彩虹山、蘭州拉面和好心人：華裔旅人甘肅獨行記

Our columnist, Jada Yuan, is visiting each destination on our 52 Places to Go in 2018 list. This dispatch brings her to Gansu, China, which took the No. 17 spot. It is the 47th stop on Jada’s itinerary.

我們的旅行專欄作者杰達·袁(Jada Yuan)正在訪問“2018年最值得去的52個地方”的途中。下面的報道發(fā)自中國甘肅，甘肅在最值得去的名單上名列17，是杰達行程的第47站。

She spoke first, a series of words in Chinese that I couldn’t understand and then one that I did: “Lanzhou?”

她先開口說了一連串我聽不懂的中文詞，然后說了一個我聽懂了的：“蘭州?”

“Dui! Dui! I am going to Lanzhou, too,” I said, nodding vigorously to the kind-faced woman in her 40s, as we established that we were both alone and flying to the capital of China’s Gansu province — a spot in the country’s interior along a northwestern part of the ancient Silk Road trade route — and that neither of us spoke the other’s language.

“對!對!我也要去蘭州，”我說，我對著這位看起來友好的40來歲的女子用力點著頭，我們很快就發(fā)現(xiàn)我們都是獨自旅行，都要飛往中國甘肅省的省會——那是中國內(nèi)陸西北地區(qū)沿古代貿(mào)易路線絲綢之路上的一站，以及我們都不會講對方的語言。

I had taken notice of Wei Zhao Han in the Beijing airport when she started listening to Chinese pop music videos next to me without headphones. This was my sixth or so visit to China, but my first without my relatives, who mainly hail from Shanghai and Beijing, and I’d been missing that familiar element of noise and chaos: everyone talking over each other, picnic spreads of steamed buns and fruit laid out across airport waiting room chairs.

我是在北京機場注意到魏昭寒(音)的，當時她坐在我傍邊，開始看中國流行音樂視頻，沒有戴耳機。這是我大概第六次來中國，但是第一次沒有親戚陪伴，我的親戚們主要住在上海和北京，我一直懷念那些已經(jīng)熟悉了的熱鬧氣氛：大家同時說話，嗓門一個比一個大，候機廳的椅子擺上了饅頭和水果，像野餐一樣。

Wei, who runs an architectural business, and I bonded quickly. As we boarded the plane she got the man sitting next to me to switch seats with her. “Let’s be friends,” she said through her Baidu translation app (China’s version of Google, which is blocked), and followed that with a declaration that she would give me a ride from the airport to my hotel.

魏昭寒經(jīng)營一家建筑公司，我跟她很快就有了好感。我們登機后，她跟坐在我旁邊的人換了座位。“讓我們做朋友吧，”她通過百度翻譯應用(百度相當于中國的谷歌，谷歌在中國被屏蔽了)說，然后又宣布，到機場后，讓我搭她的車去旅館。

“You can trust that I am a good person!” she wrote into Baidu, and laughed as her friend drove us down a dark highway toward Lanzhou after midnight, which might be the midpoint of a Stephen King novel under other circumstances. But she was just one in a series of people who jumped in to help me — ordering for me at restaurants, getting me safely to my hotel, as Wei did. Most of them didn’t realize I was Chinese-American at first; they just seemed to see a woman on her own in a strange land looking rather lost.

“你可以相信我是個好人!”她在百度應用上寫道，然后笑了起來，當時時間已過了午夜，她的朋友正沿著一條黑漆漆的公路，把我們拉向蘭州。在別的情況下，這可能是一部斯蒂芬·金(Stephen King)小說的中間部分。但她只是眾多主動幫助我的人中的一個——他們在餐館幫我點餐，像魏昭寒那樣把我安全地送到旅館。他們中的大多數(shù)人一開始并沒有意識到我是華裔美國人;他們似乎只是看到了一個女子獨自在一個陌生的地方，看起來好像有點迷路。

A magnificent stretch of desert sandwiched between mountains, Gansu was once China’s Wild West, containing the westernmost structures of The Great Wall, built to ward off attacking nomadic hordes, and legendary shrines dug into cliffs for the westward spread of Buddhism.

位于群山之間的甘肅省有大片的壯麗沙漠，這里曾經(jīng)是中國的“蠻荒西部”，是用來抵御游牧民族襲擊的長城的最西端，這里還有著名的石窟，那是隨著佛教的傳播，在懸崖峭壁上挖出來的神龕。

It had made the 52 Places list for 2018, because the opening of high-speed rail lines had made its treasures, including the rainbow-striped mountains in the Zhangye Danxia National Geological Park, easier to get to.

