50年前 美国第一夫人的中国行
译者按：
1972年2月21日，帕特·尼克松跟随她的夫君总统先生访华，给周恩来总理留下了深刻的印象，之后总理送给她两只稀有的大熊猫作为来自中国的礼物。
访华期间，帕特和总统先生受另一位第一夫人的邀请观看了革命样板戏《红色娘子军》, 他们恭恭敬敬地看着舞台上的吴琼花率领红色娘子军打倒了土豪南霸天，并在表演结束时站立礼貌地鼓掌。
事后，当美国记者问总统如何评价《红色娘子军》时，素来健谈的尼克松一时语塞，竟找不出一个词来“夸夸”，最后云里雾里绕了一句：“我想……这出芭蕾剧在传递一些信息……它水平很高。”
两位第一夫人对女性的影响是深远的。
一位认为：向前进，向前进，战士的责任重，妇女的冤仇深。
一位提及：女性的力量是无与伦比的，我在美国到处都看到了这一点。
两位第一夫人的命运也大相径庭，耐人回味：
一位在夫君去世后，被审判、入狱，最后自杀。
一位在夫君辞职后，归隐家乡，最后在夫君的拥爱中离世。葬礼上，前总统尼克松悲痛欲绝，当着众人的面痛哭并在仪式过程中数度失控。这位前总统很少表露自己的感情，朋友表示，从未见过他如此伤心。
在三八妇女节，重温一下美国第一夫人在中国的趣事，译文如下。
像任何好奇的家庭主妇一样，她首先得去厨房看看。“我认为所有美国人都喜欢中国菜，”她说。“所以我想到了这点。”
在北京饭店的厨房里，有很多东西值得一看，也有很多东西值得细细品味，这是一座完美无瑕的白色的品味殿堂，雇佣了 115 名厨师和助手。她一边闻香一边品尝，在琳琅满目的美味佳肴上停了下来——白酱金鱼、海藻田上盛放的蛋卷、蛤壳糕点上的蒸小鸟——并以用餐者的审慎眼光从 A 列和B 列之间选择。
在蔬菜雕刻室里，厨师们将 6 英尺的萝卜、萝卜、胡萝卜和甜菜雕刻成装饰花，她拿起一枝萝卜康乃馨，放在一个喜气洋洋的厨师的胸前，嘟囔道：“戴起来还蛮好看的。”
她熟练地挥舞着筷子，吃了一些鸡肉和竹笋，然后没有一点畏缩，吃了一块辣泡菜。“很好吃，”她说，狡猾地给一位在场的新闻记者咬了一口。记者咀嚼、吞咽，脸色变白。“很辣，” 翻译提醒时已迟。然后，婉拒了一个鸡蛋卷，恳求道：“如果我再吃，我需要所有新的衣服了。”最后，像一个尽职尽责的邻居承诺归还一杯借来的糖一样，她对主人说：“等我们在白宫团聚时，我们要吃中餐，我会做饭。我得带几盆回家。”至于筷子，她透露自己终于解决了中国古代的“筷子放在哪里”的难题：“你把筷子放在别人的盘子里就行了。”
帕特·尼克松高兴地承认，她“热爱在中国的每一分钟”。事实上，由于总统大部分时间都与他的助手和中国官员在一起，第一夫人自有亲切的招牌、健谈的厨房外交在很大程度上使尼克松之旅的形式更趋人性化。在过去的几年里，她僵硬而与世隔绝，现在她似乎在国外不那么幼稚的角色中绽放美丽。不像杰奎琳·肯尼迪，倾向于在出国时抢占J.F.K.的风头，帕特·尼克松证明了自己是一个非常微妙的艺术大师，在舞台上散发独自迷人的魅力。“人们，”她毫不掩饰地说，“非常友好、热情和慷慨。”这些评语同样适用于她自己。
如果不是新闻记者和中国官员围在她身边，尼克松夫人其实渴望成为一个普通游客，尽可能多地参观一些景点。她参观了占地659英亩的清朝慈禧太后居住的颐和园，漫步于仁寿殿、乐寿堂、排云殿和佛香阁。穿过寿善门时，她说：“那是预言。” 凝视着山顶的一座宝塔，询问是否要爬上去仔细观察一下，却被告知登山小径太危险了。“我想去看看，”她说，但她的主人很快催促她去其他景点了。
虽然她可能不像记者希望的那样好奇，但第一夫人从不想要有礼貌的闲聊——有时非常小。慈禧太后的饭厅里，她承认客人应该不多，因为桌子实在是太小了。看着慈禧太后闺房里的多面镜子，她说，也许皇太后喜欢注视自己。
在拥有 4000 只动物的北京动物园，尼克松夫人选择只参观大熊猫，这是一种罕见的、身材魁梧、长着浣熊脸的亚洲哺乳动物。“它们很可爱！”她叫道。尼克松夫人解释说，周恩来总理曾告诉她，作为总统赠送两只麝牛的回报，“我们将在您的飞机上装上熊猫”。她会是给熊猫起名字的人吗？“哦，不，”她说，“它们将是为所有美国人民服务的。其他人会为它们命名。动物园将会为得到它们而展开一场激烈的争夺。”(注：华盛顿特区、底特律和圣路易斯的动物园已经开始竞购熊猫。在中国以外，目前圈养的大熊猫只有三只，伦敦、莫斯科和朝鲜平壤各一只。)
在这星期中，尼克松夫人还顶着大雪冒险前往北京西部边缘的四季青人民公社参观。她穿着鲜艳的毛皮衬里的红色外套，精心梳理着金色头发，当她经过灰色的四季青——灰色的大地、灰色的墙壁、灰色的房子、灰色的天空时，她看起来绚丽夺目。面带微笑的小个子公社副主席王东武（音译）用密苏里州农场代理的热情解释说，四季青有41000名工人，年产10000头猪和120000吨蔬菜。尼克松夫人建议，也许雪有利于庄稼的生长。
