好英语网从 《寄生虫》到首尔底层贫民的半地下世界
SEOUL, South Korea — The sunlight peeks into Kim Ssang-seok’s home for just half an hour a day. When he opens his only window and looks up, he sees the wheels of passing cars. Mr. Kim dries his clothes and shoes in the sunless inside because of thieves outside. He wages a constant battle against cockroaches and the sewer smell emanating from the low-ceilinged, musty space that is his toilet and laundry room.
韩国首尔——金双石（Kim Ssang-seok，音）的家每天有阳光照射的时间只有半个小时。他打开唯一的窗户往上看，看到的是马路上的滚滚车轮。因为外面有小偷出没，金双石在没有阳光的屋里晾衣服和鞋子。他和蟑螂进行着持久的斗争，还要忍受低矮、散发霉味的厕所和洗衣房发出的下水道气味。
This 320-square-foot abode, built partially underground, has been Mr. Kim’s home for 20 years. His late mother smiles from a portrait on the wall.
这个30平米的居所部分建在地下，金双石在这里住了20年。他已故的母亲在墙上的相框里微笑着。
金双石在他的地下室公寓里。
“You end up in places like this when you have nowhere else to go,” said Mr. Kim, 63, a taxi driver.
现年63岁的出租车司机金双石说：“当你无处可去的时候，你最终就会到这种地方。”
But Mr. Kim, a widower, said he was still “grateful that I have a roof over my head and a warm floor to rest on.” He fears the city will clear out his neighborhood in a few years to make room for more of the apartment towers that increasingly dominate Seoul’s skylines.
但是，妻子已过世的他“对自己有栖身之所，并可以在温暖的地板上休息已经很知足”。他担心，这座城市将在几年后清理他所在的街区，为更多逐渐主导首尔天际线的公寓楼腾出空间。
If that happens, Mr. Kim said, he has “no plan” on where to go — just like the desperate family in “Parasite,” which became the first foreign-language movie to win the Academy Award for Best Film this month.
金双石说，如果这种情况发生，他对去哪里“没有计划”——就像电影《寄生虫》里的绝望家庭一样。上个月，该片成为首部获得奥斯卡最佳影片奖的外语电影。
Overseas, South Korea may be best associated with its Samsung smartphones, Hyundai cars and K-pop stars like BTS.
在海外，人们最常把韩国和三星智能手机、现代汽车和BTS这样的K-pop明星组合联系起来。
But “Parasite” has mesmerized viewers around the world by exposing a much grimmer side of South Korea’s economic growth: urban poverty, and the humiliation and class strife it has spawned.
但是，《寄生虫》通过揭露韩国经济增长的阴暗面吸引了全世界的观众：都市里的贫困，以及由此产生的屈辱和阶级冲突。
The movie does so through the tale of a family in Seoul who lives in a “banjiha,” or a semi-basement home like Mr. Kim’s, and whose initially hilarious subterfuge to latch onto a wealthy family unravels tragically.
影片通过一个首尔家庭的故事实现了这一点，这家人住在“banjiha”里，也就是金双石家那样的半地下住宅，他们起初想用一种滑稽的方式傍上一个富有的家庭，但结果很悲惨。
The fictionalized story reflects the lives of Seoul’s so-called dirt spoons, the urban poor, many of whom live in semi-basements in the congested city, where living high and dry — in apartment towers and away from the honking, yelling and odoriferous squalor of down below — symbolizes the wealth and status of the gold-spoon class.
这个虚构的故事反映了首尔所谓的“脏汤匙”，也就是城市贫民们的生活，他们很多人都住在半地下室里。在这座拥挤的城市，能够住在俯瞰众生的高层公寓，远离底层的汽车喇叭、大喊大叫和脏臭邋遢，是金汤匙阶层财富与地位的象征。
In Seoul, where housing prices have been rising fast, many students and young couples start out renting in a banjiha, with the hope that enough striving and toil will eventually lead to homeownership in an apartment tower.
在首尔，房价一直快速上涨，许多学生和年轻夫妇从租住半地下室起步，希望经过足够的努力奋斗，最终能在公寓楼拥有一套房。
“It’s clearly a basement but people living there want to believe they belong to the above-the-ground world,” the director of “Parasite,” Bong Joon-ho, said last year at a news conference in with South Korean Media after his film was invited to the Cannes Film Festival. “They live with constant fear that if things get any worse, they will be completely swallowed underground.”
