生死場 The Field of Life and Death11 / 18

十　十年 Ten Years

十年前村中的山，山下的小河，而今依舊似十年前，河水靜靜的在流，山坡隨著季節而更換衣裳；The mountain in the village from ten years ago, and the little river at its foot — even now it is just as it was ten years ago: the river water flows on quietly, the hillside changes its garments with the seasons;大片的村莊生死輪迴著和十年前一樣。The great sweep of the village goes on turning through birth and death, just as it did ten years ago.

十年前村中的山，山下的小河，而今依旧似十年前，河水静静的在流，山坡随著季节而更换衣裳；大片的村庄生死轮回著和十年前一样。

屋頂的麻雀仍是那樣繁多。The sparrows on the rooftops are still as numerous as ever.太陽也照樣暖和。The sun, too, shines just as warmly as before.山下有牧童在唱童謠，那是十年前的舊調：「秋夜長，秋風涼，誰家的孩兒沒有娘，誰家的孩兒沒有娘，……At the foot of the mountain a shepherd boy is singing a children's song, the very same old tune from ten years ago: "Autumn nights are long, the autumn wind is cool, whose child is it that has no mother, whose child is it that has no mother, ……月亮滿西窗。」the moon fills the west window."

屋顶的麻雀仍是那样繁多。太阳也照样暖和。山下有牧童在唱童谣，那是十年前的旧调：「秋夜长，秋风凉，谁家的孩儿没有娘，谁家的孩儿没有娘，……月亮满西窗。」

什麼都和十年前一樣，王婆也似沒有改變，只是平兒長大了！Everything is the same as it was ten years ago; even Wang Po seems unchanged — only Ping'er has grown up!平兒和羅圈腿都是大人了！Ping'er and Luo Quantui are both grown now!

什么都和十年前一样，王婆也似没有改变，只是平儿长大了！平儿和罗圈腿都是大人了！

王婆被涼風飛著頭髮，在籬牆外遠聽從山坡傳來的童謠。Wang Po, her hair blown about by the cool wind, stood beyond the fence listening from afar to the children's song drifting down from the hillside.

王婆被凉风飞著头发，在篱墙外远听从山坡传来的童谣。

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What it’s about

Ten years compress into changes that are at once unmistakable and insufficient. Children become adults, bodies wear down, households alter and old episodes harden into village memory, but the basic circuits of labour and deprivation remain. Xiao Hong abandons day-by-day continuity to show time as villagers often experience it: seasons repeat until a face or family suddenly reveals how much has passed. The chapter gathers earlier figures under the pressure of aging rather than resolving their stories.

The long interval also shifts the novel toward history. Personal memory can span a decade, yet forces approaching the village exceed the scale by which its residents have measured change. Repetition is therefore not stasis. Each harvest, pregnancy, illness and death modifies the community, leaving it both familiar and newly vulnerable. The title's bare unit of time resists nostalgia; nothing in the past becomes golden simply because it has vanished. By surveying accumulated losses before the occupation chapters, Xiao Hong makes clear what invasion will rupture and what kinds of suffering it will intensify rather than originate.

When it was written 背景

This temporal hinge divides much of the novel's cyclical village portraiture from the increasingly explicit history of Japanese occupation after 1931. Xiao Hong was writing only a few years after the conquest of Manchuria, but she uses retrospective compression instead of supplying a textbook chronology. Readers should look for repeated names, kin relations and bodily descriptions to see what the decade has changed. The prose may seem episodic because transitions replace a continuous plot; noting age and season markers helps. In the architecture of the 1935 book, the chapter guards against treating resistance as an entirely new story. The same villagers who enter national history already carry ten years of work, violence, attachment and grief.

Words in this chapter 生词