Opportunity Cost 机会成本

Vincent stood about six feet tall, a handsome boy with close-cropped hair. He always sat in the front of the class, and he enjoyed speaking up, unlike many of the other engineers, who tended to be shy. On the first day of the term, I asked students to list their favorite authors, and Vincent chose Wang Xiaobo, a Beijing novelist who wrote irreverent, sexually explicit fiction.
文森特身高约六英尺，是个英俊的男孩，留着短发。他总是坐在教室的前排，喜欢发言，不像其他很多害羞的工程师。学期的第一天，我让学生们列出自己最喜欢的作家，文森特选择了北京小说家王小波，他写了很多大胆、露骨的小说。

As with many of his classmates, Vincent hoped to complete his undergraduate degree in the United States. I was teaching at the Sichuan University–Pittsburgh Institute, or SCUPI. All SCUPI classes were in English, and after two or three years at Sichuan University students could transfer to the University of Pittsburgh or another foreign institution. SCUPI was one of many programs and exchanges designed to direct more Chinese students to the U.S. In the 2019-20 academic year, Chinese enrollment at American institutions reached an all-time high of 372,532.
和他的许多同学一样，文森特希望在美国完成他的本科学位。我在四川大学-匹兹堡学院（SCUPI）任教。所有 SCUPI 的课程都是用英语授课的，在四川大学学习两三年后，学生可以转到匹兹堡大学或其他外国机构。SCUPI 是许多项目和交流计划中的一个，旨在将更多的中国学生引向美国。在 2019-20 学年，中国学生在美国机构的注册人数达到创纪录的 372,532 人。

Nobody in Vincent’s section had previously studied in the U.S. Almost all of them were middle class, and they often said that their goal was to complete their bachelor’s degree in America, stay on for a master’s or a Ph.D., and then come back to work in China. A generation earlier, the vast majority of Chinese students at American universities had stayed in the country, but the pattern changed dramatically with China’s new prosperity. In 2022, the Chinese Ministry of Education reported that, in the past decade, more than eighty per cent of Chinese students returned after completing their studies abroad.
文森特这一班没有人之前在美国学习过。他们几乎都是中产阶级，常说他们的目标是在美国完成学士学位，然后继续攻读硕士或博士学位，之后回中国工作。一代人之前，绝大多数在美国大学的中国学生都留在了这个国家，但随着中国新繁荣局面的出现，这一模式发生了巨大变化。2022 年，中国教育部报告称，在过去十年中，超过 80%的中国学生在完成国外学习后返回了中国。

Vincent also intended to make a career in China, but he had specific plans for his time in the U.S. Once, during a class discussion, he remarked that someday he would purchase both a car and a real firearm. The illegal airsoft pistol that he had acquired in high school shot only plastic pellets. In 2017, when Vincent ordered the gun, it had been delivered to his home at the bottom of a rice cooker, as camouflage. At the time, such subterfuges were still possible, but the government had since cracked down, as part of a general tightening under Xi Jinping.
文森特也打算在中国发展事业，但他在美国的时间有具体的计划。有一次，在课堂讨论中，他提到有一天他会买一辆车和一把真枪。他在高中时获得的非法软气枪只能发射塑料子弹。2017 年，文森特订购了那把枪，并以米饭锅底部的伪装方式送到了他家。那时候，这种伪装还行得通，但在习近平领导下，政府对这些行为进行了打击。

In Vincent’s essay, he was surprised that the two policemen who arrived at his home didn’t mention the forbidden gun. Instead, they accused him of a much more shocking crime: spreading terrorist messages.
在文森特的文章中，他对到他家来的两名警察没有提及被禁的枪感到惊讶。相反，他们指控他犯下了一个更令人震惊的罪行：传播恐怖主义信息。

“That’s ridiculous,” Vincent said. “I have never browsed such videos, not to mention posted them in the Internet. You must be joking.”
“那太荒谬了，”文森特说。“我从来没有浏览过这种视频，更不用说在互联网上发布它们了。你一定是在开玩笑。”

“Maybe you didn’t post it by yourself,” the policeman said. “But the app may back up the video automatically.”
“也许你不是自己发布的，”警察说。“但是这个应用程序可能会自动备份视频。”

Vincent admitted that once, in a WeChat group, he had come across a terrorist video. The police instructed him to get his I.D. card and accompany them to the station. After they arrived, they entered a room labelled “Cybersecurity Police,” where Vincent was impressed by the officers’ politeness. (“It’s not scary at all, no handcuffs and no cage.”) The police informed him that they had found a host of sensitive and banned material on his cloud storage:
文森特承认，有一次他在一个微信群里看到了一个恐怖主义视频。警察指示他拿上身份证并跟他们去派出所。他们到达后，进入一个标有 “网络安全警察” 的房间，文森特对警察的礼貌印象深刻。（“一点都不可怕，没有手铐也没有笼子。”）警察告诉他，他们在他的云存储中发现了大量敏感和禁止的材料：

“But how interesting it is!” the policeman said. “They sent pornographic videos, traffic accident videos, [breaking news] videos, and funny videos.”
“但这多有趣啊！”警察说。“他们发送了色情视频、交通事故视频、[突发新闻] 视频和搞笑视频。”

“Yes,” he said helplessly, “so I am innocent.”
“是的，”他无奈地说，“所以我是无辜的。”

“Yes, we believe you,” the policeman said. “But you have to [sign] the record because it is the fact that you posted the terrorism video in the Internet, which is illegal.”
“是的，我们相信你，”警察说。“但你必须 [签署] 记录，因为你在互联网上发布恐怖主义视频的事实是违法的。”

