I have been doing translation for Gu Wenda since 2015. Please note the studio’s house style involves all lower-case and some fairly creative use of punctuation.
《艺术的故事》
a story of art
我和我的家庭 二楼文献长廊 DE
my family and me 2f archival corridor DE
出生这当儿母亲曹燕宇身有孕，爷爷谷剑尘最终进了上海提篮桥监狱。俗话说，祸不单行，外公也在同年去世了。除了爷爷入狱对母亲精神上的刺激，还承受了失去生父的折磨。对于一位有孕的女人，影响几乎难以想象。母亲害怕肚里的胎儿受影响，便没去向
生父辞别。母亲怀孕的孩子就是谷文达。母亲在南京西路（近黄陂北路口）的一条弄堂里的财经医院生下了我。当我哇哇落地之刻，我的基因记忆里已储存下了母亲经历……
at the time when she was pregnant, my mother soon found out that her father in law, Gu jianchen, was to be sent to tilanqiao prison. as they say, “when it rains it pours” — as her own father had passed away the same year. my grandmother was highly distraught by my grandfather being sent to prison — a pain which was compounded by the torment due to the loss of her father. for a pregnant woman, this had an unimaginable impact. my mother feared that the fetus inside her would be affected by this suffering and therefore she decided not to bid farewell to her dying father. this child she was carrying was named gu wenda. my mother gave birth to me at the caijin hospital, which was in a lane off of west nanjing road near north huangpi road in shanghai. as I entered the world, making my first cries, my genes were already carrying the weight of my mother’s experience.
太爷爷与太外公（绍兴话称呼祖一辈）自然我无从见到，久而久之，只能从母亲和长辈处日积月累，众说纷纭也颇有偏差之嫌疑。简而言之，谷家系从河南迁徒到江浙。父母出生于绍兴上虞……最后落户申城。家中唯独我出生在共和国的上海。
母亲常向我提及她的祖父，也就是我的太外公曹铭，由清皇帝派遣去西藏，并统领管辖西藏。据说曹铭业绩非凡，官封叁品。藏族部落首领，曾献一藏女增曹铭为妾……而我将信将疑。朋友微信了我《清史稿》有关我的太外公之记述……
naturally i have never met my great grandfathers, (in shaoxing dialect we called this senior generation taigwaigong and taiyeye). over time, i was only able to garner something from my mother about that accumulated history of that generation, opinions seemed to vary widely and there were lots of variations on stories and suspicions as to the facts. in short, the gu family moved from henan to zhejiang. my father was born in shangyu, near shaoxing and later settled in shanghai. i was the only one in my family to be born at the end of the republican era in shanghai. my mother often spoke of her father, my maternal grandfather cao ming, who was dispatched by the qing emperor to go to tibet, as the commander of the armed forces which controlled the region. it was said that he had a record of outstanding achievements, and was an important general of the third rank. another story had it that a tibetan leader once offered him a tibetan woman as a concubine . . . a detail which maybe seems somewhat unbelievable. once a friend messaged me to say that in the book qingshigao, “a draft history of the qing dynasty” there are accounts of my great maternal grandfather ….
故有一次母亲对我说来，”你身上可能有点儿藏人血统……”
Once my mother told me, “you may even have a little tibetan blood in your veins.”
缺陷一岁的我，对母亲的奶过敏，浑身泛起粉色奶癣。大人告诉我，时常痒到难以忍受，便到处抓痒；我的双手常被套上袜子，以防抓破皮肤。家人看不下去了，便带着婴孩谷文达求医。医生瞧着我，对着母亲说道，奶癣治愈，会引发哮喘病。能治愈浑身上下难忍的奶癣过敏，顾不上引发哮喘了，这是父母的决定。果然在幸福的儿童时代，我便患上了
at the age of one, my parents discovered that I was allergic to my mother’s milk and pink blotches of eczema emerged all over my body. my parents told me that the itching was often unbearable, and I would scratch myself all over. they eventually put a pair of socks on my hands to prevent me from damaging my skin. finally, my family couldn’t stand it and brought gu wenda (the infant) to the hospital to seek medical advice. while looking at me, the doctor told my mother that the curing of the infantile eczema would lead to asthma. even if we cured this intolerable head-to-toe eczema allergy, we could not be able to prevent the development of asthma. this was my parent’s decision. but sure enough, in this otherwise happy childhood, I nonetheless suffered from asthma.
