I was standing on top of a cliff looking at a loudspeaker the size of a small block of flats facing out to sea. There was music playing, the woman’s voice so loud it hurt my ears. But this was down to the vastness of the speaker, not the song, which was plaintive and mellifluous and heartbreaking, even though I couldn’t understand a word.
我站立在悬崖顶上，眺望着面朝大海、足有小型公寓楼大的一个大喇叭。喇叭里正播放着歌曲，女歌手的歌声震耳欲聋。但这主要拜巨型喇叭、而非歌曲本身所赐。虽然我压根听不懂一句歌词，但歌声哀怨而又甜美、十分伤感。
The music stopped. The woman talked, in Mandarin, the recording crackling. “Dear friends in mainland China,” she said, my guide, Chifa Chen, translating. “I am happy to be here in Kinmen. I hope you can share the same freedom. Please, just come here and realise your dreams.”
突然音乐声停了，随之听到的是女歌手的普通话声音，录音吱吱作响：“亲爱的大陆朋友，”她播道，我的导游陈赤发（Chifa Chen，音译）为我一句句翻译。“我幸福地生活在金门(Kinmen)，希望你能同享自由，请到我们这边来，你会梦想成真。”
I turned to face the sea, following the woman’s voice. Across the strait, just six miles away, through the diaphanous smog, I could see the ghostly skyscrapers of Xiamen city in mainland China. The voice, Chen told me, was the late Teresa Teng’s, Taiwanese folk singer and soldiers’ sweetheart, whose patriotic ballads of the 1970s, blasted nightly across the strait, were a potent propaganda tool in the cold war between Taiwan and China. Despite being banned at one point, Teng enjoyed huge popularity in China, where lovestruck fans christened her “Little Deng” (on the mainland, her name was spelt in the same way as China’s then leader). “It is said that Deng Xiaoping ruled China by day,” said Chen. “But Deng the singer ruled China by night.”
顺着女播音员的声音，我转向大海。六英里外的海峡那边，透过薄薄的云雾，依稀能看到大陆那边厦门市(Xiamen) 的摩天楼群。陈告诉我，广播里的女声是已故台湾歌星邓丽君(Teresa Teng)，她是国军士兵心中的偶像；她在上世纪70年代演唱的那些爱国民歌，每天夜晚都会播到海峡那边的大陆，是大陆与台湾冷战时期强有力的宣传工具。尽管邓丽君的歌曲曾经遭禁，但她在大陆是家喻户晓的明星，那些热恋中的年轻歌迷尊称她为“小邓”（在大陆，她与当时的中国领导人邓小平(Deng Xiaoping)同姓）。“都说大陆白天由邓小平统治，”陈说。“但到了晚上则是邓丽君‘统治’。”
I had flown 200 miles west from Taiwan’s capital city Taipei to Kinmen, a bow-tie-shaped lump of granite gneiss, just 58 square miles in all. The Taiwan Strait is studded with tiny islands, familiar to Taiwanese holidaymakers but virtually off the radar of western tourists. I was to spend a week exploring a few of them.
我从台湾首府台北(Taipei)坐了200英里飞机抵达金门(Kinmen)，这座蝴蝶结形状的花岗片麻岩小岛总面积只有58平方英里。台湾海峡小岛林立，台湾的度假者对它们耳熟能详，但西方游客对此却知之甚少。我打算花一周时间，寻芳探幽一番。
Kinmen was the first place Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces landed and claimed in their 1949 retreat from Mao Zedong’s Communist regime. At its closest point, it is just over a mile from the mainland. For the next 30-odd years Kinmen was shelled remorselessly by China; and the cliff-top sirens did their thing.
1949年，蒋介石(Chiang Kai-shek)的国民党军队(Nationalist forces)被毛泽东的共产党军队打败后，溃退后的首个立足点就是金门。金门离大陆最近的地方只有一英里，在接下来的30多年时间里，金门不断遭到大陆炮火的无情打击，悬崖顶上的大喇叭就是对大陆作宣传之用的。
But rapprochement eventually followed and, in 1995, Taiwan designated Kinmen a national park, embarking on a massive programme to turn the once off-limits military zone, one of the most heavily fortified places on earth, into a tourist destination – with its cold war history one of the key draws. And the tourists they mainly want to attract? The newly wealthy Chinese, of course: what sweet irony.
