When Your Identity Is Erased

The other day, I came across a Cantonese girl online, who was then looking anxiously for someone that could help her a bit with English. She was a first-year student from an anonymous vocational school, she told me, and in order to become an undergraduate, she must learn English, of which she had virtually zero knowledge. I wouldn’t call myself an altruist but if helping a stranger costs me little to nothing, I am normally willing to reach out a helping hand. I thus added her on the very social app where we met, thinking I could at least give the girl a push on her way to whichever university she wished to attend. 前几日，我在网上遇到了一个广东女孩，她当时正焦急地寻找可以帮助她学习英语的人。她告诉我，她是一所默默无闻的职业学校的一年级学生，为了升入本科，她必须学习英语，尽管她对英语几乎一无所知。我并不认为自己是个利他主义者，但如果帮助陌生人只是举手之劳，我通常也愿意伸出援助之手。因此，我在我们相遇的社交软件上添加了她，我想，我至少可以在这个女孩的升学路上给她一点助力。 Having known me for a couple of days, she began calling me ‘sifu’, the same way an apprentice addresses his most revered Kung Fu master. I enjoy the feeling of being held in such high esteem, I must admit, and being looked admiringly at gives me, an otherwise unobtrusive nonentity, more satisfaction than nearly anything else. At this point, all the labels I had previously applied to her as a result of stereotypes were beginning to fade. I no longer thought of her as another inveterately lazy vocational school student. My opinion of her changed even more as she regularly impressed me with the great effort she put into her studies. 认识我几天后，她开始叫我“师父”，就像学徒称呼他最尊敬的功夫大师一样。我必须承认，我享受被人如此尊重的感觉，而他人钦佩的眼神，比其他几乎一切事物更能给我这个原本无足轻重的人带来满足感。此时，我之前给她贴上的所有刻板印象标签都开始褪色。我不再把她当成又一个懒惰到无可救药的职校生了。我对她的看法有了转变，因为她在学习上付出的巨大努力经常给我留下深刻的印象。 And now, we do sometimes talk about our respective lives, childhood memories, ambitions, and everything else— just like friends. Earlier today, she told me how she’d used to be an exasperatingly unmanageable child, making all kinds of trouble and resisting any attempt at disciplining her. She would throw herself into a river just to catch fish, and get bitten by her dog multiple times without learning her lesson. I never had any rural experience as a child, but I suppose her childhood must be one filled with picture-perfect moments. Still echoing in her soul is a pastoral symphony with cicadas, fireflies and frogs; still backdropping her dreams is a midsummer starry sky; still coursing in her veins is the desire to quit the bustle of urban life and return to rural tranquility. It was in the country she grew, like a weed voraciously taking in nourishments from the most fertile of soil. 而现在，我们确实有时会谈论我们各自的生活、童年记忆、雄心壮志和其他一切--就像朋友一样。今天早些时候，她告诉我她曾经是一个令人气愤的、难以管理的孩子，会制造各种麻烦，同时抵抗任何试图管教她的行为。她会为了抓鱼而跳进河里，并多次被她的狗咬伤而从来没有吸取教训。我小时候没有任何农村生活的经历，但我想她的童年一定是充满了如画的美好时光。在她的灵魂深处仍然回荡着一首有蝉、萤火虫和青蛙的田园交响曲；在她的梦中仍然有仲夏的星空作为背景；在她的血管中仍然流淌着放弃城市生活的喧嚣，回到农村宁静的愿望。她是在乡村长大的，在那里她就像一株野草，贪婪地从最肥沃的土壤中汲取营养。 But now, in the big city which she shall never call home, feeling disoriented and insecure, she is lost among everybody else. I lament the gradual erasure of her identity as she adapts to her new environment, and this loss of her uniqueness seems inexorable. She buries her juvenile dreams in the depths of her subconscious, keeps the disobedient side of hers well-hidden, runs as everyone does toward a finish line so distant, behaves as she is expected to, replaces her mannerisms with the more refined comportment acquired later in life… She is becoming unlike herself. 