唐人街：华裔用选美自救？

In February of last year, the Miss Chinatown USA pageant in San Francisco crowned its newest winner: the then-18-year-old Lauren Yang of Sugar Land, Texas.

去年2月，在旧金山举行的美国华埠小姐选美大赛中，来自美国得克萨斯州舒格兰、时年18岁的杨若润摘得桂冠。

Across four competition categories -- titled beauty and poise, talent presentation, verbal communication and swimsuit/fitness and form -- Yang, a Harvard University student, gave a speech on the importance of gender equality and performed a classical piano piece.

在比赛的四个环节（旗袍仪态、才艺展示、机智问答和泳装走秀）中，就读于哈佛大学的杨若润就男女平等重要性发表了演讲，并弹奏了一首古典钢琴曲。

The yearly event is both quintessentially American and remarkably Chinese. Emcees host in English, Mandarin and Cantonese, and contestants often showcase Chinese arts, like ribbon dancing or playing traditional stringed instruments.

这个一年一度的赛事既美式又中式。司仪用英语、普通话和粤语主持，参赛者也经常展示中国艺术，如表演彩带舞或演奏传统弦乐。

Reflecting on her victory after the emergence of the recent Stop Asian Hate campaign, Yang said that the Covid-19 pandemic's impact on Asian American communities made 2020 an especially meaningful year to have competed, describing the experience as a "space to celebrate Chinese culture, history and tradition."

在近来“停止亚裔仇恨”运动兴起后，杨若润谈起她选美夺冠一事时说，新冠疫情对美国亚裔的影响使2020年成为特别有意义的参赛年，她将这次比赛经历描述为“庆祝中国文化、历史和传统的空间”。

"At the height of Lunar New Year celebrations in February, we paraded on the streets -- corners filled with local Asian vendors and brightened by lion dances and cultural performances. Within a month, the streets emptied. Where our culture was celebrated, our people were now loathed and blamed."

杨若润说：“在2月农历新年庆祝活动的高峰期，我们到街上巡游，街头巷尾都是当地的亚裔小贩，舞狮和文化表演点给街上带来勃勃生机。然而还不到一个月，街上就变得空空荡荡。在曾经庆祝我们文化的地方，我们的同胞现在被排挤和指责。”

▲2018年，第119届中国新年“金龙游行”在洛杉矶唐人街举行

"These very streets are now where our elders are being attacked," she added, where anti-Asian rhetoric "hangs with suffocating weight in the air."

“亚裔老人们就在这条街道上被攻击，”她补充道，仇视亚裔的言论“令人窒息”。

Yang could just as easily be talking about the first Miss Chinatown pageant in the 1950s, a period of similar anti-Asian xenophobia. And although those early competitions ultimately helped challenge racial prejudices, they also reinforced other stereotypes -- of women, in particular -- that later generations would find limiting.

杨若润的这番话也可以用来描述上世纪50年代的首届全美华埠小姐选美大赛，那时亚裔也面对着类似的排外情绪。虽然早年的比赛最终都为战胜种族偏见助力，但与此同时却强化了另一些刻板印象——特别是对女性的成见，这些成见限制了美国亚裔后代的发展。

The 1950s were a fearful time for Asians in America. China entered the Korean War -- pitting it directly against the US -- Chinese Americans feared being interned. America imposed an embargo against  China mainland that, in an instant, paralyzed the many Chinatown businesses that relied on imported goods.

20世纪50年代对美国亚裔来说是一段恐怖的时期——中国加入了朝鲜战争直接与美国为敌，因此在美国的华裔担心被拘禁。当时美国对中国大陆实施禁运，唐人街许多依赖进口产品的商户立刻陷入瘫痪。

It was in this environment that community and business leaders in San Francisco's Chinatown hatched a plan to improve its public image and encourage tourism: a day of cultural activities to mark Chinese New Year. Though the community had previously staged its own new year celebrations, this one would be explicitly public -- a place to "invite our American friends ... to appreciate and learn things about (the) Chinese," as organizer Henry Kwock "H.K." Wong put it.

