(双语对照)纽约时报报道：福建村民越洋追讨20年前失窃真身佛像

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纽约时报报道：福建村民越洋追讨20年前失窃真身佛像
Mummy Displayed in Hungary Sets Chinese Villagers in Pursuit of Lost Icon
Yangchun Journal By AMY QINMay 05, 2015
纽约时报看中国 AMY QIN2015年05月05日

上个月，中国阳春的村民在一尊遗失雕像的灰色复制品前。遗失雕像内据信藏有一名古代僧人的尸体。Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times

YANGCHUN, China — One day in March, Lin Yongtuan was on his lunch break scrolling through the news on his phone when a story with an interesting photo caught his eye. Researchers in Europe had made a remarkable discovery: the nearly 1,000-year-old mummified body of a monk encased in a statue.

福建阳春村——今年3月的一天，林永团在午休时用手机翻看新闻，其中一篇文章附有一张有趣的照片，吸引了他的注意力。欧洲的研究人员获得了惊人的发现：一尊塑像内包裹着一具近千年历史的僧侣遗骸。

Mr. Lin rushed to this lush mountain village in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian, where he had grown up praying to a similar statue that was believed to hold a monk’s remains. He passed around the photo, which showed a gilded Buddhist figure sitting cross-legged, shoulders slightly hunched forward, the corners of his lips turned slightly upward in a faint smile.

林永团匆匆赶回中国东南部福建省的一座草木茂盛的山村。在这个村子长大期间，他就曾经拜过一尊类似的塑像，据说内有一位僧人的遗体。他把照片拿给大家看。那是一尊镀金的佛像，盘腿而坐，肩膀微微前倾，嘴角略微上翘，带着淡淡的微笑。

The villagers all agreed: It was the same statue. They called it the Zhanggong Patriarch, and it had been stolen from Yangchun 20 years earlier. Now it seemed to have resurfaced halfway around the world in a museum in Budapest.

村民们一致认为：这就是阳春20年前失窃的那尊塑像。他们称其为“章公祖师”。现在，在半个地球之外的布达佩斯的一座博物馆里，它似乎重新出现了。

“Everyone in the village was so excited,” said Mr. Lin, 46, who works at a financial services firm in a nearby city. “The smile, the eyes, his posture — it was unmistakable.”

“村里每个人都很激动，”46岁的林永团说。他在附近城市的一家金融服务公司工作。“那种微笑，那双眼睛，还有姿态——毫无疑问就是失窃的佛像。”

上个月，布达佩斯一家博物馆里展示的一尊疑似被盗佛像的雕像。

Mónika Kiss-Stefán

In the weeks since then, the 1,800 residents of Yangchun have been on a mission to get their mummy back. They have welcomed journalists to the village, appealed for help on social media and lobbied government officials. A native of Yangchun working as a cook in Budapest was recruited to check out the statue in the Hungarian Natural History Museum, where it was on display as part of a mummy exhibit. Then villagers organized simultaneous prayer readings at their temple and at the museum to celebrate the discovery and draw attention to their cause. Hundreds turned out, and fireworks lit up the night sky at the temple.

自那之后的数周里，阳春的1800名居民致力于讨回这尊肉身坐佛。他们把记者迎到村里采访，在社交媒体上呼吁大家提供帮助，并对政府官员进行游说。一名阳春人在布达佩斯当厨师，受村民委托去了匈牙利自然历史博物馆(Hungarian Natural History Museum)的干尸展区查看这尊塑像。然后，村民在本村寺庙和这所博物馆同时举办了诵经仪式，以此庆祝佛像的发现，并吸引大家对此事的关注。数以百计的人到达了现场，焰火照亮了寺庙上方的夜空。

The village’s demand has been embraced by the Chinese government, which has stepped up efforts to reclaim looted cultural relics that ended up abroad. On April 16, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage announced that it had contacted the mummy’s Dutch owner, whom it did not identify, and begun discussions about returning it.

中国政府在加紧追讨流失海外的失窃文物，积极响应了阳春的诉求。4月16日，国家文物局宣布，已经联系了这尊佛像在荷兰的所有者，并开始讨论与归还有关的事宜。这位所有者的姓名未作披露。

It will be difficult to determine with certainty whether the mummy, which has been removed from the museum exhibit, is truly the missing Zhanggong Patriarch.

