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“You couldn’t have cared less about school starting. Like fun-loving people of every generation, you could always find ways to skip school, no matter which one you were attending. Your school was located in Bumbu-machi and the first thing you saw when you left the school grounds was the Governor-General’s Office. The building was less than four decades older than you, but it gave the impression of being old and decrepit. Without giving it a second thought, you assume it had a history going at least a century or two, but at other times you assumed it had been built by the Nationalist government, which came over with your parents’ generation.” (Page 119)

才不管开学了， 你们像每一代死爱玩的那些个一样，总有办法离开上学中的学校，学校在文武町， 出门就是总督府大你不到四十岁， 却给人垂垂老矣之感，你们从不考虑 地以为它起码有一两百年历史， 有时又以为它是父辈随来的 “国府” 盖的。(Page 139)

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“In any case, under circumstances created by these combined factors, plus a fire burning with driftwood collected by an industrious individual, you’d wish you had a boy next to you, so the two of you could lie on the beach oblivious to how people might see you. You’d feel so warm and secure in his arms that you’d happily be turned into a woman, no matter who he was.

You looked at A, next to you, and wondered why she’d never been the object of your fantasies.” (Page 126)

总之， 这些个因素加一起， 若再有勤快的拾了浮木生了野火一堆， 便叫人好想有个男孩在身边， 两人不顾形迹地躺在沙滩上，他把你拥抱得好温暖好安全， 于是你甘心如此甜蜜地变成一个女人，不管他是谁。 你看看身畔的 A， 奇怪这一类的幻想对象从没有过是她。(Page 143)

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“If you want to leave, leave. Go back to where you came from”- as if you all had a place just waiting for you to return to, a ready-made place to live, but you kept hanging around, to your shame. Was there such a place?” (Page134)

你从未试图整理过这种感觉，你也不敢任何人说，尤其在这动不动老有人要检查你们爱不爱这里，甚至要你们不喜欢这里的就要走快走的时候。有那样一个地方吗？(Page 149)

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“That night, with the residual excitement still raging inside him, your husband attacked you with  movements and rhythms the likes of which he’d never used before. You lay in the dark refusing to shed a tear, while he did what he wanted. It had been many years since you’d last cried, because tears were too salty. Sweat was salty too. You couldn’t say when it started, but a strange and repellent odor slowly began to appear on you. At first you thought it was the result of childbirth. You’d spent a week in the hospital and come  home with a pleasant mixture of smells: the hospital’s fresh, clean, disinfectant; baby oil; medicine; and breast milk. But it didn’t take long for the fragrance to disappear. The first time you discovered that the strange odor clung to you, you returned assiduously to the shampoo, hand soap, and laundry powder you’d used before. But twenty-odd years of the same odor was gone; it had been with you for over two decades without your noticing it, and you realized you’d had it only after you’d lost it. What remained was a salty odor that easily crystalized; the dirty, salty smell must have had a completely different molecular structure than the salt in the ocean. There were things you could neither avoid nor change, like bodily fluids or sweat, but not tears, and that is why you refused to shed them.” pg 132

当晚，你丈夫亢奋未歇地积极向你，用异于平常的动作和节奏，你被拨弄着，黑里仍然不肯掉眼泪，好多年了你都不肯掉眼泪，因为眼泪太咸了，汗也好咸，从什么时候开始，身上逐渐酿成一股陌生但不好问的气味，起初以为是生过小孩的缘故，从医院住了一星期回家，带着医院里清爽干净的消毒水、baby oil、药香、奶香混成的好味道，好味道没多久就不再有了，初次你发现了陌生的味道紧盯着你不去，你赶忙努力重拾以前的洗发精、香皂、洗衣粉……二十几年的味道再也没有了，跟了二十几年你不知道的体味却在消失之后你才知道，只剩下可以轻易结晶成盐的咸味，肯定与海的盐分不同的分子结构的脏兮兮咸味，别的无法避免无法改变例如体液和汗水，但泪，是绝不肯流了。pg 147

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“It became virtually impossible to recount to your daughter the traces of your lives in this city: the village you’d lived in; the spot where you’d buried the dog; the studio where you’d learned to dance; the memory-filled suburban movie theaters, with their double features; the site where you and her father had had your first date; you and your best friend’s favorite coffee shop; the bookstores you’d frequented as a student; the house you’d rented when you and her father were first married…… Even the two kindergartens (same location, different ownership) where she’d been enrolled not so long ago had disappeared (it was now a small restaurant called Home of the Geese).

