经济学人下载:讣告:著名评书艺术家单田芳逝世 享年84岁(2)

He had grown up in Liaoning province before the Communist revolution of 1949, his mother ("The Pale Girl") an actress and his father a player of the three-stringed lute.
1949年共产主义革命前，单田芳长于辽宁省，母亲是演员（人称“白丫头”），父亲是三弦演奏者。

But he knew from childhood, as he shook the money-basket round after their shows, that this was not much of a living.
但是他从小就知道，这种演出结束捧着篮子向观众讨要钱的生活，不是长久之计。

Folk arts might be centuries old, but they had low social status.
民间艺术可能已有几个世纪的历史，但民间艺人社会地位低微。

He hoped to be a doctor or an engineer, until the collapse of his parents' marriage threw him back on pingshu to maintain his seven sisters.
他希望成为医生或是工程师，直到他父母离婚，迫使他回归评书，以此来养活7个妹妹。

Fate ordained it so.
命运注定如此。

He had always been good at memorising, diligent at practice, and after more instruction he was happy to spend the decade from 1956 to 1966 playing the tea-house circuit.
他过目成诵、勤于练习、不吝请教，于1956到1966的十年间，在茶馆说评书，乐在其中。

His favourite stories were always the classics, not least China’s four great novels:
单田芳最爱经典之作，尤喜中国四大名著：

the medieval "Romance of the Three Kingdoms",
描写汉末纷争的《三国演义》，

"The Journey to the West", where an intrepid monk went searching for Buddhist texts,
僧人勇赴西天取经的《西游记》，

"The Dream of the Red Chamber", in which 40 main characters portrayed a noble family's 18th-century decline,
以40个主角为主线讲述18世纪的一个贵族家庭逐渐没落的《红楼梦》，

and "Water Margin", with its wild band of 108 scheming outlaws.
以及描述108位梁山好汉的《水浒传》。

Some stories had hundreds of chapters, each ending with a coy "To be continued".
有些故事有数百个章节，都以“欲知后事如何，且听下回分解”结尾。

As a keen student of history he altered some tales a bit, playing down the demons and spirits and giving his listeners, instead, characters that made sense.
单田芳酷爱历史，在说评书时他也会对故事稍加润色。他淡化了恶魔和精灵，为听众塑造合理的人物形象。

He also turned recent events into stories, poring over newspapers, as soon as the sun came up, to find reports of policemen foiling notorious robbers.
他还把新近发生的事写成故事，仔细研究报纸，天一亮，就开始寻找警察挫败臭名昭著的强盗的报道。

Fighters against injustice touched a soft spot with him:
喜读反抗不公的人物故事：

the wrongly court-martialled General Sheng of "I Know Your Name Well",
《三侠剑》中被冤枉的胜英，

or the "White-Eyebrow Hero" Lord Bao, China's most righteous judge,
《白眉大侠》中的公正无私的包公，

whose story he had been telling all and sundry since he was five years old.
这些故事，自打他五岁开始，就不断地向众人讲述。