英文《无定河，蒙汉人民的母亲河》翻译：郭文学

Wuding River: The Mother River of the Mongolian and Han Peoples

Zhang Tianxiao

The ancient city of Tongwan has captured, within its walls, the historical panorama of several millennia of China's changing fortunes, while the surging waters of the Wuding River sing one stirring, heart-rending tale after another.

Unfolding the long historical scroll of the Wuding River, scene after scene takes flight with the ethereal grace of romanticism, and image after image flashes with the spark of realism.

The Wuding River — the green river, the river of enchanting scenery. More than 35,000 years ago, the Hetao people made their home and multiplied here. Before the Qin and Han dynasties, it was called the Yongding River, its water and grass lush, its cattle and horses lining up head to tail. Helian Bobo, king of the Great Xia, once marveled, "Facing the broad marsh, girdled by the clear stream," and so built Tongwan City, which has stood proudly on the banks of the Wuding River ever since.

The Wuding River — the turbid river, the river of solemn tragedy. After the Tang and Song dynasties, wars came thick and fast, the ecology was destroyed, and soil and water were lost on a vast scale; with its waters no longer following any fixed course, it became the "Wuding" (unsettled) River. Hence the Tang-dynasty poet Chen Tao lamented in his "March to Longxi": "They vowed to sweep away the Xiongnu, reckless of their own lives; / Five thousand in sable brocade were lost amid the dust of the northern wilds. / Pity the bones that lie by the Wuding River's bank — / They are still the ones who appear in a young wife's spring dreams."

The Wuding River — the great river, the red river. It runs 491 kilometers in length and drains a total basin of 30,260 square kilometers; it holds 260 reservoirs large and small and 28 hydropower stations, and flows through eight counties of the Yulin region and two banners of Ordos City. A poem praises its origins and course: "The waters rise south of the ridge; three sources fix its frame, moistening the northern lands and enriching the Central Plains. The mountains rise from Baiyu; four bends become its eyes, till it joins the Yellow River and runs into the East Sea." At its source on Mount Baiyu (called Qiaoshan before the Qin and Han dynasties), Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty came in person to offer sacrifice to the Yellow Emperor Xuanyuan; the Qin Straight Road, by which the First Emperor unified the realm, crosses the Wuding River; the battle banners of Genghis Khan, the pride of his age, fluttered in the wind on its banks as he campaigned against Western Xia; at Qingjian, where the Wuding River joins the Yellow River, the great leader Chairman Mao's world-stirring poem "Snow — to the Tune of Qinyuanchun" sounded the call to liberate all of China; and the armies guarding Yan'an watered their horses in the Wuding River after the Red Army's victorious 25,000-li Long March reached northern Shaanxi and founded the rural revolutionary base.

Green hills need no ink to be a painting of a thousand autumns; clear waters need no strings to be a zither of ten thousand ages.

The Wuding River — the mother river of the peoples of northern Shaanxi and Ordos. This is the belt where farming culture and grassland culture meet; this is the place where Yellow River culture, loess culture, and Great Wall culture mingle; this is a region rich in coal, oil, and natural gas — a vital concentration of energy and chemical resources in western China; this is a scenic corridor of green eco-tourism and a cornucopia of wholesome agricultural and livestock products; this is a wide arena where entrepreneurs race their ambitions; this is a land that brings forth talents and beauties in abundance.

We rejoice to see the rice and beans rolling in thousandfold waves; by the banks of the Wuding River, the fragrance of fish drifts on the air.

Today the Wuding River's waters are as clear as a mirror, their green spreading across the whole land. The industrious, brave, and wise people of the Wuding River basin, under the correct leadership and kind solicitude of the Party and the government, are — with the spirit of seizing every moment, the heroism that can swallow mountains and rivers, and the soaring ambition to "dare to make the sun and the moon shine in a new sky" — drawing the grand blueprint of jointly building a harmonious society and constructing a new socialist countryside, and writing a magnificent chapter for the green, ecological, and healthy industry brands of the Wuding River basin under the rural revitalization strategy.