甘肅入選了2018年的52個旅游目的地，是因為高鐵開通后，人們更容易前往當?shù)卦S多寶貴的旅游資源，其中包括張掖丹霞國家地質(zhì)公園的彩虹斑紋山。

But easier is relative and Gansu in November was not easy. Temperatures were below freezing in a landscape so beautifully barren it’s hard to believe it can sustain life. There were few foreigners; almost no one spoke English; and I couldn’t read menus or street signs. (I speak only basic, familial Chinese, like “I already ate,” and “no, really, I can’t eat any more.”)

但容易是相對而言的，11月來甘肅并不容易。這里的氣溫在零度以下，這里的土地美麗、貧瘠，讓人很難相信它能維持生命。這里幾乎沒有外國人;也幾乎沒有人說英語;我看不懂菜單和路標。(我只會說一些基本的家常話，比如“我已經(jīng)吃了”;“不，真的，我再也吃不下了”)

My lungs were burning from the cold, dry air (and a decent amount of pollution) after climbing a mountainside near the city of Jiayuguan. I was standing on the Overhanging Great Wall, so named because it appears to cling to a ridge of the Black Mountains by some feat of wizardry. Ming dynasty tacticians built it in 1539, and from the peak there were views of the Gobi Desert in every direction, marked with bare mountains, oases, and in the distance, a steaming industrial plant.

爬上嘉峪關(guān)市附近的一個山坡后，寒冷干燥的空氣(還有相當多的污染)讓我的肺有一種灼燒的感覺。我登上了懸臂長城，之所以這么叫，是因為這段長城好像是用某種魔法牢牢地貼在黑山山脊上的。明朝的戰(zhàn)術(shù)師們于1539年修建了這段長城，從其最高處往所有的方向看都是戈壁，其間點綴著光禿禿的山脈和綠洲，遠處還有一座冒著煙的工廠。

It was hard not to marvel at sheer human will up there, including the amount I’d had to employ just to get to the view.

站在這里很難不去贊嘆強大的人類意志，包括我為看到這個景色而付出的那點。

The afternoon after my dinner with Wei, I had boarded a 6.5-hour train to Jiayuguan, which was the shortest I could find from the downtown Lanzhou train station — after I learned all the high-speed trains were sold out and left from a new train station, Lanzhou West, on the outskirts of the city, anyway.

在我和魏昭寒一起吃飯之后的下午，我坐了六個半小時的火車來到了嘉峪關(guān)，那是我在蘭州市中心的火車站能找到的用時最短的車次，之前我已經(jīng)了解到，高鐵票都賣光了，而且高鐵是從郊區(qū)的一個新火車站——蘭州西站上車。

Onboard, a police officer introduced me to Jo, an English teacher from Jiayuguan. She not only woke me up when we had to get off the train at 2:30 a.m., but had her husband drive me to my hotel, where she negotiated my rate down to $29 for two nights (as opposed to the $90 I’d booked online). I showered and huddled under my covers with all my winter clothes on because I couldn’t figure out the heater. But I sure was glad I wasn’t paying $60 more for that.

在火車上，一名乘警把我介紹給了來自嘉峪關(guān)一名姓喬的英語老師。她不僅在我們需要凌晨兩點半下火車時把我叫醒，而且還讓她的丈夫開車送我去旅館。到旅館后，她把我的房價砍到了兩晚29美元(而不是我在網(wǎng)上預訂的90美元)。我沖了個澡，穿著所有的冬天衣服鉆進了被窩，因為我不知道怎么把取暖器打開。但我很高興沒有多花那60美元。

The next morning, at Jo’s suggestion, I walked on Jiayuguan’s wide, relatively empty boulevards to a local restaurant, Wu Mai Er, to try a regional specialty: Lanzhou hand-pulled beef noodles. When I couldn’t communicate my order, a man in line bought my bowl for me and showed me how to pick it up, put chili sauce, or lajiao, in it, and then sit at a counter to slurp the noodles from the steaming broth.

