我带着燥热来到临汾。长途汽车夜晚八点才从太原抵达临汾车站，我们钻进出租车，开始感受到城市混乱的交通。空气中秉承着山西一贯的肮脏，灰尘混合着我们身体的汗水，牢牢的粘在我身上，使毛孔难以呼吸。到处都在修路，到处都在鸣笛，到处都是闪烁的霓虹灯……

在漫长的时间里，临汾被称作平阳，是“南通秦蜀,北达幽并,东临雷霍,西控河汾”的兵家必争之地，也曾是北方工商业的重镇。它更著名的渊源是，它是尧的诞生地，尧被公认为华夏文明的开创者，他和另外两位继任者——舜和禹——构成了中国最初的统治史，他们都被认定代表了华夏的黄金时代。

我依稀记得尧舜禹的传说。我旅行来到山西南部，中原地带的中心。说来奇怪，尽管我这一代对“中原之地”耳熟能详，却很少意识到它到底意味着什么？如果我对于中国文化有所了解的话，它遵从的地理区域也先是东南沿海，或是江浙一带。中国近代历史的变革中心来自沿海，而文化中心则一直在江南。历史变化总是沧海桑田，如今我们谈论的是上海、香港，谁还记得临汾、商丘与开封？但当后者是华夏文明的兴起之地时，后者仍出杂草丛生的乱石堆。也因此，尧、舜和禹，就像皇帝、炎帝一样，是个总是被提及、却很少被说清楚的传说。甚至，只有到了临汾，我才知道尧曾建都于此。

我用一晚上清除了旅途的疲倦，整个上午，都徘徊在临汾市区的尧庙广场。结果发现的不是对被远古文明的悠思，而是一种生理上的不适。饱经战乱、天灾与人为纵火的尧庙当然早已消失，最多剩下断壁残垣、青苔野草。遗迹是个不断修复的东西，况且，中国的历史倾向于存留在典籍，而不是建筑之中。除去万里长城，我们不喜欢帕台农神庙那种石头，而倾向于木头，它们美观、精巧，却经不起历史烟尘。

眼前的尧庙是1998—2002年一连串扩建的产物，它不再是一座孤单的被祭奠的建筑，而变成了一片建筑群，被称坐尧庙广场。它就像另一种意义上的世界公园，或是街口的杂货铺，建造者费力地想把所有的东西都塞进一个空间里，而且所有的东西都有着显而易见的廉价感。

我先是在观礼台的广场上游荡，它坐南朝北，正对着尧宫。它是一个小型的天安门，殿内摆放着那种显而易见的廉价的工艺品，它是“中国尧都民间艺术博物馆”，两个年轻姑娘无精打彩坐在那里。在同样微缩的广场上，摆放着几辆电瓶车，它们分别塑造成济公、火箭的模样，花上5块钱，你可以在广场上驰骋一下。然后，我又在尧庙里消耗了一个小时，在那些仿明清的建筑中穿梭。那些懒散的管理员会突然走到你面前，“给先祖敬香吧，三十块的六十块的都有”。如果你拒绝，她就立刻恹恹的走会屋角的同伴那里，继续她们的聊天。这尧庙是她们的，而不属于游客……

“旅游业是一个大蛋糕，关键是谁能将这块人人看好的蛋糕做大做强……”在付出了三十元的门票，买了一瓶热乎乎的冰红茶之后，我还买了一本蓝色封皮的《尧庙》的小册子，在它的序言里，当时的临汾市尧都区委副书记王天然这样写道，“我们的卖点就是4500年中华文明的源头”。而书的编著者高树德则写道：“我们的先祖创造了太多太多的华夏之冠。如何将先祖们创造的‘无形资产’变为‘有形资产’，使华夏千古文明浓缩在尧都，浓缩在一处看得见、摸得着的艺术精典中……”

一切变得容易理解，浩大的工程与历史情怀无关，它只是经济增长的催化剂，而且它与大跃进式的坏品味相联——拜多年的标语化、好大喜功的美学观念所赐。贯穿广场的的尧都大道有40米宽，两边的景区除去天安门，还有缩小的天坛，有尧舜、禹三座宫门，有用水泥制成立体中国地图（可惜福建、台湾一些省份，表层水泥已经脱落）……广场建筑处处夸耀它的规模，21米高的汉白玉华表，长达百米的、花岗岩铸就的千家姓纪念壁——它不断是全国最大的，而且采用了长城造型，还有号称“天下第一门”的华门——三门鼎立象征了尧舜禹，主门18米高，是“世界上最高最大之门”……

