好英语网“当我穿上它们时，我感觉最好”
BEIJING — As soon as Karen Chen skates onto the ice, the dreaded feeling returns.
北京——当陈楷雯进入冰场，可怕的感觉又回来了。
Her coach could be pounding on the wall of the rink to get her excited. Her family and friends could be screaming encouragement from the stands. The fans could be cheering her name.
她的教练可能会敲打冰场的围栏让她兴奋起来。她的家人和朋友可能会在看台上大声鼓励。粉丝们可能会为她的名字欢呼。
Yet in that spotlight, standing there waiting for the music to begin, as she will in Thursday’s free skate of the Beijing Games, she still feels so very vulnerable.
然而在那样的聚光灯下，她站在那里等待音乐开始，她在周四参加的北京冬奥会自由滑比赛也将是如此，她仍然感到非常脆弱。
“It’s only me, my body and my mind, and it just hits me that, ugh, I’m doing this by myself,” said Chen, a two-time Olympian and the 2017 U.S. national champion. “That can be so scary.”
“只有我，我的身体和我的意识，我突然发现，啊，只能靠我自己了，”曾两次参加奥运会并获得2017年全美冠军的陈楷雯说。“那样真的很可怕。”
She knows the remedy is close, so close that she carries it with her. A quick touch of her jade rabbit necklace and a glance at her costume remind her that it will be OK because her mother is out there with her, too.
她知道缓解的办法近在咫尺，因为她随身携带着它。快速摸了摸她的玉兔项链，看了一眼她的考斯滕（costume的音译，指花滑选手的服装——编注），她知道会没事的，因为她的母亲也和她在一起。
Chen’s mother, Hsiu-Hui Tseng, gave her that necklace when Chen was 9 after her first serious injury in the sport, a chipped bone in her foot, and the rabbit is Chen’s Chinese zodiac sign. It’s meant to protect her, and Chen always wears it.
九岁时，陈楷雯第一次在滑冰中受重伤，脚部骨折，这条项链便是母亲曾秀慧当时送给她的。陈楷雯属兔。这条项链是她的护身符，陈楷雯总是戴着它。
And her costume? That’s a different story, one stitched together over years of a mother’s love and support for a daughter who had an Olympic dream and now has realized it twice.
她的考斯滕呢？那就是另一个故事了，这是一个母亲多年来对一个有奥运梦想的女儿的爱和支持，这个梦想现在已经实现了两次。
For most of Chen’s career, her mother has made her sparkling costumes that are carefully designed with Swarovski crystals that are the best for catching the light. There could be thousands of them on each costume, and each is individually glued on. The bigger ones are also sewn on, so they don’t fall off.
在陈楷雯的职业生涯的大部分时间里，她的母亲都为她制作了闪亮的考斯滕，这些精心设计的服装使用的是最适合反射光线的施华洛世奇水晶。每件考斯滕上可能镶有数千个，每个都是单独粘上的。较大水晶则被缝上，以至于不会脱落。
At this level of the sport, where dresses can cost several thousand dollars each — or more because, in some cases, Vera Wang has designed them — a homemade dress that can pass muster at the top level of the sport is a rarity.
这项运动到了这个级别，每条裙子可能要花费数千美元——甚至更贵，例如那些由王薇薇(Vera Wang)设计的——一件自制考斯滕能在这项运动的顶级比赛中过关是非常罕见的。
There’s a lavender one with a deep V lined with shining butterflies and flowers, for a performance to “Butterfly Lovers Concerto.” Another, purple with a splash of white and fuchsia flowers that flows daintily across the bodice. A black one with a moody deep V design of dazzling blues on the front and a matching deep scoop on the back.
她有一件深V领的薰衣草紫色考斯滕，镶有闪亮的蝴蝶和花朵，搭配的曲目是《梁祝小提琴协奏曲》。另一件的底色是紫色，白色和紫红色的花朵优雅地点缀在身上。还有一件是黑色的，正面的深V设计让人感到情绪的多变，镶着闪亮的蓝色宝石，露背部分的设计与之相呼应。
And one that’s among Chen’s favorites: a lavender dress with an ombré design that took Tseng multiple tries to perfect because she bought the fabric from a Jo-Ann store and dyed it herself. You can learn anything on YouTube, she said.
而陈楷雯最喜欢的是那件带有渐变色设计的淡紫色考斯滕，曾秀慧多次对其进行完善，因为面料购自Jo-Ann商店购并自己染色的。她说，什么都能在YouTube上学到。
Chen, 22, wore meticulously mom-made dresses in both the short program and the free skate of the team event last week, when the United States won the silver medal. She can’t imagine wearing a dress made by anyone else.
上周美国花滑队获得团体银牌，22岁的陈楷雯在短节目和自由滑中都穿着妈妈一丝不苟做出来的裙子。她无法想象穿着别人做的衣服。
“It’s hard to explain, but I just feel the best when I wear them,” Chen said, several days after arriving in Beijing.