On one level, the essay was terrifying—Chinese can be imprisoned for such crimes. But the calm tone created a strange sense of normalcy. The basic narrative was universal: a teen-ager makes a mistake, finds himself gently corrected, and gains new maturity. Along the way, he connects with the elders who love him. Part of this connection comes from what they share: the parents, rather than representing authority, are also powerless in the face of the larger system. The essay ended with the father giving advice that could be viewed as cynical, or heartwarming, or defeatist, or wise, or all these things at once:
从某种程度上来说，这篇文章令人恐惧——中国人可能因为这样的罪行而被监禁。但平静的语调创造了一种奇怪的正常感。基本的叙述是普遍的：一个少年犯了错误，发现自己被温和地纠正，并获得了新的成熟。在此过程中，他与爱他的长辈们建立了联系。部分联系来自他们的共同点：父母不再代表权威，在更大的系统面前他们也是无能为力的。文章以父亲的建议结束，这些建议可以被看作是愤世嫉俗的、温馨的、失败主义的、智慧的，或者同时具备这些特征：

“That’s why I always like to browse news [but] never comment on the Internet,” father said. “Because the Internet police really exist. And we have no private information, we can be easily investigated however you try to disguise yourself. So take care whatever you send on the Internet, my boy!”
“这就是为什么我总是喜欢浏览新闻 [但] 从不在互联网上发表评论，”父亲说。“因为网络警察确实存在。我们没有隐私信息，无论你如何伪装自己，都可以被轻易调查。所以，不管你在互联网上发送什么，都要小心，我的孩子！”

From this matter, Vincent really gained some experience. First, take care about your account in the Internet, and focus on some basic setting like automatic backup. Besides, don’t send some words, videos, or photos freely. In China, there is Internet police focus on WeChat, QQ, Weibo, and other software. As it is said in 1984, “Big Brother is watching you.”
从这件事中，文森特确实学到了一些经验。首先，要注意你在互联网上的账户，并关注一些基本设置，如自动备份。此外，不要随意发送文字、视频或照片。在中国，有网络警察关注微信、QQ、微博等软件。正如《1984》中所说的那样，“老大哥在看着你。”

More than twenty years earlier, I had taught English at a small teachers’ college in a city called Fuling, less than three hundred miles east of Chengdu. The Fuling college was relatively low in the hierarchy of Chinese universities, but even such a place was highly selective. In 1996, the year that I started, only one out of twelve college-age Chinese was able to enter a tertiary educational institution. Almost all my students had grown up on farms, like the vast majority of citizens at that time.
二十多年前，我曾在一座名为涪陵的小城市的一所师范学院教英语，这座城市距离成都不到三百英里。涪陵学院在中国的大学层次中相对较低，但即使是这样的地方也非常挑剔。1996 年，我开始教学的那一年，只有十二分之一的适龄中国学生能够进入高等教育机构。几乎所有的学生都在农场长大，就像当时的绝大多数公民一样。

In two years, I taught more than two hundred people, not one of whom went on to live abroad or attend a foreign graduate school. Most of them accepted government-assigned jobs in public middle schools or high schools, where they taught English, as part of China’s effort to improve education and engage with the outside world. Meanwhile, the government was expanding universities with remarkable speed. In less than ten years, the Fuling college grew from two thousand undergraduates to more than twenty thousand, a rate of increase that wasn’t unusual for Chinese institutions at that time. By 2019, the year that I returned, China’s enrollment rate of college-age citizens had risen, in the span of a single generation, from eight per cent to 51.6 per cent.
两年内，我教了两百多人，其中没有一个人出国生活或上外国研究生院。他们大多数接受了政府分配的在公立初中或高中的工作，作为中国改善教育和与外界接触努力的一部分。同时，政府以惊人的速度在扩建大学。在不到十年的时间里，涪陵学院的在校本科生人数从两千人增长到超过两万人，这一增长速度在当时的中国高校中并不罕见。到我 2019 年回来的时候，中国适龄入学率在一代人的时间里从 8%上升到了 51.6%。

When I had first arrived, in the nineties, I believed that improved education was bound to result in a more open society and political system. But in Fuling I began to understand that college in China might work differently than it did in the West. Students were indoctrinated by mandatory political classes, and Communist Party officials strictly controlled teaching materials. They were also skilled at identifying talent. In “River Town,” a book that I wrote about teaching in Fuling, I described my realization that the kind of young people I once imagined would become dissidents were in fact the most likely to be co-opted by the system: “The ones who were charismatic, intelligent, farsighted, and brave—those were the ones who had been recruited long ago as Party Members.”
九十年代我初到中国时，我相信改善教育必定会导致一个更加开放的社会和政治制度。但在涪陵，我开始明白中国的大学可能与西方的大学运作方式不同。学生们被强制性的政治课程灌输思想，共产党官员严格控制教学材料。他们还非常擅长识别人才。在我写的关于在涪陵教学的书《江城》中，我描述了我意识到我曾经想象的那种会成为异见者的年轻人实际上最有可能被体制所吸纳：“那些有魅力、聪明、有远见和勇敢的人——那些早就被招募成为党员。”

This strategy long predated the Communists. China’s imperial examination system, the ancestor of the gaokao, was instituted in the seventh century and lasted for about thirteen hundred years. Through these centuries, education was closely aligned with political authority, because virtually all schooling was intended to prepare men for government service. That emphasis stood in sharp contrast with the West, where higher learning in pre-modern times often came out of religious institutions. Elizabeth J. Perry, a historian at Harvard, has described the ancient Chinese system as being effective at producing “educated acquiescence.” Perry used this phrase as the title for a 2019 paper that explores how today’s Party has built on the ancient tradition. “One might have expected,” she writes, “that opening China’s ivory tower to an infusion of scholars and dollars from around the world would work to liberalize the intellectual climate on Chinese campuses. Yet Chinese universities remain oases of political compliance.”
这种策略远早于共产主义者。中国的科举制度，高考的前身，是在七世纪设立的，持续了大约一千三百年。在这些世纪里，教育与政治权力紧密相连，因为几乎所有的学校教育都是为了培养进入政府服务的男性。这种强调与西方形成了鲜明的对比，在西方，前现代时期的高等教育往往起源于宗教机构。哈佛大学历史学家伊丽莎白·J·佩里将古代中国的系统描述为有效地产生 “受过教育的默许”。佩里在 2019 年的一篇论文中使用了这个短语，探讨了今天的党是如何在古代传统基础上发展的。她写道：“人们本可以预料到，将中国的象牙塔向来自世界各地的学者和资金开放，会促使中国校园内的知识氛围自由化。然而，中国的大学仍然是政治服从的绿洲。”

