So, when you say you’re going overseas to study, the first thing your Singaporean friends and relatives will say is, “Aiyoh, won’t it be cold?” Or, if they are of a slightly more optimistic bent, they will say, “So lucky! Will there be snow?” (Unless you’re going to China, in which case, the first thing they’ll say is, “Ee… But what about the toilets?” – Actually, I’ve been to China, and thanks to a possibly Singapore-inspired 5 star rating system, their toilets, at least in major attractions, are now pretty decent.) So when I landed in Boston, I was pretty scared. I didn’t check the weather, because in my imagination everywhere “overseas” was cold. So I got out of the plane wearing the family winter jacket. You know, the communal jacket that gets passed around and is too big for you because it is from your uncles and aunties and cousins who lend it to anyone going “to a cold country”. It hangs off me like an ugly oversized bag of polyester. Which is what it is. Anyway, I get out of the plane in my family winter jacket, and step into the blazing heat of 40-degree Boston summer. But of course, this is September, the end of summer, and soon enough the leaves turn, and it is fall. Fall is nice enough, but winter here in Boston is hard and cold. It also seems to go on forever. My first winter here, I remember looking out onto Harvard Yard with my new roommates, and seeing the light, polite dusting of first snow softly covering everywhere – the grass, the branches, the paths, the people. It was exquisitely beautiful. But it was also really, really scary. Something in me panics. I’m a tropical person! I’m not adapted to this sort of thing! I have no evolutionary advantages in this environment whatsoever! I have very skinny legs. I have a lot of melanin. If you put me out in the sun every day I will get unflattering sock lines. I remember in secondary school I had my entire school uniform imprinted on my body: neck line, sleeve line, skirt line, sock line. I have big (for an ethnically Chinese person), wide eyes. My JC boyfriend had an epicanthic fold over each of his eyes – like Lenin – “to keep out the snow”, according to Wikipedia. It must have been some vestigial Northern Chinese trait, because as far as he knows he is Teochew. I was very envious. I could spend hours just looking at it; it was a source of endless fascination. At Harvard, they call our first semester Fall term and the second semester Spring term. This is a blatant exercise in deception. What they really mean is Winter Part I and Winter Part II. Winter extends its lengthy limbs well into November sometimes, and, exasperatingly enough, it refuses to go away for sure until May. What I hate the most about winter is the slush and the snow. First snow is beautiful, but when it’s sat there for days, weeks, months, its whiteness gets lost in the dirt and smog from the car exhaust and pollution, and from the countless people stepping all over it. People slip and fall on it – there are always a few people hobbling around on crutches by mid-January. By February, a thick crust of snow has covered all the ground. We let it stay there, just shoveling the minimum number of paths, but even those have slabs of ice and treacherous freezing