第二天早上，按照喬的建議，我沿著嘉峪關(guān)寬闊而相對空曠的街頭，來到了一家名叫吾麥爾的餐館品嘗當?shù)氐奶厣称罚禾m州拉面。當我無法與人交流我要點什么時，一個排隊的男子替我買了一碗面，還教我如何把面取來，加上辣椒醬，然后坐在柜臺邊，把面條從熱氣騰騰的面湯里用嘴吸起來嘖嘖作響地吃下去。

Jo had also suggested I charter a taxi for 150 renminbi ($22) to see Jiayuguan’s three Great Wall scenic sites. We drove through the Gobi Desert outside the city to the mound of mud that was once The First Beacon Tower of the Great Wall, or the westernmost end of the western defense. It was part of a system of 54 beacons that sent smoke signals down the wall to warn of enemy movements.

喬還建議我以150元人民幣(22美元)租一輛出租車，去看嘉峪關(guān)的三個長城景點。我們開車穿過城外的戈壁沙漠，來到一個土墩，它曾經(jīng)是長城第一座烽火臺，或者說這個西部防御的最西端。像這樣的烽火臺有54個，沿著長城發(fā)送煙霧信號，警示敵人的行動。

On the shuttle bus around the site, I met another female traveler, Wei Gong, who had come by herself from Sichuan, and an English-speaking businessman from Nanjing, Yu Lihong, who helped me talk to my driver. The three of us didn’t always keep the same pace, but we kept in touch over WeChat as we circuited the Overhanging Great Wall and the final site, Jiayu Pass, or fortress, which was so huge I had to go back the next day to see it all.

在景點的往返巴士上，我遇到來自四川的女游客魏宮(音)，以及來自南京、會說英語的商人余立宏(音)，他幫我和司機溝通。我們?nèi)齻€人并沒有總是保持步調(diào)一致，但是當我們游覽懸壁長城和最后的嘉峪關(guān)時，我們一直用微信保持聯(lián)系，它實在太大，我只得第二天又去了一次才全部看完。

The fortress underwent an impressive renovation in 2014. The evening I went, as the desert temperatures dropped precipitously with the sunset, I had the entire place to myself, walking up stone ramps used for bringing horses to lookout points and rolling down logs to crush enemies. At the exit, I caught up with Wei Gong, who was waiting for her taxi. A man who ran a shop selling tea sets made out of a local stone invited us to sit inside next to his wood-burning stove to warm our freezing hands.

嘉峪關(guān)在2014年經(jīng)歷過一次大修。我來到這里的那個晚上，沙漠氣溫隨著日落而急劇下降，整個地方只有我一個人，我走上石頭坡道，它可以用來把馬牽上瞭望臺，也可以用來滾下原木，沖垮敵人。在出口處，我找到了等出租車的魏宮。在一家出售用當?shù)厥^制成的茶具的商店，店主邀請我們坐在柴爐旁邊烤火，溫暖凍僵的雙手。

The UNESCO-recognized Caves of a Thousand Buddhas, known as the Mogao Grottoes, hadn’t been on my radar, until Wei Gong invited me to come with her there. She was taking an overnight train hours after we’d left Jiayu Pass and I just couldn’t do it. But I also couldn’t get the idea out of my head. The 492 devotional caves, hand-carved into sandy cliffs, house the world’s largest and longest-used treasure of Buddhist art in the world, to paraphrase UNESCO. They were also a tempting 4.5 hours west of Jiayuguan, in the desert oasis of Dunhuang, and I never knew when I’d be this close to them again.

我本來沒有計劃去莫高窟，也就是經(jīng)聯(lián)合國教科文組織認證的千佛洞，后來魏宮邀請我和她一起去。在離開嘉峪關(guān)幾個小時后，她就要連夜坐火車去那里，我可做不到。但這個念頭，揮之不去。據(jù)聯(lián)合國教科文組織介紹，那里有492個窟，都是手工在沙質(zhì)懸崖上刻出來的，是世界上最大、使用時間最長的佛教藝術(shù)寶藏。它們位于嘉峪關(guān)以西4.5個小時車程的地方，一個名為敦煌的沙漠綠洲里，這個距離很誘人，我也不知道下次什么時候才能再離它們這么近。

With the help of Yu Lihong, I booked a 2 a.m. train from Jiayuguan. I’d sprung for a luxurious “soft sleeper” car, with a comfortable bed and a door that closed. After four glorious hours of sleep, and a couple more waiting around in a taxi for the site to open, I walked into my first Mogao Cave to see 1,400 year-old Buddhas from the Tang dynasty.

在余立宏的幫助下，我訂了凌晨2點從嘉峪關(guān)出發(fā)的火車。我選擇了豪華的軟臥車廂，它有舒適的床和可以關(guān)上的門。在美美地睡了四個小時，為了等開門又坐出租車兜風幾個小時后，我走進了第一個莫高窟洞穴，去看1400多年歷史的唐朝佛像。

You can’t get into the caves without a guide. After a bit of asking around I found an English-speaking tour, which had three people on it, including me.