要确定这个干尸就是丢失的章公祖师塑像很困难。目前，这座塑像已被撤出博物馆的展览。

“Unlike the big museums, where everything is very well documented, holdings of temples and local small museums have very poor records, if any at all,” said Stefan Gruber, an associate professor at Kyoto University in Japan who studies cultural heritage law and art crime in Asia. “The world is a big place, and if an object is not included in an international database, for example, how would you even find this object? Where do you even start looking? Usually once these things are gone, they are gone forever.”

“大型博物馆里的所有东西一般都有非常详细的记录，与这些地方不同，寺庙和地方的小型博物馆里，藏品记录通常极不完善，有的根本没有任何记录，”日本京都大学(Kyoto University)研究亚洲文化遗产法和艺术品犯罪的副教授史蒂芬·格鲁伯(Stefan Gruber)说。“世界很大，例如，如果一件物品没被记录在国际数据库里，你怎样才能找到它？你要从哪里开始寻找？一般情况下，这些东西丢了，就永远丢了。”

The people of Yangchun hope their case will be an exception. On a recent afternoon, residents milled about and chatted with visitors in the village temple, a massive structure with thick wooden columns supporting a gently sloping, gray-tiled roof. Red vertical banners with handwritten poems appealing for good fortune hung inside, and smoke from burning incense filled the air. An electronic billboard flashing the temple’s name signified the hamlet’s relative prosperity, which villagers attribute to the tea farms that have replaced subsistence agriculture in recent years.

阳春村的村民希望他们的案件会是一个例外。最近一天下午，村民和游客在村里的寺庙游逛和聊天。这座寺庙很大，粗粗的木柱子支撑着略微倾斜的屋顶，屋顶上铺着灰色的瓦块。里面竖直悬挂着红色的条幅，上面是祈求好运的手写诗词，空气里弥漫着焚香产生的烟雾。一块电子公告牌上闪烁着寺庙的名称，它代表了这座小村庄的相对富裕——村民认为，这是因为近年来茶园取代了温饱型农业。

On the main altar stood a crude replica of the Zhanggong Patriarch, dark gray instead of gold, overlooking a table where residents had laid out evidence to support their claim to the statue: several photos of it taken in 1989 and the clothes that had adorned the figure and were left behind by whoever made off with it in 1995. A faded gold crown sat among the rags.

主坛上放着一尊粗糙的章公祖师塑像复制品，表面是深灰色而不是金色。村民在塑像面前的桌子上，展示着支持他们说法的证据：这尊塑像1989年的几张照片和装饰它的衣物，后者被1995年偷走它的人丢在了这里。一个褪色的金冠放在旧衣物中间。

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Villagers acknowledged that it was difficult to say that the statue in their photos was an exact match with the one exhibited in Hungary because the Zhanggong Patriarch was rarely displayed in their temple without clothes or a crown. Still, they are convinced they have the right mummy.

村民们承认，很难说他们照片中的塑像与匈牙利展出的那尊塑像完全一致，因为章公祖师很少在不着衣戴冠的情况下在他们的寺庙里展出。不过，他们仍然确信那就是他们丢失的那尊肉身坐佛。



“To us, Zhanggong Patriarch is not a cultural relic,” said Lin Wenqing, 39, who returned from selling tea in the southern region of Guangxi when he heard the statue had been found. “We see him as family. He is one of us.”

“对我们来说，章公祖师宝像不是文化遗产，”39岁的林文青说。当听说塑像已被找到时，在广西南部卖茶的他就返回了村里。“我们把他视作家人。他是我们中的一员。”



Before its theft, residents prayed to the Zhanggong Patriarch at every important event in the village, including the harvest. Once a year, they took the statue down from the altar and paraded it through the village, visiting each house. And on the fifth day of the 10th lunar month — believed to be the mummified monk’s birthday — the village celebrated with a festival featuring performances and a bountiful vegetarian feast.

