寻“江”中国——彼得·海斯勒《江城》的寻找主题

Looking for "River" in China——A Study on Searching Theme of Peter Hessler’s River Town

彼得·海斯勒在华期间完成的作品《江城》《甲骨文》《寻路中国》因聚焦于“大变革”中的中国而被称之为“纪实中国三部曲”。笔者发现三部作品均以“寻找”为主题,讲述中国社会变革中的得与失。它们都属于“在路上”作品,以至于在三部曲的最后一部作品《寻路中国》的书名中直接点题“寻路”,副标题“从乡村到工厂的自驾之旅”更是呈现出了这种寻找的方式。文章拟以第一部《江城》为例,探讨非虚构作品《江城》的寻找主题。

Peter Hessler’s works River Town,Oracle and Country Driving:A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory written in China were called“Documentary China Trilogy”,because they focused on China of“Great Change”.It is found that all the works take“searching”as the theme and tell about the gains and losses in Chinese social changes,which all belong to the“on-the-Road”works,so that in the title of Country Driving the theme of“searching”is bought out,and the way of searching is even presented in its subtitle A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory.This article plans to take River Town as an example to discuss the“searching”theme in the non-fiction novel.