China is an education. Learning about the country can seem as difficult as learning Chinese. The business visitor is said to be swiftly engulfed in the soupy embrace of China's cities, with their mushrooming tower blocks, television-illuminated meals in private restaurant rooms and visits to karaoke bars. Those who classify themselves as tourists rather than travellers, meanwhile, will walk a famous wall and meet an army of model warriors, cruise a large river, eat some mystifying meals, go shopping and go home. Either way, the new, open China can sometimes seem as elusive as the old, forbidden one.
  中国是一门学问。了解这个国家似乎与学习中文同样困难。据说，商务游客很快被淹没在中国城市的海洋里，他们四周是迅速崛起的高楼大厦，他们会在私家餐馆包间里边看电视边享用晚餐，以及去卡拉OK唱歌。同时，这些将自己定义为观光客而非旅行者的人，会在闻名遐迩的长城上漫步，在宽阔的江河上航行，品尝一些不可思议的食物，逛商场，然后回家。不管怎样，开放的新中国有时候似乎与封闭的旧中国同样令人难以捉摸。

  Unlocking its intricacies requires either the courage to sally out in the face of incomprehension (tough but rewarding – problem-solving, good humour and honesty are far more common in China than their opposites) or it requires a special interest – in birds, gardens, railway trains, art – which will lead you to stranger, more educative places than nightclubs and cruiseboats. Tea can do this, too. Grown throughout southern China and loved nationwide, it will not only draw you towards some of the country's most remarkable landscapes but it also provides a glimpse, in the drinking, of a China far sweeter and more gracious than the nation's brash public image.
  要解开其中的错综复杂，要么需要面对疑问时施放出勇气（虽然困难但是值得——解决问题、良好的幽默感和诚实比其反义词在中国更为常见），抑或要求你对鸟类、园艺、火车、艺术等具有特别的兴趣——这些事物将你带往比夜总会和游艇更为陌生、也更具有教育意义的地方。茶也能做到这点。茶生长在中国南方，深受全中国人的喜爱，它不仅会将你带到中国一些风景最为迤逦的地区，而且在品茗过程中，它还会带你透过中国不佳的公众形象，领略一个更美好和更高雅的中国。

  My own Chinese education was defective in that I had assumed that the vast, sparely rugged landscapes of classical Chinese painting were more spiritual lesson than a faithful rendering of place. Those tiny figures moving, insect-like, between indolent river and abrupt peak were there to teach modesty, instil calm and underline impermanence, surely, rather than reflect reality. No landscape could open like that, could it? It could and it does. Travel in China's tea country, and those same scenes will unfold before you, their pines seemingly placed at the summit of crags by some great artificer and their quiet valleys broken only by the soft race of falling water. Even the lenses of mist, mobile and intermittent, are accurate. Tea bushes thirst for more than twice London's annual rainfall, and cloud cover combined with high humidity is perfect for keeping their vivid green leaves pliant.
  我自己的中国学问并不完善，因为我曾以为，中国古典绘画中广袤平坦的风景，比忠实地描绘一个地方的手法更具精神层面的意义。那些如同昆虫般微小的人影在水流缓慢的江河与陡峭的山峰之间移动，教育人们虚怀若谷，灌输平静的心境，强调世事无常，而不是对现实的反映。没有其它哪处风景能够如此开阔，不是吗？游历中国这个茶的国度，那些相同的风景将一一呈现在你的面前，在一些伟大画师的笔下，松树生长在峭壁顶峰，而静谧的山谷中淌过涓涓的流水。就连对飘忽不定的雾霭的刻画都是那么生动。茶树对雨量的要求，是伦敦年降雨量的两倍以上，而多云的天气加上高湿度，构成了茶树盎然生长的完美环境。

  A good bit of China is mountainous. Lowland areas are commandeered for the productive agriculture required to feed 1.3bn people, so that any crop that can migrate upwards will do so. Tea is ideal for this task – indeed you can create a small tea garden in many areas by doing no more than clearing the scrub to leave the wild, native bushes to enjoy the light and warmth on their own. “Garden” is exact: the small, shaped bushes grafted on to stone terraces and rock ledges look, at first sight, like effusions of the privet so cherished in suburban horticulture or like some vegetable sculptor's audacious installation. In the Da Hong Pao (Great Red Cloak) valley of Wuyi Mountain in Fujian Province, this is an installation dating back to Tang times. At the same moment as the first Viking raiders were descending on Lindisfarne, in other words, the bamboos were being parted to make way for Camellia sinensis in this almost secret valley where water cuts its way through soaring planes of sandstone and conglomerate as sheerly as gin through ice.
  中国大多数地区多山。低地被征用来从事生产性农业耕作，以养活中国13亿人口，因此可被移往高处的农作物都会被移向高处。茶非常适合这种方式——实际上你可以在许多地区开辟一小块茶园，所做的工作无非是清除杂草，让野生天然的茶树自己享受阳光和温暖的气候。“茶园”非常准确：修剪成形的小茶树被移植到阳台和花架上，乍看像是郊外园艺非常青睐的那种垂落的女贞灌木，或是像一些蔬菜雕刻家手下大胆的作品。在福建省武夷山的大红袍峡谷里，这种植物的历史可以追溯至唐朝。在首批维京海盗突袭林迪斯法恩岛(Lindisfarne)的同一时期，在这个流水淌过层层沙岩和砾岩的幽静山谷里，人们砍伐竹子，腾开地方种植茶树。
共4页: 上一页 1 [2] [3] [4] 下一页