现在想来，那还是蛮有乐观幼童的optimism。后来有人告诉我，有过哮喘病之过敏史，可能免疫癌症，我就把她看作是过敏 & 免疫的阴阳平衡了。过敏之DNA会放大感觉系统，我的over reaction之心理生态是物质物理的过敏基因之现象。有朋友半揶揄滴说：”过敏因放大感觉系统，或许益于艺术灵性，你不瞧瞧鲍伊斯，罗曼罗兰，普鲁斯特……哇塞！
thinking about it now, i marvel at my own of childish optimism. if someone told me today, that I would have to endure a life of asthma and allergies, and might be immune to cancer, i would just see it as an issue of the balancing of the yin and yang, of allergies and the immune system. the tendency towards allergies encoded in the dna amplifies the body’s sensory system. the “over-reaction” of the psychological systems, is a phenomena created by the physiological genetic tendencies towards allergies. one of my friends once said half-jokingly: “allergies magnify the sensory system, which perhaps benefits your artistic sensibility, just look at beuys, romain roland, proust … pretty amazing.
看着我幼小童年suffering哮喘病发作的痛苦，中西医和土秘方，肆方问津，却无助改变免疫缺陷，哮喘似乎是伴随终生之疾病。曾经上海工艺美校乒乓球队长的我，运动前常需用肾上腺素雾剂解痉。陆一儿童节对于我，更是不愉快之记忆；迫于每次公园游弋带来花粉诱发的过敏，我便只能在家做起好学生做好功课。春秋气候变迁，哮喘必发；而发作时辰，打坐床上白夜，无眠睡眼里的繁星，至今仍记忆犹新……
looking back, on that time, I endured a lot of suffering and pain because of asthma. I used western medicine and folk remedies and sought advice everywhere, but none of this could cure the defects of my immune system — sadly asthma is a disease which accompanies us throughout our whole lives. as the captain of the pingpong team at the shanghai school of arts and crafts, I often needed to take adrenaline in an inhaler to prevent an asthma attack. I remember, june 1st, known as children’s day, was marked by a particularly unpleasant memory; while other children were frolicking in the park, the pollen in the air would bring out my allergies, so that I was forced to stay at home, to be a good student and do my homework. the climatic changes in the spring and fall would precipitate asthma attacks, and when they would happen, I would lie awake all night, unable to sleep staring up at a sky full of stars. even now I can remember it as if it were yesterday.
迁徒1987那年，我移居美利坚，最后落户帝都纽约的一年里，哮喘症症状减弱。那时我并无意识到地理 & environment之迁移，或许过敏原会随之变化。时执教明尼苏达大学，也应邀在美大学巡回演讲我的艺术。有那么几次，觉得从来没有过的轻松爽快，精力旺盛；我佰思不得其解，忽然顿悟，气喘不再伴随我，惊讶了！要知世间过敏原逾成佰上仟，过敏体质其过敏原大致无从验证，如何知晓某地不再有过敏原？真是仟载难逢的异想天开。匪夷之际，酿成终身惊喜！我一信仰物质决定consciousness、move & action的人，不用大夫，便猜测到纽约lifted我的过敏原！
in 1987, the year I moved to america, eventually to settle in the imperial capital of new york, the symptoms of the asthma seemed to subside. at that time, I didn’t realize that migrating to a different geographical location and living in a new environment, would affect the kinds of allergens I would encounter. when I was teaching at the university of minnesota, i was invited to give a lecture tour about my art, visiting several universities in america. there are only a few times in my life which I have felt so relaxed, rejuvenated and vigorous, but I failed to understand the reason. all of a sudden it hit me; the asthma was no longer following me. I was so surprised! the number of allergens found in the world can range from hundreds to thousands and for those with allergic sensitivities, there is not really a good way to test for these allergens, so how would one know if there are high levels of allergens in a specific place? it was truly a fantastic and rare revelation — the surprise of a lifetime. i am a person who believes in the material consciousness, who believes in movement and action. I didn’t need a doctor; simply the act of moving to new york transported me away from the source of my allergies.