沒有向?qū)Ь蜔o法進入洞窟。經(jīng)過一番詢問，我找到了一個英語團，加上我一共三個人。

The caves, whose ceilings are covered in hundreds of little Buddha portraits to convey Buddha’s infinite nature, date back to the year 366, when a monk named Le Zun went for a walk in the desert, had a vision of a thousand Buddhas bathed in a golden light, and was inspired to dig a shrine out of sandstone.

洞窟的天花板上畫滿了幾百個小佛像，表明佛法無邊，它們的歷史可以追溯到公元366年，當時一位名叫樂尊的僧人在沙漠中散步，看到一千尊佛像沐浴在金光之中的幻象，于是有了靈感，在砂巖上鑿出石窟。

For centuries, devotees would dig caves and decorate them with enormous Buddhas, until the Silk Road declined, and people stopped coming. The caves remained intact and untouched (save for the work of a few shrine robbers) only to be revived over the last century with the discovery of a huge trove of Buddhist documents from the 11th century.

幾個世紀以來，虔誠的信眾會開鑿新窟，并在其中雕出巨大的佛像，直到絲綢之路衰落，人們不再到來。洞窟一直原封不動(除了一些盜賊)，只是在上個世紀才重新開放，人們在這里發(fā)現(xiàn)了大量11世紀的佛教文獻。

The centerpiece of the site is a five-story pagoda-like structure. As I walked in, a crowd of people were leaving and the light was so dim it was difficult to see. There was something big ahead. Was that a foot? I looked up to see a 98-foot-tall Buddha.

莫高窟的核心是一座五層寶塔式結(jié)構(gòu)。我進去時，一群人正走出來，光線很暗，什么也看不清。前方有什么龐然大物。那是一只腳嗎?我抬頭看到一尊98英尺(合29.8米)高的佛像。

There are bigger Buddhas in China and the world, but likely none feel as intimate as standing inside a building that’s basically the same size as the Buddha, forcing you to crane your neck up to look at him and stay always in a supplicant position. The feat of human determination and faith that brought this massive statue into existence is overwhelming to contemplate. I think about that Buddha a lot and how close I had to stand to him to see him, and how tiny I felt in that moment.

中國和世界上的其他地方還有更大的佛像，但可能不會有這種親密感——站在一個與佛像大小基本相同的建筑物里，迫使你仰起脖子看著他，令你始終處于一個乞求者的位置。決心和信仰使人類把這個巨大的雕像變成了現(xiàn)實，這種壯舉令人無所適從，不知所措。我經(jīng)常想起那座佛像，我得站多近才能看到他，以及那一刻我覺得自己何其微小。

For my last day in the country, with a flight to Japan at 9 p.m., I had concocted a harebrained plan to spend the morning at Zhangye Danxia Landform National Geopark, or the Rainbow Mountains, then hop on a three-hour bullet train to the Lanzhou West station, and take another 40-minute train from there to the Lanzhou airport. But the trip was going to require precision engineering.

在中國的最后一天，晚上9點我得飛往日本，我突發(fā)奇想，計劃在張掖丹霞地貌國家公園，也就是彩虹山上度過一個早晨，然后坐三小時的子彈頭列車前往蘭州西站，接著再乘坐40分鐘的火車從那里前往蘭州機場。但這一路需要精準規(guī)劃。

First, Lien Shao-Yong, a fellow eastward-bound traveler I had met at the grottoes, struck a deal for me with the conductor. I had a ticket for only part of the journey because the final leg to Zhangye had been sold out. The solution: pay cash for the difference and the staff would wake me in the middle of the night to move me to an empty slot since my bed was already spoken for.

首先，我在石窟遇到的東行同伴連少勇(音)為我和售票員達成了協(xié)議。由于去張掖的最后一段行程已經(jīng)售罄，所以我只獲得了部分行程的車票。解決方案：現(xiàn)金支付差額，工作人員會在半夜叫醒我，把我移到空位上——因為我的床位已經(jīng)售出。

Next on the scene was Song Xu, my bunkmate and a businessman with excellent English. He began plotting my day backward from my last possible arrival time at the airport. A college student, Liu Haocheng, joined us, as did another businessman sitting nearby. The family of three whose bottom bunks we’d commandeered listened in with bemusement as Liu translated the action into Chinese. “You’re doing this by yourself?” the mother said, nodding with approval. “Very brave.”

