For me, the four photos showing a detritus-cluttered Times Square were hardly surprising. Any place that had just packed in a million people would leave jetsam and flotsam of garbage - even under the best of circumstances. I'm not oblivious to factors such as cultural impact, educational levels and social backgrounds, etc. A typical American crowd that scientifically represents US demographics would probably litter less than a typical Chinese crowd. Within China, an urban gathering would heed public sanitation more than a rural assemblage. This has nothing to do with race, but lots to do with education, especially the teaching of civility.

在我看來，紐約時代廣場的垃圾照片一點都不令人驚奇。即使是在最好的情況下，一個剛剛有一百萬人呆過的地方都會產生大量的碎屑垃圾。我并非沒有注意到諸如文化影響、教育水平和社會背景之類的因素。一群能科學地代表美國人口結構的典型美國人群很可能會比一群典型中國人丟的垃圾更少。在中國國內，城市居民集會時會比鄉村居民更加注重公共衛生。這和民族屬性沒有任何關系，而與教育水平關系關系匪淺，尤其是公民的禮儀教育。

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.

上個世紀90年代，我在紐約居住了兩年。紐約并不是一個典型的美國城市，至少在我看來不是。它吸引了來自全美和世界各地的人們，因而多元的文化和思想在這里交匯融合。參加新年夜倒數的絕大多數都是年輕人，情況和在上海外灘狂歡的人群類似。不管怎么說，我不會僅從一件事或幾張照片就匆匆下一個籠統的結論。我見過一些美國的市中心比中國的城市更骯臟、更可怕。我也見過一些美國的郊區和小鎮比中國的郊區和小鎮干凈整潔許多。這種差異的形成是有原因的，但據我所知，民族和種族絕不是其中之一。

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.

如我所想，中國網民對于時代廣場垃圾照片的過激反應是無知的表現。那些不了解美國的人們很可能會把這種行為看作是一種標志——善良或邪惡的標志。如果是這樣，他們會把這種發布垃圾照片的行為看作是不愿面對自身問題的表現——或甚至是誹謗他們心中理想國的惡劣行徑。我相信那些人應該從來沒有在美國呆過或讀過美國的報紙，而美國的報紙通常會在醒目的位置刊登當地面臨的問題和批評政府政策的文章。

Of course, there was also the camp of schadenfreude that, "They were no better than us". They used the photographic evidence to justify domestic problems, inadvertently bearing witness to the mentality portrayed by the old Chinese saying, "Those who run 50 steps away from danger call those who fled 100 steps cowards". They forgot that lessons learned in other countries can indeed be applied to similar situations in our own country, with qualification, of course, thus saving us the trouble of making the same mistakes.

當然，也有許多人幸災樂禍道：“他們和我們一樣沒什么素質。”他們以這些照片為據，為國內的社會問題正名。他們的心態無意中印證了中國的一句古話：“五十步笑百步”。他們忘記了，其他國家的經驗教訓在一定條件下也可以在我國相似的問題中得到運用。這樣我們就可以避免犯類似的錯誤。

Other than ignorance, the tendency to see a place as either pure good or pure bad is rooted in a stubborn inability to absorb the complexities of the real world. The world does not abide by either-or rules. Even a simple thing like littering has a full gamut of variations. Coupled with other factors, it may have so many dimensions as to dwarf the imagination of the creators of the theoretical physics-based movie Interstellar. We tend to simplify matters by winnowing less significant details from the discussion. But we should remind ourselves that the golden nuggets of wisdom are distilled from real-life experiences that are often messy and hard to grasp.

除了無知，這些人看待一個地方不是好就是壞，這種傾向源于他們缺乏觀察真實世界復雜性的能力。這個世界并不是非黑即白的。即使是像丟垃圾這樣簡單的事情也會有各種各樣的變化。與其他因素結合起來，它可能有如此多個維度，以致于（以物理理論為基礎的電影）《星際穿越》創造者的想象力都顯得相形見絀。我們傾向于在討論中省去一些細枝末節以達到簡化問題的目的。但是我們應當要提醒自己，智慧的金塊是從真實的生活經歷中提煉出的，而現實生活往往是混亂而難以捉摸的。

Last year, I staged a play I had written earlier, titled The Ring Road, part of which was based on what I know personally. It features a Chinese couple who live in Silicon Valley. The husband wants to come back to China, listing all the things he finds unbearable stateside, like the glass ceiling for Asians and pure boredom for the middle class, and the wife counters with a litany of objectionable phenomena in China, such as pollution and the unremitting competition in Chinese schools.

去年，我創作的劇目《環路》上演了。這是我以前寫的一部劇，故事是部分地基于我個人的所見所聞。故事的主角是一對居住在硅谷的中國夫婦。丈夫想要回到中國，于是他列舉出所有他覺得美國不可容忍的地方，比如說存在對亞洲人的晉升障礙，中產階級逐漸失去社會地位等。妻子則說起一系列有關中國不好的地方的陳詞濫調，例如污染嚴重，學校競爭壓力巨大等。

I invited some friends to the dress rehearsal and their feedback disconcerted me. Some said my play was too pro-American and some too anti-America. I tried to explain that I did not have any political agenda either way, but I stopped midway. Instead I told them not to see it as an allegory, but as one man's journey through a real place, or more accurately, journeys of various characters I created from my observations.

我邀請了一些朋友觀看這部劇的排練，而他們的反饋令我有些困惑不安。一些人說我的劇親美色彩太重，另一些人則覺得它帶有很強的反美意識。我試著向他們解釋我并未在劇中隱含任何政治意圖，但中途我便放棄了。與之相反，我告訴他們，我希望他們不要把這部劇看作是一個政治性的寓言，它只不過是我通過觀察而創作出的真實反映人生旅途的一部作品罷了。

We all have our little prisms through which we see the world and which we cannot discard completely. But the ability to see a place for what it truly is, not what it is supposed to be, relies on the assiduous accumulation of knowledge. Only under the mountain of knowledge and impartiality will globs of prejudice crumble.

我們每個人都習慣于用自己的方式來看待這個世界，而我們都不能完全擺脫自身主觀判斷的影響。但是要能夠看到一個地方它“是什么樣子”，而不是它“應該是什么樣子”，就需要刻苦勤勉地積累知識。只有掌握了足夠多的知識，秉承公正客觀的原則，才能消除內心的一絲偏見。

（中國日報網英語點津 Helen 編輯）