At Sichuan University, which is among the country’s top forty or so institutions, I recognized some tools of indoctrination that I remembered from the nineties. Political courses now included the ideas of Xi Jinping along with Marxism, and an elaborate system of Party-controlled fudaoyuan, or counsellors, advised and monitored students. But today’s undergraduates were much more skilled at getting their own information, and it seemed that most young people in my classes used V.P.N.s. They also impressed me as less inclined to join the Party. In 2017, a nationwide survey of university students showed decreased interest in Party membership. I noticed that many of my most talented and charismatic students, like Vincent, had no interest in joining.
在四川大学，这是一所全国前四十左右的高校，我认出了一些九十年代记忆中的灌输工具。政治课程现在包括了习近平思想和马克思主义，还有一个由党控制的复杂系统的辅导员，他们为学生提供建议并进行监控。但今天的本科生获取自己信息的技能要高得多，我发现班上的大多数年轻人都在使用 VPN。他们给我的印象是更不愿意加入党组织。2017 年，一项全国范围内的大学生调查显示对党组织成员资格的兴趣下降。我注意到，我最有才华和最有魅力的学生中，像文森特这样的很多人对加入党组织毫无兴趣。

But they weren’t necessarily progressive. In class, students debated the death penalty after reading George Orwell’s essay “A Hanging,” and Vincent was among the majority, which supported capital punishment. He described it as a human right—in his opinion, if a murderer is not properly punished, other citizens lose their right to a safe society. Another day, when I asked if political leaders should be directly elected, Vincent and most of his classmates said no. Once, I asked two questions: Does the Chinese education system do a good job of preparing people for life? Should the education system be significantly changed? Vincent and several others had the same answer to both: no.
但他们不一定是进步的。在课堂上，学生们在阅读乔治·奥威尔的散文《一次处决》后，讨论了死刑问题，文森特是支持死刑的大多数人之一。他认为这是一种人权——在他看来，如果凶手没有得到适当的惩罚，其他公民就失去了拥有一个安全社会的权利。另一天，当我问是否应该直接选举政治领导人时，文森特和大多数同学都说不。曾有一次，我问了两个问题：中国的教育系统是否很好地为人们的生活做准备？教育系统是否应该进行重大变革？文森特和其他几个人对这两个问题的回答都是：不。

The students rarely exhibited the kind of idealism that a Westerner associates with youth. They seemed to accept that the world is a flawed place, and they were prepared to make compromises. Even when Vincent wrote about his encounter with the Internet police, he never criticized the monitoring; instead, his point was that a Chinese citizen needs to be careful. In another essay, Vincent described learning to control himself after a rebellious phase in middle school and high school. “Now, I seem to know more about the world,” he wrote. “It’s too impractical to change a lot of things like the education system, the government policies.”
学生们很少表现出西方人所联想到的那种理想主义。他们似乎接受了世界是一个有缺陷的地方，并准备做出妥协。即使在文森特写到他与网络警察的遭遇时，他也从未批评过监控；相反，他的观点是中国公民需要小心。在另一篇文章中，文森特描述了自己在初中和高中叛逆阶段后学会控制自己。“现在，我似乎对世界有了更多的了解，”他写道。“改变很多事情，比如教育制度和政府政策，太不切实际了。”

Vincent took another class with me the following fall, in 2020. That year, China had a series of vastly different responses to COVID. Early on, Party officials in Wuhan covered up reports of the virus, which spread unchecked in the city, killing thousands. By February, the national leadership had started to implement policies—strict quarantines, extensive testing, and abundant contact tracing—that proved highly effective in the pre-vaccination era. There wasn’t a single reported case at Sichuan University that year, and we conducted our fall classes without masks or social distancing. Our final session was on December 31st, and I asked students to write about how they characterized 2020. Vincent, like more than seventy per cent of his peers, wrote that it had been a good year. He described how his thinking had evolved after observing the initial mistakes in Wuhan:
2020 年秋季，Vincent 再次参加了我的课程。那一年，中国对 COVID-19 的反应各不相同。早期，武汉的党政官员掩盖了病毒的报告，导致病毒在城市中不受控制地传播，导致数千人死亡。到二月份，国家领导层开始实施政策——严格的隔离、大规模的检测和充分的接触追踪——这些政策在疫苗接种前的时代被证明是非常有效的。那一年四川大学没有报告一例病例，我们在秋季的课程中没有佩戴口罩或保持社交距离。我们的最后一节课是在 12 月 31 日，我要求学生们写下他们如何定义 2020 年。Vincent 和超过 70%的同学一样，写道这一年是很好的一年。他描述了在观察武汉初期的错误后，他的想法是如何演变的：

Most people held negative attitudes to the government’s reaction, including me. Meanwhile, our freedom of expression was not protected and the supervision department did a lot to delete negative news, critical comments, and so on. I felt so sad about the Party and the country at that time.
大多数人对政府的反应持负面态度，包括我在内。同时，我们的言论自由未得到保护，监管部门做了很多工作来删除负面新闻、批评性评论等。那时我对党和国家感到非常难过。

But after things got better and seeing other countries’ worse behaviors, I feel so fortunate now and change my idea [about] China and the Party. Although I know there are still too many existing problems in China, I am convinced that the socialist system is more advanced especially in emergency cases.
但在情况好转之后，看到其他国家更糟糕的行为，我现在感到非常幸运，并改变了对中国和党的看法。虽然我知道中国仍然存在许多问题，但我相信社会主义制度在紧急情况下更加先进。

In 2021, after suspending visa services for Chinese students during the pandemic, the U.S. resumed them. Throughout the spring, I fielded anxious questions from undergraduates who were thinking about going to America. One engineer itemized his concerns in an e-mail:
2021 年，在疫情期间暂停对中国学生的签证服务后，美国恢复了这一服务。整个春天，我接到了许多打算去美国的本科生的焦虑问题。一位工程师在邮件中详细列出了他的担忧：

