月是故鄉明

　　Bright is the Moon over My Home Village

　　季羨林

　　By Ji Xianlin

　　每個人都有個故鄉，人人的故鄉都有個月亮，人人都愛自己的故鄉的月亮。事情大概就是這個樣子。

　　Everyone has his hometown, every hometown has a moon, and everyone loves the moon over his hometown. Presumably, that's how things are.

　　但是，如果只有孤零零一個月亮，未免顯得有點孤單。因此，在中國古代詩文中，月亮總有什么東西當陪襯，最多的是山和水，什么“山高月小”、“三潭印月”等等，不可勝數。

　　However, the moon would look lonely if it hung in the sky all by itself. In classic Chinese poems or essays, therefore, the moon is always accompanied by something, most likely by a mountain or a river. Hence, "High is the mountain, and small is the moon," and "Three towers reflected on the lake on a moonlight night," etc. There are simply too many such scenes to count.

　　我的故鄉是在山東西北部大平原上。我小的時候，從來沒有見過山，也不知山為何物。我曾幻想，山大概是一個圓而粗的柱子吧，頂天立地，好不威風。

　　My home village is located on a major plain in northwestern Shandong. I never saw a mountain when I was small; as a result, I didn't know what a mountain was like. In my imagination, a mountain was probably a thick and round column, so tall that it pierced the sky and looked awesome.

　　以后到了濟南，才見到山，恍然大悟：山原來是這個樣子呀。因此，我在故鄉望月，從來不同山聯系。像蘇東坡說的“月出于東山之上，徘徊于斗牛之間”，完全是我無法想象的。

　　When I grew up, I went to Jinan, where I saw some mountains for the first time. Suddenly I became aware of what a mountain was. The moon that I saw in my village when I was young, therefore, was never associated with any mountains. It was beyond my wildest dream to understand what the poet Su Dongpo said in his poem: "The moon rises above the Eastern Mountain and lingers between the Southern Dipper and Altair."