正是在这种环境下，旧金山唐人街的侨界和商界领袖策划了一个改善华裔公众形象和鼓励旅游的计划：用一天的中国文化活动来庆祝中国农历新年。尽管唐人街此前也曾举办过自己的新年庆祝活动，但这场活动受众面明显更广——用组织者黄定国的话来说，这是一个“邀请我们的美国朋友……来欣赏和学习与中国相关事物的地方”。

▲唐人街小姐Ingrid Van在纽约参加中国新年庆祝活动

In 1954, Wong added a local Miss Chinatown pageant (which had been held since 1948) to the festival lineup. The competition proved so popular that, in 1958, it was expanded into Miss Chinatown USA, a national-level pageant featuring 17 young women from around the country, many of whom had been Miss Chinatown winners in other cities.

1954年，黄定国在这一系列的庆祝活动中加入了当地的华埠小姐选美大赛（该赛事从1948年起开始举办）。事实证明这一赛事大受欢迎，到1958年，它扩大成为全美华埠小姐大赛，这场全国性的选美比赛吸引了来自全美的17名年轻女孩参加，其中多人是旧金山以外的其他城市的华埠小姐得主。

▲ 1958年，女鼓手在中国新年游行中行进

The first winner, June Gong of Miami, Florida, was a college senior studying home economics. She was crowned by the mayor of San Francisco, and her smiling image -- complete with a cheongsam, heels, lipstick and curled, 1950s-style hair -- appeared in newspapers across the country.

首位获奖者是佛罗里达州迈阿密的研究家政学大四学生周转娣。旧金山市长为她加冕，她微笑的照片登上了全美各地的报纸。照片中周转娣身着旗袍、高跟鞋，涂了口红并梳着上世纪50年代的卷发造型。

▲20世纪80年代来自伦敦的选美选手

The cheongsams worn by contestants were key to the early pageants' success, argues scholar Chiou-ling Yeh in her book "Making an American Festival: Chinese New Year in San Francisco's Chinatown.""By this time, Chinese Americans had long been Orientalized by their fellow Americans -- in other words, they were portrayed as exotic and distinctly different from White Americans," Yeh wrote. 

学者叶秋伶在她的《打造一个美国节日：旧金山唐人街的中国新年》一书中写道：“选手身着旗袍是早年选美比赛成功的关键所在。”她还写到：“美国华侨这时已经被他们的美国同胞‘东方化’了，换句话说，他们被视为与美国白人有显著区别的异乡人。”

▲2006年全美华埠小姐身着彩虹旗袍

At Miss Chinatown USA, Wong hoped the garment would present spectators with the perfect blend of East and West. He wrote that the winner should conjure "the centuries-old Chinese concept of beauty" described in classical literature, "such as melon-seed face, new moon eyebrows, phoenix eyes, peachlike cheek, shapely nose, cherry lips, medium height, willowy figure, radiant smile and jet black hair." However, he also wanted the winner to embody American notions of progress, with "adequate education, training and the versatility to meet the challenge of the modern world."

黄定国希望，在全美华埠小姐大赛上，旗袍能让观众看到东西方的完美结合。他写道：“大赛冠军应该让人联想到古典文学作品中所描绘的‘中国人千百年来所持的审美观’”，“如瓜子脸、新月眉、丹凤眼、桃花面、悬胆鼻、樱桃小口、中等身高、苗条身材、明媚笑容和乌黑头发”。不过，他同时也希望胜者体现美国进步的观念，接受充分的教育和实践训练，并具有应对现代世界挑战的多元能力。

In the ensuing years, Miss Chinatown USA boomed in popularity. It moved to larger venues that seated thousands of spectators, was embraced by San Francisco's tourism board and was covered by global media. But as 1950s conservatism made way for the social upheavals of the late '60s and '70s, a new generation of youth activists, influenced by the civil rights, feminist, Black liberation and anti-war movements, began voicing concerns about the contest.