1. How to feel or deal with the discrimination when the two countries’ relationship [is] very nervous?
当两国关系非常紧张时，如何感受或应对歧视？

2. What are the root causes [in] America to cause today’s situation (drugs; distrust of the government, unemployment, and the most important, racial problem)?
2. 导致美国今天这种情况的根本原因是什么（毒品问题；对政府的不信任，失业，最重要的是种族问题）？

They generally worried most about COVID, although guns, anti-Asian violence, and U.S.-China tensions were all prominent issues. One student who eventually went to America told me that in his home town, in northeastern China, ideas about the U.S. had changed dramatically since his childhood. “When people in the community went to America, the family was proud of them,” he said. “But this time, before I went, some family members came and they said, ‘You are going to the U.S.—it’s so dangerous!’ ”
他们普遍最担心的是新冠病毒，尽管枪支、反亚裔暴力和美中紧张局势也是突出的议题。一位最终去了美国的学生告诉我，在他的家乡中国东北，人们对美国的看法自他童年时代起发生了巨大的变化。他说：“当社区里的人成群结队去美国时，家人会为他们感到自豪。但这次，在我去之前，一些家人来找我，他们说，‘你要去美国——那儿太危险了！’”

Vincent’s mother was on a WeChat group for SCUPI parents, and that spring somebody posted an advisory from the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C.:
文森特的母亲在一个 SCUPI 家长的微信群里，那年春天有人发布了中国驻华盛顿大使馆的一则通知：

Since the COVID pandemic, there have been successive incidents of discrimination and violent crimes against Asians in some cities in the United States. . . . On March 16, three shooting incidents occurred in Atlanta and surrounding areas, killing 8 people, of whom 6 were Asian women, including 1 Chinese and 1 Chinese citizen. . . . When encountering such a situation, you must remain calm, deal with it properly, try to avoid quarrels and physical conflicts, and ensure your own safety.
自新冠疫情以来，美国一些城市接连发生了针对亚裔的歧视和暴力犯罪事件。……3 月 16 日，亚特兰大及周边地区发生了三起枪击事件，造成 8 人死亡，其中 6 人为亚裔女性，包括 1 名华裔和 1 名中国公民。……遇到这种情况时，您必须保持冷静，妥善处理，尽量避免争吵和身体冲突，确保自身安全。

That month, Vincent told me that he planned to buy a .38 revolver after arriving in Pittsburgh. He had already researched how to acquire a hunting license and a firearm-safety certificate. In July, a month before he was scheduled to leave, I had dinner with his mother. She said that she worried about gun violence and racial prejudice. “Lots of people say that now in America you can’t rise to the highest level if you are Chinese,” she said.
那个星期，文森特告诉我，他计划到匹兹堡后买一把 .38 口径的左轮手枪。他已经研究过如何获得狩猎许可证和枪械安全证书。七月份，在他预定离开的前一个月，我和他母亲一起吃晚饭。她说她担心枪支暴力和种族偏见。“很多人说，现在在美国，如果你是中国人，就不能升到最高层，”她说。

Vincent’s mother was born in 1974, the same year as many of the people I had taught in Fuling. Like them, she had benefitted from a stable government job during the era of China’s economic boom. She and her husband weren’t rich, but they were prepared to direct virtually all their resources toward Vincent’s education, a common pattern. Edith, the girl who wrote about her graduation banquet, told me that her parents were selling their downtown apartment and moving to the suburbs in order to pay her tuition at Pittsburgh—more than forty thousand dollars a year. Like Vincent, and like nearly ninety per cent of the people I taught, Edith was an only child. Her mother had majored in English in the nineties, when it was still hard to go overseas. After reading “Gone with the Wind” in college, she had dreamed of going abroad, and now she wanted her daughter to have the opportunity.
文森特的母亲出生于 1974 年，与我在涪陵教过的许多人同年。和他们一样，她在中国经济繁荣时期受益于一份稳定的政府工作。她和丈夫并不富裕，但他们准备将几乎所有资源都投入到文森特的教育上，这是一种常见的模式。写毕业宴会的女孩伊迪丝告诉我，她的父母正在出售市中心的公寓，搬到郊区，以支付她在匹兹堡的学费——每年超过四万美元。像文森特一样，像我教过的近 90%的人一样，伊迪丝是独生子女。她的母亲在九十年代主修英语，那时出国还很难。在大学读了《飘》之后，她梦想着出国，现在她希望女儿能有这个机会。

At dinner with Vincent’s mother, I asked how his generation was different from hers.
在和文森特的母亲共进晚餐时，我问她，他这一代和她那一代有什么不同。

“They have more thoughts of their own,” she said. “They’re more creative. But they don’t have our experience of chiku, eating bitterness.”
“他们有更多自己的想法，”她说。“他们更有创造力。但他们没有我们吃苦的经验。”

Even so, she described Vincent as hardworking and unafraid of challenges. I saw these qualities in many students, which in some ways seemed counterintuitive. As only children from comfortable backgrounds who had spent high school in a bubble of gaokao preparation, they could have come across as sheltered or spoiled. But the exam is so difficult, and a modern Chinese childhood is so pressured, that even prosperous young people have experienced their own form of chiku.
即便如此，她还是形容文森特勤奋且不畏挑战。我在很多学生身上看到了这些品质，这在某些方面似乎显得反常。作为那些出身优越、在高考准备的泡沫中度过高中生活的独生子女，他们本可以显得被保护得太好或者被宠坏了。但高考非常难，现代中国的童年压力很大，即使是富裕的年轻人也经历了属于他们自己的吃苦。

