当年，他们第一次来中国

    我的第一次中国之行是在2007年春天。当时，我正在报道迈克尔•戴尔的一次访华行程。他定期都会前往他全球电脑帝国的这个遥远地区。我下榻上海四季酒店（Shanghai Four Seasons），当晚在顶层的酒吧里喝了杯酒，一边俯看周围灯光绚丽多彩的摩天大楼，一边倾听一支中国摇滚翻唱乐队的演奏。第二天早晨，我和戴尔上了辆豪华轿车，前往戴尔公司（Dell）中国总部参加公司全体会议。本来需要半小时的行程只花了10分钟，这得感谢警车的鸣笛护送和不怕跨过道路中线的司机。

    那段行驶路程最令我吃惊，因为这个人民共和国的车流竟然为了一位财富500强CEO而让道。好吧，这是我的第一次中国之行，我哪知道还有这种事？

    当然，在21世纪头十年，我早就该知道才对。但30位先驱们不可能早就知道。现在，他们的笔触生动、富于揭示性的散文已经结集成册，汇编成《我的第一次中国之行：学者、外交官和记者回忆他们与中国的首次相遇》（My First Trip to China: Scholars, Diplomats, and Journalists Reflect on their First Encounters with China）。这本书的编辑是刘建民（音译），书中记述的最早中国之行发生在1942年抗日战争时期，最晚是1986年，但所有行程都发生在中国成为全球经济大国之前。

    这本书的撰稿人包括：洛伊斯•惠勒•斯诺，她是《红星照耀中国》（Red Star Over China）的作者埃德加•斯诺的遗孀，1970年首次到访中国；西德尼•里顿伯格（1945年），这位美国人曾加入中国共产党，在中国呆了35年，其中16年都是在监狱中度过；哈佛大学（Harvard）学者埃兹拉•沃格尔（1973年）。此外还有几位商界人士，例如香港“中国会”（China Club）创始人邓永锵（1979年）和《财富》（中文版）董事长高德思（1975年）。

    有些话题频繁出现，比如：对工业化之前中国自然美景的赞美；对中国人民的喜爱；对中国社会和经济迅猛发展的敬畏。但把这些引人入胜的故事串起来的，不是他们在抵达中国时发现了什么，而是他们带来了什么。不管怎么说，这些故事都是关于中国的纯真、中国的失落以及后来之事。

    经验丰富的中国通奥维尔•斯切尔在引言中写到，“当时，我们星球上最后一块未经探索的区域正在消失，没有为我们留下惯常所见的那种混杂着新奇与冒险的产物”。此时，冷战“意外地成为了新的禁地替代形式”，其中最吸引人的莫过于毛泽东时代的中国。

    My first trip to China was in the spring of 2007. I was covering Michael Dell on one of his periodic expeditions to the far reaches of his global computer empire. I stayed at the Shanghai Four Seasons, where I had a drink that night in the top-floor bar overlooking colorfully lit skyscrapers and listening to a Chinese rock-and-roll cover band. The next morning I got into a limousine with Dell, and we rode across town to a company-wide rally at Dell's (DELL) China headquarters. What should have been a half-hour trip took 10 minutes, thanks to a honking police escort and a driver unafraid to cross the centerline.

    It was that limo ride that surprised me the most, the way the traffic parted in the People's Republic for the benefit of a Fortune 500 CEO. Well, it was my first trip, how was I supposed to know?

    By the first decade of the 21st century, of course, I should have known. Not so the 30 pioneers whose vivid and revealing essays appear in My First Trip to China: Scholars, Diplomats, and Journalists Reflect on their First Encounters with China, edited by Kin-ming Liu. The earliest visit recounted here took place in 1942, during the Japanese occupation; the latest, in 1986. All took place in the years before China's sprint to the top of the global economy.

    Contributors include Lois Wheeler Snow, widow of Edgar Snow, author of Red Star Over China, whose first visit was in 1970; Sidney Rittenberg (1945), an American who joined the Chinese Communist Party and spent 16 of his 35 years in China in prison; Harvard scholar Ezra Vogel (1973); and a smattering of business types, including David Tang (1979), owner of Hong Kong's China Club, and Fortune's own Tom Gorman (1975), publisher of Fortune China.

    Certain themes abound: appreciation of China's pre-industrial natural beauty; affection for its people; and awe at the distance travelled on the country's path to social and economic development. But what binds these compelling stories is not what the visitors found when they arrived; it's what they brought with them. In one way or another, they're all stories about innocence, its loss, and what comes after.

    "Just as the last geographically unexplored pockets of our planet were vanishing and leaving us without our accustomed fix of exotica and romance," veteran China hand Orville Schell writes in his introduction, the Cold War served up "a surprising new surrogate form of the forbidden," no part of it more alluring than Mao's China.