在公社诊所停下来后，她被带到一张小床前，看一位68岁正在接受针灸治疗的妇女。看了一眼女人右肩、胳膊和腿上插着的银针，第一夫人连忙转过身去，说道：“我觉得这样看有点不礼貌。”确定不会无礼，而且病人反应很好后，她去外面看猪圈。
当摄影师急切希望她靠猪近一点时，她问道：“你要我抚摸一只还是和它们一起进围栏？” 无论这些景象多么新奇或陌生，尼克松夫人似乎都在强调共同的纽带。在公社的一场乒乓球比赛中，她说：“我们在佛罗里达州有一张乒乓球桌。我们打乒乓球。”在猪圈里，她回忆起早年在加利福尼亚州阿蒂西亚的农场里的日子：“我曾经养过一头猪还得了奖呢。”在公社的校舍里，她看着一些三年级的学生快速完成一道数学题（56 X 38÷7 -19 X 4），就说：“我曾经是一名教师。”然后，拥抱并亲吻了一些孩子，她对翻译说：“告诉他们，美国所有的孩子向他们问好。” 甚至还有一丝政治色彩。那天晚些时候，尼克松夫人在北京玻璃器皿厂发现了一些绿色的小象雕像。“啊，大象！”她叫道。“我们党的象征。” （译者注：尼克松为共和党人。）
《时代周刊》英文版
LIKE any curious homemaker, she first had to have a look at the kitchen. "I think all Americans love Chinese food," she said. "So I thought of it."
There was a lot to look at—and nibble on—in the kitchen of the Peking Hotel, an immaculate, white-tiled temple of taste employing 115 cooks and helpers. Sniffing and sampling as she went, she paused over the array of delicacies—goldfish in white sauce, egg rolls rampant on a field of seaweed, steamed baby bird couchant on clamshell pastry—and with the judicious eye of a diner selecting one from Column A and one from Column B. In the vegetable carving room, where chefs sculpted 6-ft. radishes, turnips, carrots and sugar beets into decorative flowers, she picked up a radish carnation, placed it on the chest of a beaming chef and burbled: "It's pretty enough to wear."
Expertly wielding chopsticks, she downed some chicken and bamboo shoots and, without a wince, a fiery stuffed pickled squash. "It's delicious," she said, slyly offering a bite to one of the attending newsmen. He chewed, swallowed and blanched. "Very spicy," a Chinese interpreter said belatedly. Then, turning down a proffered egg roll, the guest of honor pleaded: "If I eat any more, I'll need all new clothes." Finally, like a dutiful neighbor promising to return a borrowed cup of sugar, she said to her hosts: "When we have the reunion at the White House, we'll have Chinese food and I'll do the cooking. I'll have to take a few pots home." As for chopsticks, she revealed that she has at last solved the ancient Chinese puzzle of where to place the sticks between courses: "You just place them on someone else's plate."