但两岸最终走向和解，1995年，台湾把金门设为国家公园，并启动大规模的开发计划，把昔日的军事禁区、这个地球上固若金汤的堡垒打造成旅游胜地——把国共冷战时期的历史作为主要旅游景点。
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We drove through tunnels of horsetail trees, swishing in the breeze, a wave of noise from the cicadas, like squealing car tyres, accompanying us. These trees, very wind resistant, explained Chen, were planted by the military to reforest the island, which had been denuded by shipbuilding dating back to the Ming era. We passed a large granite statue, flowing red cape around its shoulders, incense burning in its lap – a wind lion god, said Chen, one of 70 erected to protect the island from the violent winds that rip through the strait.
我们驱车穿过长满马尾树的坑道，马尾树在微风中嗖嗖作响，耳畔传来知了的阵阵噪叫，就象汽车轮胎辗过地面发出的那种长而尖的声音。陈对我说，这些马尾树特别能防风，军方种它们，是想让金门岛绿树成林，从明代起，岛上的树就被砍伐一空，用来建造船只。我们穿过一座巨大的花岗岩雕塑，肩上披着红色的披肩，迎风飘展，膝盖前面香烟袅袅——陈说，这就是风狮爷(wind lion god)，全金门共有70座，先人树此目的是让金门免遭台湾海峡狂风之肆虐。
We stopped at Maestro Wu’s knife factory. From 1958 to 1978, the Chinese dropped nearly 5m shells on Kinmen. Many of them have ended up at Maestro Wu’s, after it was discovered that the high-grade steel made for superb kitchen knives.
我们在金合利钢刀厂(Maestro Wu’s knife factory)停下车来，从1958年至1978年，中国大陆落在金门岛上的炮弹差不多有500万发。发现这些高质量的钢可制成质量上乘的厨房刀具后，很多炮弹最终成了钢刀厂的用料。
I met the current maestro, Wu Tsong-shan, 56, who had followed his father and grandfather into the business. He selected a shell from the huge pile in the workshop, cut out a section with a blowtorch, then hammered and polished it and hammered it again. Within 20 minutes, he was handing me my very own knife, made from a Chinese bomb.
我见到了钢刀厂如今的制刀大师吴增栋(Wu Tsong-shan)，他今年56岁，随自己父亲与爷爷学艺后进入此行。他从车间的一大堆废炮弹中挑出一枚，用喷灯切割下一段后，不断敲打、打磨，而后再次锤打。不到20分钟，吴增栋大师就把用大陆炮弹制成的钢刀递到了我手上。
We walked around Kincheng, Kinmen’s sleepy little main town, along Mofan Street, flanked by 1920s red-brick buildings with arched front doors in the Japanese style. At the Chef Huang restaurant, we drank bitter herbal tea made from the luo han guo gourd, ate beef jerky infused with cumin, and then beef noodle soup, scarlet red and powered by yeast and chillies. Kinmen’s beef is famous throughout Taiwan, the cattle being fed on the brewing leftovers from the potent and equally famous 58 per cent proof sorghum-based kaoliang liquor that is made here.
我们在金城(Kincheng，见右图)里转，这座宁静小镇是金门的主要集镇，我们沿着模范街(Mofan Street)转，两边是上世纪20年代、拱形大门的日本式红砖洋房。在黄家酒楼(Chef Huang)，我们喝了由罗汉果冲泡的苦茶，品尝了孜然牛肉干，还点了牛肉面，酵母发过的面条放上辣子后，通红通红。金门牛肉全台湾知名，它的牛是用本地酿造的58度烈性高粱酒酒糟所喂养出来的。
We drove around the island, along narrow hedgerowed country lanes, where hoopoes, Kinmen’s emblematic striped bird, stood in our way, their feathered crowns defiantly erect. We stopped at a sandbank peppered with nesting holes, and watched the air pulse iridescent blue as hundreds of bee-eaters swooped around us. We drove past mangrove swamps, alive with huge black-and-white common mime butterflies and fiddler crabs, past fields of wild mint and peanuts, and then emerged once more at the coast, where a long, palm-fringed beach could have had you in the Caribbean were it not for the neat rows of steel spikes embedded in concrete that covered its entirety and a giant sign facing the sea reading, “Destroy the Evil Communists.” “There’s a local saying that Kinmen is a garden built upon a fortress,” said Chen, before adding, reassuringly, that they’d finally cleared the last of the mines.
