Tradition’s voice
传统之声
Obituary: ShanTianfang
缅怀单田芳
China’s favourite storyteller died on September 11th, aged 84
2018
年
9
月
11
日，中国人最喜爱的说书人去世，享年
84
岁
WHAT struck Shan Tianfang most, as he walked into the studio for his first radio broadcast at the end of the 1970s, was the lack of things. No brightly painted screen to set the scene for his pingshu, or storytelling. No block of wood on the table, to make the audience pay attention or to scare them stiff. No folded fan to snap open for a surprise, simper behind, or whip through the air as as word. A traditional storyteller needed only those three props. Still, he could manage. With the side of his left hand, he could bang emphatically. And with his voice alone he could evoke the creaking wing beats of a flying bird, the pealing, descending glugs of a man taking poison or the power of an adversary, “the corners of his eyes and brows showing a thousand streams of killing aura”.
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世纪70年代末期，单田芳走进演播室第一次录制电台广播节目时，感触最深的，是那里缺东少西：没有可以为他的评书布景的绚丽屏风；没有可以吸引听众注意或者让其吓一大跳的醒木；也没有一把折扇，可以忽地打开让人为之一震，可以以扇掩面偷笑，可以当成剑在空中挥舞。传统的说书人只需要这三种道具。尽管如此，他依然能应付过去。他能用自己的左手侧掌敲击发出棒喝，用自己的声音再现飞鸟扑扇翅膀的吱吱声、一长串的铃声、一个人喝下毒药时渐渐减弱的汩汩声以及敌手的狠劲，“他的眼角眉梢都透着千层杀气”。
Thething he missed most was an audience. He was used to the teeming tea houses ofnorth-east China, packed with old folk smoking in bamboo chairs and childrenrunning round. Here there were only two sound guys in headphones. He remembered, though, that for his first official performance in an Anshan teahouse, in 1956 when he was 23 and faint with nerves, he had tried his routineon a few colleagues first. A few were as good as a crowd. So he told “The Three Heroes and Five Gallants” to the sound guys, improvising and with lots of slang as usual, watching closely to see where they laughed, and where they dozed off.
他最想要的是一名听众。他习惯了中国东北热闹的茶馆，那里挤满了坐在竹椅上抽烟的老人和四处跑动的孩子。而这里，只有两个戴着耳机的音响师。不过，他记得1956年在鞍山一家茶馆第一次正式登台，那年他23岁，紧张得要命。在登台前，先是对着几个同行试说了固定桥段。人少人多一个样，所以他在给音响师讲《三侠五义》时，像往常一样，加进了一些即兴发挥片段，并且夹杂了许多方言。他一边说，一边仔细观察他们听到哪里会哈哈大笑，哪里会打瞌睡。
That broadcast, he later found out, was heard by 100m people. It brought him suchfame that by the end of a 60-year career he had performed more than 12,000 episodes of more than 100 stories on 500 TV and radio stations. He had filled stadiums. His hoarse, smoky voice, “cloud covering the moon” as the saying went, was listened to everywhere, by farmers in fields, workers commuting and,especially, by taxi drivers, to while the traffic away. “Wherever a well has water”, people tuned in to him.
后来他得知，那台广播节目听众有一亿之多。他由此名声大噪，在长达60年的说书生涯里，先后在500家电视台和电台演说了100余部12000余集的故事。他曾经让体育馆座无虚席。无论是田间地头的农民,还是坐车上下班的工人，都在收听他那传说中如“云遮月”一般的沙哑烟嗓，尤其是出租车司机，更是一边听一边消磨路途时光。“凡有井水处”，都有人打开收音机听他说书。（译注：即“凡有井水处，皆听单田芳”。）
He had grown up in Liaoning province before the Communist revolution of 1949, hismother (“The Pale Girl”) an actress and his father a player of thethree-stringed lute. But he knew from childhood, as he shook the money-basket round after their shows, that this was not much of a living. Folk arts might becenturies old, but they had low social status. He hoped to be a doctor or an engineer, until the collapse of his parents’ marriage threw him back on pingshu to maintain his seven sisters. Fate ordained it so. He had always been good at memorising, diligent at practice, and after more instruction he was happy to spend the decade from 1956 to 1966 playing the tea-house circuit.
他的母亲（“白丫头”）是一名演员，父亲是弹三弦的。1949年革命胜利前，他就已在辽宁长大成人，但是，当年父母每次演出过后，他都要晃着篮子四处要钱，年幼的他那时就已明白这样的生活难以为继。民间艺术历史悠久，但社会地位低微。他曾想要成为一名医生或工程师，直到父母婚姻破裂后，为了维持7个姐妹的生计，他才被迫说起了评书。或许命该如此吧。他一直擅长记忆，再加上刻苦练习，在别人多次指导下，从1956到1966年，他依靠在茶馆串场演出，度过了快乐的十年。
His favourite stories were always the classics, not least China’s four greatnovels: the medieval “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”, “The Journey to the West”, where an intrepid monk went searching for Buddhist texts, “The Dream of the Red Chamber”, in which 40 main characters portrayed a noble family’s18th-century decline, and “Water Margin”, with its wild band of 108 scheming outlaws. Some stories had hundreds of chapters, each ending with a coy “To be continued”. As a keen student of history he altered some tales a bit, playing down the demons and spirits and giving his listeners, instead, characters that made sense. He also turned recent events into stories, poring over newspapers,as soon as the sun came up, to find reports of policemen foiling notorious robbers. Fighters against injustice touched a soft spot with him: the wrongly court-martialled General Sheng of “I Know Your Name Well”, or the“White-Eyebrow Hero” Lord Bao, China’s most righteous judge, whose story he had been telling all and sundry since he was five years old.
古典文学故事一直是他的最爱，尤其是中国四大名著——中世纪的《三国演义》，描写一名勇敢僧人取经征途的《西游记》，透过40名主要人物展现18世纪一个贵族世家衰落历程的《红楼梦》，讲述108个绿林好汉阴谋造反故事的《水浒传》。有的故事有数百个章节，每一章节都以含糊其辞的“且听下回分解”作为结尾。他很爱研究历史，会将某些故事稍作改动，对妖魔鬼怪都轻描淡写，给听众讲述更多的是活生生的人物。他也会把新近发生的事件改编成故事。每天太阳刚一升起，他就要翻看报纸，找到警察打败臭名昭著的强盗的相关报道。他对敢于反抗不公的人情有独钟——《三侠剑》中被朝廷冤屈的胜将军，还有《白眉大侠》里的包大人——中国最正直的法官，单田芳从5岁起就开始给各色人等说他的故事。
During the Cultural Revolution, however, he fought injustice himself and lost. The builders of the New China did not need his old tales, those remnants of theimperial and feudal system. They sent him to the far north-east, his teeth knocked out to silence him, to cut hay and cart manure. He escaped, and lived with his family on the streets for four years, selling artificial flowers. In 1978 he was rehabilitated, though with a mouth full of painful plastic through which he had to learn to speak again. He summed up life then in one word, “Endure”. But it rapidly got better.
文革期间，他也曾为自己遭到的不公抗争，但是失败了。他们并不需要他讲那些属于封建帝制残渣余孽的陈年故事。他们将他遣送到偏远的东北地区，敲落他的牙齿封他的嘴，让他割草运牛粪。他逃了出来，带着家人穿街过巷，靠卖假花熬过了四年。1978年，他得以平反，然而已是满嘴假牙，虽然苦不堪言，却不得不再次学着说书。后来，谈及人生，他一言以蔽之，那就是“熬”。不过，生活很快有了起色。
