月是故乡明

　　Bright is the Moon over My Home Village

　　季羡林

　　By Ji Xianlin

　　每个人都有个故乡，人人的故乡都有个月亮，人人都爱自己的故乡的月亮。事情大概就是这个样子。

　　Everyone has his hometown, every hometown has a moon, and everyone loves the moon over his hometown. Presumably, that's how things are.

　　但是，如果只有孤零零一个月亮，未免显得有点孤单。因此，在中国古代诗文中，月亮总有什么东西当陪衬，最多的是山和水，什么“山高月小”、“三潭印月”等等，不可胜数。

　　However, the moon would look lonely if it hung in the sky all by itself. In classic Chinese poems or essays, therefore, the moon is always accompanied by something, most likely by a mountain or a river. Hence, "High is the mountain, and small is the moon," and "Three towers reflected on the lake on a moonlight night," etc. There are simply too many such scenes to count.

　　我的故乡是在山东西北部大平原上。我小的时候，从来没有见过山，也不知山为何物。我曾幻想，山大概是一个圆而粗的柱子吧，顶天立地，好不威风。

　　My home village is located on a major plain in northwestern Shandong. I never saw a mountain when I was small; as a result, I didn't know what a mountain was like. In my imagination, a mountain was probably a thick and round column, so tall that it pierced the sky and looked awesome.

　　以后到了济南，才见到山，恍然大悟：山原来是这个样子呀。因此，我在故乡望月，从来不同山联系。像苏东坡说的“月出于东山之上，徘徊于斗牛之间”，完全是我无法想象的。

　　When I grew up, I went to Jinan, where I saw some mountains for the first time. Suddenly I became aware of what a mountain was. The moon that I saw in my village when I was young, therefore, was never associated with any mountains. It was beyond my wildest dream to understand what the poet Su Dongpo said in his poem: "The moon rises above the Eastern Mountain and lingers between the Southern Dipper and Altair."