籬苑書屋 最美圖書館讓山野小村重獲新生

JIAOJIEHE, China — Nestled among the shimmering chestnut, walnut and peach trees of a deep valley surrounded by craggy hills, the tiny village of Jiaojiehe suffers from being close to the nation’s capital. The young flee easily to the big city, leaving the elderly behind, lonely and poor.

中國，交界河——交界河村坐落於一個長滿栗子樹、核桃樹和桃樹的山谷裏，枝葉微光閃爍，四周是陡峭的山峯。因爲靠近北京，這個小山村境況不佳，年輕人急於逃離農村去大城市謀生，只剩下老人在這裏忍受孤獨和貧窮。

In today’s China, villages like this often try to engineer a sense of well-being by opening a new medical clinic, say, or by upgrading the water supply.

在當下的中國，像這樣的村子都會通過開設新診所，或者升級供水系統，來嘗試着讓人們感到生活水平的提高。

But Li Xiaodong, an award-winning architect who fuses traditional Chinese ideas of design with Western themes, had a different idea for Jiojiehe. He was captivated by the potential he saw in the village’s most abundant natural resource, the branches of its thousands of trees, which the locals harvest for fuel.

但是，屢獲殊榮的傑出建築師李曉東對交界河村有不同的想法。這位擅長把傳統的中國設計理念和西方建築主題融合在一起的建築師，被這個村子最爲豐富的的自然資源吸引，並從中看到了潛力。這種資源就是樹枝，來自該村的成千上萬棵樹木。村民通常收集樹枝作爲柴火。

So he built a library — with a twist. At its base, it is a steel and glass box in the vein of a Philip Johnson open-plan creation from the 1950s, but its exterior walls and roof are clad with fruit-tree twigs.

所以，他用這些樹枝建了一座圖書館。這座圖書館並不像看上去那麼簡單，其底部是鋼筋和玻璃材質的箱體結構，與菲力普·約翰遜(Philip Johnson)在上世紀50年代建造的開放式建築頗爲相似。不過，圖書館的外牆和屋頂上蓋滿了果樹上採集來的樹枝。

The spindly sticks are arranged in vertical rows, and their uneven shapes allow natural light to filter into the library’s reading room, while keeping the building cool in the summer and cozy in the winter. They also act as a kind of camouflage, making the library’s rectangular edges barely noticeable in the landscape as visitors approach the village on a narrow, twisting road.

這些細長的樹枝都是垂直排列，它們參差的形狀形成的空隙，使自然光能夠進來，照射在閱覽室內，同時又能讓圖書館冬暖夏涼。這些枝椏還像是一種僞裝，當遊客沿着一條狹窄而彎曲的小路走近這個小山村，幾乎注意不到圖書館的矩形邊角。

The interior of the Liyuan library is basically just one large, casual room, lined with open bookshelves and an eclectic collection of works that include President Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope,” “Forrest Gump” and traditional Chinese novels about the Qing dynasty. There are no chairs or desks, just a polished wood floor with several elevated platforms where readers can lounge with their books.

籬苑書屋的內部基本上就是一個頗爲隨意的大開間，擺滿開放式書架。其藏書可謂五花八門，既有奧巴馬的《無畏的希望》(The Audacity of Hope)，又有《阿甘正傳》(Forrest Gump)，還有關於清朝的中文小說。圖書館裏沒有桌子，也沒有椅子，拋過光的木地板有好幾個階梯狀的平臺，讀者可以坐在上面閒適地看書。

Meeting the reading needs of the roughly 50 households that remain in the village is something of a sideline, though. What the building is mainly meant to be is a magnet for day-trippers from Beijing, eager to escape the city’s perpetual smog and dirt for a bit of beauty and calm.

不過，滿足留在村中大約50戶人家的閱讀需求只算是它的副業。建這個書屋主要是吸引從北京來的一日遊遊客，這些人渴望逃離北京無時不在的霧霾和灰塵，尋找片刻美麗與平靜。

“The library is a tool to attract people to the village,” said Mr. Li, a professor of architecture at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

“書屋是一個吸引人們來村裏旅遊的工具，”李曉東說，他也是北京清華大學的建築學教授。

When visitors come to see the library, he said, they also spend money at the village’s few restaurants, pay parking fees and donate money for the building’s upkeep.

他表示，當遊客來看書屋的時候，會在村裏的餐館消費，付停車費，也會爲這座建築的維護捐款。

“The place is special,” said Li Wenli, 45, an insurance saleswoman from Beijing who sat in a corner of the reading room with a large book balanced on her knees as her 9-year-old son read along with her.

“這個地方很特別，”45歲的李文麗（音）說。她是來自北京的保險銷售員，坐在閱覽室的一個角落裏，膝蓋上平攤着一本大書，正和九歲的兒子一起看。

“In the city, a library seems to be unnaturally quiet,” she said. “You think: ‘I need to stay quiet because everybody else is quiet.’ But here, the peace is natural.”

“在城市裏，圖書館好像安靜得不自然，”她說。“你會想：‘我需要保持安靜，因爲其他人都很安靜。’但在這裏，這種平靜是自然而然的。”

The library has a presence on social media, and many of the visitors on the weekend are university students or young professionals. They wander around the village, snap photos of themselves and order the local delicacy, stewed chicken with chestnuts, at one of the restaurants.

