D14: 府谷 → 马镇（双语）

October 4, 2024

I appreciate products that embrace the idea that they're using a herb named "duck shit" 我很欣赏那些敢于使用名为“鸭屎”的草药的产品。

After a brief interlude on the Shanxi side of the Yellow River to look up in horror at the number of stairs we would need to climb if we wanted to check out a modern pagoda which we'd seen during the stop and go traffic we'd gotten during the last thirty minutes of the previous night's bus, it's time for us to cross into Shaanxi and go back upstream in search of the closest of the cave temples¹.

A National Key Protected Cultural Heritage Site since 1996, Qianfodong² was a fascinating example of a place that had been recognized for it's historic importance while also being allowed to remain a living, breathing place of worship.

我们在黄河山西一侧小插曲去看前一晚坐汽车的最后三十分钟里走走停停的交通状况中看到的一座现代宝塔。到了下面我们抬头，惊恐地发现，如果想要去参观，需要爬很多很陡的台阶。放弃计划之后，我们便该跨过黄河进入陕西，逆流而上，去寻找最近的石窟寺庙¹。

自1996年起，千佛洞²就被列为全国重点文物保护单位。它是一个很有意思的例子，既因其历史重要性而被认可，同时又仍然是一个充满生机、有人前来朝拜的场所。

Chosen solely on account of being the only hotel on this side of the Yellow River listed as "foreigner friendly," the Front Desk was fine. The security guard, on the other hand, kept calling people³ trying to find some reason we shouldn't be allowed to stay. 我们选择这里，只是因为它是黄河这一侧仅有的一家被标注为“对外国人友好”的酒店。酒店的前台服务还不错。然而，保安却不停地打电话³，试图找出一些理由不让我们入住。

Crossing to the other side of the road 过马路到另一边

I've never before seen such a rich patchwork of old, older, new, and newest with religious icons scattered all over the place, monks still resident on site, and a dearth of protective glass or signs warning of the evils of flash photography. More importantly than my having never seen something like this—as someone whose primary field of research focuses on historic and modern people's interaction with religious rock carvings—Dr. M had also never seen something like this.

我以前从未见过如此丰富多样的景象，古老的、更古老的、新的和最新的建筑交织在一起，宗教圣像散落各处，仍有僧侣住在寺庙里，而且没有防护玻璃，也没有警示闪光灯拍照危害的标志。我没见过就算了，更重要的是——作为一个主要研究古代人民和现代人民与宗教石刻互动关系的人——M博士也从未见过这样的地方。

Sure you get the occasional place that's made it all the way to being a Provincial Cultural Heritage Protection Site without having all it's movable bits carted off to the local museum and research institutes for conservation and study, but National sites (rather like the Confucius Temple in Dai⁴) tend to have a strictly placed set of clean and uniform offerings in front of each idol put there by someone whose job it is to set out beautiful displays of fruit and colored mantou and remove them again before they go moldy.

当然，偶尔也会有一些地方被列为省级文物保护单位，却没有把所有可移动的文物都运到当地的博物馆和研究机构进行保护和研究。但国家级的文物保护单位（就像代县的孔庙⁴那样）往往会在每个神像前摆放一套整齐的供品，这些精美的水果和彩色馒头是由专人摆放的，并且在它们发霉之前拿走。

In a park on the Shanxi side of the Yellow, a statue depicting the river as a nurturing mother 在黄河山西一侧的一个公园里，一座雕像将黄河描绘母亲河

Nice paving stones on the Shanxi side of the river 黄河山西一侧有意思的铺路石

Leaving Shanxi for Shaanxi, neither province has bothered to have a "good-bye" or "welcome" sign 离开山西前往陕西，两个省份都没有“再见”或“欢迎”的标识牌

As places where religion is performed rather than expressed, China's Recognized Places of Historical Interest—even when they aren't Major Tourist Sites—generally don't welcome a hundred supplicants to the God of Wealth Shrine to leave behind embroideries, red velvet banners, framed pictures, and their own statues of Caishen, nor do they encourage families wanting a child to place stacks of miniature shoes on the Guanyin Shrine.

