原文：HAN SUYIN OF MANY-SPLENDOURED THINGS

译文：韩素音与瑰宝

By Helen Snow

作者：海伦•斯诺

MY HOUSE HAS TWO DOORS by Han Suyin, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1980.

韩素音自传《吾宅双门》，由帕特南之子出版公司于1980年在纽约予以出版。 

原文：This book is listed as “China-Description and travel. …Biography... English and Chinese.” In fact, Han Suyin is not her real name, only a pen-name, and her mother was Belgian (maybe also Dutch and German, she has said) and her father was a Hakka Chinese engineer of Szechuan Province in China. The genetic mix is evident on every page of her writing and the recombinant genes happened to be the best kind, a rare thing so far as the mixing of ethnics is concerned. She is in person a bridge between East and West, as her father had tried to be in his engineering. “I am not a preacher,” she said over the phone to me a few hours ago, “I write what I see and hear and am told. I have never been guided by any theory.” 

译文：此书被列为 “中国——叙事与旅行……英国人与中国人的……自传”。实际上，韩素音只是笔名，并非其真名。她的母亲是一位比利时人（据她坦言：也可能是荷兰人和德国人），而父亲则是一名来自中国四川省的客家华人工程师。在她著作的每一页，无不显而易见地彰显出基因融合的特征，而这重组的基因恰巧又是最佳的那一种。就种族融合而言，这实为罕见。她本人便是一座连接东西方的桥梁，恰似她的父亲在他的工程中想方设法而为之的那样。“我不是为了传教”，几个小时前，她在电话里告诉我，“我把我的所见所闻和别人告诉我的皆如实地秉笔直书。我从不被任何理论所引导。”

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I have been trying to think of a definition for Han Suyin, but I cannot even think of any other individual like her. She seems to be unique, one of a kind but not of one kind. As a writer, she is European and may have inherited the special qualities that we used to say in the phrase, “you can’t beat the Dutch.” She was alone, yet she not only survived but took the mountains and molehills in her stride. She was a world traveler and a true explorer like a “woman geographer mapping our not only land and sea but also ideas and people”. (I was elected in 1940 to the Society of Women Geographers, which has women somewhat like Han Suyin and myself. This is the sister-society to the Explorers’ Club, which does not admit women, or never did that I know of.) 

我一直尝试着去定义韩素音，但我又实在想不出还有谁能像她那样。她似乎是与众不同的，独一无二，却又不拘泥于任何一种定式。当作为一名作家时，她是一位纯正的欧洲人，大抵继承了我们过去常说的“永不惧难”的特殊品质。她孤身一人，却也能存活，并以她的脚步，走过崇山峻岭。她环绕世界旅行，是一个名副其实的探险家，俨然一位“女性地理学家，不仅勘测陆地与海洋，而且洞悉民众与思想”。（在1940年，我当选成为妇女地理学家协会的会员，该协会里也有众多像韩素音和我一般的女士。这是探索者俱乐部的女性社团。该俱乐部从不接纳女会员。至少据我所知，从未接纳过女会员。）

Han Suyin not only has two eyes but natural binoculars. She sees through a Chinese prism and her mind receives the impression on a European receptor. This is very valuable and rare. I do not know just how developed her capacity is for understanding and recording all the data received, but there is no question that she has piled up a Mt. Everest of books (eight are listed on the above front matter). Yes, she even has a relationship with the Himalayas as that is where she met her husband, Vincent, of twenty-three years in 1979, but still at her side in New York in1992 December 15, at the China Institute (founded by the Henry Luce people). She instantly saw this man of India as “many-splendoured thing,” and thought him handsome and compelling because he was so very dark that he was “almost blue.” Now that is neither Chinese nor European, but a NEW GENETIC MIX AND PSYCHOLOGY of a chemistry not as yet studied by her herself or anyone else probably. 

韩素音不仅生得一双慧眼，且像一副天然的双筒望远镜。她透过中国这个棱镜洞察世事，同时，她的思想深受欧洲的影响。这可谓是宝贵无比，世所罕有。我对她如何精进自己的理解和记录所有收集到的数据能力一无所知。但毋庸置疑的是，她著作等身，她的作品堆积得如同珠穆朗玛峰一般巍峨。（已在前页列出了她的八本著作）的的确切，她与喜马拉雅山有着一段不解的情缘。她在那儿，偶遇了她的丈夫——陆文星（Vincent）。1979年，他们已经相识了23年，在1992年12月15日，他仍在纽约的中国研究所（由亨利卢斯等人创立）一直鼎力扶持着她。她即刻将这个印度男人视为 “瑰宝”。他皮肤黝黑到“发蓝”，却让她感觉到：他是如此地英俊迷人。这既不是中国式的，亦非是欧洲式的，而是一种全新的基因混合与心理作用发生的化学反应。这一点，显然连她自己都未曾察觉，其他人便更是如此。

She married first, “Pao”, a Chinese military attaché from Szechuan who was the embodiment of all that is “wrong with China and Chinese, as seen by the European vision, hence this was certainly a basic Belgian genetic set of cells, brain and body apparently. She then took as husband “Leonard” and lived with him in Malasia over a decade but ended with another total rejection as if by a Belgian taboo on this stranger to her own physiology. Meantime, her Great Love had been no accident in Hong Kong. This was Ian Morrison, the male element in “A Many-splendoured Thing,” her most famous book and film. To add to the splendor, Ian was killed in the War in Korea around 1950 and his body returned to Singapore to his wife and children. Now, Ian was the son of the Morrison foreign correspondent of the London Times, for whom the main street in Peking was named (how often I used to wonder why when I lived in Peking from 1933 to 1937.) That this young, little Belgian-Chinese woman, a practicing doctor, should pick out an Eng1ish “gentleman” for her Great Love, means that she was made up of the best genetic raw-materials with instincts to catch and a good mind capable of choice and thinking high above the quotidien.

她先是嫁给了一位来自四川的中国军官“保”（唐保黄）。以韩素音的欧洲视角看来，他身上裹挟着所有中国人都有的通病，带有典型化的中国思维。因此可以看出，无论就思维还是就身体而言，她都明显带有比利时基因的遗传特征。之后，她又嫁与“康柏”，并与其一起，在马来西亚生活了十多年。但最终，这场婚姻还是以另一种彻底的决绝而劳燕分飞，恍若是触碰了比利时人对这个陌生男人的生理禁忌。在香港的日子里，她邂逅了自己的挚爱，并开启了一场旷世绝恋。而此人便是伊恩•莫里森，亦是她那最声名远播的书与电影“瑰宝”中的男主人公。伊恩于1950年左右，在朝鲜战争中，不幸阵亡，他的遗体则被运抵马来西亚的妻儿手中。这更为这场生死爱恋增添了传奇色彩。伊恩乃是《伦敦时报》驻外记者莫里森之子，就是那位以其名字命名了北京主要街道的人之子（1933年至1937年间，我住在北京，常常苦思冥想着这其中的缘由）。这位年轻且有着比利时和中国血统的弱女子，一位见习医生，理应精挑细选一位英国“绅士”作为自己的挚爱。由此可见，这最佳的基因原料造就了她，使她能用本能去察觉，能用美好的心灵去选择，并以超乎常人的境界去思索。

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