圖書館也經常出現在社交媒體上，許多週末來的遊客都是大學生或者年輕的上班族。他們在村莊裏漫步，給自己拍幾張照片，還會在村裏的餐館點上一盤當地的佳餚栗子燉雞。

And some of them actually read. Sun Liyang, 27, an automotive journalist, said a friend in Beijing had donated some books after hearing about the library online, and he decided to come for a look. “I am sitting here reading ‘The Adventures of Tintin,’ ” he said. “It’s taking me back to my childhood.”

他們當中的一些人確實是來讀書的。27歲的孫立陽（音）是一名做汽車領域報道的記者，他說他在北京的一個朋友從網上聽說這家圖書館後，給這裏捐了一些書，而他則決定來這裏看看。“我正坐在這兒看《丁丁歷險記》呢，”他說道。“它讓我想起了自己的童年。”

Wang Fuying, 57, who used to grow crops in the area, is now the librarian, even though she can barely read. “All the library visitors are from the city,” she said. “We have up to 200 visitors a day over the weekend. They come for fun, take a look, take some pictures and take a walk.”

57歲的王福英（音）以前在當地種莊稼，現在她在這個書屋擔任圖書管理員，儘管她幾乎不認識什麼字。“來這裏的都是城裏人，”她說，“週末每天會有200人。他們來這裏玩，看一看，拍點照片，散個步什麼的。”

There are a few flaws. To preserve the wood floor, patrons must remove their shoes at the front door, but in the summer when there are many visitors, the reading room becomes smelly from all the socks, Ms. Wang said. The wood-burning fireplace looks like an inviting place for winter reading, but it was placed too close to the windows and has proved to be unusable.

有一些不如意的地方。王福英說爲了保護木地板，顧客必須在門口脫掉鞋子，但夏天遊客很多，脫了鞋，閱覽室裏味道就會比較大。燒柴的壁爐看起來是個適合冬天裏閱讀的好地方，但因爲設計得離窗口太近，結果也沒法用。

But those are small things compared with the good the building has done for the village. Its two small restaurants “would have closed without the visitors,” Ms. Wang said.

但是，相比於它給這個村子帶來的好處，這些都是小事。村裏的兩個小飯館“要是沒有遊客早就關門了，”王福英說。

Mr. Li, the architect, who is 52, graduated from Tsinghua University in 1984, in one of the first classes of young designers to emerge after the disaster of the Cultural Revolution. He went to the Netherlands to study the history and theory of site planning, received a doctorate in 1994 and taught in Singapore before returning to join the faculty of the lively architecture school at Tsinghua.

籬苑書屋的建築師、52歲的李曉東，1984年畢業於清華大學，他所在的班級培養了文革浩劫後中國第一批年輕建築設計師。後來他去荷蘭學習了景觀規劃的歷史和理論，1994年獲得博士學位，而後曾在新加坡任教，直到回國進入充滿生氣的清華大學建築學院。

There he refines ideas that he said were influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, and are based on the tenet that buildings should be integral parts of the landscape and not objects placed in it.

他在那裏完善了他的一些想法，他說這些想法受到了弗蘭克·勞埃德·賴特(Frank Lloyd Wright)影響，基本原則是：建築應該是自然環境不可分割的一部分，而不是放在環境中的一個物體。

“Chinese architecture is always drawn from a bird’s-eye view, never from the human eye,” he said. “We always think of architecture as one piece. We don’t see the human as detached from the environment.”

“中國建築多數是從鳥瞰的視角着手，而不是人的視角來設計的，”他說。“我們一向認爲建築是一個整體。我們不認爲人類與環境是分開的。”

Mr. Li’s projects in other parts of China where he has built small structures in rural areas — including a school built high over a creek — have won many prizes. But few honors seem to have pleased him more than last year’s Moriyama R.A.I.C. International Prize, named for the Canadian-Japanese architect Raymond Moriyama. It honors projects that are “transformative, inspired as well as inspiring, and emblematic of the human values of respect and inclusiveness.”

李曉東在中國其他地方的農村地區建造了一些小型建築。他在這些地方的項目——其中包括一所建在一條小河上的學校——獲了很多獎項。但去年的“森山-加拿大皇家建築協會國際獎”(Moriyama R.A.I.C. International Prize)似乎格外讓他開心。該獎以加拿大籍日裔建築師雷蒙·森山(Raymond Moriyama)命名，表彰那些“具有變革性、創造性和啓發性，而且能體現人類價值觀的尊重與包容的”項目。

On a recent weekend, Mr. Moriyama, 85, was one of the visitors to the library. He liked what he saw. “I was so happy this particular project won,” he said. “It was all about picking one that represents service to the people. The sense of humanity of the library is so great.”

近期的一個週末，85歲的森山與其他參觀者一同來到籬苑書屋。他喜歡自己眼前的建築。“這個特別的建築能獲獎，我非常開心，”他說。“這個獎的目的，就是挑選出一個能代表爲人服務的精神的建築。這座圖書館的人文感非常棒。”

The older architect patted Mr. Li on the back. “You did good,” he said. “I was not on the jury, and quite often, I disagree with the jury. But in this case, I believe it was 150 percent right.”

這位老建築師拍了拍李曉東的後背。“你做得非常好，”他說。“我不是評委，而且我經常不同意他們的決定。但是這一次，我認爲他們的決定150%的正確。”