接下來出場的是宋旭(音)，他跟我同臥鋪，也是一位英語很好的商人。他從我最后可能到達機場的時間開始倒推，為我規(guī)劃行程。一位名叫劉浩成(音)的大學生，以及一個坐在附近的生意人，也加入了我們。我們占用了一家三口的下鋪，當劉浩成把我的行動翻譯成中文說給他們聽的時候，他們不無疑惑。“你一個人?“那位母親問;我點點頭。“很勇敢。”

With the four of us checking websites and making phone calls in both Chinese and English, we nailed down a plan in a mere two hours. A driver named Tao Hong-Bing would pick me upwhen the train got in at 2 a.m., help me buy tickets for the legs back to the Lanzhou airport, find me a cheap by-the-hour hotel for a quick rest, pick me up again at 7 a.m. in order to get me to the geopark before sunrise, and then return me to the Zhangye train station to make the bullet train to Lanzhou that was holding this whole Jenga schedule in place.

我們四個查看網(wǎng)站，用中文和英文打電話，在短短兩個小時內(nèi)敲定了一項計劃。當火車在凌晨2點進站時，一位名叫陶宏兵(音)的司機會來接我，幫我買好回蘭州機場的票，為我找間便宜的鐘點房短暫休息一會，他早上7點來接我，以便在日出之前把我送到地質(zhì)公園，然后返回張掖火車站，乘坐子彈頭火車前往蘭州，那里是我這環(huán)環(huán)相扣的日程安排的中心點。

Tao picked me up while it was still dark and we drove to the park, past trucks making early morning deliveries, and droves of children riding their bicycles to school. Private cars can’t go inside, so I boarded the first hop-on-hop-off bus of the day, which was carrying all the security guards and park workers, in their fur hats and winter coats, to their posts. The temperature gauge read minus-7-degrees Celsius (19 degrees Fahrenheit).

陶宏兵在天還黑的時候就來接我，我們朝公園開去，一路經(jīng)過清晨運送貨物的卡車，還有成群騎車去學校的孩子。私家車不能進入公園，所以我登上了當天第一輛隨上隨下的公共汽車，這輛車載著所有的警衛(wèi)和公園工作人員，他們戴著皮毛帽子、穿著冬季外套，去到他們的工作崗位。溫度計顯示氣溫是零下7攝氏度。

After a short drive down red brick roads, a guard shouted something that I assumed meant “Get off!” as we pulled up to the second of four scenic overlook platforms on the route. Along with two other tourists, I raced up flights of steps and along wooden boardwalks just in time to watch the sun peek over a sea of red hills and valleys and pillars and anthropomorphic sandstone formations that rivaled anything I’ve seen in the American Southwest. Then stripes in yellows and greens and whites and maroons began to emerge as sunlight bathed the landscape. They’re the result of mineral deposits organizing themselves during tectonic movements over tens of million of years.

在紅磚路上短暫行駛后，我們到達了路線上四個風景優(yōu)美的觀景平臺中的第二個，一位警衛(wèi)喊了一句，我猜測是“下車!”的意思。和其他兩個游客一起，我沿著木制步道飛快地向上跑，剛剛好得以看見了朝陽掠過成海的紅色山丘、山谷、石柱和好似人形的砂巖層，這些景象可以與我在美國西南部看到的任何東西相媲美。然后，當陽光沐浴大地之時，黃色、綠色、白色和褐紅色的條紋開始出現(xiàn)。那是礦藏在數(shù)千萬年的地殼運動中產(chǎn)生的組織形態(tài)。

WeChat messages began flooding in from the planning committee, who wanted to know how it was all going, and from Yu and both Weis, as well as from my aunt, uncle and cousin from Queens who happened to be visiting Shanghai for Thanksgiving but whom I wouldn’t be able to see. The other tourists had gone and I was alone on a freezing cold mountaintop across the world from a life I’d left behind almost a year ago, overlooking what could have been Mars, and I felt at home.

從計劃委員會發(fā)來的微信消息開始涌入，他們想知道一切進行的怎么樣了，余立宏和兩位姓魏的朋友、皇后區(qū)的叔叔阿姨和堂兄也發(fā)來消息，他們正好在感恩節(jié)造訪上海，但我無法見到他們。其他的游客已經(jīng)走了，我獨自一人在冰冷的山頂上，與將近一年前離開的那個生活遠隔萬里，看著眼前仿佛來自火星的景色，我感到怡然自得。