我们沿着两连灌木篱笆墙的狭窄小道驱车浏览金门岛，路两旁不断有带标志性花纹的金门戴胜鸟飞起，它们的羽毛冠醒目地竖立着。我们在一块沙丘边停下车，只见上面密布巢穴，成千上万的食蜂戴胜鸟在飞落下来时，四周的空气都颤动着闪亮的蓝色。我们驱车经过红树林沼泽时，到处可见巨大的黑白色斑凤蝶与招潮蟹，它们飞（爬）过大片的野薄荷与花生地，不一会儿又在海滩边现形。在棕榈树点缀的长长海滩上，要不是看见混凝土上密密麻麻布满的一排排整齐钢钉，以及看见面向大海、写着“打败共匪”的大标语牌，真以为自己正身处加勒比海呢！“当地人曾说金门是建在碉堡上的花园，”陈对我说，然后又以肯定的语气补充说已经把最后所有的地雷都排干净了。
That night we stayed in Qionglin, an old village whose ubiquitous sweeping swallowtail roofs were a symbol of its former wealth and status. Approached from the hillside above, Qionglin had looked like a vast scaled monster. Our B&B was built in the 1850s but modelled on the classic Ming-era vernacular. Wrapped around a small courtyard, it dripped with pendulous lanterns, the gables engraved with vivid peonies and birds and golden dragons. The ancient hardwood doors to my bedroom creaked with age as I opened them.
当天晚上，我们住在琼林古村(Qionglin)，这儿随处可见扫燕尾屋顶的房屋，它们曾是本地财富与身份的标志。从上面的山坡来到这里，整个村庄酷似巨型怪物。我们入住的旅馆（含早餐）建于19世纪50年代，但仍采用典型的明代民居建筑风格。整个旅馆围小院子而建，悬挂着灯笼，山墙上雕刻着栩栩如生的牡丹、鸟以及金龙。打开房间时，它的硬木老门还吱吱作响。
We went out for a dinner of squid balls and fried sandworms, a Kinmen delicacy, and a few shots of kaoliang, downed in one from thimble-sized glasses, its throat-stripping effects somewhat but not entirely annulled by its traditional accompaniment of dried black beans.
我们到街上去享用金门本地的美味（鱿鱼丸子与炸沙虫），并喝了几小酒盅高粱酒，一口喝下去，只觉得嗓子眼有点儿烧，尽管酿酒时加入干黑豆，但酒劲仍挺大。
After dinner we walked back through Qionglin, slightly giddy from the kaoliang, along alleyways so narrow I had to turn sideways, the languid, humid night suffused with jasmine, the swallowtail roofs silhouetted against the moonlight. Old men drew water from street wells. Women sat under flickering lamps shucking the wild oysters they’d harvested from the beach.
吃完饭后，我们漫步于琼林村，步行回旅馆，酒劲上来后，脑子觉得有些飘飘然，小巷太过狭窄，于是就转向旁边的路，慵懒、潮湿的夜晚弥漫着茉莉花的香味，在月光的衬托下，扫燕尾屋顶的轮廓清晰可见。老人们从街道的井里汲水，女人们则坐在摇曳的灯光下，正在去除海滩上捡拾的野生牡蛎外壳。
The next day, we saw more of Kinmen’s cold war legacy. First, we walked through the elaborate network of cramped tunnels the people of Qionglin dug under the village to escape the Chinese shells, and then to Zhaishan where, in the early 1960s, the military dug a 375-metre tunnel out of solid granite, filled it with seawater and used it to shelter its navy from bombardment. Ernst Stavro Blofeld would have felt very much at home.
第二天，我们亲眼目睹了金门在国共冷战期间的更多遗物。首先，我们穿行于密密麻麻的狭窄坑道网，这是由琼林村村民当时挖掘的，旨在躲避共产党军队炮火的攻袭，而后又参观了翟山坑道(Zhaishan)，上世纪60年代，国民党军队在坚硬的花岗岩中，挖掘了一条375米长的坑道，并灌满海水，以用它来保护自己海军免受炮火攻击。布鲁弗（Ernst Stavro Blofeld，007系列电影中的反面人物，译者注）看到这里，定会觉得特别亲切。
But Kinmen is about more than war. We drove past more pagodas and lakes brimming with birds – Kinmen has more than 300 species, resident and migratory – and more exquisite old Fujian villages – Shuitou, Jhushan, Shanshou – and then through forests of Madagascar almond and golden flame trees, spotting the wind lions as we went. We passed a vast building, nearing completion. It was, Chen told me, a five-star hotel and shopping mall, due to open at the end of this year. In a sign of ever-increasing closeness between the two countries, it was the first hotel and mall in Taiwan to be funded by a Chinese property developer. It looked terribly out of place.
