※ 引述《Aurelius@feeling-NOsmthSPAM-org (Marcus)》之銘言：
下面的報道是我同班同學寫的
英文的是來自華盛頓郵報
永州八記之一-----老人
人能有多老?
毛澤東活了83歲,孔子73,孟子84,宋美齡106.
這些數字因為他們被寫在書上,被記住,被引用.面前這個老太太的歲數也是歷史,不知道什
麼時候會嘎然而止,能肯定的是,那時,一種文字會隨她生命的氣息煙消雲散.
老太太姓陽,湖南江永女書最後一個自然傳人,今年95.
她一個人住在一間石砌的小屋裡.大兒子和媳婦的家不到十米遠.
這是當地的風俗,老人上了歲數就讓他們單獨住,其實就是等死.因為他們覺得父母如果到了
該死的年齡不死,就是在奪取兒孫的壽命.老人家的二兒子前幾年去世了,更是加深了大兒子
和兒媳的憂慮,趕緊讓她搬出來.還沒事說幾句該去就去,不走就是累贅之類典型不肖子孫的
話.
早上10點多,老人起床,眯著眼睛看著門外的草從綠到黃從黃轉綠.到晚上睡覺之前,坐在屋
裡的小凳子上就是她全部的工作.床上的東西早就被省的,市的,縣的文物局博物館搜刮幾次
了,被子,褥子,枕頭都是用不了多久就要被人拿走.老人身上的布兜也是後來做的,針腳很亂
.幾年前她自己洗衣服,自己縫被子,現在都做不動了.沒有人陪她說話,日子總是沉寂,復又
沉寂.
女書是苦情文學,陽奶奶的歷史也是這樣:結婚3個月她丈夫就出意外死了,再婚之後生
了八個孩子只活下來兩個,她幾十年踩著三寸金蓮上山砍柴,下田種谷,到老來還被孩子冷
落一旁..
但是她臉上很陽光,眼睛特別亮,笑的時候,沒牙,很甜很燦爛.據說幾年前有一次她生
病之後,不吃不喝幾天,就等死,縣裡的女幹部來看她,說姥姥你要活下去,你死了就沒人唱女
書歌了,她才開始勉強吃東西.之後就為了這個生於斯的文字和歌謠,老太太活的異常頑強.春
春節感冒發燒,家裡人把她頭髮剪短,開始準備後事,她硬是活下來,活下來顫巍巍地寫字,輕
輕地唱歌,她多寫一個字,以後的字典和研究就多一個參照物,她多唱一首歌,一個學者就能整
理發表一片論文.
但這些對於一個生命隨時能走到盡頭的老人沒有任何意義,她只是做,她為此而活.
女書是幾百年流傳在江永縣幾個村子的文字.這裡的女人很小開始結拜姊妹,然後用女書寫
詩,唱歌,繡花,把苦和希望分擔和分享.現在十幾個的女孩也能學寫這樣的字,但是她們多半
為了旅遊者而作,不結拜,沒有女友,沒有那麼多苦寫成詩歌吟唱,所以她們都算不上女書真
正的傳人.經歷了女書,女歌,女友和女紅的老人們相繼去世,如今只剩陽奶奶.
常常有媒體來拜訪,奶奶雖然沒念過書,中央每個頻道,BBC, CNN, 紐約時報,華盛頓郵報的
記者都跟她問過好.95年奶奶還一輩子頭一次離開了縣城,跟著清華的趙老師來北京參加世
婦會,臨走的時候很慎重的跟趙老師說,把我的骨灰帶回來就行了.那時候她86歲,體重60斤
..
我問她奶奶您多大了,她說記不得了哦.
我問奶奶您什麼時候開始學女書的,她還是搖頭說記不得了.
我說奶奶您能唱女書我聽聽嗎?她眼睛一下子就亮了,開始唱,很簡單的曲調,用的當地方言
,一首接一首,唱了20多分鐘,老鄉不停跟我說,這是唱的孟姜女,這是李白的詩,這是她自己
的年輕時候的故事...