“这显然是一个地下室，但是住在里面的人想要相信自己属于地上世界，”去年该片受邀参加戛纳电影节后，导演奉俊昊在面向韩国媒体举行的新闻发布会上说。“他们一直生活在恐惧中，担心如果情况变得更糟，他们会被彻底吞噬到地下。”
While younger banjiha occupants may dream of escape, many others are elderly or unemployed people who have all but abandoned hope for social mobility. They live hand-to-mouth, one step away from becoming homeless.
年轻的半地下室住户可能梦想着逃离，但其他许多人是老年人或失业者，他们几乎完全放弃了向上流动的希望。他们过着朝不保夕的生活，离无家可归只有一步之遥。
Hundreds of thousands of people live semi-underground in Seoul, scattered around the city, according to government statistics. They remain largely invisible unless you explore back alleys at night and see their lit windows below street level. Many live, literally, in the long shadows of shopping and apartment towers.
根据政府的统计数据，首尔有数十万人生活在半地下室，他们分散在城市各处。除非你在夜晚探索后街小巷，看到街道地面以下有灯光照射的窗户，否则基本上无法看到。许多人是真的就生活在购物中心和公寓大楼投下的长长阴影里。
Even before “Parasite” won the Oscar, local movie fans and foreign tourists had begun visiting the locations where some of the film was shot, to sample the sights and smells of the real-life Seoul that inspired the story.
甚至在《寄生虫》获得奥斯卡奖之前，当地影迷和外国游客就已经开始前往影片的拍摄地，体验为该片提供灵感的首尔真实景象和气息。
They visit Ahyeon-dong, a hillside shantytown covered with identical two- or three-story tenements. The cheapest rooms are available in semi-basements there for $250 to $420 a month.
他们参观阿岘洞，这是一个山腰上的棚户区，到处都是两三层的公寓。最便宜的房间在半地下室里，月租金是250到420美元。
During a recent visit, “Piggy Super,” a grocery store that appeared in the movie under a different name, offered no fresh meat but was selling plenty of dried fish, liquor and other cheap fare. A man stepped in from the evening cold and bought some instant noodles and an egg for dinner.
从近日的一次探访可以看到，以另一个名字出现在电影里的食品店“超级小猪”不提供生肉，但出售大量鱼干、白酒和其他廉价食品。寒冷的夜晚，一个男人从外面走进来，买了一点方便面和一个鸡蛋当晚餐。
“He is O.K.,” said the store’s owner, Kim Kyong-soon, 72, looking at the man’s back. “Unlike others, he doesn’t cheat when he counts out his coins.”
“他挺好的，”72岁的店主金敬顺（Kim Kyong-soon，音）看着这个男人的背影说。“和其他人不一样，他掏硬币付钱的时候不耍花样。”
A warren of narrow alleyways stretch uphill around the grocery store, many ending in steep stairs.
一条条狭窄的小巷绕过杂货店向上延伸，尽头往往是陡峭的楼梯。
This is the neighborhood of Mr. Kim, the taxi driver. Just outside his door on a recent night, under a streetlight, a neighbor sorted piles of empty paper boxes and other trash she collects for a living.
出租车司机金双石就住在这一带。最近的一个晚上，在他家门外的路灯下，一位邻居正在整理成堆的空纸盒和其他垃圾，她收集这些是为了生计。
When Mr. Kim climbs out of his den, he sees a view of tall, sleek, brightly lit apartment blocks looming in the distance like a mirage.
金双石爬出自己的小窝，就会看到高大、优美、灯火通明的公寓楼，像海市蜃楼一样在远方浮现。
“They keep going higher and higher, so they won’t have to smell the smell down below,” Mr. Kim said of the tower dwellers. “Those living up there must look down on people like me like pigs.”
“它们越盖越高，这样就闻不见下面的气味了，”金双石说。“住在那儿的人一定瞧不起我这样的人。”
In Seoul, wealth is measured by how high you live, said Kim Nam-sik, a real estate agent in Seoul’s quiet Seongbuk district, home to dozens of foreign ambassadors’ residences and where the rich family of “Parasite” lives.
房地产经纪金南植（Kim Nam-sik，音）说，在首尔，财富是用你住得多高来衡量的。他在首尔安静的城北区做中介，这里有数十座外国大使官邸，《寄生虫》里那个富裕的家庭就住在这里。
“The taller your apartment tower and the higher floor you live on in the tower, the more expensive your apartment,” he said.
