我們不是成龍，也別叫我們林書豪

For a long time, playing pickup basketball as an Asian-American guy involved the considerable likelihood that someone would call you Yao Ming.

很長一段時間以來，只要是亞裔美國人打籃球，就有可能會被叫作姚明。

Yao is Asian. You’re Asian. That was the joke.

姚明來自亞洲。你也來自亞洲。這就是笑點了。

That formulation began to fade, though, about four years ago, when Jeremy Lin, a Taiwanese-American point guard from Palo Alto, Calif., playing at the time for the Knicks, became a household name in a blinding, monthlong metamorphosis still referred to today as Linsanity.

盡管如此，大約四年前，這種表達方式開始消失，當時來自加利福尼亞州帕洛阿爾托的臺灣裔美國控球后衛(wèi)、紐約尼克斯隊球員林書豪(Jeremy Lin)，一夜之間成了家喻戶曉的人物，他在那一個月的表現(xiàn)，至今仍然被稱為“林來瘋”(Linsanity)。

I felt things shift about two weeks into his rise. I was covering spring training baseball in Port St. Lucie, Fla., that month for The New York Times. One afternoon, I drove to a public basketball court to find a game.

在他崛起的大約兩周之后，我就感到事情在發(fā)生變化。當時我在弗洛拉港的圣露西港為《紐約時報》報道籃球春訓。一天下午，我開車去一個公共籃球場打場比賽。

“Jeremy Lin is here,” someone announced.

“林書豪來了，”有人宣布。

At one point, I caught a pass on the move, juked to my left, then hopped to the basket for a layup.

有一次我接球向左做了個假動作，然后起跳上籃。

“He’s nice like Lin, too,” somebody joked.

“他也像林書豪一樣棒，”有人開玩笑。

This is how it’s going to be now, I guessed. And I was right: Weeks later, back home in Manhattan, I held the door open for a man at a bank, and instead of saying thank you — the two-word phrase we’re conditioned to expect in that situation — he looked at me and said, “Jeremy Lin.”

我猜，這種情況現(xiàn)在就會持續(xù)下去了。我沒猜錯：幾周后，我回到曼哈頓，在一個銀行里，我?guī)鸵粋€男人拉了一下門，他沒有說出這種情況下通常會用的那兩個詞——“thank you”(謝謝)，他看著我說，“Jeremy Lin”。

It’s common as an Asian-American to feel like an unwilling participant in society’s lazy word association game: See someone Asian, say something Asian.

亞裔美國人常常覺得很不樂意，不得不參與這個社會的代用詞游戲：看到一個亞裔人士，就說點關于亞洲的事情。

An absence of reference points for Asian identity in popular culture has helped create a perpetual stream of hackneyed encounters, for men and women, children and adults.

在大眾文化中缺乏亞裔身份的參考點，已經給男人和女人、兒童和成年人帶來了無休止的煩人遭遇。

“In elementary school, it was Jackie Chan,” my friend Daniel Sin, a fellow hoops addict and Korean-American, told me about playing pickup ball. “In high school, it was Yao Ming. At the gym now, it’s Jeremy Lin. When it first happened, around Linsanity, I thought: Nice. At least I’m a guard now.”

“在小學的時候，大家說的是成龍，”我的朋友丹尼爾·申(Daniel Sin)說，他是韓裔美國人，也是籃球迷，他跟我講起平時打球的事。“在高中，大家說你是姚明?，F(xiàn)在在健身房，大家說你是林書豪。林來瘋時期第一次出現(xiàn)這種事的時候，我想：還不錯。至少現(xiàn)在我是后衛(wèi)了。”

Lin has returned to the public eye here in New York as he prepares to begin his first season as a member of the Nets. His narrative continues to resonate with Asian-Americans, in part, because of the way his skin color has shaped the substance of his life.

在首次作為布魯克林籃網隊球員備戰(zhàn)新賽季期間，林書豪再度成為紐約的公眾人物。他的講述一再引起亞裔美國人的共鳴，部分原因是他的膚色影響了他的實際生活。

During a talk at the New Yorker festival this month, Lin recalled that as a little-known high school basketball player he dreaded the moments before games when he knew he’d hear those familiar taunts from people in the stands: “Yao Ming, Yao Ming.”

在本月紐約客節(jié)(New Yorker festival)的一次座談中，他回憶說，作為一個不知名的高中籃球運動員，他在比賽前有時候會感到害怕，他知道自己將會聽到觀眾席上那些熟悉的嘲諷聲：“姚明，姚明。”

Nicknames on a court, of course, can be wielded with affection or respect, and rhetorical sparring can be one of basketball’s auxiliary pleasures.

當然，在球場上的昵稱也可能是在表達喜愛或尊重，虛夸的罵戰(zhàn)也可以是籃球運動的附帶樂趣。

But as Ren Hsieh, the Taiwanese-American commissioner of the Dynasty League, a recreational basketball organization in Chinatown, pointed out, the intent of words is usually pretty clear. “I’m a 5-foot-9 point guard,” Hsieh said, laughing. “If you call me Yao Ming, I know what you’re saying.”

但正如華埠康樂籃球組織皇朝聯(lián)賽(Dynasty League)負責人、臺灣裔美國人謝仁(音)所說，這種說法的意圖通常是很清楚的。“我是一個5英尺9英寸(約合1.75米)高的控衛(wèi)，”謝仁笑著說。“如果你叫我姚明，我知道你是什么意思。”

Lin may be too famous today for those proper-noun taunts. But he remains a magnet for abuse.