基因修复，缘起基因缺陷；基因修复便是其蜕变过程，自然 & artificial are all countable。
my genes have recovered, the origins of my genetic defects and the repair of my genes is part of the process of mutation and involves both natural and artificial processes.
母亲的礼物母亲是绍兴人家，在著名的春晖中学就读，聆听过弘一法师的课程。她祖父曾受清政府委派统辖西藏，官至叁品。母亲英语流利，写一手出众的好字，玖拾岁余仍天天坚持毛笔蝇头小楷金刚经。她是中国银行第一代国外部信贷科专员，为新中国国际信贷服务一辈子。最可贵的是她立下遗嘱去世后遗体捐赠，为科技也为他人。曹燕宇培养出了我国银行界无数银行经理人才。外公曹仁麟，著有《星度指南》和《壬学述古》，仍为香港书网评级伍星。
a mother’s gift. my mother is from shaoxing, and studied at the famous chun hui high school, with master Hong Yi (a chinese buddhist monk, artist, and teacher). her paternal grandfather was once dispatched to tibet to take command of the area for the qing empire, an important general of the third rank. my mother spoke fluent english and was an outstanding calligrapher. at the age of 90 she would still write out the text of the diamond sutra in very small and precise characters with an ink brush. she was part of the first generation of credit specialists in the overseas department of the bank of china and worked her whole life in international credit in the service of new china (china post-1949). what is perhaps most commendable is that in her last words, when she passed away, she expressed the wish that her body be donated to science, to help others. Cao Yanyu nurtured a generation of talented managers at the bank of china. my maternal grandfather cao renlin was the author of “a guide to the movements of the celestial bodies” and “ren xue shu gu” a book about chinese divination and ancient calendars, books which today receive five-star ratings on the websites of hong kong bookstores.
我离开浙江美院后的第二年，美院通知我家人要归还那时清贫的寒舍。身在纽约的我回不了杭州，母亲废寝忘食，以巨大的母爱清点和储存了叁拾年前我所有的物件：从上仟本书籍到几箱读书卡片，从红领巾到学生证，这些已经成为美术馆的极其珍贵的猎物。母亲永远是这样的，没有任何一种感情比得上母爱！我母亲储存了一个艺术家的故事。
the second year after I left the zhejiang academy of fine arts, i was contacted by the school which told me I needed to move my things out of the humble dwelling where I lived during those hardscrabble days as an artist and teacher. I was in new york and couldn’t return to hangzhou so my mother, powered by an enormous amount of motherly love, took inventory of all of my things and found storage for all the cumulative belongings of the thirty years of my life. from thousands of books, to primary school notebooks, from our school-issued red scarves, to our student cards, these are just some of the exceedingly-precious items found at this museum. my mother was always this way — there was no emotion stronger than her motherly love and it was my mother who helped preserve this story of an artist.
我入学浙美山水画专业研究生。而文革后的首届，体制与条件都毫无头绪的。学校方说了，我们这届研究生毕业，无硕士文凭可言，大家没有第二语言能力。时隔一年，我在美国大学集中研习英语整年，并为访问学者在美欧巡回以英语演讲。母亲知道了。她便计划去浙美我的学位。如同一竞选议员去游说当时拾一位学术委员，其中包括院长肖峰，副院长宋忠元和国画系主任潘公凯，最后以柒票对肆票通过！这一结果非常艰巨的：一个在当时极为保守的教育体制里的前卫”教授”，几乎在计划我离校，并调低到师范系去。一为校方规定毕业创作不可出版，与学生生活学习一起，深受学生爱戴，成了”误导”学生等等。母亲的奋斗让我感动和惊讶！
I enrolled in the chinese painting department of the zhejiang academy of fine arts to do a master’s in chinese landscape painting; ours was the first class to enroll after the cultural revolution ended. the system, with all of its prerequisite qualifications for enrollment, was a complicated affair. the school said that, for this particular graduating class, there would be no master’s degree awarded, because none of us had second language speaking abilities. a year later, after studying english in a condensed year-long course at an American university, and after having given lectures in English as a visiting scholar in both america and Europe, my mother had an idea. she planned to go to the zhejiang academy of fine arts to collect my degree. like a campaigning politician, she went around trying to convince the members of the academic committee, such as the dean xiao feng, the vice-dean song zhongyuan and the head of the chinese painting department, pan gongkai. in the end she won; the committee decided to grant my degree by a vote of seven to four! this was quite a remarkable achievement, to obtain a degree for an avant-garde “instructor” working within an extremely conservative education system. the school was planning to kick me out, but had instead demoted me to working in the “teacher-training” department of the school. on one hand, the school had issued an edict that nothing could be published about the works from my graduating show, on the other I was living and studying together with the students, adored by them and was held in great esteem. Of course, in their eyes, I was “leading the students astray.” I was really surprised by the lengths my mother went to win this war.