“这很难解释，但当我穿上它们时，我感觉最好，”陈楷雯在抵达北京几天后说。
At first, Chen didn’t skate with bespoke dresses. When she was about 7 or 8 and needed a costume, her mother just bought one at the rink’s pro shop, albeit balking at the price. Chen ended up complaining about it, saying “Oh my God, this is like too itchy and I don’t want to wear this!”
起初，陈楷雯并没有穿着定制的考斯滕滑冰。当她大约七岁或八岁时需要一套考斯滕时，她的母亲只是在滑冰场的专业用品商店买了一件，尽管对价格犹豫不决。陈楷雯总抱怨道：“天哪，这件太扎了，我不想穿这个！”
Her mother offered a familiar parental reply: “I paid money for this. You are going to wear it.”
她的母亲提供了一个父母常用的回答：“我们已经买了，你只能穿。”
And Chen did wear it, but only for a while. Her complaints wore her mother down.
陈楷雯确实穿了，但没有多久。她的抱怨让母亲招架不住了。
“Her body is very sensitive, and so her dresses need to fit in a certain way,” Tseng said. “So I said, ‘I’ll see what I can do' and solved that issue on my own.”
“她的身体非常敏感，所以她的衣服需要在某些方面特别合身，”曾秀慧说。“所以我说，‘我来想想办法，’然后我自己解决了这个问题。”
Tseng’s old Barbie dolls helped. As a girl in Taiwan, Tseng was not satisfied with Mattel’s fashion choices, so she ripped apart her dolls’ clothes to examine the deconstructed fabric, then used them as a template for her own designs and borrowed her mother’s sewing machine to create new, improved clothes.
曾秀慧的旧芭比娃娃帮了大忙。小时候在台湾的曾秀慧对美泰公司的时尚选择并不满意，因此她撕开娃娃的衣服，检查解构后的面料，然后将它们作为自己设计的模板，并借用母亲的缝纫机来创造新的、改进的衣服。
Years later, she also tore apart her daughter’s first competition dress and put it back together in a way that made Chen feel comfortable — and, maybe more important, confident.
多年后，她撕开了女儿的第一件比赛服，然后重新缝制，让陈楷雯感觉很舒服——也许更重要的是，感觉很自信。
That dressmaking was just the start of Tseng’s devotion to her daughter’s career — and Chen said her mother’s effort and sacrifices have helped her reach the top of her sport.
做衣服只是曾秀慧致力于女儿职业生涯的开始——陈楷雯说她母亲的努力和牺牲帮助她达到了运动的顶峰。
“I was so young and needed so much help that I couldn’t have done this without her,” Chen said. “When I made the team in 2018, it was a dream come true, and I also knew that my mom was behind it all.”
“我那么年轻，那么需要帮助，没有她我不可能做到这些，”陈楷雯说。“2018年进入团队的时候，我的梦想成真了，我也知道是妈妈在背后支持这一切。”
When Chen was in middle school, her family partly uprooted so she could train with the internationally known coach Tammy Gambill, who was based in Riverside, Calif., 400 miles south of where the Chens lived in Fremont. Chen’s father, Chih-Hsiu Chen, couldn’t move because of his job, but Tseng could work remotely as a database engineer, so she rented an apartment in Riverside, where the family lived during the week.
陈楷雯上中学的时候，半个家背井离乡，好让她在国际知名教练塔米·甘比尔的指导下训练。甘比尔住在陈家所在的弗里蒙特以南644公里的加州里弗赛德。陈楷雯的父亲陈致修因为工作原因不能搬家，但曾秀慧可以作为数据库工程师远程工作，所以她在河滨市租了一套公寓，一家人工作日都住在那里。
Eventually, Chen’s younger brother, Jeffrey, also started training in Riverside, as an ice dancer. On weekends, they would drive back to Fremont so the whole family could be together, and Chen remembers her mother being so tired during the six-to-eight hour drive in their Honda minivan that Chinese podcasts or game shows would be blasting in the car to keep her awake.
后来，陈楷雯的弟弟陈凯捷也开始在河滨大学接受冰舞训练。周末的时候，他们会开车回弗里蒙特全家团聚。陈楷雯记得，母亲开着他们的本田面包车，一连要开六到八个小时，非常疲惫，车里放着中文的播客或者游戏节目，好让她保持清醒。
During the week, Tseng would wake up at 6 a.m. for East Coast business meetings and bring her laptop to the rink, where she would work in the stands.
工作日里，曾秀慧每天早上六点起床参加东海岸的工作会议，然后带着笔记本电脑来到滑冰场，在看台上工作。
“My husband and I could never do a sport like figure skating because we didn’t have the resources,” Tseng said. “We will do anything to give our children the opportunity to do what they love.”
“我和丈夫永远无法从事花样滑冰这样的运动，因为我们没有资源，”曾秀慧说。“我们会尽一切努力，让孩子们有机会做自己喜欢的事。”
Tseng continued to make Chen’s dresses until 2016, when Chen’s first chance at the Olympics drew near, and they turned to a professional instead. Dresses are such an important part of a skater’s presentation that athletes show them to coaches and even judges before competitions to get feedback on how a dress makes their body look as they perform jumps and spins.
