老外看老鼓浪屿3

 Compiled by Bill Brown

 Eyes opened by XM

       “来到中国的第一年，我们充满着惊奇和激动。我们接触到了一种内涵无比丰富的陌生文明。一接触这种文明，你马上就会感到震惊、愉悦和困惑。它迅速地改变了我的世界观。这就像是第一次打开我所熟悉的光滑表盖，发现里面精致的齿轮在运行，完整、复杂而又持续不断。这是一个完全自给自足的系统，周而复始地转动着，而我自己却从来没有留意。这就要求欧洲人抛弃他们对中国和中国人所抱的偏见，同时用西方最精华的高级指挥和文化作为衡量和理解不一样的中国文化及其成就。尽管这个国家的一些现象令人震惊， 这些现象背后就是中国，坚固而不朽……”   

       — 麦肯兹·格瑞芙，1959年

    “In this, our first year of China, an astonished excitement possessed us. We were confronted by a strange civilization of an unparalleled richness. To unfold at once it was alarming, delightful and baffling.    

    It radically altered the nature of my world. It was as if I had opened the smooth familiar back of my watch for the first time and discovered within the complete, complex and inexorable interactions of fine-toothed cogs -- a whole self-sufficient system that had been going on all the time, and I unaware of it.

    It demanded, paradoxically a jettisoning of preconceived European ideas of China and the Chinese, while requiring the best and highest of Western wisdom and culture as a yardstick to measure and understand its anomalies as well as its heights. In spite of the appalling state of the country...underneath it all was China, solid and enduring... ”

    －－ Averil Mackenzie－Grieve， 1959