祖父谷剑尘的《花国大总统》与姜文《一步之遥》，故事原型是民国奇案之一的阎瑞生案。舒淇所饰演的完颜英的原型，便是红极一时的”花国总统”王莲英。而姜文所饰演的马走日的原型，也正是阎瑞生。
my grandfather gu jianchen’s screenplay “a flower of passion” and also jiang wen’s “Gone with the bullets,” both share the same inspiration: a strange tale of republican era china, the quirky case of yan ruisheng. actress shu qi plays the role of the original wan yanying, just like actress wang lianying who enjoyed brief popularity with the earlier film “a flower of passion.” jiang wen correspondingly plays the role of Ma Zouri, which is of course based on yan ruisheng himself.
姜文说了影片虽受案件启发，也仅借用《花国大总统》的一些元素，而剧情不尽相同。那么问题就来了。”阎瑞生案”到底是个啥案子，它为什么会被称为民国奇案？在姜文之外，这案子还被谁改编过？
Jiang wen said that this case was only one element of several which inspired the making of the film and that the plot is not completely similar, and that is precisely where the problem arises: what was the actual story behind the real-life case of Yan ruishen? and why is it referred to as a “strange case” of the republican era? and finally, besides jiang wen who else has made adaptations based on this case?
1927年的电影《花国大总统》被拍成默片，由传奇艳星杨耐梅出演，在当时红极一时。而担任编剧的，正是中国当代知名艺术家谷文达的爷爷谷剑尘，可惜此片的拷贝已早已失传。
the 1927 film “a flower of passion.” was made into a silent film, with the legendary and gorgeous, yang naimei, during the height of her popularity and of course the writer of the screenplay was the gu jiancheng, the paternal grandfather of the famous contemporary artist gu wenda. unfortunately, no copies of the film remain.
贾樟柯在一采访中曾提到：”谷剑尘是二叁拾年代的导演，拍过一部片叫《花国大总统》，花国就是妓院，谷文达曾经想拿他爷爷当年这个默片来做一个东西，但因为没找到他爷爷那部片子，最后他没做出来，这作品叫《妓女超级市场》，可能也想阐发历史跟现在的某种关联。”
once in an interview, jia zhangke said: “gu jiancheng, a director in the 20s and 30s shot a film called ‘a flower of passion.’ in the film there is a brothel called flower kingdom. gu wenda once wanted to use his grandfather’s silent film to make something, but because he couldn’t find a copy of it, in the end, he was not able to make it. this work would have been called “prostitute supermarket,” maybe he wanted to elucidate the relationship between the past a certain kind of situation today.
虽耳鸣声轰然，刚才咸亨酒店的熙熙攘攘，心绪仍然萦绕在绍兴上坟时的静谧。忆及的爷爷两叁事情便又跳出来了……
ears ringing with the cacophony of the bustling and chaotic xianheng restaurant, I nonetheless possess a certain aura of quiet tranquility. the atmosphere of visiting the grave in shaoxing still lingers over me, and this calls to mind two or three things about my grandfather….