They often seemed eager for a change of environment. In my classes, I required off-campus reporting projects, which aren’t common at Chinese universities. Some students clearly relished the opportunity to visit places that otherwise may have seemed illicit or inappropriate: Christian churches, gay bars, tattoo parlors. Occasionally, they travelled far afield. One boy in Vincent’s year who called himself Bruce, after Bruce Lee, rode a motorcycle several hundred miles into the Hengduan Mountains, at the edge of the Tibetan Plateau, to research a road that had been constructed as part of China’s supply chain during the Second World War.
他们常常渴望换个环境。在我的课堂上，我要求学生完成校外报道项目，这在中国大学并不常见。有些学生显然很享受参观那些平时看起来可能是非法或不合适的地方：基督教教堂、同性恋酒吧、纹身店。偶尔，他们会远行。有一位与文森特同年的男孩，他自称布鲁斯，以李小龙的名字命名，骑着摩托车行驶数百英里进入横断山脉，在青藏高原边缘，研究一条在二战期间作为中国供应链的一部分而建造的道路。

Vincent liked interacting with people from different backgrounds, and he researched a massage parlor, a seedy pool hall, and an outdoor marriage market in Chengdu’s People’s Park. At the marriage market, singles tried to find partners, often with the help of parents and various middlemen. In Vincent’s opinion, Chinese parents were too controlling, and young people had spent so much time studying that they had no dating experience. He wrote:
文森特喜欢与不同背景的人互动，他调查了一个按摩院、一家破旧的台球厅和成都人民公园的一个露天相亲市场。在相亲市场，单身人士试图寻找伴侣，通常会得到父母和各种中介的帮助。在文森特看来，中国父母太过控制，而年轻人花了太多时间学习，以至于没有约会经验。他写道：

Because of one-child policy and traditional ideology, many parents consider their children as their treasure which belongs to the parents instead of the children themselves. . . . I hope the future Chinese children can have genuine liberty.
因为独生子女政策和传统观念，许多父母认为他们的孩子是属于父母的宝贝，而不是孩子自己的......我希望未来的中国孩子能够拥有真正的自由。

Vincent’s mother told me that she and her husband had made a point of allowing their son to decide for himself whether to go to America. But many parents were nervous, including Bruce’s father, who didn’t want his son to go to the U.S. because of the political tensions with China. In the end, Bruce decided to take a gap year before leaving. The delay was probably fortunate, because while researching the highway in the mountains he drove his motorcycle around a blind curve and was hit by a thirteen-ton dump truck. Bruce and the motorcycle slid beneath the truck; by some miracle, the vehicle came to a halt before killing the boy. I didn’t hear about the accident from the police, or the hospital, or anybody at the university. It was characteristic of these hardworking students that the news arrived in the form of an e-mailed request for an extension:
文森特的母亲告诉我，她和丈夫特意让他们的儿子自己决定是否去美国。但许多父母都很紧张，包括布鲁斯的父亲，他不希望儿子去美国，因为中美之间的政治紧张局势。最终，布鲁斯决定在离开之前休学一年。这个延迟可能是幸运的，因为在研究山区公路时，他骑着摩托车在一个盲弯处被一辆十三吨的自卸卡车撞到。布鲁斯和摩托车滑到了卡车底下；奇迹般地，这辆车在压到他之前停了下来。我没有从警察、医院或大学的任何人那里听到事故的消息。这些勤奋的学生的特点是，这个消息是通过一封请求延期的电子邮件形式传来的：

Dear Prof. Hessler,  亲爱的赫斯勒教授，

I had an accident on my way to the Lexi Highway. I was turning a corner when I was hit by a truck. Now I have a fracture in my left hand and a piece of flesh has been grinded off my left hand. Then the ligaments and nerves were damaged, and the whole left hand was immobile. My left foot was also injured. It was badly bruised. The whole foot was swollen and couldn’t move. I’m in hospital now. I’ll have to stay in the hospital for a while before I can come back. So I may not be able to write the article about the Lexi Highway. I don’t know what to do now. Can I write the article at a later date? Because I can’t do my research right now. And it’s really hard for me to type with one hand.
我在去莱克西高速公路的路上出了事故。我在转弯时被一辆卡车撞了。现在我的左手骨折，左手的一块肉被磨掉了。然后韧带和神经也受到了损伤，整个左手无法动弹。我的左脚也受伤了，严重瘀伤。整个脚肿胀，无法移动。我现在在医院。我得在医院待一段时间才能回来。所以我可能不能写关于莱克西高速公路的文章。我现在不知道该怎么办。我可以晚些时候写这篇文章吗？因为我现在不能做研究。而且我用一只手打字真的很困难。

Best wishes, 最好的祝愿，

Bruce 布鲁斯

By my second visit to Pittsburgh, in November, 2022, Vincent had decided to stay permanently in the U.S., been baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and added an AK-47 and two Sig Sauer handguns to his arsenal. He had also downgraded to a less expensive car, because the Lexus had been damaged in a crash. Rather than getting the Glock 19 of automobiles, Vincent decided on the Camry’s cousin, a used Toyota Prius. He picked me up in the Prius, and we headed out for a traditional Steel City meal of lajiao and prickly ash. Vincent wore a Sig Sauer P365 XL with a laser sight in a holster on his right hip. The car radio was playing “Water Tower Town,” a country song by Scotty McCreery:
到 2022 年 11 月我第二次访问匹兹堡时，文森特已经决定永久留在美国，加入了耶稣基督后期圣徒教会，并在他的武器库中增加了一把 AK-47 和两把西格绍尔手枪。他还因为雷克萨斯在一次车祸中受损而换了一辆更便宜的车。文森特没有选择汽车界的格洛克 19，而是选择了凯美瑞的表亲，一辆二手的丰田普锐斯。他开着普锐斯来接我，我们出发去吃传统的钢铁城餐——辣椒和花椒。文森特右臀的枪套里插着一把带激光瞄准器的西格绍尔 P365 XL。车载收音机正在播放斯科蒂·麦克里里的乡村歌曲《水塔小镇》:

In a water tower town, everybody waves
在一个水塔小镇，每个人都会挥手致意
Church doors are the only thing that’s open on Sundays
周日唯一开门的地方是教堂的门
Word travels fast, wheels turn slow. . . .
消息传得快，行动却慢. . . .