Instead, they—unlike in Europe or Southeast Asia—are dead, unchanging places. They aren't perfumed by clouds of incense and dust; and they never, ever, ever⁵ have been granted permission for the construction of new shrines and new monuments, or the excavation of new carvings⁶ from the rock face.

在中国，那些被认定为历史名胜的地方，是表演宗教的场所，而不是表达宗教信仰的地方——即使它们不是热门旅游景点——也不会有上百位信徒在财神庙留下刺绣品、红色天鹅绒锦旗、带框的图片以及他们自己的财神雕像。它们也不会鼓励想要孩子的家庭在观音庙摆放一堆小鞋子。

与欧洲或东南亚不同，中国的历史名胜的寺庙是一成不变、缺乏生气的。它们没有弥漫着的香火和尘土的味道；而且，它们几乎从未被允许⁵建造新的神龛和纪念碑，或者从岩壁上开凿新的雕刻作品⁶。

Collection of gifted Caishen in the God of Wealth Shrine 财神庙里供奉的各种财神像

Every little nook and cranny on the rock face had gotten additions such as these 岩壁上的每一个小角落都有这样新添加的东西

But this Qianfodong in Fugu is wonderfully, delightfully, refreshingly different. And, if we got a little bit too carried away with behaviors (like looking behind or underneath things) that are totally acceptable⁷ in the sorts of un-touristed places we normally go (for fun or work), the monk who rightfully chastised us accepted the apology without too much more than a tongue lashing.

From Qianfodong until Dr. M and I parted ways at the train station in Wubao four days later, we would follow the course of the Yellow River downstream along a mostly de-trucked route that had also undergone relatively recent straightening and grading.

但是，府谷的这座千佛洞却非常奇妙、令人愉悦且耳目一新。而且，如果我们在一些平时去（无论是出于玩还是出于工作）的非旅游景点常做的一些行为（比如看看东西的后面或下面）在这儿⁷有点过头了，那位理应斥责我们的僧侣在我们道歉后，也只是责骂了我们几句而已。

从千佛洞开始，一直到四天后我和M博士在吴堡的火车站分道扬镳。这期间我们沿着黄河下游的路线前行，走的大多是排除卡车行驶的道路，而且这条路最近也进行了拉直和修整。

I would have called this sandstone door lion "one of the most weathered I have ever seen" 我本可以称这尊砂岩门狮为“我见过的风化最严重的门狮之一”

Except that, her proximity to him is the only reason I knew the lioness on the other side had, at some point in her history, been a statue 只是因为它与另一尊狮子离得很近，我才知道另一边的那尊母狮曾几何时是一尊雕像

The stairs up to Qianfodong are considering whether or not they'd rather be a ramp 通往千佛洞的楼梯渐渐在变成坡道

Concrete stairs down to street level, probably built over top of stairs that had given up on being stairs 通往街道的混凝土楼梯，可能是建在那些已经不再像楼梯的楼梯之上的

A more recent set of stairs heading up to a side entrance 一组较新的通往侧门的楼梯

Providing electricity and controlling flooding, dams along the Yellow River (like the one just upstream from Fugu that we'd seen from the bus) have made the valley substantially safer than it was even 20 or 30 years ago; but the raging volume of water with it's sudden, dangerous, constantly forming, reforming, and disappearing whirlpools and sandbars caused by the loess that gives the river both it's color and it's name make the Yellow entirely unlike any other Chinese river.

There is no shipping. No docks. No fish farms.

No running trails. No parks. No playgrounds or promenades.

