经济学人下载:讣告:著名评书艺术家单田芳逝世 享年84岁(3)

During the Cultural Revolution, however, he fought injustice himself and lost.
然而在文化大革命期间，他亲身与不公正作斗争，结果以失败告终。

The builders of the New China did not need his old tales, those remnants of the imperial and feudal system.
新中国的缔造者们不需要那些被视为封建制度残余的老故事。

They sent him to the far north-east, his teeth knocked out to silence him, to cut hay and cart manure.
单田芳被远放至东北，牙齿被敲掉，讲不了话，只能割干草、运牛粪。

He escaped, and lived with his family on the streets for four years, selling artificial flowers.
他逃走了，一家人流落街头四年，靠卖假花谋生。

In 1978 he was rehabilitated, though with a mouth full of painful plastic through which he had to learn to speak again.
1978年，他恢复了名誉，尽管满口假牙，痛苦不堪，但他不得不再次学习说话。

He summed up life then in one word, "Endure".
单田芳用一字形容此生：“忍”。

But it rapidly got better.
但很快柳暗花明。

In the hectic consumerist China of the late 20th century he cut a deliberately quaint figure.
20世纪末，中国掀起一股狂热的消费主义之风，但单田芳有意塑造古雅形象。

On television, in plain robes before a screen of ancient symbols,
电视节目中，他着一袭素袍，立于古典屏风前。

he did not move from behind his table, letting his hands, eyes and voice paint scenes, characters, emotions, even abstractions.
他不从桌后走出来，只以双手、眼睛和声音便描绘出场景、人物和情绪，甚至是一些抽象事物。

The young loved him as much as the old,
老少皆爱单田芳的评书。

and the government declared him an Inheritor of China's Intangible Cultural Heritage;
政府还宣布他为中国非物质文化遗产的传承者；

his fans called him "an eternal electric wave" and an evergreen tree.
他被粉丝们誉为“永不消逝的电波”和“常青树”。

Kind words, but he still worried that he had no obvious successor to carry on the oral tradition.
众口交赞，但他还是担忧没有明确的继承人来继承这个口头传统文化。

To stave off silence he set up a storytelling academy in Beijing, put his favourite tales into 47 books and blogged on Sina Weibo.
为延缓评书的失传，他在北京创建了评书学会，将自己最喜欢的故事创作整理成47部评书小说，还在新浪微博发表。

Yet most of that was words written down.
但大部分评书是以文字形式写下来的。

His gravelly voice was what mattered: so much so that a channel was set up in 2005 just to keep broadcasting his stories.
可是至关重要的是他那沙哑嗓音：2005年，为了更好地展示评书，专门建立频道播出他的评书。

At an episode a day, the stock would last until 2036.
一天一集，这个节目将持续至2036年。

Ever since that first studio performance he had reminded China that it needed those tales, after all.
从演播室的第一次表演开始，他就提醒道：毕竟，中国还是需要这些故事的。

Despite its rush to modernity, it needed him.
尽管中国急于现代化，但是中国也需要他这样（传承传统文化）的人。