碎金集 2021 Fortuitous Gold Nuggets 2021 第 10 篇 Section 10
十月 救救书店！或许还能… October: Save the Bookstores! Perhaps We Still Can...
返回 碎金集 2021 Back to Fortuitous Gold Nuggets 2021近期喜欢上了台湾文学。白先勇《孽子》，齐邦媛《巨流河》，琦君《灯景旧情怀》以及张晓风、苏雪林、席慕蓉、台静农、司马中原都挺好，49年以来华语文学的版图台湾至少占一半！可是当我在书店中试图寻觅更多佳作时，却愕然发现书店的大半版图都已被网络小说与教辅占领了。
Recently I have developed a deep fondness for Taiwanese literature. Pai Hsien-yung’s Crystal Boys, Chi Pang-yuan’s The Great Flowing River, Chi Chun’s Lanterns and Old Sentiments, along with Chang Hsiao-feng, Su Hsueh-lin, Hsi Muren, Tai Ching-nung, and Sima Zhongyuan are all marvelous—since 1949, Taiwan occupies at least half of the modern Chinese literary landscape! Yet when I sought to hunt for more masterpieces in bookstores, I was astonished to find that more than half the bookstore shelves had been conquered by web novels and test-prep guides.
实体书店在一座城市里能存在，是这座城市最后的韧性带，我并非抨击电商和电子小说，而是因为实体书店所代表的文明底蕴是无法超越的。有人会说“时代发展的代价就是实体店全部消失或倒闭，人类最后将依赖于网络而非现实”，如果这样发展，不出二十年人和人之间必然形成冷漠社交圈，从而大规模发生“遮面效应”，也就是如今的“极度社恐”。
That physical bookstores can exist in a city is the ultimate buffer zone of resilience for that city. I am not bashing e-commerce or digital novels, but the civilizational heritage embodied by brick-and-mortar bookstores is something that can never be surpassed. Some might argue: “The price of historical progress is the total extinction or bankruptcy of physical stores; humanity will eventually rely on the virtual rather than reality.” If development proceeds down this track, within twenty years cold, alienated social circles will inevitably form among people, precipitating a widespread “masked effect”—what we call today “extreme social anxiety.”
实体书店和实体店存在的意义不仅仅是让店主赚钱，更多时候这些实体书店和实体店是在给予人们互相交流和重新焕发个人能力的机会，在挑拣自己所喜欢的书籍或物品时，人类本身的审美在被放大，于是你会发现这些书籍和物品你有兴趣买下并阅读，也有兴趣买下并使用。
The purpose of physical bookstores and physical shops is by no means merely to enrich shopkeepers; far more often, they afford human beings the opportunity to converse and rekindle personal faculties. In the process of selecting books or objects one truly loves, innate human aesthetics are magnified; and so you find yourself keen to purchase and read these books, keen to purchase and utilize these items.
于是书籍和物品使你的精神世界和物质世界丰富起来，这种视觉和精神上的满足是电子小说和极简主义者所无法理解的，恰恰是这种他们无法理解的生活方式在华夏大地上传承了无数代人，由此创造出了璀璨耀眼的华夏文明。
And so books and physical objects enrich both your spiritual and material spheres. This visual and mental gratification is something digital novels and minimalists can never comprehend; yet it is precisely this mode of living, beyond their grasp, that has been handed down through countless generations across the land of Cathay, forging a dazzlingly luminous Chinese civilization.
再想到当年萧绎这样一个千古所谓博学的皇帝，却最终城破被擒、江陵焚书，用一己之力毁灭了公元六世纪之前中华文明的一半典籍，整整十四万卷书籍只因一句“读书万卷，犹有今日”而焚之。
Reflecting then upon Xiao Yi (Emperor Yuan of Liang), an emperor renowned through the ages for vast erudition, who was ultimately captured upon the fall of his citadel and burnt his library at Jiangling—with his own hands annihilating half the textual heritage of Chinese civilization before the sixth century A.D.: fully 140,000 scrolls destroyed simply because he exclaimed, “Having read myriad volumes, I still meet today’s ruin!”
王夫之怒评：“得纤曲而忘大义，迷影迹而失微言，且为大惑之资也。况百家小道、取青媲白之区区者乎！呜呼！岂徒元帝之不仁，而读书止以导淫哉？”“读书无用论”在这些现实中失意的人心里，永远是自身问题的托词。身为华夏子孙，不应使其消亡，这是我们的责任，也是我们的历史使命。
Wang Fuzhi indignantly remarked: “Fixated on trivial subtleties while forgetting grand righteousness, bewitched by superficial shadows while losing profound wisdom—this is the very fuel of great delusion. How much more so the petty paths of the Hundred Schools, preening themselves in mere rhetorical embellishment! Alas! Was it solely the cruelty of Emperor Yuan, or did reading merely serve to foster wanton folly?” In the hearts of those frustrated in reality, the creed that “reading is useless” serves forever as an alibi for their own failings. As descendants of Cathay, we must never let bookstores perish; this is our duty, and our historical mandate.
救救书店…
Save the bookstores…