《別告訴她》:爲什麼亞洲人愛說"善意的謊言"

The Cultural Truth at the Heart of the Lies in 'The Farewell'

《別告訴她》：爲什麼亞洲人愛說“善意的謊言”

From the moment "The Farewell" opens, its main characters tell lies that flow from their mouths smoothly and deliberately, as if they are speaking in code.

影片《別告訴她》(The Farewell)一開始，主角們就在撒謊，謊言從他們口中流暢而有意地涌出，就好像他們在用暗號說話。

Many people of East Asian descent may be fluent in this code. I know I am.

許多東亞裔可能會流利地使用這種暗號。我知道我會。

There are the petty lies that Billi (Awkwafina), a Chinese-American artist in New York, and Nai Nai, her grandmother in China, tell each other on the phone. Billi, in chilly Brooklyn, assures Nai Nai that she's wearing a hat. She's not. Nai Nai says she's visiting her sister, but she's actually in the hospital.

紐約華裔美國藝術家比莉（Billi，奧卡菲娜[Awkwafina]飾）在電話裏和她在中國的奶奶互相撒了些小謊。比莉在寒冷的布魯克林向奶奶保證，她戴了帽子。其實她沒有。奶奶說她要去看望姊妹，但實際上她在醫院。

They're lying to avoid worrying each other, but that's nothing compared with the core untruth, that Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen) has terminal lung cancer, and the family knows but won't tell her. Anxiety over the diagnosis, Billi's relatives argue, could kill her before the cancer.

她們說謊是爲了避免互相擔心，但這與片中核心的謊言相比根本算不了什麼，那就是奶奶（趙淑珍飾）患了晚期肺癌，家人知道但不肯告訴她。比莉的親人認爲，對診斷結果的焦慮可能會先於癌症奪去她的生命。

When I first heard about "The Farewell," the premise struck me as bizarre. The idea of concealing a health diagnosis was appalling to this Chinese-American. But when I watched the film recently, I found it to be incredibly powerful. Not only did the story remind me of my own family's great lie, but it also reopened old wounds.

第一次聽說《別告訴她》時候，我覺得這個情節設定很怪誕。隱瞞病情診斷的想法，讓我這個華裔美國人驚駭萬分。但最近看這部電影的時候，我發現它非常有力。這個故事不僅讓我想起了自己的家人說過的彌天大謊，而且還重新揭開了舊傷疤。

When I was a teenager, my parents, both immigrants, got divorced, and what was most confusing was the aftermath. We never had a discussion about how things would change. We didn't tell family friends or relatives. Instead, we pretended as though nothing had happened. My father did not move out; he slept in a separate room. When we saw relatives for dinner, we acted as a cohesive family, and I was told not to frown.

我十幾歲的時候，我的父母離婚了，他們都是移民。我們從未討論過事情會如何變化。我們沒有告訴家人朋友或親戚。相反，我們假裝什麼也沒發生。我父親沒有搬出去；他睡在一個單獨的房間裏。當我們和親戚一起吃飯時，我們表現得像個融洽的家庭，他們要我不要皺眉。

While I could relate to Billi, who was instructed to hide her grief in front of Nai Nai, I lacked a clear sense of the cultural rationale behind the lies. If Billi's family and mine were any indication of how some Chinese families solve problems, I wondered, why don't we just put everything out in the open so everyone can have a say in a solution? And why do we insist on creating the illusion that everything is O.K.?

我能理解比莉的感受，她按照要求需要在奶奶面前隱藏悲傷，但我對這些謊言背後的文化邏輯缺乏清晰的理解。如果比莉的家庭和我的家庭能代表一些華裔家庭的解決問題之道，我想，爲什麼我們不把所有事情都公開，讓每個人都能就問題的解決方案有發言權呢？爲什麼我們要堅持製造一切如常的假象？

I posed these questions to Jeff Mio, a professor of multicultural psychology at California Polytechnic State University. He was quick to correct me.

我向加州理工州立大學(California Polytechnic State University)多元文化心理學教授傑夫·繆（Jeff Mio，音）提出了這些問題。他很快糾正了我的錯誤。

"It isn't that Asians avoid difficult topics, but rather that Asians tend to have indirect communication," Mio said.

“並不是亞洲人迴避棘手的話題，而是亞洲人傾向於間接溝通，”傑夫·繆說。

In indirect communication, also known as high-context communication, what's not said is more important than what is said. Eastern philosophy emphasizes balance and harmony, and indirect communication minimizes conflict. So some Asian cultures prefer communicating in a "show, don't tell" manner and value the ability to decode indirect messages.

間接溝通也被稱爲高語境溝通，在這種交流中，沒說出口的比說出口的更重要。東方哲學強調平衡與和諧，而間接溝通則將衝突最小化。因此，一些亞洲文化更喜歡以一種“展示而不是講述”的方式交流，並重視解讀間接信息的能力。

In the film, repressing truth is indirect communication taken to an extreme. The family members show their love for Nai Nai by keeping mum about her condition.

在電影中，壓抑真相是一種極端的間接交流。家人不讓奶奶知道她的情況，以此表達他們對她的愛。

Mio gave the example of a man asking a woman out on a date on Saturday. The woman could reject him by saying, "I would never go out with you." Or she could say, "I think I'm busy on Saturday."

