域外视角、边缘叙事与地方性书写——美国非虚构作家梅英东的东北叙事

Overseas Perspectives,Marginal Narratives and Local Writing:Northeast China Narrative by American Nonfiction Writer Michael Meyer

“东北”不只是地理区域的指认和表达,更具有区域群体文化高度的概括性和指向性。新世纪以降,一批域外作家相继旅居中国并集体性地以非虚构方式书写中国。其中,梅英东(Michael Meyer)沉潜在东北民间,以跨文化民族志的方式深描东北,以“看见中国未来”为立意,在中国近现代史辐辏离合中,表征出了一个多世纪东北的历史嬗变、阵痛和新变。梅英东的非虚构东北书写,在新的历史节点持有边缘性表达和微观视角,力求通过对乡土中国岁时肌理的触摸、以他者之眼凝视工业化浪潮下东北乡村中的自然景观、人地关系、生产形态和文化表征,发微出对东北未来甚至城乡中国去向的思考。这种跨文化的新质东北叙事,着力提取出中华文化匀质性之外的东北区域风味,在域外完成了富有个性化和辨识度的东北形象他塑和传播过程,结构性地丰赡了东北书写的立体性和历史感,亦形成了与对当下中国文学框架下东北叙事的互文和对话,成为新世纪东北书写光谱的重要一端。

“Northeast China”is not only the identification and expression of geographical regions,but also has a high degree of generalization and orientation of regional group culture.Since the beginning of the 21st century,a group of international writers have lived in China one after another,and collectively began to write about China in a non-fictional way.Among them,the non-fiction writer Michael Meyer has been deeply involved in the Northeast and people there,describing the Northeast in a cross-cultural ethnography,with the idea of“seeing China’s future”.In the convergence and reunion of modern Chinese history,he has presented the historical transmutation,pain and new changes of Northeast China for more than a century.Michael Meyer’s non-fictional northeastern writings held marginal expressions and microscopic perspectives at new historical nodes,and strived to touch and deeply describe the texture of rural China.He stares at the natural landscape,human-land relationship,production forms and cultural representations in the northeastern countryside under the wave of industrialization with others’eyes and expressed his thoughts on the future of the Northeast and even the future of urban and rural China.This new cross-cultural Northeast narrative focuses on extracting the Northeast regional flavor beyond the homogeneity of Chinese culture and completes the process of shaping and disseminating a personalized and recognizable Northeast image outside China.His writing structurally enriches the tridimensionality and historical sense of Northeastern writing,and forms intertextuality and dialogue with Northeastern narratives within the framework of current Chinese literature,becoming an important part of the Northeastern writing in the new century.