家书，5月12日，下午6:44

只是想让你知道北京一切都好。当然，为什么不呢?今天下午我坐在18楼的沙发上我开始觉得我可能有点醉了。或者头晕。还是在做梦。你看，整栋楼都在摇晃。我站起来，希望这种感觉会过去，但没有，灯光碰撞在一起，门来回摆动，挂在窗户上的衣服在跳舞，就在那时我想到我们这里发生的是地震。我跑去告诉我的西班牙室友奥斯卡，他的房间里发生了地震，我正在逃离房子。他坐在那里看着电脑上的什么东西，对着屏幕笑，基本上没有意识到，因为他以为这种感觉只是在他的椅子上移动。我想是我疯狂的眼神吓得他采取了行动，但我也不能肯定，因为我当时出了门，飞快地跑进了大厅，我只有时间拿钱包、钥匙，还有香烟。 As I hightailed it out of there, I practically collided with a Mexican guy from our floor who was running to our place to find out what was happening. So I fled the building, taking out 18 flights of stairs in about 1 minute flat. Came barreling out the front door of my apartment building into a scene of pure and utter… normalcy. There was nobody out there. I thought I’d been dreaming, but Oscar and the Mexican guy followed about 1 minute later, and it wasn’t until five minutes afterwards that others trickled out. Not many, mind you, just a few who had places on the top floors. Mostly foreigners too, people from places that had some experience with shifting earth. Central Asians, Mexicans. People on the lower floors hadn’t felt anything and didn’t come out. It was bizarre and I felt like a bit of a coward, but after all, nobody ever died from being a coward. I vote with my survival instinct. I went back inside about 20 minutes later, got a call from my Chinese friend out in Qinghai province who said they’d had the earthquake out there as well. Apparently the epicenter was out in the Chengdu area of Sichuan, and there’s something like 100 people dead with the toll supposed to go quite a bit higher. Magnitude 7.8 out there. Something like 3.9 here. I’ll check out the news tonight and report back. But wow, it was mighty scary.

现实

在写了上述信件24小时后，新华社(Xinhua)报道说四川地震比我原先想象的更具毁灭性。当我笑着说我是如何从高楼里逃出来救自己的命时，西方发生的事情真的没什么好笑的。我在北京的小小震动，与四川地震造成的破坏和生命损失相比，简直不值一提。估计有1.2万人死亡，另有近2万人失踪绵阳城市和绵竹村，在县汶川在地震震中。中国当局正在夜以继日地救援幸存者，并欢迎外国援助。到目前为止，中国经历了艰难的一年。