畢業於英美文學和語言系快三十年，從來沒有翻譯過長點任何東西。現在朋友要開展覽，趕鴨子上架。

我記起許多網友都認為自己英文棒，我決定找個老師 - 看看您是否有真本事？

正是因為我怕翻壞了，所以我從不敢翻譯我的《論範例》！但如果你真有英文本事，我也許還真考慮請你 - 多少稿費？ 有一天，我相信，《論範例》會人手一冊的。

謝謝，

董亞維

https://youtu.be/lI9fzRyulhc

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Why Do We Need To Draw?

- On My Illustrations of Eva's Book "The Great Famine of China"

I know Eva only in photo - so far. In 2012, Eva sent me her prose collection, "My hometown - countryside village". With strokes of her pen, her birth place was in a way materialized meandering  the earth on the yellow plateau of the Northwest of China - as if with your hand picking up any piece of dirt at will you could form a yellow figure standing in front of you. Writing about stories of those ups and downs of the lives in her hometown village, I was informed later, especially about the generation of her mother's, after she came back from America.  When I heard of that her mother was once a homeless in street, I was shocked - because I knew well while I shoot the news brief "Blazing Star", many women escaped from the west of Guansu Province to the Shanxi Province in order to survive by marriage in the later period of " The Movement of Great Leap Forward" - and Eva's mother was one of them. Due to this event probably, Eva could have touched the silenced period of 1959-1961, "The Great Famine Of China" , with her heart. Unlike the rest of us, she did not stop here but bravely following the trail of her mother's past when her mother was only a girl, and uncovered the hidden history of that period. Undoubtedly, it is not hard to imagine her sharpened sensitivity girdled with the basic concept of human rights due to years of living in America, when once more she re-entered the mythical land of hers in the past.

By the end of year 2013, Eva sent me a letter informing me that she would publish a book on the "Great Famine of China" and asked if I would like to provide some illustrations? “I will give a try”, I told her. My reply was based on the fact that I was already familiar with this theme of the "Great Famine in China". It goes back to the period of 1999 when I shoot the documentary of "Lin Zhao". In those days of interviewing locals, I realized that so-called "The Three Years of Natural Disaster" is NO disaster at all -  it is purely out of "humans" manipulation and it is entirely a tragedy caused by the political movements then: “The General Line，The People's Commune, The Great Leap Forward". A few years later, I myself made the same theme by a peasant named "Wu, Yong Quan" in the Guangshan County, Henan Province, as a documentary, recorded this event of "The Great Famine of China". Mr. Wu built a memorial for the 74 peopled starved to death in the year of 1959 - more than half of the entire population of 130 in the village at that time. Till today, it is still the ONLY memorial for those thousand of millions of people who died of "The Great Famine of China" all over China in the 3-year period. Over the years, in my interviews along the provinces of Anhui, Yunnan, Gansu, Sichun, Liaoning, etc., emerged in my head, not only by the textual data, by listening to the narration of interviewers, picture after picture of those unbearable images looms large in my memory, as a professional painter, while still making documentaries, I kept constant sketching of those events without knowing when I can actually use them for the best possible occasions.

Only after Eva sent me the 15 text paragraphs of her book for illustration did I realize then that the best  media to utilize those sketches is in the form of woodcut, which resulted in the initially current of 15 pieces of them. As best as I can possibly attempt with those paintings, it is still very hard to convince even myself whether or not this kind of art form being capable of thoroughly recalling those memories suffered through actual starvation and the terrifying periods of excruciating pains endured by the public then, neither being capable of lessening the writer's psychological torture for herself, due to the limitation in this form of art. Nonetheless, it is my belief that there must exist a channel connecting individual sensation with collective memories. Eva wrote like this:

"My sister in-law passed her night under a neighbor's roof of their house outside and woke up at daybreak to see her brother finally coming here to receive her: 'how come you are so late....?" which she assembled enough strength to utter while ending her last breath.  As another case, a little boy under the name of Wei Fu-lian ran out of home in order to survive from starvation by catching a train, but not being able to get in. As a result, he put his arm through the door handle of the car and clenched his thumb finger with his teeth tightly to prevent himself from falling under the train. More like these appeared in my interviews, such as babies biting dying mother's breasts searching for milk etc.  Various local dialects spoken from a multitude of countryside villages echoed the same proofs of those hunger related events.