puddles and slushy pools of water that feel like 7-11 Slushies but look far less appetizing. Every time a fresh coat of snow whitens the ground again, my heart lifts a little – new snow is easy to walk on, and crunches pleasingly underfoot like a million little bones. But in my mind I always know it’s only a matter of time before the white turns to grey and sooty black, and the walking gets treacherous again. Anyway, sure enough, I wasn’t built for winter. After suffering from the harsh cold of three winters, when the loss of light from the short days and the difficulty of even getting from point A to point B became overwhelming, I capitulated. It turns out I have Seasonal Affective Disorder, the appropriately acronym-ed “SAD” (like Mutually Assured Destruction = MAD). Apparently, I need to stare into a little box of full-spectrum light for at least 20 minutes in the morning during the winter months to maintain my sanity. So when, this year, I returned to Harvard, and winter started creeping up on me again, I felt I had something to prove. I couldn’t let all that ice and snow and sleet and hail or the icy Atlantic gales stop me from going outside. I decided to run every morning, regardless of the temperature. Now, I’ve always been one of those extremely wimpy nerds with no ball sense whatsoever who enthusiastically follows the ball from one end of the netball court to the other, always sprinting but secretly dreading that the ball may come flying my way, because I knew that I would drop it, or freeze on the spot and not know what to do with it. Fortunately, all my classmates knew this, too, and never threw the ball at me, so, by this wonderful tacit agreement, my pretense of playing netball during PE was preserved, as was my personal dignity. So my point is, I am not by any measure athletic, nor have I ever been inclined to be. But as I said, this time I had something to prove. The first day it dropped below -12 degrees Celsius, My skin felt like it was being burned off by the wind. I got myself one of those terrorist balaclava things. The first day the ice was thick on the ground, I slipped, and, Charlie-Chaplin-like, slid right onto my butt three steps in front of my door, after carefully picking my way over the ice for 40 minutes without a hitch. Soon it became a matter of honour. I started to keep score: Judith 1, Boston 0. Judith 2, Boston 0. Then it was Judith 130, Boston 0, and there was no going back. Because damn it, if I stopped now Boston would get ahead! Most days, I run along the Charles River. It thrills me to bits that one of my favourite novelists, Haruki Murakami, ran along this same river the year he was at Harvard. He wrote in his book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, that the Harvard girls he saw running along the river were often confident, sporty and blonde. He never saw any “ethnic” runners. Well, I’m not blonde, I think to Murakami. (I often have these completely one-sided imaginary conversations.) Look, I’m pretty ethnic! And rather pudgy, too. (This was the semester after I gorged myself on Mexican hot chocolate for a couple of months.) I’m nothing like those girls! Anyway, the Charles River doesn’t look like a river in winter. Like