林書豪的名氣可能已經大到不適用那些使用專名的嘲諷了。但他仍然是很多言語羞辱的對象。

“Even now, to this day, you go to N.B.A. arenas, guys will say racist things, ‘chicken lo mein’ or whatever, which is a really good dish, by the way, but I don’t like being called that,” Lin said at the New Yorker event.

“即使是現(xiàn)在，到了今天，你去NBA賽場，還是有人會說種族主義言論，‘雞肉撈面’之類的，雞肉撈面很好吃，但我不喜歡別人管我叫這個，”林書豪在紐約的座談中說。

Likewise: Jeremy Lin is a good player, but we don’t like being called that.

同樣：林書豪也是一個很好的球員，但我們不喜歡被叫做林書豪。

Eddie Huang, the Taiwanese-American chef, writer, and television host, recalled an interaction three years ago, on St. Patrick’s Day, in which a group of men emerged from a bar near his restaurant on 14th Street and shouted to him, “Yo, Jeremy Lin.” Huang felt tempted to throw a punch before checking himself.

臺灣裔美國名廚、作家、電視節(jié)目主持人黃頤銘(Eddie Huang)回憶起了三年前的圣帕特里克節(jié)的經歷。一群男子走出他第14街上的餐廳旁邊的一家酒吧，朝他喊，“喂，林書豪。”他想給他們一拳，但后來克制住了。

“I don’t want nobody calling me Jeremy because it reminds me of being called Long Duk Dong or reminds me of being called things like Jackie when I was a kid,” Huang said. “I don’t like that. I’m Eddie Huang, you know what I mean?”

“我不想被人叫林書豪，因為這讓我想起小時候被人叫Long Duk Dong或成龍，”黃頤銘說。“我不喜歡這樣。我是黃頤銘，你懂我的意思吧?”

This was the landscape of Linsanity. Along with whatever euphoria Lin’s unexpected success engendered among Asians, we remember, too, all the residual messiness as people around us betrayed an inability, or a lack of desire, to treat him with basic decency.

林來瘋也是這種情況。在林書豪出人意料的成功讓亞裔興高采烈的同時，我們也記得身邊的人暴露出無法或不愿以基本的禮貌對待他。

As his name was added to the shortlist of famous Asian people invoked in racist taunts, it was an uncomfortable evidence again of the dearth of Asian representation in media and popular culture.

當他的名字被列入引發(fā)種族歧視奚落的亞裔名人名單時，這是另一個令人不安的證據(jù)，表明媒體和流行文化中缺乏亞裔代表。

I started covering the N.B.A. for this newspaper a year and a half after Linsanity — Lin was playing for the Houston Rockets at that point — and it took precisely three games for a stranger at an arena to call me Jeremy Lin.

我開始為本報報道NBA新聞時，林來瘋現(xiàn)象已經過去了一年半——那時，林書豪已效力于休斯頓火箭隊——三場比賽下來，已經有陌生人在球場管我叫林書豪了。

I was leaving the visitors’ locker room that night in Orlando, where the Magic had just hosted the Nets. A big crowd of autograph seekers perked up as they sensed me approaching and deflated again when they realized who it was.

那天晚上在奧蘭多，魔術隊主場對陣籃網隊的比賽剛結束。我正離開客隊更衣室，一大群索要簽名的人在感覺到我向他們走去后很是振奮，但很快他們意識到我是誰，于是又泄了氣。

But a second or two later, there it was: “It’s Jeremy Lin!” someone yelled, making the crowd laugh.

但過了一兩秒鐘，有人喊道：“是林書豪!”人群發(fā)出了笑聲。

“That’s racist,” I said, halfheartedly.

“這是種族歧視，”我冷冷地說。

“He said, ‘That’s racist!’ ” someone said, and everyone laughed again.

“他說，‘這是種族歧視!’”有人說。大家再次笑了起來。

(This is as good a time as any to write: If you think Lin and I look alike, you may be the type of person who thinks all Asian people look alike.)

(這句話怎么說都不嫌多：如果你覺得我和林書豪長得像，那你大概就是那種認為所有亞洲人看起來都一樣的人。)

A few weeks later, I walked into the Nets’ locker room in Houston as they dressed to play the Rockets. Lin was on the injured list for Houston that night. Seeing me, one Nets player could not resist: “I thought Jeremy Lin was out tonight,” he said, feigning surprise.

幾周后在休斯頓，當我走進籃網隊的更衣室時，他們正在換衣服，準備對陣火箭隊。當晚，林書豪在籃網隊的傷員名單中?？吹轿业臅r候，籃網隊的一名球員沒忍?。?ldquo;我以為林書豪今天晚上不上場呢，”他假裝驚訝地說。

I gave the player an incredulous stare. He broke the silence. “You aren’t going to tweet about that are you?” he said, suddenly serious.

我難以置信地盯著那名球員。他打破了沉默。“你不會發(fā)推說這件事的，對吧?”他說，突然嚴肅了起來。

Racism has far more dire consequences than asinine name-calling, but it will serve always as a barefaced reminder of the extent to which we remain alien in people’s minds.

種族歧視的影響遠比亂叫名字更嚴重，但它永遠都可以作為一個毫無遮攔的提醒，讓我們知道自己在人們心中依然多么格格不入。

Respite from this, realistically, feels far-off.

實事求是地說，這種現(xiàn)象的緩解感覺遙遙無期。

So you stare ahead. You laugh things off. You don’t lash out because do you really want to spend your days lashing out?

于是你目視前方。一笑了之。你不會破口大罵，因為你真的愿意把時間花在破口大罵上嗎?

You wait for another Yao Ming, another Jeremy Lin, and another, and another, until maybe the names begin to lose their meaning.

你要等著另一個姚明，另一個林書豪，另一個，另一個，直到這些名字開始失去它們的意義。