More than ten thousand years have passed since drawing which accompanied humans all the way along has witnessed the visiccitudes of its modern various schools, what, however, is its inner most aesthetic strength? How shall we be able to reveal our deeply felt shock of reality? In my interviews, many so- called "Rightist Intellectuals" became numb when being violated themselves or ubiquitous violence surrounds them while their friends were decimated. They were put into such environment for hard-laborers undergoing brain-washing to implement a "change of outlook" . Anybody being capable of thinking for himself was terminated from hunger, violence, or physical hard labor. All words pronounced from them are pieces of paper from former friend's betrayals, or such "self-criticisms". All their drawings  are either political propaganda for the "Great Leap Forward" with those masters smiling to their heart-content,  or stack at the back of their former colleges.

Drawing for what? Once a "Rightist" told me after experienced such mental agony of "death" but survived eventually: "While the moment came I knew I was dying, my whole body showed a serene peace without slightest disturbance of physical hurting. All sensation had left body so the death of starvation was faced with a smile leaving this world." Drawing for what? I heard repeatedly such stories in my interviews: when passing a dying mother, the baby was still sucking milk crawling on the her bosom.  How to engrave such kind of psychological trauma?   The editor of "Blazing Star" expressed his feeling with his heart-felt words and recorded texts, with dignified speeches seeking justice in court. When Eva's little far-relative Wei Fu-Lian clenching his thumb with his teeth while hinging himself outside of that train car to avoid falling off, it reaches the limit of human capability as an animal seeking survival - how to express this kind of critical situation in drawing? For those who died of hunger, from children of countryside to the civil intellectual rightists, what is the base color of drawing? Starved to death, terrified of starvation and feeling helpless out of deep depression - what base color is able to describe them?  As the old man Wu Yong-kuan concluded: "There exists, no longer, a human society". Fearing and death have turned human's value judgment upside down. 

Drawing is a sketch of one's heart all of which is the grammatical future tense of would have done.  This series of woodcuts reflects my exploration of how to reach the bottom of actual lives with this art form. Incidentally, the historian of art Mr. Li Gong-ming's selection of this outpost hall in Xiaozhou village of Guangdong Province, as my exhibition place, is, my take,  particularly meaningful - it is this place in the year of 1959,  the leashing out of the political movement of "Anti Hiding Production Quantity", then initialed from here,  Guangdong Province, spreading all over the rest of China, the so-called "experience", which eventually leads massive population to the engulfing destiny of starvation of death.

(draft)

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繪畫何為？——關於依娃這本書的插圖

  到目前為止，我只是在照片上見過依娃。2012年，依娃給我寄來了她的散文集《我的鄉村》，把她生長的黃土高原那溝溝坎坎寫的很有質感，像是在田埂上拾起一塊土坷垃，用手隨性隨心刻鑿一下，就呈現出一個黃土色的人。後來知道她從美國又回到了家鄉的溝溝坎坎里，寫她母親那輩子人的故事。當我聽她說，她母親是個乞丐的時候我心裡一震，我在拍攝《星火》的時候知道，在大躍進的後期，甘肅隴西地區有很多婦女逃荒去了陝西省，在那裡只要嫁個人都可以活下來。而依娃的媽媽就是逃亡中的一位。也許，正是這個緣故，她觸摸到了1959年到1961年中國當代史上沉默的大飢餓。然而，依娃與眾不同的是，她沒有就此而止，而是勇敢獨自前行，她沿着母親還是大姑娘時的逃荒路線去實地採訪。可以想象，一個生活在美國並有了基本人權意識的她，再次融入那片傳說着神秘故事的黃土地時，她的不同情感。