这是我儿时对爷爷很深的印象，谷剑尘深度近视，读书时鼻子几乎贴到书本纸页。他仿佛每天在孜孜不倦地阅读毛主席的老五篇：《为人民服务》、《纪念白求恩》、《愚公移山》、《反对自由主义》和《纠正党内的错误思想》等。并常常写着学习心得。我儿时对爷爷的记忆非常少，也就那么一二，除此之外，几乎一无所知。止于没有一起的经验，其中隔阂现在想来，是父母的安排，无非求取家庭的安然无恙。人性从来就不是完美的，社会更是如此。不久文革伊始，那时我就读小学叁年级，却经过了成人均不可经过的旅程，沪上有成了革命的发源地。从建党到一月风暴都在魔都诞生。对于我临阵体验，因为幼小，我就读的和田路小学便”停课闹革命”。我依稀恍惚中还记得语文课最后一篇：”滴答滴答下雨啦，小苗儿说，下吧下吧，我要长大……”然后就再也没有课本了，取而代之的是每天早晨去观看和监督老师们。他们面壁学校的外墙，纹丝不动地排排站着，口中念念有词。那时的我实在太幼小，并不知道发生了什么事。只觉得很开心，可以不要上学了。
When I was a child, I had a very strong memory of my grandfather, gu jianchen a someone who was severely nearsighted. he was so nearsighted that when he would read books, his nose would practically skim the page. it seemed like every day he would diligently read and make study notes on mao zedong’s five key articles: “serve the people,” “In Memory of Norman Bethune,” “The Foolish Old Man who Removed the Mountains,” “Combat Liberalism,” and “on correcting mistaken ideas in the party.” I didn’t have too many memories of my grandfather at that time, just only those two. apart from this, I was practically ignorant about anything else in his life, because we didn’t experience much time together. thinking of this estrangement, I realize that it was orchestrated by my parents, but in fact, it was really no more than an attempt by them to keep our family safe and sound. people are never perfect and society even less so. it was not long after the beginning of the revolution and I was in grade three. Though young i had already been through the kinds of journeys that would seem unimaginable even to an adult. shanghai was one of the birthplaces of revolutionary activity and was born from the founding of the party marked by the January revolution. i personally experienced the moment of this critical juncture at school. because I was young, I remember when the hetian road primary school was closed “to engage in revolution.” i have faint memories of being in a trance reading a textbook for the last time in my chinese class, “pitter, patter, pitter patter, it’s raining. the little seedling says: ‘let it rain. let it rain. I want to grow up’…” and then all of a sudden, there were no text books. learning was replaced by the observation and supervision of the teachers, their faces turned against the outer wall of the school, standing absolutely still in rows, mumbling to themselves. at that time, I was really too young and immature. I had no idea what happened. I just felt really happy, that I no longer needed to go to school anymore.
文革的经历，对当事人或对听故事的人来讲，是直感、情绪的或悲或闹的喜怒哀乐；时过境迁，从人类文明去读它，你读懂了，那是历史所然。个人的遭遇只是沧海一粟，没有文革会有革文的。就像卓别林的齿轮和螺丝钉，功能主义的实用价值，每一个人不足为道。和田路小学停课闹革命了。这让我接触到爷爷，也是唯一与爷爷经历过的记忆。那时不上课了，爷爷在家里教我语文，还把邻居的同学叫来一起学。记得学习班的语文常常是阅读唐诗。爷爷操着一口很标准的普通话，纠正我的口齿发音，比划我的是老式的发音方式，不是英语拼音。我不理解的是在沪上，几乎找不出能说标准国话的人。直到在纽约的生活里才知晓，爷爷在旧上海卓越的戏剧和电影的一生。
the cultural revolution, to hear the people who experienced it or to hear the stories about it was characterized by very direct feelings. the mood, whether it was boisterous or melancholy, whether it was a situation of happiness, anger, grief or joy — the whole gamut of human emotion — things always changed as time passed. If you read it from the point of view of human civilization, if you read it and understand it, you will understand that this is merely human history. the bitter experiences that i encountered are merely a drop in the ocean. even those not directly involved were involved as we were like the cogs in the machine, like in charlie chaplin’s “modern times.” our functionality, our use-value, our individual value was so infinitesimally small that it’s hardly worth mentioning. finally, the hetian lu primary school closed to allow the students to engage in full-time revolution. this allowed me to spend time with my paternal grandfather, which was pretty much my only memory of him. at that time when the school was closed, my grandfather was at home teaching me Chinese. he even gathered some of the other neighborhood students and taught everyone together. i remember in our class we often read tang poetry. my father would speak in a very standard mandarin, and would correct my pronunciation. we learned the old-style of pronunciation or articulation, not the romanization system of pinyin. what I didn’t realize at the time, was that in shanghai it was almost impossible to find people speaking standard chinese. it was only when I was living in new York, that it dawned on me that my paternal grandfather had a brilliant career in theatre and film in shanghai.