黄河上的水坝（比如我们在汽车上看到的府谷上游的那座水坝）提供了电力并防控了洪水，使得河谷比二三十年前安全多了。但是，黄河水流汹涌，由于黄土而形成的突然出现又危险的漩涡和沙洲不断生成、变形和消失，这些黄土赋予了黄河颜色和名字，也让黄河与中国其他任何一条河流都截然不同。

这里没有航运。没有码头。没有养鱼场。

没有跑步道。没有公园。没有操场和亲水长廊。

Speaking of running trails and riverside promenades, we came down to the park inside the levee to check out a pop-up Space Exploration Museum that was way more interesting looking from up top 说到跑道和亲水长廊，我们来到了堤坝内的公园，想看看一个临时搭建的后来发现没太有意思的太空探索博物馆。

Once we were down below, however, ways back up were few and far between. Eventually, once all pretense at a park disappeared, we found ourselves having to climb back up the levee 然而，一旦我们到了下面，能回去的路就寥寥无几。最后，当公园的迹象不不复存在时，我们发现自己不得不爬回堤坝上。

An oddly flimsy⁸ warning sign "when the water is this high, it's moving that fast" 一个奇怪的、不太牢固⁸的警示标志，上面写着“当水位达到一定的高度时，相应的水流速度会是多少”

Depending on their level of economic development, the cities, towns, and villages it passes are—by and large—completely missing everything recreational that ought to have been built within the past decade.

Also, whether they're lived in or abandoned, the villages and scattered houses we pass aren't just far above the current water line, they're mostly all far above the highest potential historic waterline.

根据经济发展水平的不同，黄河流经的城市、城镇和村庄，总体而言，大多完全没有在过去十年里本应修建的河畔设施。

无论这些村庄和分散的房屋是有人居住还是已被废弃，我们经过的这些地方不仅远高于当前的水位线，而且大多远高于历史上可能出现的最高水位线。

The Yellow River is not a nurturing river. It does not irrigate. It does not bring life to the land. Rushing south and east as it carries thousands of cubic meters of water per second, it is a massive inland sea draining hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of land.

黄河不是一条滋养万物的河流。它不用于灌溉。它也没有给土地带来生机。它以每秒数千立方米的水量向南向东奔腾而去，是一片巨大的内陆水域，排水面积达数十万平方千米。

Stunning wall paintings in one of the caves at Qianfodong 千佛洞其中一个洞穴里令人惊叹的壁画

And, the date according to the traditional sixty year cycle⁹ 还有，根据传统的六十甲子纪年法⁹标注的日期

I may not know their names¹⁰, and I may have never seen them illustrated in this fashion but I recognize many of the figures from other temples 我可能不知道他们的名字¹⁰，也可能从未见过以这种方式描绘的人物，但我从其他寺庙里认出了其中的许多形象。

The Yellow River is a monster.

And, as befits the road that runs alongside such a beautiful monster, although our road south will have orchards full of red dates in the process of being harvested and the occasional field full of grain, we will often go a dozen or more kilometers with no people, no shops, no houses, no restaurants, no resupply points. Just river and river road.

黄河是一个怪物。

而且，与沿着这样一个美丽的怪物流淌的河流相伴的道路也很相称，尽管我们向南行驶的道路旁会有许多正在收获的红枣果园，偶尔还会有长满谷物的田地，但我们常常会行驶十几公里甚至更远的距离，去没有人、商店、房屋、餐馆和补给点的地方，只有河和沿河路。

It's pastoral. It's pretty. Round upon round of straightening and regrading has made for a nice, wide road that—if the government weren't actively restricting trucks from taking this—could carry 100× the volume of traffic using it. But, even as used as we are to the benefits of urbanization emptying the spaces between cities, we aren't used to places where the spaces were never very full in the first place.

