17 Aug 2024 14 min read weekly

DPS 周刊 162 - 请不要杀死好奇心

当你走进一个熟悉的餐馆，点了一份熟悉的食物，你会拿出手机拍照吗？
当你走进一个熟悉的餐馆，点了一份从没试过的食物，你会拿出手机拍照吗？
当你走进一个陌生的餐馆，点了一份熟悉的食物，你会拿出手机拍照吗？
当你走进一个陌生的餐馆，点了一份从没试过的食物，你会拿出手机拍照吗？

很大概率，第二个和第四个问题的答案是会，而第一个和第三个问题的答案是不会。那么决定因素是什么？主要还是我们的好奇心。

类似地，当我们阅读那些老外写中国的非虚构作品，不也是好奇吗？好奇他们是如何观察中国的，好奇他们的好奇心。

最近读到的两本非虚构作品都深入并记录了当地的废品回收行业，一部是 Michael Meyer (梅英东) 的 The Last Old Days of Beijing，一部是 Peter Hessler (何伟) 的 The Buried 记录了埃及的废品回收行业。

梅英东的笔下的 Recycler Wang（中译为废品王）是这么出场的：

A man in a smock spreads a blanket on the ground and arranges dental bridges in neat rows upon it, bellowing, “Tooth repair!” Recycler Wang uses a cast-iron scale to weigh a satchel of empty mineral-water bottles.

而何伟的人物 (Sayyied, a zabaleen) 是这么出场的：

“Salaamu aleikum,” Sayyid said, after I opened the door. Instead of a handshake, he held out his upper arm so that I could grasp his shirt. “Mish nadif,” he explained, smiling. “Not clean.” He showed me his hands—they were stained like old leather. The fingers were so thick that they looked as if he were wearing gloves.

后来何伟见到 Sayyid 的双手经常被废品割伤，还专门送了他一副寿司师傅用的防割手套。结果 Sayyid 谢了他，当没有接受这份礼物，因为：

He told me that if he wore gloves, he lost his touch. He insisted on working bare-handed, despite the risks.

废品王来自河南，和许多老乡一样，以收集废品为生。这也成为了他们立足北京的支点：

He was from the Henan province countryside, a locale that drew especial ire from Beijing natives because it produced the majority of migrants from outside the region. Wang spoke in a thick accent that betrayed his origin. He hadn’t come to the capital with the intention of becoming a resident. “Most of the trash recyclers in our neighborhood are from the same town as I am,” he said. “We can’t have a union, of course, but we help each other. In our eyes, frankly, we’re just in Beijing because we need food. It’s a better economy than our village. If it weren’t, we would never leave.

远在埃及的 Sayyid 也有着相似的出生，来自上埃及的他没有接受多少教育，这反而使他变得易于共情，成为了很好的聆听者：

He was curious and patient, and his lack of education seemed to make him sympathetic to our struggles. Mostly, he was an attentive listener. I suppose that this was a natural response to illiteracy; he was accustomed to receiving much of his information aurally.

两人有着非常强的 street smart，比如 Sayyid 告诉何伟：

But Sayyid’s suggestion was easy to follow. He said, “Don’t stand on high places.

He warned me not to say salaamu aleikum to a Christian, and he reminded me to address any priest as abuna, “our father.” At all costs I should avoid using Muslim interjections like la ilaha ill’allah—“there is no God but God.” I enjoyed the strangeness of this exchange: the Muslim garbageman instructing the former Catholic altar boy on how to avoid offending Coptic Christian sensibilities.

Sayyid explained that in the same way that people paid him to take their garbage away, a landlord could also pay him to allow somebody’s trash to accumulate. The filth was leverage: once the dispute was resolved, the landlord would give Sayyid some money to clean up the mess.

而废品王告诉梅英东：

He took a winding route to reach the expressway out of town. “I know where the police checkpoints are.”

不仅仅是 street smart，两人其实还深谙这个社会，比如废品王从没出过国，但是知道中美的不同：

“Actually, I know that in America, things are different. You can criticize the president all you want. Little Bush invades Iraq, why, even members of his own party will disagree in public.”

而 Sayyid 则提醒何伟这个前基督教徒如何避免冒犯其他基督徒：

He warned me not to say salaamu aleikum to a Christian, and he reminded me to address any priest as abuna, “our father.” At all costs I should avoid using Muslim interjections like la ilaha ill’allah—“there is no God but God.” I enjoyed the strangeness of this exchange: the Muslim garbageman instructing the former Catholic altar boy on how to avoid offending Coptic Christian sensibilities.

尽管生活不易，但是俩人都相当知足：

“I have no regrets,” he said. “It’s not a stable way of life, but that’s life.”

My son is fifteen. He’s back on the farm, going to middle school. I have two wishes for him. The first is that he doesn’t become a farmer. It’s too hard. The second is that he doesn’t work in recycling. It’s not easy, either. I learned this job from people who told me to come to Beijing. I don’t want him to come here until he’s educated."

“I have garbage in the brain.” He was only half-joking; his livelihood, after all, forced him to spend much of his time thinking about trash.

凭借着锱铢必较的努力，两人都过上了更好的生活：Sayyid 盖了一栋两层小楼，里面装满了全新的家具；废品王买了一辆面包车：

“By the end of his twenties, Sayyid had saved enough to build a modest two-story building in Ard al-Liwa, a district on the Giza side of the river.”

But all of the appliances and furniture were brand new. The couches were still wrapped in factory plastic, and the family had two televisions. A computer was being installed for the older son, Zizou.