Earlier in the year, some Mormon missionaries had struck up a conversation with Vincent on campus. “Their koucai is really good,” he told me, using a word that means “eloquence.” “It helps me understand how to interact with people. They say things like ‘Those shoes are really nice!’ And they start talking, and then they ask you a question: ‘Are you familiar with the Book of Mormon?’ ” Now Vincent had a Chinese app for the Book of Mormon on his phone, and he attended services every Sunday. He had been baptized on July 23rd, which was also the day that he had quit drinking and smoking cigarettes, a habit he’d had since Sichuan University. He thought that the church might be a good place to meet a girlfriend. He had a notion that someday he’d like to have a big family and live in a place like Texas, whose gun laws appealed to him.
今年年初，一些摩门教传教士在校园里与文森特搭话。“他们的口才真的很好，”他对我说，用了一个表示 “口才” 的词。“这让我理解如何与人互动。他们会说‘那双鞋真的很好看！’然后他们开始聊天，接着问你一个问题：‘你熟悉摩门经吗？’”现在，文森特的手机上有一个摩门经的中文应用程序，他每个星期天都会参加礼拜。他在 7 月 23 日受洗，那天他也戒掉了从四川大学开始的喝酒和抽烟的习惯。他认为教会可能是个结识女朋友的好地方。他有一个想法，某天他想要有一个大家庭，住在像德克萨斯州那样的地方，那里的枪支法律让他很感兴趣。

Corn grows high, crime stays low
玉米长得高，犯罪率保持低
There’s little towns everywhere where everybody knows. . . .
到处都是小镇，人人都知道……

During the winter of Vincent’s first academic year in the U.S., his political transformation had been rapid. “I watched a lot of YouTube videos about things like June 4th,” he told me, referring to the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre, in 1989. He began to question the accommodationist views that he had previously held. “Young people are like this in China,” he said. “They tend to support the system.”
在文森特在美国的第一个学年的冬天，他的政治转变非常迅速。“我看了很多关于 6 月 4 日的 YouTube 视频，”他说，指的是 1989 年的天安门大屠杀日期。他开始质疑自己之前持有的妥协观点。“中国的年轻人就是这样，”他说。“他们倾向于支持这个体制。”

In the spring of 2022, Vincent became dismayed by the excessive COVID lockdown in Shanghai. He posted a series of critical remarks on social media, and in May he sent me an e-mail:
2022 年春天，文森特对上海过度的 COVID 封锁感到沮丧。他在社交媒体上发布了一系列批评言论，5 月时他给我发了一封电子邮件：

In recent months, I make some negative comments on WeChat on the humanitarian crisis caused by the lockdown in Shanghai and some other issues. My parents got nervous and asked me to delete these contents because their colleagues having me in their contact lists in WeChat read my “Pengyou Quan” [friends’ circle] and reminded my parents of potential risks of “Ju Bao” [political reporting] that would affect my parents’ jobs.
最近几个月，我在微信上对上海封锁造成的人道主义危机和其他一些问题发表了一些负面评论。我的父母变得紧张，要求我删除这些内容，因为他们的同事在微信的 “朋友圈” 里看到我的言论，提醒我的父母有关 “举报” 可能带来的潜在风险，这会影响到我父母的工作。

One day, a man who may have been from the Chinese security apparatus phoned Vincent’s parents. Unlike in the call from years before, this man didn’t identify himself as the police. But he said that Vincent’s actions could cause trouble for the family. Such anonymous warnings are occasionally made to the parents of overseas Chinese, and they weigh heavily on students.
有一天，一个可能来自中国安全机构的男子打电话给文森特的父母。与几年前的那次通话不同，这个男子没有自称是警察。但他说，文森特的行为可能会给家庭带来麻烦。此类匿名警告偶尔会给海外华人的父母打电话，这给学生带来了沉重的心理压力。

Vincent deleted his WeChat comments. But he also decided that he couldn’t imagine returning to China. “I would say something and get arrested,” he told me. “I need to be in a place where I have freedom.” An older Chinese friend in Pittsburgh had made a similar decision, and he advised Vincent on how to eventually apply for a green card.
文森特删除了他的微信评论。但他也决定自己无法想象回到中国。“我会说些什么然后被抓，”他告诉我。“我需要在一个有自由的地方。”在匹兹堡的一位年长的中国朋友也做出了类似的决定，并建议文森特如何最终申请绿卡。

Vincent told his parents that he planned to stay in America for at least five years, but initially he didn’t say that his decision was permanent, because he worried that they would be upset. In the meantime, he didn’t want to waste their money, so he earned cash on the side by teaching Chinese students how to drive. Professional garages charged at least five hundred dollars to install a passenger brake, but Vincent found one on Taobao for about eighty-five dollars, including shipping from China. “I don’t know if it’s legal,” he told me. With his engineering skills, he was able to install the brake in the Prius.
文森特告诉父母他计划在美国至少待五年，但一开始并没有说这个决定是永久的，因为他担心他们会难过。同时，他不想浪费父母的钱，所以通过教中国学生驾驶来赚取外快。专业车库至少要收五百美元安装副驾驶刹车，但文森特在淘宝上找到一个大约八十五美元的，包括从中国运来的运费。“我不知道这是否合法，”他告诉我。凭借他的工程技能，他能够在普锐斯上安装刹车。

The number of Chinese studying in the U.S. had dropped to the lowest level in nearly a decade. But there were still almost three hundred thousand, and many of them arrived in places like Pittsburgh and realized that qishiyi B and other public buses weren’t adequate for their needs. They preferred to hire driving instructors who spoke Mandarin, and Vincent’s rate was eighty dollars an hour. He charged even more for the use of his car during exams. Vincent told me that a Chinese-speaking driving instructor who hustled could earn at least two hundred thousand dollars a year. In my own business, the Chinese political climate had made it almost impossible for American journalists to get resident visas, and specialists of all sorts no longer had access to the country. Sometimes I envisioned a retraining program for old China hands: all of us could buy passenger brakes on Taobao and set up shop as mandarins of parallel parking.
在美学习的中国学生人数已降至近十年来的最低水平。但仍有将近三十万人，他们中的许多人到达像匹兹堡这样的地方后发现，Qishiyi B 和其他公共汽车不能满足他们的需求。他们更愿意雇佣会讲普通话的驾驶教练，而文森特的收费是每小时八十美元。在考试期间使用他的车收费更高。文森特告诉我，一个努力工作的会讲中文的驾驶教练每年至少可以赚二十万美元。在我自己的业务中，中国的政治环境几乎使美国记者无法获得居住签证，各类专家也不再能进入这个国家。有时我会设想一个为老中国通再培训的计划：我们所有人都可以在淘宝上购买副驾驶刹车，然后开设平行停车的普通话培训班。