在塑像被盗前，每到村里的重要时刻，村民都会向章公祖师祈福，丰收也包括在内。每年，他们都会把塑像从神坛上取下来，抬着它在村里游行一次，拜访每户人家。每年农历十月初五——据称是这位僧人的生日——村民都会像节日一样庆祝，有表演和丰盛的斋菜。



These traditions appear to go back centuries, passed down from generation to generation along with tales of the patriarch as a boy with the surname Zhang who moved to the village with his mother, worked as a cowherd and became a monk.

这些传统似乎可以追溯到数世纪以前，一同代代相传的还有关于章公祖师的传说：这个姓章的男孩与母亲一起搬来阳春村，他曾经放过牛，后来当了和尚。



“They always told us that he lived during the Song dynasty,” said Lin Chengfa, 44, “and that inside the statue was his mummified corpse.”

“他们经常告诉我们，他生活在宋代，”44岁的林成发说，“塑像里面是他的遗体。”



Mr. Lin, who was part of the police unit that responded in December 1995 when the statue disappeared, recalled that several villagers wept outside the temple that morning. Especially upset were older residents, some of whom had gone to great lengths to protect the statue during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, when the Communist Party smashed such relics and sought to stamp out ancient traditions as obstacles to socialist progress.

林成发是1995年12月佛像消失时负责办案的民警之一，他回忆说，那天上午，有好几名村民在寺院外面哭泣。上了年纪的村民尤其伤心，他们有些人曾在毛泽东发动的文革期间付出极大努力保护这尊塑像，共产党当时毁掉了许多类似的文物，试图扼杀阻碍社会主义进步的古代传统。



“We dug holes to hide him, and sometimes we would hide him in people’s houses,” Lin Chuanlong, 73, said of the mummy during an interview at his home in a neighboring village. “We were under a lot of pressure during those years. Sometimes we would even move him twice in one night.”

“我们挖坑把它藏起来，有时把他藏到家里，”73岁的林传龙在附近村子的家中接受采访时说。“那些年我们承受了很大的压力。有时我们甚至一晚上要把他转移两次。”



Village records, which trace the histories of families in Yangchun, most of whom share the surname Lin, include references to the Zhanggong Patriarch from as early as the Song dynasty, which ruled China from 960 to 1279.

阳春村民多数姓林，记载该村各家族历史的文献最早在宋代就提到过章公。宋朝统治中国的时间为960年到1279年。



Mummification was a sign of eminence among monks of the Chan school of Buddhism during that era, and Fujian Province was a center of Chan Buddhism, said James Robson, a Harvard professor who has written about the alleged theft of another Chinese mummy by a Japanese traveler in the early 20th century.

哈佛大学(Harvard)教授罗柏松(James Robson)说，在那个时代，肉身佛像在佛教禅宗里是地位的象征，而福建省是禅宗的中心。他曾经撰文讲述过20世纪初一名日本旅行者被指盗走另一尊中国肉身佛像的故事。



Only a few mummies are likely to have survived the vicissitudes of Chinese politics, he said, and some may still be hidden in statues in museum collections around the world.

他说，只有少数肉身佛像可能在中国的政治兴衰中存活下来，有些可能仍然藏在世界各地博物馆收藏的雕塑中。



When contacted on the networking site LinkedIn last month, the Dutch architect Oscar van Overeem publicly acknowledged for the first time that he owned the mummy in dispute. He has said he purchased the statue in 1996 from a collector in Amsterdam who had acquired it in Hong Kong.

上个月通过社交网站领英(LinkedIn)联系到荷兰建筑师奥斯卡·范奥维利姆(Oscar van Overeem)时，他首次公开承认自己是争议中的这尊肉身佛像的所有者。范奥维利姆表示，他1996年从阿姆斯特丹的一位收藏家那里买到了这尊佛像，而这位收藏家是从香港把它买来的。



Workers restoring the statue realized something might be inside, and Mr. van Overeem decided to get a CT scan, which revealed the mummy. But he insists that his statue is not the Zhanggong Patriarch.

修复这尊佛像的工人们意识到里面可能有什么东西，于是范奥维利姆决定对它进行一次CT扫描，进而发现了里面的干尸。不过，他坚持认为，他的这尊塑像里面不是章公祖师。



“I have convinced the Chinese representatives easily with facts and research that the villagers’ claim is unjustified or unlikely,” he wrote via LinkedIn. “However, meanwhile, my mummy has become a political issue — if I like it or not.”