但现在，在这个她永远不会称之为家的大城市里，她感到迷失方向，没有安全感，她在其他人中被淹没了。我为她在适应新环境的过程中逐渐抹去了自己的身份扼腕叹息，而这种自己独特性的丧失似乎是不可阻挡的。她把少年时的梦想埋在潜意识的深处，把她桀骜不驯的一面隐藏得很好，像所有人一样奔向遥远的终点，按照人们的期望行事，用后来习得的更优雅的行为取代她原先的举止......她正在变得不像自己。 It saddens me more to think that each of us must’ve also gone through the same transformation from distinctive children to members of a homogeneous adult world. We each have a distinct past that shapes our present selves, and it is our different upbringings and experiences, which distinguish us from others that makes us who we are, but the sharp edges of our individuality have worn away as we jostled against each other in the long march through the same narrow tunnel leading not to fulfilment but to disillusionment. The adult world in which we now find ourselves is a terrible place, we’ve finally realised, and there’s no way back. 想到我们每个人一定也经历了同样的转变，从与众不同的孩子成为一个同质化的成人世界的成员，我就更难过了。我们每个人都有一个独特的过去，塑造了现在的自己，而正是我们不同的成长和经历使我们成为我们自己，但我们的个性的棱角已经被磨掉了。我们在这漫长的行进过程中相互推搡，通过同一个狭窄的隧道，迎接我们的却不是满足，而是幻灭。我们终于意识到，我们现在所处的成人世界是一个可怕的地方，而且没有退路。 We had diverse dreams. The unkempt repairman fixing your air-conditioner might’ve dreamed of becoming an architect that turns fancies into concrete structures; the obscure security guy in your company might’ve envisioned a career as an illustrious musician playing in the greatest music hall; the senile public toilet cleaner in your community might’ve aspired to become a poet able to cure the world with beautiful verses. Yet they bent under the burden of subsistence, letting the flowers of dreams wither before they could bloom. Dreams, just as our memories, are nothing compared with the more urgent need of survival. 我们有不同的梦想。修理你的空调的不修边幅的修理工可能在小时候就梦想成为一名建筑师；你公司里默默无闻的保安可能设想过成为一名杰出的音乐家；你社区里年老的公厕清洁工可能渴望成为一名诗人，能够用美丽的诗句治愈世界。然而，他们在生计的重压下屈服了，让梦想之花在绽放之前就凋谢了。梦想，就像我们的回忆一样，与更迫切的生存需求相比，微不足道。 Like flat characters in fiction who exist merely to advance the plot, we too lack dimension, our purpose being to fuel the advancement of society. We take pride in contributing to the propelling force behind social progress, but when we pause and introspect, we feel insignificant, for we have lived, not for our own sake, but for some lofty goals that are always somewhere before our eyes but forever unattainable— just like a mirage. 就像小说中的扁平人物，他们的存在只是为了推动情节，我们也缺乏作为人的维度，我们的目的是为社会的进步提供动力。我们为能为社会进步贡献一点推动力而感到自豪，但一旦我们停下来内省，我们会感到自己渺小到无意义的程度，因为我们并非为自己而活，而是为某种海市蜃楼般，看似近在眼前却不可企及的目标而活。 The same feeling of insignificance is shared by many in this era, when almost everyone’s identity is erased. We are evaluated like products; some of us are worth more than others, but in the end we are all reduced to bricks for building the grand edifice of this society. This is a universal tragedy. When your identity is erased, your self-esteem too falls into pieces, and you live just to live. 在这个时代，许多人都有这种无足轻重的感觉，几乎每个人的身份都被抹去了。我们像产品一样被评估；我们中的一些人比其他人更有价值，但最终我们都沦为建造这个社会的宏伟大厦的砖头。这是一个普遍的悲剧。当你的身份被抹去时，你的自尊心也会摔成碎片，你就会为了生活而生活。