the huge crusts of hardened ice and snow that cover the ground, this river looks utterly dead. It looks like land. It gives off this cold, white look. It chases away the geese that used to feed by it. It was very sad, watching those geese go. I had developed feelings of kinship with those geese. It is difficult to imagine that anything is going on under that formidable sheet of ice. I could walk across it, and probably get safely to the other side. And that’s the thing about winter that really gets to me. Soon, you cannot imagine things looking any different from how they look now. The Charles River is so solid, it looks so firm you cannot imagine how it could look any other way. The sheet upon sheet of snow, frozen as giant ice heaps on the ground, look so heavy, so huge, so difficult to move, you cannot imagine how anything beneath it could survive its crushing weight, or its formidable cold. That’s the funny thing about really huge heaps of ice and snow. There are only three ways to get rid of snow: heat, salt and friction. Harvard has giant machines that try to loosen bits of ice with salt and friction. However, there is only so much you can do with a giant machine. If you tried to do it with only your hands, you can barely break off little bits, and then the bits you chip off burn and freeze you if you hold them for too long. You start to imagine that this state of affairs is permanent. You start to forget what the trees ever looked like with leaves on them, with birds in them. You start to forget the songs, the warbles, the squawks and quacks of the birds. You imagine that, because you feel so dead and tired inside, everything beneath all that heavy winter must be dead too, and what little surviving stirrings in you are completely and utterly alone. People walk differently in the winter. They bundle themselves up, tuck their chins down, their hands deep in their pockets, their backs hunched against the wind. They don’t look at you when they pass you by. In winter, everyone behaves as though they are under siege. Our bodies are so preoccupied with fighting off the cold that they have no time or energy for anything or anyone else. This is what they mean when they say, People in Boston are Cold. They just want to get to the next building, warm themselves up – then they can start noticing things around them again. Who has time to bother with what’s around when their eyes are tearing from the bitter wind? So, the coming of spring is always miraculous. This is how it begins: the sun, even though it seems distant and small and cold, somehow provides the enormous nuclear power which warms the earth again. The earth warms up, the snowfall turns to rain. For several miserable days, you wade around in Wellingtons, shielding yourself from the cold, but the persistent little raindrops soak you through anyway. At the same time, the ice melts. Those formidable sheets of white slush, snow and ice mysteriously seem thinner, then more translucent, then more transparent. They begin to shrink, to pool into puddles with tiny particles floating around in them. As they recede, we are all in for a surprise, the oldest surprise in the world – beneath the snow is earth, covered with grass. It is so green