“我已经很轻松地让中国代表相信了这些事实和研究结果，即村民们的说法没有根据，不太可能是真的，”他通过领英写道。“然而，与此同时，我的这尊肉身佛像已经成了一个政治问题——无论我是否想要这样。”



Mr. van Overeem wrote that he had reached a tentative agreement to donate the mummy to “a major Buddhist temple” near Yangchun, which he referred to as a village that “pretends the mummy belongs to them.” An unidentified foundation will offer him some compensation for what he has invested in the statue and in researching its history, he said.

范奥维利姆写道，他已经达成了把这尊肉身佛像捐给阳春附近“一座大型佛教寺院”的意向协议，他把阳春称为“假装佛像属于自己的”村子。他说，一个基金会将为他对这尊塑像以及相关历史研究工作的投资给予一些补偿。不过他没有透露该基金会的名称。



He added that he was letting go of the mummy because he believed it deserved to return to its homeland “to be incorporated in truly Buddhist surroundings” and worshiped “by those who love and appreciate him.”

他还表示，自己放弃这尊肉身佛像，是因为他相信它应该回到故乡，“融入真正的佛教环境中”，“受到热爱和欣赏他的人”的崇拜。



The mummy’s well-being may be the only issue on which Mr. van Overeem and the villagers of Yangchun agree.

肉身佛像的福祉可能是范奥维利姆和阳春村民唯一共同关心的事。



“We want our Zhanggong Patriarch back so we can pray to him and worship him,” said Lin Wenqing, the tea salesman. “Not so that some collector can keep him in a cold basement or in a museum display case.”

“我们想要回章公祖师，这样我们就可以向他祈福，祭拜了，”茶商林文青说。“而不是让某个收藏家把他放在冰冷的地下室或博物馆的陈列柜里。”



本文转载自纽约时报 http://cn.nytstyle.com/culture/20150505/t05yangchun/dual/

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《纽约时报》（The New York Times）

有时简称为“时报”（The Times）是一份在美国纽约出版的日报，在全世界发行，有相当的影响力，美国高级报纸、严肃刊物的代表，长期以来拥有良好的公信力和权威性。由于风格古典严肃，它有时也被戏称为“灰色女士”（The Gray Lady）。它最初的名字是《纽约每日时报》（The New-York Daily Times），创始人是亨利·贾维斯·雷蒙德和乔治·琼斯。纽约时报传统的版面风格高贵、严肃，但拘谨保守，版面上一片灰色，被称为“灰贵妇”。在新闻报道方面《纽约时报》将自己看做是一份“报纸记录”，这个政策的结果是除纽约当地的新闻外，《纽约时报》很少首先报道一个事件。而假如它真的首先报道一个事件的话，那么这个报道的可靠性是非常高的，因此往往被世界上其它报纸和新闻社直接作为新闻来源。在美国大多数公共图书馆内都提供一份《纽约时报》索引，其内涵是《纽约时报》对时事的报道文章。 《纽约时报》享有可靠的新闻来源的声誉。它的社论一般被认为是比较开通的。不过实际上它的社论是由许多不同的作者撰写的，而他们的观点则从左到右各不相同。《纽约时报》在美国的影响可谓是巨大而深远，它是美国人生活中不可或缺的一部分。每天早晨在上班前，从地铁站花2美元买一份《纽约时报》已经成为许多美国人生活中的一部分。《纽约时报》从经营到内容生产，包括对社会问题的观察，应该说都是报业的楷模。

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纽约时报记者AMY QIN发

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阳春村的地理位置：js1.cn/yc
二维码.cn:eszd.cn/yc

感谢海内外朋友们共同关注章公六全祖师，
欢迎海内外宾朋到访福建阳春村
You are all welcome to Yangchun, home of "Mummified Monk" Master Liuquan (sits in an  Ancient Chinses Buddha Statue )
maps : js1.cn/yc
lies in Wushan, Datian County, Sanming City, Fujian Province, SE of China