On the afternoon of January 10, 2023, at around three o’clock, in the neighborhood of Homewood, Vincent was stopped behind another vehicle at a traffic light when he heard a popping sound that he thought was fireworks. He was driving the Prius, and a Chinese graduate student from Carnegie Mellon sat in the passenger seat. Vincent wore a Sig Sauer P365 subcompact semi-automatic pistol in a concealed-carry holster on his right hip. The Carnegie Mellon student was preparing to get his driver’s license, and Vincent was taking him to practice at a test course in Penn Hills, an area that was known for occasional crime problems.
2023 年 1 月 10 日下午三点左右，在霍姆伍德社区，文森特在红绿灯处停在另一辆车后面时，听到了一声爆裂声，他以为是烟花。文森特驾驶的是一辆普锐斯，副驾驶座上坐着一位卡内基梅隆大学的中国研究生。文森特右臀佩戴着一个 Sig Sauer P365 半自动紧凑型手枪的隐蔽携带枪套。卡内基梅隆大学的学生正在准备考驾照，文森特正带他去宾夕法尼亚山的一处测试场练习，那是一个偶尔会有犯罪问题的区域。

At the traffic light, Vincent saw a car approach at high speed and run a red light. Then there were more popping sounds. Vincent realized that they weren’t fireworks when a bullet cracked his windshield.
在红绿灯处，文森特看到一辆车高速驶来并闯了红灯。接着传来更多的爆裂声。当一颗子弹击碎他的挡风玻璃时，文森特意识到那不是烟花。

He ducked below the dashboard. In the process, his foot came off the brake, and the Prius struck the vehicle ahead of him. The shooting continued for a few seconds. After it stopped, the Carnegie Mellon student said, “Ge, brother, you just hit the car in front!”
他低下头躲到仪表盘下面。在这个过程中，他的脚离开了刹车，普锐斯撞上了前面的车辆。枪击持续了几秒钟。停下后，卡内基梅隆大学的学生说道：“哥，你刚才撞到了前面的车！”

“Get your head down!” Vincent shouted. He backed up, swerved around the other vehicle, and tore through a red light. After a block, he saw a crossing guard waiting for children who had just finished the day at Westinghouse Academy, a nearby public school.
“低下头！”文森特喊道。他倒车，绕过另一辆车，闯过红灯。过了一条街，他看到一名护学员在等刚放学的西屋学院（附近的一所公立学校）的孩子们。

“Shots fired, shots fired!” Vincent shouted. “Call 911!”
“开枪了，开枪了！”文森特喊道。“打 911！”

He parked on the side of the road, and soon he was joined by the driver whose car he had struck. They checked the bumpers; there wasn’t any damage. The driver, an elderly woman, didn’t seem particularly concerned about the shooting. She left before the police arrived.
他把车停在路边，很快就有他撞到的那辆车的司机加入了。他们检查了保险杠，没有任何损坏。司机是一位老年女性，她似乎对枪击事件并不特别关心。她在警察到来之前就离开了。

A woman from a nearby house came out to talk with Vincent. She remarked that shootings actually weren’t so common, and then she walked off to pick up her child from Westinghouse Academy. After a while, a police officer drove up, carrying an AR-15. Vincent explained that he was also armed, and the officer thanked him for the information. He asked Vincent to wait until a detective arrived.
一位住在附近房子的女人出来和文森特交谈。她说枪击事件其实并不常见，然后她离开去西屋学院接她的孩子。过了一会儿，一名警察开车过来，手持一把 AR-15。文森特解释说他也带了武器，警察感谢他提供的信息，并让文森特等侦探到来。

For more than two hours, Vincent sat in his car. The Carnegie Mellon student took an Uber home. When the detective finally showed up, his questions were perfunctory, and he didn’t seem interested in Vincent’s offer to provide dashboard-camera footage. A brief report about the incident appeared on a Twitter account called Real News and Alerts Allegheny County:
两个多小时，文森特坐在车里。卡内基梅隆大学的学生叫了一辆优步回家。当侦探终于出现时，他的问话是敷衍的，而且似乎对文森特提供的行车记录仪视频并不感兴趣。关于这起事件的一份简短报告出现在一个名为 “阿勒格尼县真实新闻与警报” 的推特账号上：

Shot Spotter Alert for 20 rounds
枪声检测器警报：20 发子弹

Vehicles outside of a school shooting at each other.
校园枪击案外，车辆相互开火。

1 vehicle fled after firing shots.
一辆车在开枪后逃离现场。

Later that year, Vincent took me to the site. He recalled that during the incident he had repeatedly said, “Lord, save me!,” like Peter the Apostle on the Sea of Galilee. The lack of police response had surprised Vincent. “I didn’t know they didn’t care about a shooting,” he said. For our visit, he wore a Sig Sauer P320-M17 on his right hip. “Normally, I don’t open-carry,” he said. “But this gun can hold eighteen rounds.”
那年晚些时候，文森特带我去了现场。他回忆说，在事件发生时，他反复说道，“主啊，救救我！”，就像加利利海上的使徒彼得。警方的无所作为令文森特感到惊讶。“我不知道他们对枪击事件竟如此漠不关心，”他说。我们访问时，他右臀佩戴了一把 Sig Sauer P320-M17 手枪。“通常，我不公开携带，”他说。“但这把枪可以装十八发子弹。”

