Beijing
颜涵 201211101060
Beijing scrambles the like and unlike, the old and new. Broad avenues sit where city walls once were. Traditional hutongs are being razed, opening up grand new spaces, upon which modern buildings rise. The removal of walls gives the city a kind of jack-in-the-box explosiveness and the liberating, but also disorienting, sensation of there being no more boundaries.
北京混杂着相同与不同，旧的和新的元素。以前是城墙的地方现在成了宽阔的马路。传统胡同正在被夷为平地，开放了大面积的新空间，在这些空地上建起了一座座现代建筑。拆除了城墙，城市爆发出突如其来的力量，令人释放，但同时没有了城墙的感觉又令人困惑。
The reigning style is pastiche. Anything can mix and match. Foreign brand names are preferred to the indigenously Chinese, unless by indigenously Chinese you mean knockoffs. Western tourists relish the city partly because, if things threaten to become too Chinese, there’s always a Starbucks nearby. Although tourism fell to almost nothing during the SARS, foreigners are back again, once more part of the city’s collage. At night the new-rises twinkle as if every day were Christmas.
现在盛行中西结合的风格，任何东西都能相互混合匹配。相比于中国当地品牌，国外的牌子更受欢迎，除非你说的中国当地品牌是仿货。西方游客喜欢这个城市一部分是因为
如果周围环境变得中国味儿太浓，周围总有一家星巴克缓冲一下。尽管非典期间几乎没什么游客，但外国人们现在陆陆续续回来了，又成为了这个城市拼贴画中的一景。晚上，现代高楼灯火通明好像每天都是圣诞节。
Beijing has always been eccentric, unnatural and artificial. It did not develop in the way most human settlements did, with a lively market at its heart. The center of Beijng was instead a wall-off place where people could not go, the Forbidden City of the emperor. In Beijing, there was a divine scale and a higgledy-piggledy scale—the vast space of the square and the gray honeycomb maze of walls, rooms and streets where people lived, called the hutongs.
北京总是古怪、反常和不自然。他跟大多数居住区发展方式不一样，热闹的市场建在了城市中心。北京中心地区，紫禁城，被城墙隔开，人们不能随便进去。北京有一种神圣又杂乱无章的布局，既有宽口的广场，又有蜂巢般迷宫排列的灰色院墙，构成人们居住的房屋和街道，这就是我们说的胡同。
Laid out in the early 15th century, the Forbidden City unfolds powerfully in courtyard after courtyard, as if the power of the emperor himself could never quite be reached. It is magnificent—but oppressive. The spaces press you down rather than lift you up. I wasn’t really happy until I came to a garden of grottoes, pavilions and shapely rocks and trees.
15世纪初，紫禁城就初具规模，一个庭院接着一个庭院地建造，威严庄重，犹如皇帝不可触碰的权利。紫禁城宏伟华丽但气氛压抑，空间让你感到压迫而不是振奋，直到我来到一个有人造洞穴、亭台楼阁和奇石绿树的花园，我才感到高兴起来。
Notes and Explanations
1. jack-in-the-box n. 玩偶匣（当盖子被揭开时，盒子里面像小丑一样的木偶就会跳起来）
2. pastiche n. 混成曲，模仿画；不协调的混杂物
3. indigenously Chinese 当地的中国人
4. knockoff n. 成功的模仿商品，非正牌货
5. Starbucks 星巴克（国际最著名的咖啡连锁店品牌之一）
6. threaten v. 预示；是……的征兆
7. SARS: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (急性呼吸综合病症，即“非典型性
肺炎”)
8. higgledy-piggledy adj. 杂乱无章的；乱七八糟的
9. honeycomb n. 蜂房，蜂巢
