周黎明：忠于现实才是大智慧[1]_其他

周黎明：忠于现实才是大智慧[1]

New York, a city I called home for two years in the 1990s, is not typically American, not in my eyes. It attracts a much more diverse segment from the US and the rest of the world. For the New Year's countdown, the crowd was predominantly youthful, similar to the one at Shanghai's Bund. Anyway, I would hesitate to draw sweeping conclusions from one event or a few photos of it. I've seen American downtowns much dirtier and scarier than Chinese cities, and American suburbs and small towns much cleaner than Chinese ones. There are many reasons for the discrepancy, but race or ethnicity is not among them as far as I can figure out.

上个世纪90年代，我在纽约居住了两年。纽约并不是一个典型的美国城市，至少在我看来不是。它吸引了来自全美和世界各地的人们，因而多元的文化和思想在这里交汇融合。参加新年夜倒数的绝大多数都是年轻人，情况和在上海外滩狂欢的人群类似。不管怎么说，我不会仅从一件事或几张照片就匆匆下一个笼统的结论。我见过一些美国的市中心比中国的城市更肮脏、更可怕。我也见过一些美国的郊区和小镇比中国的郊区和小镇干净整洁许多。这种差异的形成是有原因的，但据我所知，民族和种族绝不是其中之一。

As I see it, the outcry from Chinese netizens over the photos stems from ignorance. Those who do not know the US that well may imagine it as a symbol, either of goodness or of evil. As such, they would see the posting of the photos as a gesture of reluctance to face our own problems - or even one of denigrating the Utopia of their mind. I'm convinced those people have never lived in the States or read an American newspaper, which is usually plastered with local setbacks and criticisms of various policies.