it hurts the eyes. You would think the grass would be dead, or brown, or straggly, but in fact the nutrient-rich ice has been feeding it all along, even while it froze it, and locked it away from view. The ice on the river Charles begins to crack – large holes begin to form little lakes, then streams free of ice appear beneath its receding borders. And underneath the ice is streaming, living water. Water – that’s what ice is, that’s all it is, and what a thing it is! Water is everything to us – it bubbles forth from the ground, it embraces the earth, it dwells deeply within us. We all thirst for water, the swift currents that make up more than half of us. I imagine what water is to cells, swelling, pushing, pushing against and past their little walls. Without water, the ground will die, the plants will die, the fish will die, the birds will die. That beloved thing, water, which brings us nutrition, which washes away our toxins, which oils the mysterious rivers of our machinery, has only been disguised as ice. It is no longer solid: it is fluid, flexible, adaptable. It moves. In our breath we hold its vapor. It rises, and it falls again as rain. Imagine a baby born in the heart of winter. She has only known the blinding whiteness of the snow. She grows up in winter, and has never seen a leaf, a bird, a river. All these things, filled with life, are beyond her imagination. But somehow, she has some inkling, some idea of the rumour of spring, because she is herself a wonderful new life, a bursting forth of lips and limbs and fingers. She stretches them, testing them against the deep white silence. Months, years go by. And then suddenly, spring sweeps forth, touching its first flower, and all the life that had been dormant all along rushes up through the earth. To be that girl! Imagine knowing the world for the first time, and then seeing it rapidly, suddenly for a second time, more lively and mysterious, more abundant than the first! The land we know is utterly unlike the snow. It is deep and rich, it is green and lush, it is uneven and dirty and filled with ants, it is soggy and fertile and laced with roots. Its thousand tongues are the leaves of thick, green cow grass, those rich, fat leaves have just the sticky, slightly itchy edge. All manner of insects wind their private ways between them, crawling up the legs of the unsuspecting human, attacking the sweet stickiness of the fruit in your hand. It used to make me think those British picnicking children in my storybooks were crazy. The land that we know gives us huge, beautiful trees: rain trees, rambutan trees, angsana trees, palm trees, the magnificent and majestic banyan tree. It gives us mangrove swamps, with their subtle flapping mudfish, their slopping stagnant water, their rich smell of gentle humid rot. Orioles and mynahs and yellow birds and crickets and grasshoppers and lizards and ants cry and scuttle and creek and whisper and rustle and sing – I can almost hear them in my mind. I can almost feel the thick blanket of water vapor, that warm, saturating blanket of humidity. In the island of my imagination, everything bursts with the knotted thickness of life. In the midst of winter, I long for the land of eternal summer. 