“你的住宅楼越高，你住的楼层越高，你的房子就越贵，”他说。
Many of the richest of the rich in Seongbuk, like the family in “Parasite,” live in luxurious, multimillion dollar, single-family homes with large backyards, shaded by graceful pine trees. These islands of affluence are secluded behind imposing walls topped with spikes and security cameras.
在城北区，许多富人中的富人就像《寄生虫》里那个家庭一样，住在价值数百万美元的豪华独栋住宅里，有很大的后院，还有优雅的松树遮荫。这些富裕的岛屿被隐藏在高高的围墙后面，墙上布满尖刺和监控摄像头。
Many of the homes also have underground spaces, originally built as air-raid shelters where the owners stocked emergency food in case North Korea invaded. Now, these hideaways, one of which plays a central role in the movie’s plot, are used mainly as underground gyms and home theaters.
许多这样的房子也有地下空间，原本是用作防空洞的，供屋主储存应急食品，防备朝鲜入侵。如今，这些隐匿之处主要用作地下健身房和家庭影院，在电影里，一个这样的地下室扮演了核心角色。
Fear of war with the North is also one of the reasons there are so many basement homes in Seoul’s poor districts.
害怕与朝鲜发生战争，也是首尔贫困地区有这么多地下房屋的原因之一。
During the Cold War, the government encouraged the building of underground shelters. But as the city’s population exploded to 10 million in 1990, from 1.5 million in 1955, the authorities allowed landlords to rent out the underground space to rural South Koreans like Mr. Kim, who migrated to Seoul en masse when the economy started galloping five decades ago.
在冷战期间，政府鼓励建造地下避难所。但随着城市人口从1955年的150万激增到1990年的1000万，当局允许房东把地下空间租给金双石这样的韩国农村人。50年前，当经济开始腾飞时，金双石全家搬到了首尔。
But as the economy slowed and income inequality deepened in later decades, the city’s down-and-out remained stuck underground.
但在后来的几十年里，随着经济放缓和收入不平等加剧，这座城市的穷困潦倒者们依然深陷在地下室里。
Mr. Kim lives in a four-story tenement building owned by a rich absentee landlord. Six families live in the upper three floors.
金双石住在一栋四层的廉价公寓楼里，业主是一个富有的房东，不住在这里。楼上三层住了六家人。
Mr. Kim sounded proud when he said that as meager as his home might be, he was better off than the other three families squeezed into the cheapest semi-basement floor. While the other three are renters, Mr. Kim owns his place in the building, bought for $30,000 after he sold his house in a better neighborhood 20 years ago to help pay for his late wife’s cancer bills.
金双石语带骄傲地说，虽然他家可能很穷，但比挤在最便宜的半地下室里的其他三家人过得好。其他三家都是租客，但金双石在这栋楼里的房子是由自己拥有的。20年前，他为了给已故的妻子治疗癌症，卖掉了在更好社区里的房子，之后他花了3万美元买下了这里的房子。
Still, Mr. Kim said that when he goes to his high school reunions, he doesn’t reveal where he lives for fear his friends might pity him.
不过，金双石说，参加高中同学聚会的时候，他不会透露自己住在哪里，因为担心朋友们会可怜他。
His worst fear is that he’ll be asked to move out and have to join a growing number of people who live in “gosiwon” or “jjokbang” — flop houses where occupants pay daily or weekly rents for windowless rooms barely enough to squeeze in a bed. There, they often wait there for lonely death.
他最担心自己会被要求搬出去，不得不和越来越多的人一样，住进“gosiwon”或“jjokbang”——那是破败的廉租屋，住户需要按天或按周支付租金，没有窗户的房间几乎挤不进一张床。他们常常在那里等待孤独的死亡。
Mr. Kim said he saw neighbors leave in tears when they were forced to move out from their underground homes.
金双石说，他见过邻居们被迫搬离地下室的时候眼含泪水。
For now, Mr. Kim said he tries not to think about the future because doing so doesn’t solve anything.
金双石说，目前他尽量不去考虑未来，因为这样做不能解决任何问题。
“You will get sick if you get constantly envious of what you can’t have,” he said. “Instead, I try to be as positive as I can, thankful for what I have. I try to keep the dignity of a hard-working man.”
“如果总是嫉妒你得不到的东西，你会生病的，”他说。“相反，我尽量积极一点，感谢我所拥有的一切。我努力保持一个勤劳的工作者的尊严。”