外国人怎么读中文书 第1篇
关于中国作为一个文明国家的表现：
When the Chinese use the term ‘China’ they are not usually referring to the country or nation so much as Chinese civilization – its history, the dynasties, Confucius, the ways of thinking, their relationships and customs, the guanxi (the network of personal connections), the family, filial piety, ancestral worship, the values, and distinctive philosophy.
中国人眼里的“中国”实则是国家、民族乃至“中华文明”的同义词，包括诸如中国的历史、朝代、儒家思想、中国人的思维方式、家族联系和习俗、人际关系、家庭、孝道、祖先崇拜、价值观、独特的哲学体系……
There are no other people in the world who are so connected to their past and for whom the past – not so much the recent past but the long-ago past – is so relevant and meaningful. Every other country is a spring chicken by comparison, its people separated from their long past by the sharp discontinuities of their history. Not the Chinese. China has experienced huge turmoil, invasion and rupture, but somehow the lines of continuity have remained resilient, persistent and ultimately predominant, superimposing themselves in the Chinese mind over the interruptions and breaks.
对中国人而言，过去——遥远的过去而非近现代的过去，与现在是如此息息相关而又意义重大。这是世界上任何其他民族都无法做到的。相比之下，其他任何国家似乎都成了“菜鸟”，因为历史的断裂令其民众与本国的历史割裂开来。然而中国人却不是这样，尽管中国曾经历过巨大的混乱、侵略和分裂，但其文明的延续性却仍坚韧地得以留存，最终占据主导地位，纵然历尽波折，仍深深地镌刻在大多数中国人的脑海中。
外国人怎么读中文书 第2篇
THERE WAS AN INTENSITY and a freshness to their readings that I'd never seen before from any other students of literature, and partly it was a matter of studying foreign material. We were exchanging clichés without knowing it: I had no idea that classical Chinese poetry routinely makes scallions of women's fingers, and they had no idea that Sonnet Eighteen's poetic immortality had been reviewed so many times that it nearly died, a poem with a number tagged to its toe. Our exchange suddenly made everything new: there were no dull poems, no overworked plays, no characters who had already been discussed to the point of clinicism. Nobody groaned when I assigned Beowulf—as far as they were concerned, it was just a good monster story.
看他们所写的读后感，我有一种强烈而清新的感受，这在以前其他学文学的学生中是看不到的，部分原因在于他们学的是外国素材。我们在不知不觉中交换着陈腐的题材：我不知道中国古诗把女人的手指比作葱根，而他们也不清楚莎士比亚的第十八首十四行诗的不朽之处已被人评点过无数次，在注脚处都标着号码，几乎不再成其为诗了。我们的这种交换突然使一切变得新鲜起来；没有了枯燥的诗，没有了被人过度研究的戏剧，没有了被讨论到近乎病态的人物。当我布置有关《贝奥武甫》的作业时，没有人咕哝过——在他们看来，那只不过是一个好看的妖魔故事而己。
外国人怎么读中文书 第3篇
对九十年代成都街头的描写：
For someone with a natural curiosity about food, Chengdu in the mid-nineties was a kind of paradise. It was all there, under your nose. In the backstreets, people cooked dinner for their families on charcoal braziers outside their cottages. The aromas of chilli-bean paste, Sichuan pepper and jasmine tea hung in the air on warm autumn nights. The most humble shack of a restaurant would often be serving Chinese food better than any you could find in London.
在天生对美食无比好奇的人眼中，九十年代中期的成都称得上是天堂了。一切都在那里，你动动鼻子就能找到。小街小巷的人们在屋门口架起煤炭炉子，为一家人做晚饭。温暖的秋夜，空气中绵延不绝地流动着豆瓣酱、花椒和茉莉花茶的香味。那些最最简陋的“苍蝇馆子”端出来的中餐，也比在伦敦能找到的任何一家要好吃。
对念念不忘的谢老板家担担面的描写：
They looked quite plain: a small bowlful of noodles topped with a spoonful of dark, crisp minced beef. But as soon as you stirred them with your chopsticks, you awakened the flavours in the slick of spicy seasonings at the base of the bowl, and coated each strand of pasta in a mix of soy sauce, chilli oil, sesame paste and Sichuan pepper. The effect was electrifying. Within seconds, your mouth was on fire, your lips quivering under the onslaught of the pepper, and your whole body radiant with heat. (On a warm day, you might even break out into a sweat.)
它看上去倒是其貌不扬：一小碗面，加了一勺深色的、松脆的牛肉碎。但只要你拿起筷子，把面拌一拌，就会唤醒铺在碗底的那些香料。每一根面条都会裹上酱油、红油、芝麻酱和花椒混合成的调料，效果实在是石破天惊。入口短短几秒，你的嘴巴就会着火，你的双唇会在花椒的猛攻下不停颤抖，你的全身都会散发着热气（天气热的时候就会汗流浃背了）。