男人和女人之間文化的較量在東亞三國驚人的一致.漢文學的興盛不僅僅在中國,也蔓延到
日本跟朝鮮.不能上學不能讀書的女人們幾乎都想到了自己發明文字.日本的貴族女人將漢
字稱作男手,自己發展出一種女手,寫出著名的<源式物語>,而後在確立民族身份的需要之下
,女手登上歷史舞台,成為平假名.同樣,朝鮮女人發明的諺文,也叫雌文字,在十九世紀末抗
日戰爭中成為民族主義的象征而全面推行,就是如今的韓語.中國湘南女人們將漢字成為男
書,自己發明了女書,做為目前唯一的單性別文字,卻只是靜靜地生存,靜靜地消失.
沒有和民族主義掛鉤並不表示女書沒有尊嚴.會女書的人都將自己稱為君子女,在一首首詩
裡互相稱讚姐妹們天仙下凡,聰穎過人.女書代表的是一個理想的世界,一個脫離了苦難的,
團結的精神天堂.所以陽奶奶才捨不得離去,捨不得讓女書斷掉最後一口氣.
採訪完我握了握奶奶的手,冰涼.我盯著她的眼睛,捂著她的手,過了五六分鐘才慢慢有了溫
度.我說奶奶我們走了,還會過來看您的,她說過來我再給你們唱歌聽.她眼睛是紅的,陪同的
村幹部說老人多有眼疾,容易迎風流淚.我轉過身的時候,倒真忍不住流淚了.
A Language by Women, for Women
Scholars Try to Save Unique Chinese Script
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, February 24, 2004; Page A01
PUMEI VILLAGE, China -- Nowadays, it would be called empowering women. But
back then, centuries ago, it was just a way for the sworn sisters of this
rugged and tradition-laden Chinese countryside to share their hopes, their
joys and their many sorrows.
Only men learned to read and write Chinese, and bound feet and social strictures
confined women to their husband's homes after marriage. So somehow -- scholars
are unsure how, or exactly when -- the women of this fertile valley in the
southwestern corner of Hunan province developed their own way to communicate
. It was a delicate, graceful script handed down from grandmother to granddaughter
, from elderly aunt to adolescent niece, from girlfriend to girlfriend --
and never, ever shared with the men and boys.
So was born nushu, or women's script, a single-sex writing system that Chinese
scholars believe is the only one of its kind.
"The girls used to get together and sing and talk, and that's when we learned
from one another," said Yang Huanyi, 98, a wrinkled farmer's widow who learned
as a girl and whom scholars consider the most accomplished reader and writer
among a fast-dwindling number of nushu practitioners. "It made our lives
better, because we could express ourselves that way."
Scholars and local authorities have taken renewed interest in the exclusive
language, trying to preserve it as the last women who are fluent reach the
end of their lives. Generations of women in the region once penned their
diaries in nushu, and the few journals that have survived offer a unique
chronicle of these private lives long ago. Today, young girls learn Chinese
along with the boys, so learning nushu has less appeal.
Nushu in some ways resembles Chinese, if some of the characters were stretched
and altered. But it also differs in many respects. For example, according
to researchers, the letters represent sound -- the sounds of this region
's Cheng Guan Tuhua dialect -- and not ideas as in the Chinese ideograms
that men studied and wrote. Nushu was written from top to bottom in wispy
, elongated letters in columns that read from right to left.
Much remains unknown about nushu. Its origins, reaching perhaps as far back
as the 3rd century, have been the subject of scholarly exchanges among a
handful of researchers in China and elsewhere. They know it was used in
Hunan's Jiangyong County, in south central China about 200 miles northwest
of Guangzhou, and believe it was limited to what is now Jiangyong's Shungjian
Xu Township, which includes Pumei and these days has a population of around
19,000 people. But even that is not certain.
What seems clear is that nushu was fostered by the region's ancient custom
of "sworn sisters," whereby village girls would pledge one another fealty
and friendship forever. The tight sorority, which included growing up together
in cobbled village lanes and gathering with adult women to weave and embroider
, inevitably was shattered when the time for marriage came. Tradition dictated
that a bride go away to her groom's home -- and that is where nushu came
in.
Three days after the wedding, the adolescent bride would receive a "Third
Day Book," a cloth-bound volume in which her sworn sisters and her mother
would record their sorrow at losing a friend and daughter and express best
wishes for happiness in the married life that lay ahead. The first half-
dozen pages contained these laments and hopes, written in nushu that the
groom could not read. The rest were left blank for the bride to record her
own feelings and experiences -- in nushu -- for what would become a treasured
diary.
