老外在中国：我在中国的KFC过感恩节

In the late summer of 2004, days before I was to move to Lianyungang, China, to teach English for a year, I spoke to an acquaintance who had spent a few years in the country.
2004年夏末，也就是在去中国连云港任教一年英语的几天前，我向一位在中国呆过几年的朋友了解情况。

"Holidays are hard," he said. "But oddly, not so much Christmas. Christmas isn't that bad. It's Thanksgiving that's hard."
他说：“那里假期很难熬，不过奇怪的是，圣诞节倒也还行，糟糕的是感恩节。”

At the time, surviving the holidays was the least of my worries. I was moving to a country where I didn't speak the language, understand the culture, or know the history, in order to do a job that I had never done and didn't know how to do. And not only that, I was going to a city—Lianyungang—that I hadn't even heard of, and could find no information about online.
当时，假期并不是最令我担心的事情。我就要去中国了，可我根本不会讲汉语，也不了解中国文化或历史，而且我以前从没教过英语，压根儿不知道该怎么做；不仅如此，我要去的那个叫连云港的城市，连听都没听过，网上也查不到相关信息！

Other than that, I was completely prepared.
除此之外，我算是准备就绪了。

Lianyungang, 300 miles or so north of Shanghai, is a port city of around 750,000 people and is famous in China for being the birthplace of the Monkey King, a literary hero from the 16th century novel Journey to the West. But in 2004, it looked like any other city in the country: full of tall, gray skyscrapers, neon signs, and belching taxis.
连云港位于上海北面300英里左右，是一座拥有75万人口的港口城市，作为16世纪小说《西游记》中“美猴王”的故乡而名扬中国。但是，2004年的连云港看上去却截然不同：到处都充斥着灰蒙蒙的高楼、闪烁的霓虹灯和喧闹的出租车。

Foreign residents in Lianyungang were few and far between. I was told that the first English teacher arrived in 2000 and when she—a middle-aged New Zealander with white hair—walked around, bicyclists sometimes slammed into parked cars. By the time I arrived four years later, there were about ten Western teachers in the city, but we still caused a minor frenzy when we ventured into a crowd of people.
在连云港老外并不多见。我听说这里直到2000年才有外教——那个满头银发的中年新西兰女教师无论走到哪儿，都能招来不少注目。4年后我到连云港，发现这里统共有10个外教，而且我们走在人群里也会引起小小的骚动。

Usually, there were the "hellos": Young Chinese people would shout the word, accompanied by peals of laughter, as I walked in the city. Other people would tail me and ask for my phone number or address. Once, when walking through a university campus, I attracted a small mob of people who, wishing to practice their English, bombarded me with questions.
通常当我走在大街上时，年轻人会大笑着冲我喊一句“哈罗”；也有人会跟着我要电话号码或地址。有次我在大学校园里遇到一帮想练英语的学生，连珠炮似的问我一堆问题。

"Do you like Chinese food?" "Can you use chopsticks?"
“你喜欢中国菜吗？” “你会用筷子吗？”

Yes, and yes—we have them at home.
喜欢啊，会用筷子呢——我家里就有。

"What is your favorite Chinese city?"
“你最喜欢中国的哪个城市？”

"Uh, Lianyungang." Except for a few hours in Beijing on the day I arrived, I hadn't been anywhere else.
“嗯，连云港。”其实，除了刚到那天在北京停留过几个小时，我还没去过其他地方。

"Really?"
“真的吗？”

Within a couple of months, the euphoria of being in China had worn off, and I found myself settling into a routine. During the day, there was work: I taught two hour-long classes of 15 and 16-year-olds, and, because I assigned no homework and rarely gave out tests, spent the afternoons either reading or making a halfhearted attempt to learn Chinese.
几个月后，在中国生活的兴奋感消退了，我发现自己安稳了下来。白天我要工作——给中学生上2个小时的英语课，因为我不布置作业，也很少安排考试，所以下午我就用来读书或三心二意学点中文。

At night, after dinner at my school's canteen, I'd walk to a store down the street and buy a pirated DVD, which usually cost about 50 cents. The quality of the copies were variable—sometimes, they were filmed with a camcorder inside a cinema, which worked okay until someone stood up in front—but watching them kept me from having to deal with my Chinese reality. I was desperately homesick. "Just get through this year," I told myself. "Then you can leave."
晚上在学校食堂吃完饭后，我就上街买盗版碟片看，这些碟片都很便宜。当然，盗版碟的质量也参差不齐——有的是用照相机摄像头在电影院拍的，前面要是没人站起来的话，也还能凑合着看。反正，看碟片好歹能让我逃避在中国的现实问题。我想家想得要命，一直跟自己说：“只要熬过这一年，你就能回家了。”