曾秀慧一直为陈楷雯制作考斯滕，直到2016年陈楷雯第一次有机会参加奥运会的时候，她们才去找专业设计师。在花样滑冰选手的表演中，考斯滕是非常重要的一部分，运动员在比赛前会向教练甚至是评委展示考斯滕，以获得反馈，了解在表演跳跃和旋转时考斯滕令身体看起来如何。
“The dress, the hair, the makeup, the music selection and the story behind it, it’s all about the packaging and that’s a big thing, right?” Drew Meekins, Chen’s choreographer, said. “The dress needs to show off the body line in a way that’s most appealing to show things like posture and stretch of the limbs. All those things are evaluated in the program component marks.”
“考斯滕、发型、妆容、选曲以及背后的故事，都和整体包装有关，这很重要，不是吗？”陈楷雯的编舞德鲁·米金斯说。“考斯滕需要以一种最吸引人的方式来展示身体线条，比如展示姿势和肢体伸展。所有这些都是要在节目组成分里评估的。”
He added, “Karen’s mom is great at highlighting her in just that perfect way.”
“陈楷雯的妈妈很擅长用这种完美的方式来突显她，”他还说。
But the cost of those professionally made costumes is high, and Tseng said she sometimes paid more than $3,500, and extra for alterations. Sometimes Chen had to buy a whole new dress because the judges didn’t like the one she showed them. In 2018, the cost became unmanageable and Chen went back to her mother for costumes. Tseng also makes costumes for her son, Jeffrey, and his ice dancing partner, Katarina Wolfkostin. They were named as alternates for this Olympics.
但专业制作的考斯滕成本很高，曾秀慧说有时要花3500美元以上，另外还要加上改衣服的钱。有时，因为评委们不喜欢她展示的那件衣服，她还得去买一件全新的衣服。2018年，成本变得无法控制，陈楷雯又开始让母亲制作服装。曾秀慧还为儿子陈凯捷和他的冰舞搭档卡特琳娜·沃尔夫科斯汀制作考斯滕。他们被提名为本届奥运会的候补队员。
“I don’t care what people say because, first, it saves money and second of all, she’s super, super talented,” Chen said. “That’s why my dresses are always drop-dead gorgeous.”
“我不在乎别人怎么说，因为首先这很省钱，其次，她非常非常有才华，”陈楷雯说。“所以我的裙子总是很漂亮。”
Before turning on her sewing machine, Tseng listens to the music Chen will perform to and then spends hours searching online and flipping through magazines to check out wedding dresses, gymnastics outfits, other skaters’ costumes and fashion, in general, to get ideas for a new creation.
在打开缝纫机之前，曾秀慧要先听一听陈楷雯表演的音乐，然后花几个小时在网上搜索，翻看杂志，研究婚纱、体操服、其他滑冰选手的考斯滕和时尚，以获得创作新作品的灵感。
Then she meets with Chen to discuss possibilities and, later, tweaks such as which stone color looks best and which direction the crystal design should go.
然后她和陈楷雯见面，讨论各种可能性，然后进行调整，比如哪种水晶颜色最好，水晶的设计应该朝什么方向发展。
Tseng said she spends about $1,000-$1,500 on each dress and creates about 10 of them per year. Chen receives them by FedEx at the United States Olympic training center in Colorado, where she has lived and trained for the past few years — and each time she opens the box, her heart jumps.
曾秀慧说，她在每件服装上的花费大约在1000到1500美元，每年制作大约10条。陈楷雯会在科罗拉多州的美国奥林匹克训练中心通过联邦快递收到它们，过去几年，她一直在那里生活和训练——每次打开盒子，她的心都会怦怦直跳。
Her latest dress arrived the day before she left for Beijing.
她最新的服装在她出发去北京的前一天送到了。
For 20 hours a day, four days in a row, Tseng had cut fabric, sewed and glued, and sewed some more for her daughter, who plans to retire soon from international competition and return to her pre-med studies at Cornell University.
曾秀慧每天花20个小时，连续四天，为女儿裁剪布料、缝纫和粘合，并且缝上更多的东西。陈楷雯计划很快退出国际比赛，回到康奈尔大学的医学预科学习。
“I barely slept at all, but I wanted to make something really special,” Tseng said. “I know in the future I won’t have this chance because she will have a different life, and I will miss this.”
“我几乎没怎么睡觉，但我想做一些真正特别的东西，”曾秀慧说。“我知道以后不会再有这样的机会了，因为她会过上不一样的生活，我会怀念这些的。”
Chen, who was in 13th place in the women’s singles competition after Tuesday’s short program, said she plans to wear the new dress for the free skate on Thursday. She wouldn’t describe it because she wanted it to be a surprise.
在周二的短节目结束后，陈楷雯在女子单人滑比赛中排名第13位。她说，她计划在周四的自由滑比赛中穿上这套新服装。她不愿描述，因为她想让它成为惊喜。
“It represents our special bond,” she said.
“这代表着我们之间的特殊纽带，”她说。