted with figures that could be earthly or celestial. If you passed through the door, which life would you be entering, or leaving, and is there a preference?
这场展览是由大都会博物馆的中国艺术策展人孙志新(Zhixin Jason Sun)在策展员陆鹏亮的协助下组织的。展览结束处有一个低矮的关闭的门，它是为坟墓制作的，用石头刻成，并绘有来自人间和天上的人物画像。如果你穿过那扇门，你将进入或离开哪一个世界?你是否偏爱其中一个?
An answer may lie in an object hanging on the exhibition’s exit wall. It’s a round gilt-bronze mirror with an inscription embossed on its rim: “May the Central Kingdom be peaceful and secure, and prosper for generations and generations to come, by following the great law that governs all.” Central Kingdom meant China. And for the Qin and the Han, wherever you went, in this world or the next, you were there.
答案可能存在于悬挂在展览出口墙上的一件物品中。它是一个圆形鎏金铜镜，边缘刻着的文字写道：“中国大宁，子孙益昌。黄裳元吉，有纪纲。”对秦汉人来说，无论你去了哪里，在此生还是来世，你都在中国。