傑夫·繆舉了一個例子，一個男人約一個女人週六出去約會。女人拒絕他時可以說：“我永遠不會和你約會。”也可以說：“我想我星期六會很忙。”

The direct rejection sounds harsh and abrupt, which could make both people feel bad. The indirect answer, though ambiguous, does a better job of minimizing conflict, sparing the wooer's feelings while making it easier for the person doing the rejecting. Both get to save face.

直接拒絕聽起來刺耳而唐突，這可能會讓雙方都感覺不好。間接的回答雖然模棱兩可，卻能更好地減少衝突，既不傷害追求者的感情，又能讓拒絕者更容易拒絕。雙方都留了面子。

The notion of saving face — maintaining dignity and control over one's emotions — is largely derived from collectivism, an Eastern concept that no person is an island; we are each part of a shared consciousness and represent a group.

“留面子”意味着保持尊嚴和控制情緒，在很大程度上源自集體主義，這是一個東方的概念，沒有人是孤立的；我們每個人都是一個共同意識的一部分，代表着一個羣體。

"If you're acting in a way that can embarrass you, in a Western society a parent might say you're embarrassing yourself, but an Asian parent would say you're embarrassing my family," Mio said.

“如果你做出會讓你丟臉的行爲，在西方社會，父母可能會說你讓自己丟臉，但亞洲父母會說，你讓家人丟臉，”傑夫·繆說。

In the film, Billi's uncle sums it up this way when his niece is contemplating telling Nai Nai the truth: "You think one's life belongs to one's self." Billi's relatives have reached consensus about what's best for Nai Nai and, by extension, for the family as a whole.

在電影中，當侄女考慮告訴奶奶真相時，比莉的叔叔總結道：“你認爲一個人的命就是自己的。”對於怎樣做對奶奶乃至整個家族更有利，比莉的親戚們早已達成共識。

The more I talked to people about the film, the less foreign its premise became. Family stories like that of "The Farewell" aren't the norm in Asian cultures, but they also aren't unheard of.

我愈是和人們談論這部電影，這種設定就愈是熟悉。像《別告訴她》這樣的家庭故事在亞洲文化中並不是常態，但也並非聞所未聞。

Guy Aoki, a civil rights activist with the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, said that when his grandfather, who grew up in Hawaii, was dying of stomach cancer in 1962, the doctor never informed the patient about his prognosis.

亞裔美國人媒體行動網絡(Media Action Network for Asian Americans)的民權活動人士蓋伊·青木（Guy Aoki，音）說，1962年，他在夏威夷長大的祖父死於胃癌，醫生始終沒有向他告知預後情況。

"I remember saying to my mother, 'Why didn't you let him know? He's got to say his goodbyes,'" Aoki recalled. The decision is still bewildering today to Aoki, a fourth-generation Japanese American.

“我記得我對媽媽說，‘你爲什麼不讓他知道？他需要跟大家道別，’”青木回憶。這個決定讓作爲第四代日裔美國人的他至今感到困惑。

Nancy Yuen, a sociologist and author of the book "Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism," had an inverse experience. When her mother was diagnosed with lung cancer, Yuen was kept in the dark. She found out about the illness from her aunt, and even after she began accompanying her mother to radiation treatments, they didn't talk about her condition. Her mother died about two years later in 2008.

社會學家、《電影不平等——好萊塢演員與種族主義》(Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism)一書的作者南希·袁（Nancy Yuen，音）則有相反的經歷。當她的母親被診斷出肺癌時，被矇在鼓裏的是她。她從阿姨那裏得知了病情，甚至在她開始陪同母親接受放療後，他們也不會談論她的病情。母親於兩年後的2008年去世。

"When she was sick, all we did was eat out a lot," she said. "She never said the word 'cancer' ever."

“她生病期間，我們經常出去吃飯，”她說。“她從來沒有說過‘癌’這個字。”

Yuen had believed that her mother's behavior was idiosyncratic. But after viewing "The Farewell," she considered the possibility that her mother hid her illness for cultural reasons — to avoid burdening the family.

南希·袁以爲母親這種是特殊情況。但在看過《別告訴她》之後，她想到了一種可能性，那就是母親出於文化原因隱瞞了自己的病情，以免給家庭帶來負擔。

Throughout the film, Billi repeatedly challenges her family and struggles to grasp the concept of collectivism just as much as she struggles to speak Mandarin. The language gap demonstrates the limits of her ability to understand her family's culture: She agrees to keep the secret but, at heart, disagrees with the decision.

在整部電影中，比莉不斷挑戰她的家庭，她很難理解集體主義的觀念，對她來說那和掌握普通話一樣困難。語言上的差異表明，她理解家庭文化的能力有限：她同意保守這個祕密，但在內心深處，她不同意這個決定。

Similarly, I rejected the way my parents handled their divorce. But the film left me with a compassionate theory — that perhaps they created the mirage of a functional family with the intention of saving face and preserving harmony. As an Asian-American, maybe all I'll ever have is a secondhand understanding, and that's the best I can do.

同樣，我也抗拒父母處理離婚的方式。但這部電影讓我得出了一個充滿同情的理論——也許他們創造一個正常家庭的幻覺，目的是爲了留面子，保持和諧。作爲一個亞裔美國人，也許我永遠只能間接地去理解，我最多隻能做到這樣了。