By her own cheery admission, Pat Nixon was "loving every minute of it." Indeed, with the President sequestered with his aides and Chinese officials much of the time, the First Lady's own brand of gracious, chatty kitchen diplomacy did much to humanize the formality of the Nixons' journey. Stiff and sequestered herself in years past, she seemed to blossom in her role of the not-so-innocent abroad. Unlike Jackie Kennedy, who tended to upstage J.F.K. in their forays abroad, Pat Nixon has proved herself a master of the very subtle art of being winning and winsome in the role of distaff stage left. "The people," she says unabashedly, "are so friendly, warmhearted and generous." The same, just as unabashedly, could be said of her.
If not for the newsmen and Chinese officials clustered around her, in fact, Mrs. Nixon could have passed as a typical tourist eager to take in as many sights as possible. In her visit to the Summer Palace, a 659-acre complex that was once occupied by the Dowager Empress Tsu Hsi during the Ching Dynasty, she strolled through such exotic edifices as the Hall of Benevolence and Longevity, the Hall of Happiness in Longevity, the Hall of Dispelling the Clouds and the Pavilion of the Fragrance of Buddha. Going through the Gate of Longevity and Good Will, she remarked, "That's prophetic." Staring up at a pagoda perched on a hilltop, she asked about climbing up to have a closer look and was told that the trail was too hazardous. "I'm game," she said, but her hosts quickly hurried her on to other sights.
While she was perhaps not as inquisitive as reporters would have wished, the First Lady was never wanting for polite small talk—sometimes very small. In the Empress's dining room, she allowed there must not have been many guests because the table was so tiny. Noting the multipaneled mirror in the Empress's boudoir, she said that perhaps the imperial lady liked to look at herself. At the Peking Zoo, home of 4,000 animals, Mrs. Nixon chose to visit only the giant pandas, the rare, burly Asian mammals with raccoon-like faces. "They're adorable!" she exclaimed. Mrs. Nixon explained that Premier Chou En-lai had told her that in return for the President's gift of two musk oxen "we'll load up your plane with pandas." Would she be the one to name the pandas? "Oh no," she said, "they will be for all the American people. Somebody else will name them. There will be a big scramble for the zoo that gets them."*
At midweek Mrs. Nixon ventured out into a snowfall to tour the Evergreen People's Commune on the western edge of Peking. With her brilliant fur-lined red coat and carefully coiffed blonde hair, she seemed colorfully radiant as she passed the gray of Evergreen—gray earth, gray walls, gray houses, gray sky. Small, smiling Wang Tung-wu, vice chairman of the commune, explained with the enthusiasm of a Missouri farm agent that Evergreen houses 41,000 workers and produces 10,000 pigs and 120,000 tons of vegetables a year. Mrs. Nixon suggested that maybe the snow will help the crops.
Stopping off at the commune's clinic, she was ushered to a cot to see a 68-year-old woman undergoing acupuncture treatments. Taking one look at the silver and gold needles sticking in the woman's right shoulder, arm and leg, the First Lady quickly turned away, saying, "I think it's sort of rude to watch." Assured that it was not and that the patient was responding nicely, she went to see the pigpens outside. When photographers cried for her to get closer to the porkers, she asked, "Do you want me to pet one or get in the pen with them?" However new or strange the sights, Mrs. Nixon seemed intent on stressing the common ties that bind. At a table tennis match in the commune, she said: "We have a Ping Pong table in Florida. We play Ping Pong." At the pigpen, she recalled her early days on a farm in Artesia, Calif.: "I once raised a prizewinner." At the commune's schoolhouse, she watched some third graders whiz through a math problem (56 X 38÷7 -19 X 4), and remarked: "I used to be a schoolteacher." Then, hugging and kissing some of the children, she said to her interpreter: "Tell them hello from all the children in America." There was even a touch of politics. At the Peking Glassware Factory later that day, Mrs. Nixon spotted some small green elephant figurines. "Ah, the elephant!" she exclaimed. "The symbol of our party."
* Zoos in Washington, D.C., Detroit and St. Louis have already bid for the pandas. Outside China, there are at present only three pandas in captivity, one each in London, Moscow and Pyongyang, North Korean.
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