从波士顿到雅安：横跨太平洋的悲情

    4月20日（星球六）早上8:02，中国四川雅安发生地震的时候，赵玉璞还在距离震中88英里的成都家中安睡，但他仍然感觉到了地震。于是他迅速起床，穿上裤子，走到户外。和中国其他拥有智能手机的20几岁的年轻人一样，他在第一时间登录了微博。

    几乎就在同时，相隔半个地球的美国麻省沃特敦地区发生了枪击案（当时，当地警力正在集中追捕波士顿马拉松爆炸案的第二名嫌犯）。美国发生的一系列暴力事件也牵动着赵玉璞的神经——不仅因为他曾在美国上过大学，而且因为三名遇难者之中有一名是他的中国同胞——现年23岁的沈阳籍波士顿大学（Boston University）研究生吕令子。当天与吕令子在一起的还有另外两名中国同胞，其中一名叫周丹龄的就来自成都。周丹龄腹部受到重创，不过她有望脱离生命危险。

    就在地震发生时最慌乱的几分钟内，赵玉璞还在微博上关注灾难动态。他发现有一半的帖子都跟雅安地震有关，另一半则是关于波士顿的。

    通常来说，美国发生的公共暴力事件不会引起中国太大的关注，即使关注，顶多也只是冷嘲热讽——“喏，那就是美国，每个人都拥有枪支的地方。”——赵玉璞解释说，中国人对美国枪击案的反应一般如此。赵玉璞目前在《财富》（Fortune）杂志旗下全球论坛（Global Forum）担任高级项目经理。

    如果你想知道中国官方如何评价美国人的生活质量，可以看看英文报纸《中国日报》（China Daily）在波士顿爆炸案发生一周后刊登的《2012年美国的人权纪录》。其中，“关于生命与人身安全”部分引用了令人不寒而栗（但很准确）的FBI统计数据，以此窥见美国暴力犯罪现象。同时，这部分内容还援引了纽约市长迈克尔•布隆伯格于去年7月科罗拉多州奥罗拉市发生暴力枪击案后在美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）发表的言论：“我认为世界上没有哪个发达国家还存在像我们这样严重的问题。”

    《工人日报》（Worker's Daily ）一位编辑在个人微博上就中国驻美大使崔天凯在波士顿医疗中心看望受伤留学生周丹龄一事表示不满，因为在同一天吉林和龙市一个煤矿发生爆炸，造成18死9伤。他援引同事的感慨写道：“死伤在中国井下的矿工什么时候也能享受这样的待遇，那才证明人民的生命得到了同等的尊重。”

    但很显然，波士顿爆炸深深牵动着许多中国人的心，我理解个中缘由。世界上每天都会有如此多可怕的事情发生。我们很难透彻地理解这些事，更不用说完全感受它们造成的影响。而这个时候，人际联系会发挥很大作用。我也是上周才明白这个道理的。

    At 8:02 on Saturday morning, April 20, the earth shook in central China. Yupu Zhao was asleep in his bed in Chengdu, 88 miles from the epicenter in rural Sichuan Province. He still felt it -- he woke up fast — and once he got his pants on and went outdoors, Zhao did what any other Chinese twenty-something with a smartphone would do: He went straight to Weibo, China's popular microblog.

    At nearly the same moment, halfway around the world in Watertown, Mass., shots were fired as police converged on the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings. Zhao had a stake in those proceedings, too, and not just because he went to college in the States. Among the three fatalities was 23-year-old Lingzi Lu, a Boston University graduate student from Shenyang in northeast China. With Lu that day were two other Chinese nationals, one -- Danling Zhou — who suffered a serious abdominal wound, though she is expected to survive. Zhou is from Chengdu.

    As Zhao tracked his feed in those first few frenzied moments, half the posts were about what was happening in Sichuan. The other half were about what was happening in Boston.

    Ordinarily, an act of public violence in the U.S. wouldn't attract much attention in China, and what little it did might be cynical. As in, "Oh that's just the United States," Zhao, who is working for Fortune's Global Forum conference, explains, "everyone has guns."

    If you're looking for a sense of how Chinese officialdom, at least, views our quality of life, see "Human Rights Record of the United States in 2012," published in the English language China Daily one week after the Boston

    bombings. The section on "Life and Personal Security" cites chilling (and accurate) FBI statistics on the scope of violent crime in America, and quotes New York Mayor Bloomberg, speaking on CNN in the wake of last summer's shooting rampage in Aurora, Colo.: "I don't think there's any other developed country in the world that has remotely the problem we have."

    Writing from his personal Weibo account, an editor at the Worker's Daily lightly chastised Cui Tiankai, the Chinese ambassador to the U.S., for visiting the injured student Zhou at Boston Medical Center on a day when 18 Chinese miners died and nine were injured in an explosion in a coal mine in Helong, Jilin Province. "The day when the dead and injured coal mine workers receive the same treatment," he wrote, "will be the day that shows the people's lives are equally respected."

    But clearly the Boston bombings touched many Chinese deeply, and I understand why. So many awful things happen in the world every day. It's hard to keep them straight, much less absorb their full impact. A personal connection goes a long way. I learned that myself last week.