但金门不仅只是反映战争，我们驱车经过很多佛塔与湖泊，上面停满了各种鸟（金门有300多种留鸟与候鸟），还有众多精致的闽南古村落——水头村(Shuitou)、竹山村(Jhushan)、山后村(Shanshou)，然后又穿过小叶榄仁树与金黄色凤凰木的树林，不时能看到矗立的风狮雕塑。快到旅程终点时，我们经过一幢规模宏大的建筑。陈告诉我这是一家五星级宾馆与大型购物商场，它预定今年底正式开张。作为两岸关系越来越紧密的标志，这是首家由大陆地产商开发的酒店与商场，但它显得不伦不类。
In the Taipei Times, Li Wo-shi, Kinmen’s county commissioner, was proposing the island become a duty-free destination, integrating travel and shopping, better to detain the Chinese holidaymakers from just across the water, who currently arrived in Kinmen by ferry from Xiamen but flew straight out again to Taipei. The islanders, Wo-Shi had been quoted as saying, should have a hard think about this. Chen already had – about the impact this would have on lovely little Kinmen – and he was worried.
金门县长李沃士(Li Wo-shi)在《台北时报》(Taipei Times)上撰文，提议把金门岛变为免税区，集旅游与购物于一身，以更好地吸引一水之隔的大陆观光客，对方如今从厦门坐渡轮来金门，但去台北却直接从厦门坐飞机。引用李沃士县长的话说，金门岛的居民真应该好好反思。此举对美丽小岛金门的影响，陈本人想到了，他对此忧心忡忡。
I flew east to Penghu, just 30 miles from the coast of Taiwan. Penghu comprises 90-odd islands – only a quarter of which are inhabited – formed from volcanic eruptions 17 million years ago. On the main archipelago, four islands forming a horseshoe and connected by bridges, I wandered around Makung, the pretty seaside capital, lost in a delicious walking reverie. I watched the locals praying at the Matsu Temple, dating from the late 16th century, with its stunning woodcarvings, sweeping swallowtail roof and a palpable sense of the eternal. Then I continued along Central Street, Makung’s oldest, winding and brick-paved, past Confucian temples and ancestral shrines.
我随后坐飞机，赶往距台湾本岛只有30英里的澎湖(Penghu，右图为澎湖的海岸线)。澎湖由90多个岛屿构成，形成于1700万年前的火山喷发，其中只有四分之一的岛屿有人居住。呈马蹄形的澎湖主群岛由四座岛屿构成，相互之间用桥梁连结。我漫步于澎湖县治所在地、美丽的海滨小城马公市(Makung)，不禁浮想联翩。我看到当地人在妈祖庙(Matsu Temple)里祈祷，扫燕尾屋顶的妈祖庙始建于16世纪末，庙里的木雕工艺巧夺天工，宁静悠长的历史感触手可及。我沿着中华路(Central Street)继续前行，这是马公市最古老的街道，蜿蜒曲折，均用砖头铺就，路过了好几座孔庙与祠堂。
I drove out of town, first south, to Shanshui beach, an expanse of golden sand I had virtually to myself, and then north to Erkan, a township of 50 or so exquisite Fujian-style houses with coral walls dating from the early 20th century. There I drank cold almond tea and ate vivid vermilion-coloured ice-cream made from cactus, a Penghu speciality, and watched the villagers roll the incense sticks they sell to tourists.
我驱车出城，先是向南来到山水海堤(Shanshui beach)，一望无际的金色沙滩上就我一个人，然后驱车往北，赶往二崁村(Erkan)，那里坐落着大约50幢珊瑚墙打造、始建于20世纪初的闽南风格精致民居。在那儿，我喝了冰凉的杏仁茶，又品味仙人掌制作的朱红色新鲜冰淇淋，这是澎湖本地的特色，还观看了当地村民制作兜售给游客的佛香。
The next day I took a ferry to Chipei Island, barely two miles wide, and walked along the Chipei Tail, a great tongue of golden sand jutting out into the water. It was quite deserted on this summer’s day but, come September, when the 50-knot winds blast down the Taiwan Strait from the north, it will be packed with the windsurfers who flock to Penghu, “the Canary Islands of the Orient”, from all corners.