It had been four years since Vincent arrived in my class at Sichuan University. Have you ever been involved in a situation that was extremely threatening, or dangerous, or somehow dramatic? Back then, he had written about what happened when the Chinese Internet police came to his home. Now Vincent’s American story was one in which the police effectively didn’t come after twenty rounds had been fired near a school. But there was a similar sense of normalcy: everybody was calm; nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The following month, four students were shot outside Westinghouse Academy.
四年前，文森特来到我在四川大学的课堂上。你有没有经历过一种极其威胁、危险或戏剧性的情况？那时，他写了中国网警来他家时发生的事情。现在，文森特的美国故事则是，警察在学校附近开了二十枪后并没有出现。但有一种类似的正常感：每个人都很冷静；一切看起来都很正常。下个月，四名学生在西屋学院外被枪杀。

I asked Vincent if the incident had changed his opinion about gun laws.
我问文森特，这起事件是否改变了他对枪支法律的看法。

“No,” he said. “That’s why we should carry guns. Carrying a gun is more comfortable than wearing body armor.”
“不，”他说。“这就是为什么我们应该携带枪支。携带枪支比穿防弹衣更舒服。”

Over time, I’ve also surveyed the people I taught in the nineties, and last year I asked both cohorts of former students the same question: Did the pandemic change anything significant about your personal opinions, beliefs, or values? The older group reported relatively few changes. Most are now around fifty years old, with stable teaching jobs that have not been affected by China’s economic problems. They typically live in third- or fourth-tier provincial cities, which were less likely to suffer brutal lockdowns than places like Shanghai and Beijing.
随着时间的推移，我也对我在九十年代教过的人进行了调查，去年我问了这两批前学生同样的问题：疫情是否改变了你们的个人观点、信仰或价值观？年长的那组报告的变化相对较少。他们大多数现在大约五十岁，有稳定的教学工作，没有受到中国经济问题的影响。他们通常住在第三或第四线的省会城市，这些地方不像上海和北京那样容易遭受严厉的封锁。

But members of the younger generation, who are likelier to live in larger cities and generally access more foreign information, responded very differently. “I can’t believe I’m still reading Mao Zedong Thought and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” one graduate student at a Chinese university wrote. “In this collectivist ideology, there is no respect for the dignity and worth of the individual.” Another woman, who was in graduate school in the United Kingdom, wrote, “Now I’ve switched to an anarchist. It reduces the stress when I have to read the news.”
但是，更年轻一代的成员——他们更有可能生活在大城市，并且通常能接触到更多的外国信息——反应截然不同。一位在中国大学读研究生的学生写道：“我简直不敢相信我还在读毛泽东思想和中国特色社会主义。在这种集体主义意识形态中，没有对个人尊严和价值的尊重。”另一位在英国读研究生的女性写道：“现在我已经转变为无政府主义者。当我不得不读新闻时，这减轻了压力。”

Their generation is unique in Chinese history in the scope of their education and in their degree of contact with the outside world. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that their concerns are broader. In my survey, I asked what they worried about most, and, out of forty-seven responses, three mentioned politics. Another three worried about the possibility of war with Taiwan. Only one cited environmental issues. The vast majority of answers were personal, with more than half mentioning job opportunities or problems with graduate school. This seemed to reflect the tradition of “educated acquiescence”: there’s no point in concerning yourself with big questions and systemic flaws.
他们这一代人在教育的广度和与外界接触的程度上，在中国历史上是独一无二的。但这并不一定意味着他们的关注范围更广。在我的调查中，我问他们最担心的是什么，四十七个回答中有三个提到了政治，另有三个担心与台湾发生战争的可能性。只有一个提到环境问题。绝大多数答案都是个人问题，超过一半提到工作机会或研究生院的问题。这似乎反映了 “教育的顺从” 传统：关注大问题和系统性缺陷是没有意义的。

Nevertheless, their worldliness makes it harder to predict long-term outcomes, and I sense a new degree of unease. On a recent trip to California, I interviewed a former student who commented that even when she and her Chinese boyfriend were alone they instinctively covered their phones if they talked about politics, as if this would prevent surveillance. I noticed that, like many other former students, she never uttered the name Xi Jinping. Afterward, I asked her about it over e-mail, and she replied:
尽管如此，他们的世故让长期结果更加难以预测，我感到一种新的不安。在最近一次加州之行中，我采访了一位前学生，她评论说，即使她和她的中国男朋友独处时谈论政治，他们也会本能地遮住手机，仿佛这能防止被监视。我注意到，和许多其他前学生一样，她从未提到习近平的名字。事后，我通过电子邮件问她，她回复说：

I do find myself avoiding mentioning Xi’s name directly in [California], even in private conversations and in places where I generally feel “safe.” . . . I guess it’s a thing that has been reinforced millions of times to the point that it just feels uncomfortable and daunting to say his full name, as it has too much association with unrestrained power and punishment.
我发现自己在 [加州] 避免直接提到习的名字，即使在私人谈话中和我通常感觉 “安全” 的地方……我想这件事已经被强化了无数次，以至于说出他的全名让人感到不舒服和令人畏惧，因为它与不受限制的权力和惩罚有太多联系。

In the survey of my Sichuan University students, I was most struck by responses to a simple query: Do you want to have children someday? The most common answer was no, and the trend was especially pronounced for women, at seventy-six per cent. Other surveys and studies in China indicate a similar pattern. One former student explained:
在对我四川大学学生的调查中，最让我印象深刻的是对一个简单问题的回答：你将来想要孩子吗？最常见的答案是否定的，这一趋势在女性中尤为明显，达到 76%。中国的其他调查和研究也表明了类似的模式。一位以前的学生解释说：

I think that Chinese children are more stressed and profoundly confused, which will continue. We are already a confused generation, and children’s upbringing requires long periods of companionship and observation and guidance, which is difficult to ensure in the face of intense social pressure. The future of Chinese society is an adventure and children do not “demand to be born.” I am worried that my children are not warriors and are lost in it.
我认为中国的孩子们更加压力重重和深感困惑，这种情况将继续下去。我们这一代已经很困惑，孩子的成长需要长时间的陪伴、观察和指导，而在巨大的社会压力下很难确保这一点。中国社会的未来是一场冒险，而孩子们并不是 “要求被生下来” 的。我担心我的孩子不是战士，会迷失其中。