  依娃在2013年底的一次來信中說，她要出一部關於大饑荒的書了。問我可不可以為此畫插圖，我回信說可以試試。我這樣的回答是因為，在此之前我也接觸到了大饑荒。那是我在1999年拍攝尋找林昭這部紀錄片時。在採訪中，我逐漸知道了＂三年自然災害＂不是來自＂自然＂，而是一場慘烈的人禍。來自那場總路線、人民公社、大躍進的運動。後來我拍攝了河南光山縣一位農民老伯吳永寬的紀錄片，他為全村74位在1959年冬餓死的村民修建了紀念碑。而當時他的村莊只有130幾人，餓死一半人還多。需要強調的是，這塊紀念碑至今仍是神州大地上，為三年人為災禍而餓死的上千萬同袍所修建的唯一一塊紀念碑。後來，我走訪了安徽、雲南、甘肅、四川、遼寧等地。隨着採訪的深入，在我眼前展現的不僅是文字資料，聽到的不僅是被採訪者的述說，還有在腦子中出現的一幅幅慘烈場景，作為一個職業的畫家，我也不斷在本子上畫着一些草圖。當時我找到了用紀錄片的表達方式，但面對這些草圖，我卻沒有找到如何用繪畫語言表達這樣思維。

  後來依娃給我發來了15段插圖的文字，這成了這組繪畫的出發點。我用木刻版畫的形式進行了表達。儘管這些繪畫無法抵達依娃的疼痛和這些具體人的飢餓與恐怖，我也常懷疑繪畫這樣的局限性和表達公共記憶可能性，甚至懷疑繪畫本身。依娃的文字是這樣的：如，嫂子在人家家屋檐下睡了一個晚上，對來接她的哥說：＂你怎麼才來接我？＂就咽下最後一口氣。又如14歲的魏連福扒火車去逃荒，卻進不了車廂，只有掛在車廂外面胳膊從把手裡伸過來，用牙齒緊緊地咬住大拇指頭，以防掉下去等等，還有那在吃着死去母親奶的孩子等等，這些都是我在採訪中相遇的，只是在中國大地不同的村莊由那些操着不同鄉音的老鄉們見證的事情。

   繪畫已經和人類共同走過上萬年，近代各種流派又繽紛而過，但繪畫本身的美學力量是什麼？那震顫我們心靈的現實怎樣才能表達。我在採訪中，有很多右派知識分子，他們面對身邊的暴力和對他們自身的暴力，面對難友的一個個死亡似乎已經麻木。他們勞作在改造思想的工地上，有思想的人已經被暴力、勞累、飢餓所消滅。我見到的文字是揭發難友的紙條、是自我檢查，見到的繪畫是頌揚大躍進的宣傳畫、是那些大師們畫的喜笑顏開和揭發批判自己同伴的漫畫。繪畫何為？有一位死過一次的右派告訴我：當自己餓死的時候，整個身體很平靜，甚至沒有痛苦。大腦已經沒有思想了。餓死的人是面帶微笑的。繪畫何為？這是我不止一次聽過的故事：當走過一個已經餓死的母親時，看到孩子還趴在母親的屍體上吮吸着母親的乳頭。那個心裡的疼痛怎樣表達。《星火》裡的向承鑒是用決絕的文章和記錄的文字表達的，是用在法庭上義正詞嚴的怒斥表達的。伊娃的那個小親戚魏連福，身體懸掛在列車的車廂外，為了不使自己掉下去，他咬着自己的手指，這是人類求生的極限。繪畫可以畫出魏連福的生存極限嗎？那些死去的，從農村的孩子到勞教的知識分子的底色畫的出來嗎？那是一個什麼樣的底色？飢餓、恐懼、精神沉淪是什麼底色？按照吳永寬老人的話說：＂那已經沒有社會了＂。恐怖和死亡已經徹底改變了價值的標準。

   繪畫，是心靈的草圖。所有的繪畫都是心靈的未完成時。這組木刻版畫我對自己提出的美學方向是現場的深切性。這次，美術史家李公明先生選定了廣東省的小洲村這個1959年人民公社時期的老禮堂作為我的版畫展的場地，我想有其深刻的含義，因為1959年廣東在大躍進的過程中，率先提出“反瞞產”，並把這個經驗推向全國，把掙扎在飢餓中的農民推向了死亡深淵。

                         2014年1月於中國南京