后来红卫兵来抄家，壹时鸡飞狗跳，连花盆都没有放过折腾，砸烂后查看究竟有否隐藏的反革命的金银财宝。他们规定家中成员要写批评爷爷的文章，并贴在家里墙上特设的大批判专栏里。文园黑白水彩画的毛主席像，我做的共和国国旗却引来了不快。红卫兵说了国旗的比例不准，毛主席像不是彩色的是别有用心。父亲带知青远去黑龙江劳动改造。就连五十年代外公过世后，母亲将遗产主动捐赠给国家，也引来了祸水……太多了也记不得了，爷爷不久便独自壹人去了老家绍兴。我哥哥结婚时，他回来上海家里参加婚礼。之后他马上回了绍兴后来知道，他生活在老家的壹灶头间，不久他便脑溢血，过世却没亲人陪伴。
later on, the red guards came to raid our home, turning the house completely upside down. not even the flowers were safe, the pots getting tossed helter-skelter. the general goal of these search and destroy missions was to find out if families were hiding counter-revolutionary treasures in their homes. they also forced our family members to write criticisms of my paternal grandfather, which were then placed in a grand column of criticism on the inside wall of our home. the red guards were displeased by the black and white painting of chairman mao because of the incorrect ratio of the flag of the people’s republic of china. they also criticized the fact that mao’s portrait was not painted in color. Of course, they had ulterior motives. my father brought the educated youth (zhiqing) to Heilongjiang province as part of the thought reform through labor movement. even after the death of my paternal grandfather in 1950, and my mother’s voluntary donation of her inheritance to the nation, she was still hounded by troubles … there are so many of them I can’t remember. my paternal grandfather went to live in shaoxing alone. when my brother got married, my grandfather came back to shanghai for the wedding, but he went directly back to shaoxing afterward. later on, we found out that he was living in the kitchen of our old house. not long after, we found that he had died of a cerebral hemorrhage. there were no family members by his side at the time of his passing.
我知道谷剑尘是我的爷爷（绍兴人称祖父的习惯）之外，我并不知道他是谁？没人提及，家里人更是对此沉默的。1973那年我走出烽火中学，也是上海工艺美术学校开始招生，可招生区没包括闸北，有幸的是非招生区有破格生，我被纳入拾一位破格生幸运录取了。学校在嘉定外岗，曾经是供资本家学习的社会主义学院，改换门庭成了工艺美术学校，理所当然的条件好。有一天我在教室里写书法，班主任许世煌老师经过，看着我写书法便说道：”你祖父写一手好字。”“噢！我不知道呀，也从来没见过我爷爷写的书法。”许老师看着我纳闷，但也没说什么的。这是第一次外人向我说到爷爷谷剑尘。
besides knowing that gu jiancheng was my paternal grandfather (the shaoxingnese call them zufu), I really had no idea who he was. no one ever spoke of him and my family was completely silent on the topic. 1973, the year that I left fenghuo middle school, was the same year that the shanghai arts and crafts school began to recruit students, but the catchment area did not include zhabei district. fortunately, they were willing to look past the catchment area rules for exceptional students and i was one of the ten exceptional students which enrolled at the school. the school was located in the town of waigang in jiading district, and was once a kind of socialist college, used for the re-education of capitalists. they replaced the door and it became an arts and crafts school; naturally, the conditions were quite good. one day, while I was writing calligraphy in the classroom, the director of the class, teacher xu shihuang said, “your paternal grandfather also had a very good hand for calligraphy.” “Oh!” I said, shocked, “I never saw him write calligraphy.” teacher xu looked at me bewildered, but didn’t say anything. this was the first time another person said anything about my grandfather gu jianchen.