这里田园风光宜人，景色很美。经过一轮又一轮的拉直和修整，道路变得又好又宽——如果政府没有限行卡车的话，这条路的车流量本可以是现在的100倍。但是，即使我们已经习惯而喜欢城市化带来的城市之间的区域变得空旷，我们也不习惯那些一直以来就没什么人的地方。

This set in the next cave over look to be trying to copy that style 隔壁洞穴里的这一组雕刻似乎在试图模仿某种风格

Didn't find a date on these and their "nice enough but not as nice as the first set" is why Dr. M thinks the other set is probably 1930 instead of 1990. 在这些画图上没有找到日期，而且它们“还不错，但不如第一组好”，这就是为什么M博士认为另一组可能是1930年的，而不是1990年的。

Which is why, when we got into Ma we were grateful—dirty as it was—for an unlicensed guesthouse above a convenience store and restaurant combo across the street from the bright new Senior Citizens Activity Center.

I will then screw things up for us by thinking that the overpriced 60y I'm told for both of us is a "price per room" rather than a "price per person" such that word spreads like wildfire and everyone and their uncle tries to overcharge us for everything from the rice we didn't have with dinner to the spare Apple charger we decide not to buy when getting a bowl to go looking for the leak in Dr. M's tire.

因此，当我们到达马镇镇时，尽管那里很脏，我们还是很感激在崭新明亮的老年活动中心对面的一家便利店和餐馆合一的店铺楼上有一家没有执照的客栈。

然后，我却把事情搞砸了，因为我以为60元是“每间房的价格”，而不是“按人数的总价”，甚至他们的七大姑八大姨，都试图在各种事情上多收我们的钱，从我们晚餐没吃的米饭，到处理M博士轮胎漏气处时决定不买的备用苹果充电器。

Distant oil pumps and a watchtower远处的油泵和瞭望塔

Random billboard under a blue sky 蓝天下偶遇的广告牌

Fire extinguishers in the tunnel. I walked. She rode. We both thought it was horrible. 隧道里的灭火器。我走路。她骑车。我们都觉得这很糟糕。

¹ Without checking the Antiquities Atlas or going to look in person, the first set of "holes in the cliff" which we had seen from the bus—while almost certainly shaped by human hands—were sufficiently indeterminate on the "religious versus residential" scale that heading in our intended direction of travel made more sense.

¹没有查看文物地图集或亲自去看，我们从汽车上看到的第一组“悬崖上的洞”——虽然几乎可以肯定是由人工塑造的——在“宗教与住宅”的界定上不太确定，以至于朝我们旅行方向前进更有意义。

² Which literally means "Thousand Buddha Cave" and, after "Big Buddha Temple" is probably one of the Top Three Names for cave temples.

² 这说明“千佛洞”可能是石窟寺庙的前三名（排在“大佛寺”之后）。

³ At a minimum, this included the hotel owner and the local police station. It also seemed to include some random friends of his.

³ 至少，这包括酒店老板和当地警察局。似乎还包括他的一些朋友。

Unique in that there are no signs of previous usage, a bathroom break by the side of the road at the first "I can duck behind that" we've seen in a while 奇特的是，没有任何先前使用的迹象，我们在路边第一次有那种“我可以躲在那后面上厕所”的地方。

⁴ I'm not actually sure if that's National or Provincial

⁴我不确定那是国家级还是省级。

⁵ Well, hardly ever

⁵ 嗯，几乎从来没有。

⁶ Finished in 2011, the Arhat Cave at Daxiangshan is a rare example of new carvings being allowed at a Major Site. However, that was over ten years ago. The most recent of the new monuments at Qianfodong is a little over a year old

⁶ 2011年完工的大香山罗汉洞是在热门景区中被允许雕刻的罕见例子。然而，那是十多年前的事了。千佛洞最新的建筑只有一年多。

⁷ Even if the abbess were to hand me a broom and tell me to go dust the primary object of devotion while I'm up there, I don't think I could ever manage—as Dr. M has—to be climbing on an altar while devotees are praying to the Buddha.

⁷ 即使住持递给我一把扫帚，告诉我上去时要打扫供奉对象，我觉得我不能像M博士那样，在信徒向佛陀祈祷时爬上祭坛。