第二天，我乘渡轮前往吉贝屿(Chipei Tail)，这块美丽的金色狭长沙滩一直伸向大海之中。炎炎夏日，这儿游客稀少，但一到九月，每小时50哩的北风刮过台湾海峡时，海滩上就会挤满从世界各地蜂拥而至的冲浪好手，这儿被誉为“东方的加那利群岛”(the Canary Islands of the Orient)。
I took a ferry south, a tiny boat in big swells, past Tongpan, barricaded by walls of basalt columns, to Chimei Island, where I hired a scooter and rode along the clifftops, looking down at the churning water and the Two Hearts Stone Weir, an ancient fish trap that forms the backdrop to many a Taiwanese honeymoon photo. And then on to tiny Wang’an, where I rode past abandoned ancient dwellings, more fabulous, deserted beaches and grassy hillsides carpeted with vivid orange and yellow firewheels.
我又乘渡船南行，小船在汹涌波涛中穿过玄武岩柱林立的桶盘屿(Tongpan)，抵达了七美岛(Chimei Island)。我在岛上雇了一辆小型摩托车，然后沿着悬崖顶一路骑行，纵览大海中的漩涡与“双心石沪”( Two Hearts Stone Weir)，这个古老的捕鱼陷阱是许多台湾蜜月度假照片的背景。然后我又坐船前往小小的望安岛(Wang’an)，在这儿，我看到废弃的古代聚居地、更多美丽空旷的海滩、以及郁郁葱葱的山坡，山坡上长满了惹人可爱的橙色与黄色“风火轮”树。
My guidebook directed me to the most famous sight on Wang’an, a “footprint” in a piece of basalt halfway up a hill which, legend has it, was formed when Lu Dongbin, one of China’s eight immortals, squatted here to urinate. It seemed a long way to come to look at the footprint of a god taking a leak but as I sat there and looked across the island – wild, remote, utterly unspoilt – I was glad I had.
我的旅游手册指引我前往望安岛上最知名的景点——位于半山腰玄武岩石上的一个“脚印”，传说这是八仙中的吕洞宾(Lu Dongbin)蹲此小便留下的。看来我得爬很长距离才能看到吕洞宾的“圣迹”，但我坐在那儿眺望望安小岛（它无人居住、地处偏僻、完全保持原始风貌）那头时，幸运的是我真正看到了所谓的“圣迹”。
On my last day in Penghu, I walked along the Makung harbour front. It was Dragon Boat racing day, and the locals were paddling their craft up and down. It was delightfully restrained, more like a school sports day than the razzmatazz of the same event going on at the same time just across the Taiwan Strait in Hong Kong.
在澎湖的最后一天，我沿着马公港口漫步。今天是端午节(Dragon Boat)赛龙舟日，当地人奋力划桨，龙舟在浪花中上下翻飞，活动一板一眼，看得赏心悦目，与其说象海峡对岸香港举办的龙舟赛那样活力四射，倒不如说更象一场普通的校运会。
That same day, the China Times had run a story about Penghu. In 2009, the islands had held a referendum on whether to allow the building of casinos – as with Kinmen, better to attract Chinese tourists. There was also talk about building huge beach resorts. The referendum had been narrowly defeated, causing proposed investment in the islands to be slashed. Now, according to the Times, the pro-casino group was gathering signatures again for a second public vote, confident this time it would win.
同一天，《中国时报》(China Times )登载了一则发生在澎湖的新闻。2009年，澎湖举行了公投，以决定是否允许和金门一样兴建赌场，吸引大陆观光客。另外还传出兴建大型海滩度假区的计划。公投最后以微弱少数惜败，结果让计划中的投资澎湖大幅削减。据《中国时报》报道，如今支持兴建赌场的一派又在收集签名，以举办第二次公投，他们坚信这一次一定能胜出。
As I walked back to my hotel, along Makung’s quiet streets, past the old temples with swallows flitting in and out of the eaves, I wondered what Kinmen and Penghu would look like in 10 years’ time. I thought back to those plaintive cliff top exhortations, “Just come here and realise your dreams,” and wondered what Teresa Teng would make of it all.
我沿着僻静的马空街道步行回酒店、经过几座古庙时，只见燕子飞进飞出，不禁纳闷：10年后的金门与澎湖会变成啥模样。我又想起悬崖上大喇叭里的那些充满哀伤语气的劝词：“到我们这边来，你会梦想成真，”不知邓丽君再世，会如何理解这一切？