“When I noticed a shiny white van parked outside our courtyard’s door, Recycler Wang gave a self-effacing laugh and said, “It’s used.” He had bought it “cheap,” of course.”

最难得的是，两位作者都深入了人物的生活：梅东英跟着废品王去了“垃圾村”，而何伟和夫人参加了 Sayyid 第三个儿子的庆生活动：

Trash Village had a convenience store, clinic, and Henan restaurant, but no trees, no animals, and no children. The kids, Recycler Wang said, were back in Henan province with their grandparents and going to school.

“At the end of August, Wahiba gave birth to a daughter they named Lamis. On the seventh day after the baby was born, the family held a traditional celebration called a sebou, and Sayyid escorted Leslie and me to his neighborhood.”

诚如梅英东在后来的一个访谈中提到的，他的写作是为了记录当地人的生活，从一个熟悉当地语言的外来者的角度来记录。这需要他深入当地，长时间地浸润，才能细细观察，与偶然到访的旅行者的角度截然不同。这种角度也与当地人的观察角度不同，因为好奇心不同。

But I’m writing from the perspective of an interested outsider—fluent in Chinese, but still new to these settings.

I’m more interested in capturing how life is actually lived there, in the vast, diverse parts of the country that most foreign correspondents and tourists pass by.

China books are very good at “explaining” China to us, but not so great at depicting what it felt like to actually live in the country during these boom years, when people’s lives rapidly changed, but political reforms deteriorated.

Being overseas gives you distance from yourself. It sharpens your awareness of your own culture and assumptions you hold and—at least for me—makes you write with your audience in mind, taking care to pay out facts and details like fishing line, leading them deeper into the story, to see what you see.

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Recap

九年前，Sam Altman 刚刚度过自己的三十岁生日，写下了一些人生感悟：

如果你不喜欢自己的工作，生活中很难完全快乐或满足。

争取在你的专业领域成为世界上最优秀的人。即使你没能做到，你可能也会到达一个相当不错的位置。
不要害怕冒一些职业风险，尤其是在早期。
无论金钱能否买到幸福，它能买到自由，这是很重要的。
赚钱往往比花钱更有趣，虽然我个人从未后悔花钱在朋友、新体验、节省时间、旅行和我相信的事业上。
多和人交流。多读长内容，少看推文。
为自己设定每天、每年和每十年的明确目标。
努力工作的一大好处是好机会会随之而来，但当机会来临时，还是要靠自己去抓住。
工作中最令人满意的部分之一是与真正优秀的人建立深厚的关系。
你确实会成为你花最多时间在一起的人的平均水平。

Morgan Housel 真是一个很好的写作者，他刚刚分享了一些短小精悍的故事：

最好的营销是一个产品本身。
你可以说自己是一个跳水运动员，但我们两秒钟内就能看出你是否真的是。这就是人们喜欢单口喜剧的原因，他们可以信任它。其他一切都是假的。
如果批评可能是真的，你可能会感到愤怒，因为你知道这是对你身份的真实攻击。
在训练时，你的三分之一的日子应该感觉很好，三分之一感觉还行，三分之一感觉糟糕。这是一个好的、平衡的训练计划。
每个初创公司都不太可能成功。清楚地认识到这一点是有帮助的，但这并不意味着你不能保持乐观。
乐观主义者和悲观主义者并不是根据他们看到的信息做出反应，而是根据他们希望看到的解释做出反应。
一旦你免费提供某样东西，之后几乎不可能再收费。

一个老外为了了解北京老百姓的日常生活，在胡同里一住就是两三年。最后写出了 The Last Days of Old Beijing （中译为《再会，老北京》），这个老外就是 Michael Meyer，中文名叫梅英东。在这篇访谈了，他谈了关于写作，阅读和中国的一些想法：

相较于旅行的浅尝辄止，这种生活迫使一个外来者深入本地的日常，去了解本地人看中什么，渴望什么；
和 Kevin Kelly 类似，他最初的写作始于和家人的通信 -- 这些通信不仅详细记录了日常，还有时间戳，更重要的是，家人向他提问，让他进一步去探索；
当他结束了 Peace Corp 的派遣，投了一份教学工作的申请。没了下文之后，他去西藏旅行了一遭。然后准备返回美国，结果在成都的旅馆收到前面的申请结果。他去北京入职，第一周就碰到了后来的夫人；
常驻海外的另一个好处是，让你与自己保持距离，这样你可以用更犀利的眼光来观察自己的内心，检视自己的文化和成见。然后像钓鱼一样，让事实和细节引导你一步步地探索；
他认为自己写这些非虚构，是引导读者与自己一起游历，一起犯错，一起学习；
每一本书的写作需要耗费他至少三年的时间，七八遍草稿；
以中文为母语的作者擅长“解释”中国，但不擅长记录日常生活。这恰好是外来写作者的优势。

最近各地股市波动不断，我们应该如何应对？Nick Maggiulli 给出了他的分析：

单看各国的市场数据也有可能不够分散，比如挪威的股市基本被石油相关产业所主导，德国的股市基本被工业所主导。一旦这些产业产生波动，就会对整个国家的股市产生很大的影响；
面对波动的股市，最好的策略还是分散投资。分散不仅仅在于投资不同的公司，还在于坚持投资，从时间维度上做到分散。
股市最差的情况会持续多久？可能会有十多年（这一数据应该不包括 A 股）。