我在四十米宽的大道上走来走去，这并非特别节日，大道上空空荡荡的。我庆幸自己没有再花五十块门票去进那个华门，它四周的飘荡的红旗早已褪色，丝绸的边角早已残破。摆设在尧都大道两旁的摊位和这些宏大的建筑一样，真实的反映了中国人此刻的精神世界。一个又一个摊位提供了每一个城市都雷同的消遣方式，汽枪打汽球的游戏，小吃摊，盗版书籍与音像——在上面我看到了几乎全部是玄幻、武俠小说，还有一本余秋雨的散文，还有《我偷了二嫂》这样诱惑人心的光盘名称……那个微缩的天坛被命名为“幻觉动感の屋”，中文的“的”字被换成了“の”字，而且在说明里特意提及，游戏来源于“日本株式会社”，我甚至看到了一艘仿制的军舰矗立在华们前……一位叫刘群良的僧人还给我算了命，但是他的个人见解上却印着八卦图。“不管僧道，都要看八卦的”，他对将信将疑的我说，并确信我“天赋敏感，也可以预测未来”，只要付给他三万元，学习一年两载即可。我婉拒了这条前途无量的工作，付给他十元钱离去。

尽管我早已熟悉这一切了，今日中国的显著特征之一是它的不谐调。但如此大规模混杂仍我有点吃不消。那位尧真的是我的祖先吗，今天的中国人真是古代中国人的延续吗？

离开尧庙广场后，我看到了第一个大幅广告牌是“纽约，纽约”和“台北新娘”的婚纱摄影……

“不要假装我们是一个文明古国了，传统早已割裂，我们是个无根的民族，精神一片荒芜，伪造出的传统只加剧了我们的虚伪，凸显了我们的空洞与脆弱。”这种感觉当我下午前往洪洞县时变得越发明显。

（作者邮件edmund.z.xu@gmail.com，他的新书《中国纪事——2006—2007》秋天将由海南出版社出版）

That was two years ago. In the wake of the multiple scandals over tainted Chinese food and drug exports in recent months, such an exercise might now provoke outright hostility rather than uneasy indifference. The scandals have ensured that Chinese goods now have an indelible image of being not just cheap, but life-threatening as well.

As with many bilateral conflicts between the US and China, perverse ironies abound. The current wave of outrage was set off earlier this year when pet food tainted by deliberately mislabelled Chinese-made additives began poisoning thousands of cats and dogs in the US.  

The fact that wrongly labelled foods, liquor and pharmaceuticals – usually by entrepreneurs looking to make a quick buck or just to survive in a cut-throat market – have routinely sickened and even killed people en masse in China has been largely overlooked.

In this respect, powerless consumers in China should be thankful for pampered pets in the west. Without the outrage generated on the animals' behalf, the Chinese authorities would not have acted with such alacrity to promise stricter regulation of the industries.

The increased regulation itself may have some perverse consequences. The west has generally cheered on the growth of entrepreneurs in China. But regulation, by raising industry standards and barriers to entry, tends initially to reduce competition by squeezing out smaller operators, which in China are synonymous with the private sector. The beneficiaries may be big state companies, whose close ties to the ruling Communist party will help mould any regulations to suit their interests.

The greatest, and most welcome, impact of the food and drug scandals, however, might be to shake up the cognitive disconnect that bedevils the debate about the fallout from China's economic surge.

The huge windfalls for western consumers have been paralleled by wailing about how cheap Chinese goods are destroying local jobs, to the unambiguous benefit of China.

This crude dichotomy misses the nub of the issue: that the benefits of growth have been unevenly, and often unfairly, spread around. This has been a point that Beijing has been at pains to acknowledge in recent years, even if its policies to address the issue have been largely ineffective thus far.

Ordinary Chinese, especially city dwellers, are much better off than they were before the country's transformative market reforms nearly 30 years ago. But proportionately, their share of national income has declined. An International Monetary Fund paper found that the fall in the wage share of national income since the mid-1980s had been pronounced, from 67 per cent of gross domestic product to 56 per cent now. The World Bank found an even sharper drop, of 9 per cent, in the wage share from 1998.

Chinese leaders publicly stress the priority of employment creation, but economic incentives continue to favour capital intensive industries, not the job-generating service sector. The huge profits these industries have made in recent years have flowed back to state investors and officials, not the workforce. The other winners have been foreign multinationals, often in local joint ventures, using China as an export base.

Labour costs have been rising in China for years but remain low because of countervailing rises in productivity and the inability of workers to organise to win quantum improvements in their conditions.

But the much-feared “China price” has always been about much more than cheap labour. The phenomenon has been underwritten by lax or non-existent enforcement of environmental rules, cheap finance and multiple incentives offered by regions competing for investment.

For companies making low value-added goods, the cheap finance and investment incentives are being wound back by a central government that wants companies to focus on developing indigenous technologies.

The enforcement of environmental rules and the establishment of a genuine regulatory regime promise to be much thornier tasks. Local autonomy, and the desire of every city, town and village in China to enjoy the fruits of economic growth, make effective regulation all but impossible any time soon.

Many foreign commentators argue that Chinese pollution is already a global problem. They are doubtless correct. China's emergence this year as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases is ample evidence for that.

But if Chinese pollution is the
price of keeping Wal-Mart stocked with cheap goods and American consumers happy, then perhaps the costs should be shared. For starters, some of the greenhouse gases emitted in China could be counted on the ledger of the countries whose consumers buy the goods.

It is an idea that would startle, and maybe even anger, shoppers in Illinois, but it might be a healthy reminder of where the low prices they enjoy really come from. One way or another, the cost of China to the world is going to rise