The sworn sisterhood tradition in this region has led some scholars to speculate
that nushu developed as a secret language for lesbians, according to Zhao
Liming, a literature professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing who helped
bring nushu to researchers' attention in the 1980s and is one of the foremost
authorities on it.
"But that is not true," she said in an interview. "They just wanted a way
to express themselves." She added: "Women needed a spiritual life. They
could not write Chinese, but they wanted to express their feelings."
Most important to the women who learned it, sometimes memorizing letters
written on the palms of their hands because of a lack of paper, nushu liberated
them from illiteracy.
The way nushu came to light some 20 years ago also has been clouded in competing
theories.
Lin Lee Lee at the University of Minnesota has written that a Jiangyong County
woman visiting relatives in Beijing in 1982 astounded them by singing and
then writing a language and script they could not understand. The relatives
passed along their amazement to scholars, she said in a conference presentation
, and research into the strange female writing system began.
Page 2 of 2 < Back
A Language by Women, for Women
But Zhou Shuoyi, 78, a self-described countryside intellectual who lives
in nearby Yongzhou city, said he knows better, and he explained why.
One of his ancestors, a grandmother six generations back, wrote a poem entitled
"Educate the Girls." The poem, handed down from generation to generation
, was translated into nushu by some local village women, he said, and his
aunt brought the nushu version to his father's house sometime in the 1920s
as a subject of curiosity.
Zhou's father, a schoolteacher, was impressed by the strange writing he could
not understand and urged the young Zhou to investigate. Later, working for
the Jiangyong County cultural department in the 1950s, Zhou said he discovered
a number of elderly peasant women still mastered nushu. A speaker of the
Tuhua dialect, he was also able to get a whiff of what nushu was about -
- and what a cultural discovery there was to make.
"At that time, many grandmothers could sing it, write it and read it," he
said in an interview, sipping green tea, smiling with satisfaction and arching
his bushy black eyebrows under a flat golfer's hat. He added, "In society
at that time, there was injustice between men and women, and women needed
this language as a way to express themselves."
After further research, Zhou reported his findings to authorities in Beijing
. But by then the Cultural Revolution had convulsed China. As an intellectual
, Zhou said, he was branded a rightist and forced to halt his work. Red Guard
zealots destroyed the nushu documents he had painstakingly accumulated.
"But the stuff in here could not be burned," he smiled, pointing at his head
and its tufts of white hair.
So in 1979, when calm had returned, Zhou said he went back to work at a local
museum and resumed his interest in nushu, eventually learning to read and
write.
Zhou collected more samples and broadened his understanding of the little
-known phenomenon. In 1982, he said, he wrote a book about the region's culture
, including a section on nushu. When the Hunan provincial government published
the book, scholars from relatively nearby Wuhan, from faraway Beijing and
eventually even from abroad started dropping by. Nushu had been discovered
.
"Now a lot of people are studying it and a lot of people come here to ask
about it," he said.
Zhao said that over the last 20 years she has guided a number of graduate
students, Chinese and foreign, in studying nushu at Tsinghua. Estimates
of its contemporary vocabulary range from 670 to 1,500 words. A dozen of
Zhao's students recently started compiling them in a dictionary. The students
include three young men, she specified with a smile.
But aside from scholars, Zhao and Zhou said, fewer than 10 people can fluently
read and write nushu. Yang, the 98-year-old, has little time left. Several
other women in Jiangyong County who can read and write, or at least read
, also have neared the end of their lives.
Local authorities nevertheless have seized on nushu's cultural value, and
on its tourism potential. An $80,000 school and museum went up last year
here in Pumei, where Hu Mei Yue, 42, visits every Saturday to teach nushu
to whoever among the village girls shows up for class.
Hu, who learned from her grandmother, the late Gao Yinxin, also embroiders
bags and handkerchiefs with nushu writings to sell to tourists, who people
here hope will start coming soon to see what they have baptized "Pumei,
Nushu Cultural Village."
"It's very interesting, and Gao Yinxin left this valuable thing for our village
," said Hu Linyin, 10, a Pumei girl who recited nushu poetry and tried to
puzzle out the writing under teacher Hu's direction during a session Saturday
.
"I don't know how people can write like this," remarked a classmate, Hu Cui
Cui, 12, who said she can read about 200 words and write a few. "Each word
is like a flower."
--
※ 來源:‧BBS 水木清華站 smth.org‧[FROM: 62.255.229.*]
--
※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc)
◆ From: 61.70.226.229