我是一非常刻苦的学习生。到我毕业的1976年，我宿舍里的同班同学常常夜间穿过桃花园，翻墙去学校对街的红星轴承场直到清晨回宿舍。我佰思不得其解，原来我是除了画画，什么都不关心的一个人，我不知道还要找女朋友一事……
i was a very hardworking student. when i graduated in 1976, other classmates would often see me slip away at night to jump over the wall of the school to go to red star bearing factory across the street only to return at dawn to the dormitory. despite pondering it over and over, I nonetheless remained perplexed as to why I cared about nothing except painting; I didn’t even think about the need to find a girlfriend…
尾声移居纽约后不久的一天，在缅因州美术学院执教的朋友徐淦电话我，他偶然买了一份《人民日报》海外版，登载了上海图书馆的一馆员为谷剑尘佰岁诞辰撰稿一篇以为纪念。《不要忘记谷剑尘》为了早已忘却了的记忆……
coda: not long after i moved to new york, a friend of mine, xu gan, a teacher at the maine college of art, gave me a call to say that he had randomly bought an overseas edition of the “People’s Daily” reviving this long-forgotten memory. He had found an article written by a staff member of the shanghai library, in memory of gu jianchen’s 100th birthday entitled, “Don’t forget gu jianchen.”
直到读了《不要忘记谷剑尘》一文后，才认识了爷爷。他为早期演剧和电影做过卓越贡献，因没有接近左联，却名落孙山，”炼狱”提篮桥。这毕竟还是一个人的遭遇，尽管有仟仟万万的遭遇。当我知道母亲怀着我的那年被关入监狱，并没有让我抱有应该有的一种私愤和复仇，或转而怒骂的理所当然，我觉得格外的平静，一个人、家庭、社会，以致整个人种，不过是天象里的一瞬间。我是这样看来：这是人性所然，历史必然。
it was only when i read this article “don’t forget gu jianchen” that i finally came to know my paternal grandfather. he made an outstanding contribution to the early era of drama and film, but because he was close with the league of left-wing writers, he was left behind in the “purgatory” of tilanqiao prison. though he would have to suffer this bitter lot, he was but one among thousands. surprisingly, at the time when i found out that my mother was pregnant with me, the year that he was sent to jail, it did not fill me a desire for spite and vengeance, or lead me to spew out a string of expletives. i actually felt especially peaceful, given the fact that a person, a family, a society, and consequently a whole entire race, all of this is just a split second in the time-scale of the universe. I saw it as an inherent element of humanity and a necessity of history.
叁拾年代的《新文化》月刊里登载签名支持”妇女继承权”，爷爷谷剑尘与蔡元培等一起签名支持。我与台湾移居芝加哥的策展人高倩惠谈及女人遗产继承权一事，令我惊讶的是摩登的台湾，竟然她家的所有遗产都给了她的兄弟，而她分文不沾。
in the 1930s, the magazine “new culture” published an article signed by many authors in support of a “woman’s right to inherit property.” my paternal grandfather gu jiancheng and cai yuanpei, signed their names in support. talking with gao qianhui, a taiwanese curator who had immigrated to chicago, about this issue of women’s inheritance rights, i was surprised to learn that in modern taiwan, all of her family’s inheritance was unexpectedly given to her brother; not a single cent was left for her.
谷剑尘是中国教育电影协会发起人之一，曾任上海戏剧学院前身上海戏剧学校首任校长，明星电影学校校长，与导演应云卫一起为戏剧协社发起人，是共和国之前在戏剧史上活动最久的现代剧团。哈佛学成回到上海的洪深，经由谷剑尘的一番介绍进入明星影业，被誉为旧上海影视圈的一匹黑马。我便开始在网上搜寻爷爷的原出版物。
gu jianchen is one of the founders of the china educational film association, and was once the first dean of the shangahi school of drama, which was the precursor to the shanghai theatre academy. he was also the dean of the stars film school, and the founder of the theatre association along with director ying yunwei. hong shen, who returned from harvard, helped to introduce gu jianchen to the stars motion picture company, and he soon became known as a kind of dark horse in the film circles of old shanghai. soon after, I began to search for the publications of my paternal grandfather online.