文／摄影⊙黄思颖 翻译⊙黄大业 你要去海外升学，亲友第一个反应都是：“哎唷！会不会很冷啊？”比较乐观的则会说：“太好了，会不会下雪啊？” 可能听得太多了，我第一次去波士顿时，心中只想着它如何寒冷，愈想愈害怕。我没有查看天气，因为在我脑海中任何“外国”都是冷的。我踏出飞机，身上穿着家人的寒衣──就是那种不合身，不知从哪个阿姨或表姐借来的“公家大衣”，专借给哪个外甥或表妹去“寒冷国家”穿的。 这件寒衣套在身上，就像穿上一个又大又丑的塑料袋子（它也实在是个又大又丑的塑料袋子！）我就是这样，穿着家人的寒衣，走进摄氏40度的波士顿夏日热浪中。 与严寒搏斗三个冬天 那是9月初的残夏。很快叶子转黄，秋天了。秋天好舒服，但冬天一下子就来了，波士顿的冬天又冷又苦，而且漫无止境。记得我在这里的第一个冬天，和新识的室友看着窗外的哈佛庭园，漫天飘着轻轻的雪粉，悄悄落满一地，盖着草地、秃枝、小径、路人，实在美不胜收。 赏心悦目之余，也不无惊悸──是打从心底泛起的恐惧：嗐！我是热带人啊！我不习惯这样的环境啊！我的身体结构不为这环境而设计啊！我的双腿细得很；我通身都是黑色素──把我放在阳光中，晒痕几乎立时显现。以华人来说，我的眼睛又圆又大，颇不胜寒。 寒冰饱含的养分滋润草木，大地回春。 哈佛的上学期称为“秋期”，下学期称为“春期”──真是混淆视听！哪来“秋”和“春”，只有“初冬”与“暮冬”！这里的冬天可从11月开始，然后直到5月！ 冬天最教人懊恼的莫如积雪与融雪。下雪头几天是美的，但若延至几周、几月，白雪就被泥泞取代，汽车的废气也在寒天中化作烟雾，还有无数人踏在雪上，当然也必有人滑倒。踏入1月中，总会看见几个人拄着拐杖缓缓而行。 2月来了，全地都是厚厚积雪。没有人理会它，铲雪的人也只作最低程度的干预。铲出来的路一点也不好走，路上有冰块，有难以察觉的水洼， 以至一片浮着碎冰的浅潭。如果雪不断下，路面总会回复又松又白──我最爱踏这样的路，又好走，又有美妙的沙沙声，像脚踏无数小不点儿的干骨头。但我当然知 道，很快这条雪白的路又会变灰变黑，危机四伏。 总之，冬天不是我的朋友。我与严寒搏斗了三个冬天，抵受日短夜长的煎熬、雪上行进的苦痛，结果溃不成军。原来我有“季节性情绪失调” （seasonal affective disorder，简称SAD），每逢冬日早上，我必须定睛看一台七色灯至少20分钟，方可确保情绪稳定。 “少数族裔”跑手 今年冬天，我又回到哈佛，情绪病又来了──但我决定要作出反抗，也要证明一件事。我就是不能让这冰天雪地，或那来自大西洋的刺骨寒风拦阻我到户外去！ 我决定天天出去跑步，不管外面有多冷。我决不是个运动爱好者，也从不想成为运动爱好者！但是啊，我要证明一件事。 跑步的第一天，气温摄氏零下12度，寒风似要把我的皮肤撕破，我只好套上恐怖分子的面罩。地面结了厚厚的冰，我像差利卓别灵影片的主角，在大门外几呎就结结实实地跌了一跤。不过我总算小心翼翼跑了40分钟，期间没有停顿。 又远又小又弱的太阳再度悄悄地照暖大地。 我就此踏上不归路。大多数的日子，我沿着查尔斯河边跑。在这里跑最教我兴奋的，是我喜爱的小说家村上春树也曾在这里跑了一年。他在新书《关于跑步，我说的其实是……》提及见过在这河边跑步的哈佛女生的典型特征：自信、活力、金发。他没见过“少数族裔”的跑手。 “嗯！我不是金发啊！”我在脑海里对村上说。（我常在脑里跟不同的人讲话。）“看！我是少数族裔吶！很明显吧！”而且有点胖呢！（只怪我猛灌几个月的墨西哥热巧克力！）“我一点都不像那些女生吧！” 冬天的困扰 可是，查尔斯河在冬天也不像一条河。河面上结了厚厚的冰，冰面上铺了厚厚的雪，远看近看都了无生气。它看起来像陆地，又冰冷又苍白。原 本在这里觅食的野鹅都飞走了。我看着野鹅飞走，心不住往下沉。我和野鹅感情深厚啊。实在难以想象这深不可测的冰层下还有什么指望。我甚至可以走在其上，从 此岸走到彼岸。 这就是冬天对我的困扰──看着眼前的景象，你开始忘了它还有别的可能性──起码你已记不起来了。眼前的查尔斯河是一片坚土，似乎很难想象它可以有别的面貌。层层的雪、叠叠的冰，看起来是那样沉重，那样广宽，那样稳如泰山，在它底下还有活命的可能吗？ 你开始觉得这境况是不会变的。你开始忘记这些树木昔日的模样──那时树枝长满叶子，鸟儿栖身其上。你开始忘记鸟儿的欢歌、啭鸣、尖嘶、 啼叫。你的思想变成这样，因为你的身心已经太累──这沉郁的冬景，岂不是你心境的反照？甚至藏于心底的一丝生机，也成了将残的灯火，在漆黑中好寂寞好孤 独。 每个春天都是奇迹 春天来了，花儿绽放。 人在冬日，连步伐也不同。他们的身体包在重重衣服之下，低着头，手插在衣袋里，背对着寒风。路上行人不打照面。冬日的人，个个诚惶诚 恐，坐困愁城。我们的身体只顾御寒，再无时间或精力作其他活动。难怪人家说波士顿人好冷漠：人人行色匆匆，只想找个荫庇所，让身子暖和；找到了，才有余力 去留意周围的事。的确，在寒风中，眼睛要睁开也不易，还遑论要看到什么？ 因此，每个春天都是一个奇迹。它是这样开始的：看起来又远又小又弱的太阳，再度悄悄照暖大地。大地暖了，雪渐渐变成雨。在绵绵细细的雨 中，你穿着长靴，走在湿冷孤清的路上。春寒料峭，你的长靴被雨粉湿透。其时，雪在融。原本厚厚松松的白雪，突然变薄，变淡，变得透明。冰雪融化成水，化为 大大小小的洼，洼中有物浮游。然后水洼干了，人人屏息以待那从创世以来已有的惊喜：积雪之下，土地之上，原来绿草如茵！那逼人的翠绿，教人不能直视。 你还以为冰封下的草必然萎靡、枯黄、零星落索，谁料寒冰竟是饱含养分，不断润泽草地──这一切一切，竟在冰冷封闭的环境中默默进行，从没被人发现。 查尔斯河上的冰开始解封。起初是一道道裂缝，然后是一个个大洞，形成一圈圈小水塘，然后在远处有水流动──近处的冰下当然也有流水。是 活水。水！冰岂不是水吗？冰本来就是水，是水啊！水是我们的生命，它从地的深处涌出，拥抱大地，也流在我们体内。这可爱的水，原来不过穿上冰的伪装。 厚厚的，看起来像陆地冰的雪逐渐地融化成水，恢复河流的原貌。 想象一个在仲冬出生的婴孩：她睁开眼睛，触目是眩眩的白雪，没见过绿叶、飞鸟、江河。可是，不知为何她心底有某种预感，源于那春天的谣 传，因为她就是初生的奇妙生命，她的嘴唇、手臂、指头，都才绽放不久。蓦地，春天决然而至，喜见那刚刚绽放的花，以及蛰伏多时、如今长满大地的每个生命。 你想那小女孩有多喜悦！ 我的心在有夏天的大地 我们所知的大地，一点也不像雪。它深厚且富饶，它釉绿而蓬勃。它不规则，不清洁，蚁踪处处。它湿润而肥沃，盘根错节。它有数之不尽的舌头──厚而且绿的草地，像一条条肥大的舌头，黏黏滑滑，各种昆虫走在其中，各选各的路径。 以前看见这一切，总会想起童书中英国小孩到郊外野餐的情景：他们是疯的！我们所知的大地，有高大而美丽的树：雨豆、悦榕、棕榈，还有雄 伟壮观的大叶榕。我们所知的大地有红树林，沼泽发出醉人的气息，流水似动非动，泥鱼懒懒慵慵。还有金莺、鹩哥、不知名的黄鸟、蟋蟀、蚱蜢、蜥蜴、蚂蚁…… 叫着、跳着、尖声、低语、鼓翼、唱咏──我彷佛听到这一切。我彷佛摸到那厚厚的一层水汽，湿湿、暖暖、厚厚，浓得化不开。在我想象的大地上，万物踊跃着生 机。在寒冬中，我的心在渴慕，那只有夏天的大地。 First published in Lianhe Zaobao 2009-05-10, Also found here http://judithhuang.com/words/%E5%93%88%E4%BD%9B%E5%86%AC%E9%9B%AA/ and in English: http://judithhuang.com/words/utterly-unlike-the-snow/ PDF: on Chinese page