Must this have an either-or relationship with progress?” (Page 149)

你简直无法告诉女儿你们曾经在这城市生活过的痕迹， 你住过的村子， 你的埋狗之地，你练舞的舞蹈社，充满了无限记忆的那些一票两片的郊区电影院，你和她爸爸第一次约会的地方，你和好友最喜欢去的咖啡馆，你学生时常出没的书店，你们刚结婚时租赁的新家⋯⋯甚至才不久前，女儿先后念过的两家幼稚园 （园址易主频频，目前是 “鹅之乡小吃店” ），都不存在了⋯⋯

这一切，一定和进步有势不两立的关系吗？(Page 159)

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“Koi lived in this stream, which was not quiet two meters wide and less than half a meter deep, with willow and weeping cherry trees flanking the banks, toward which shop owners oriented their view, raising or lowering their bamboo curtains based on the intensity of the sun. You told your daughter that Southern China was just like that. When had you ever been in southern China?” (Page136)

眼前宽不过两米深不及半尺的川里却养着锦鲤， 两岸植柳和垂樱， 店家于是把景观调到这一头，随阳光强弱打起 或放下竹帘， 你告诉女儿江南就是这个样子。 你哪儿去过江南。(Page 151)

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“Probably there were mental patients among them, but you felt perfectly safe….Taking a sip of the hot coffee, you said to yourself, for some strange reason, ‘Tadaima, I’m back.’ ” (Page 151)

其中想必有不少的 精神病患也不让你觉得危险，你技巧地打量衣冠楚楚的中年欧几桑，严重烟廳一身香奈儿的两名年轻女子， 金城武兄第的上班族帅哥⋯⋯你啜口热咖啡， 莫名所以地暗暗说声：“Tadaima, I’m back 。” 回来啦。(Page 161)

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“It turns out that you cannot call a place your hometown if none of your relatives has died there. You weren’t as picky as that; you just wanted to ask humbly and deferentially: wouldn’t a city, no matter what it’s called (usually something related to prosperity, progress, or, occasionally, hope and happiness), be in essence a city of strangers if it had no intention of retaining the traces of people who had lived there? Why would anyone want to cherish, treasure, maintain, and identify with an unfamiliar city?” (Page 156)

原来没有亲人死去的地方，是无法叫作故乡的。你并不像他如此苛求，你只谦畏地想问，一个不管以何为名 （通常是繁荣进步偶或间以希望快乐）不打算存人们 生活痕迹的地方，不就等于一个陌生的城市？一个陌生的城市，何须特别叫人珍视，爱惜，维护，认同？(Page 164)

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“Was this a case of middle-aged nostalgia, which all people and all cultures experience? Unwilling to admit that was so, you believed that Chen Weiying shared your view, and believed even more strongly that the Meiji Bridge, buried beneath you in the eternal darkness of the eighteenth level of hell, did too. Over half of the sweet gum trees, which had been as old as Chokushi Street, were gone; the beautiful Miyanoshita Road had grown into such a state that it was like countless incurable tumors—ugly, ugly. Mournfully, you avoided the area, but what had died, of course, included part of you.” (Page 160)

难道又只是人或民族必定会有的中年怀旧？你不愿意承认相信陈维英也一样，因为与敕使街道同年岁的枫香不见了大半， 美丽的宫ノ下参道变成长了无数肿瘤群医束手的景象， 丑透了，你带着哀悼的心情走避，死去的， 当然包括你的一部分。(Page 167)

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“Honestly speaking, what would have been imprinted on your heart before you died was not white oaks. So what would it have been?” (Page 169)

诚实地说，印在你死前心版上的，当然不会是白橡树。会是什么呢？(Page 173)

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