很是欣慰收集到1930年上海现代书局出版的谷剑尘原版本《绅董》，1933年商务印书馆出版的《戏剧的化妆术》，1936年世界书局出版的《现代戏剧作法》，1936年商务印书馆出版的《电影剧本作法》，收集记忆是一种wonderland，美不胜收还不足与表述，她每每让人惊讶，也”艳”在其中了……
I was very pleased to receive copies of Gu Jianchen’s “local gentry,” published in 1930, by the Shanghai Modern Book Company, along with “make-up for theatre,” published by the commercial press in 1933, “Methods of Modern Drama,” published in 1936 by the world press, and “Screenplay Writing,” published by the commercial press in 1936. collecting these memories sent me into a kind of wonderland; I am helpless to finds words to express, the joy of finding these marvelous things; each one brought me great surprises, each one more wonderful than the next.
可惜的是爷爷生活的时代仅有无声电影，所谓默片，其醋酸片基不可久存，不及时复制遭不复存在了。有感于那时的民族，佰分之捌拾伍的人口是斗字不识的文盲，加上兵荒马乱，只有马背上的资料档案馆了。我和我的助手沈玲玲足迹肆方，跑遍了上海香港北京的电影档案馆，非常遗憾，没有追回一片！
it is a pity that my paternal grandfather only got to experience the era of silent films. the acetate on which the films were printed does not have a long lifespan and they needed to be copied or else they would no longer exist. what really moved me was that at that time 85% of the population was illiterate and that due to the chaos and turmoil of the time, the materials needed to be brought to the archive by horseback. Travelling with my assistant shen lingling, we searched the four corners of the earth, going to visit film archives in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Beijing, looking for even one film. We were so disappointed.
爷爷是中国戏剧与电影的先驱之一。他首次在中国电影史上提出导演中心说；他写就了中国演剧史上第一部有台词的话剧《孤军》，开了中国话剧的先河。他编著的《中国电影发达史》是大家拥有的最早一部中国电影史书。早期电影史著述仅两种：1934年版《中国电影年鉴》刊载的谷剑尘所著《中国电影发达史》，1936年版《近代中国艺术发展史》收入的郑君里之著《现代中国电影史略》。爷爷的《中国电影发达史》为中国电影史的拓荒之作，有筚路蓝缕之功。
my grandfather was a forerunner of chinese theatre and film. once, when speaking of chinese film, one of the directors said that he wrote the first drama with lines (rather than opera lyrics) “isolated troupes,” which marked the beginning of chinese drama. In addition, his “the history of the development of chinese film,” was a seminal work in the early period of chinese film history, a work which many people owned and read. of the early works on the history of film there were two kinds: the 1934 edition of the “china film yearbook,” which published gu jianchen’s “the history of the development of chinese film,” in 1936 and “the history of the development of early modern chinese art,” the earnings of which were used to fund zheng junli’s “a brief history of modern chinese film.” my grandfather’s “the history of the development of chinese film” was a trail-blazing text in the history of chinese film, a testament to his pioneering efforts.
我起初怎么都觉得佰思不得其解，爷爷带着戏剧协社足迹遍布四川、上海、南京，唤起民众抗日救国。这样一位有良心的功臣，会最后落入提篮桥监狱！本家兄谷文园说过，他当时去贵州插队落户时，报考工农兵大学，他的考核分数是贵州省第一，却没有录取。原因是爷爷的演剧界的支持人是肆大家族的陈家。原来同是抗日还得分清国共，在抗日前沿还需分清是哪家的阵地。
another fact which still puzzles me to this day is how my father ended up in jail. though he brought the amateur theatre troupe “xiju xieshe” around the country — leaving its footprints in sichuan, shanghai, and Nanjing, and catalyzing the public to resist japanese aggression — though he was the kind of person with a strong social conscience and who possessed an outstanding record of service, he still ended up in the tilanqiao prison! my brother gu wenyuan said that, when he was “sent-down” to guizhou to join a rural commune, “enrolled” as a student at “the university of the workers, peasants and soldiers,” (i.e. the period from 1966-76 when students were admitted to universities not based on their qualifications but on their proletarian class backgrounds) he had attained the highest marks in the whole province of guizhou as a highschool student. but he didn’t enroll, because my grandfather was from the chen family, named as one of the “four big families” who held influence in the republican era china. Within the anti-Japanese resistance there were strict delineations between the communists and the nationalists, and before the Japanese war, families were already divided into different camps or positions.
（摘自《蜕变中的基因》，《雨中清明》）(from: “genes and transformation,” “a pure brightness in the rain,” )