在随后的几年里，全美华埠小姐大赛的人气大涨——它搬到了能容纳数千名观众的更大场馆举行，得到了旧金山旅游局的支持，并被全球媒体所报道。然而，20世纪50年代的保守主义让位于60年代末和70年代的社会动荡，新一代的青年活动分子在民权、女权主义、黑人解放和反战等运动的影响下开始对这一赛事表示担忧。

▲1988年全美华埠小姐大赛参赛者

Criticisms of the contest, as detailed by Asian American studies professor Judy Tzu-Chun Wu in a 1997 paper, included: that it promoted a stereotype of Asian women as submissive or exotic "China Dolls"; that the winners were usually affluent and educated, when Chinatown itself was mostly working class; that contestants were being judged by White beauty standards (since its inception, the pageant's judging panel has included a mix of Asians and non Asians); that it served tourism and businesses rather than local residents; and that it reinforced the image of a "model minority" at a time when the city's Chinese community -- often poor and ignored by City Hall -- badly needed resources.These objections spoke to wider, conflicting visions of what San Francisco's Chinatown should be.

从事亚裔美国人研究的吴祖春教授在1997年的一篇论文中详述了对这一赛事提出的批评意见：促成了对亚裔女性的一种刻板印象，即认为亚裔女性是顺从的或充满异域风情的“中国娃娃”；获胜者通常是富家女且受过良好教育，但唐人街主要由工薪阶层构成；参赛者是按照白人审美标准进行评判的（大赛的评委一直既包括亚裔和非亚裔）；赛事服务于旅游和商业，而非当地居民；在旧金山大多贫困且被市政厅忽视的华人群体急需资源的时候，强化了“模范少数族裔”的形象。这些反对意见反映了人们对“旧金山唐人街应该是什么样”这个问题更宏观而矛盾的愿景。

▲1960年全美华埠小姐冠军Carol Ng（左3）

Much like Miss America, the contest has evolved in line with the feminist movement and changing visions of womanhood. Where contestants once talked about wanting to be a good wife and mother, on-stage interviews now emphasize community service, individual achievement and career ambitions. The most recent winners have embodied present-day ideals of academic success and upward mobility, including several Harvard students and women who have gone on to careers in fields including management consultancy and technology.

就像美国小姐选美比赛一样，华埠选美也随着女权主义运动和对女性观念的变化而演变。过去，参赛者会在台上访谈中说希望成为贤妻良，而现在，她们更看重社区服务、个人成就和职业抱负。最新的获胜者，包括若干位哈佛大学学生和在管理咨询、技术等领域继续职业生涯的女性，都体现了当今社会对学术成功和社会阶层向上流动的理想。

"The ideal Miss Chinatown USA embodies the best of both cultures -- the East and the West," said a representative of the San Francisco Chinese Chamber of Commerce via email. "She serves as a positive role model for young women and as an ambassadress for the Chinese communities throughout the United States. She possesses inner and outer beauty. She is intelligent, talented, articulate, poised and community service oriented."

旧金山中华总商会的一名代表通过电子邮件表示：“理想的全美华埠小姐得主体现着东西方文化中最美好的东西：她不仅是年轻女性的行为榜样，也是全美国华人社区的大使；她内外兼修；她聪明、才华横溢、善于表达、举止从容，并且乐于为社区服务。”

▲夏威夷唐人街小姐

Yet, despite its seemingly more progressive values, Miss Chinatown USA has, like pageants elsewhere, waned in popularity and relevance. While winners would once spend a year visiting Chinese communities across America, and even traveling to Hong Kong and Taiwan, their responsibilities are now relatively local and stretch little beyond the two-week festival period.

然而，尽管其价值观似乎更加进步，但像其他地方的选美比赛一样，全美华埠小姐大赛的受欢迎程度和重要性都有所下降。虽然获胜者曾经会花一年时间走访全美各地的华裔群体，甚至会赴香港和台湾地区旅行，但他们的责任现在较为局限于本地，而且几乎不会超过农历新年的那两周。

Nonetheless, the pageant still attracts criticism. Since 2002, performance artist Kristina Wong has crashed several Miss Chinatown USA events as the satirical character "Fannie Wong, former Miss Chinatown 2nd runner-up." Chomping on a cigar, generally defying stereotypes of Asian women as quiet and demure, she was removed by security on more than one occasion.

尽管如此，这一选美赛事仍然招致批评。自2002年以来，表演艺术家黄君仪都以“前华埠小姐季军范妮·黄”这一讽刺性角色，多次恶搞全美华埠小姐比赛。她嘴里叼着雪茄，公然藐视亚洲女性娴静的“人设”，被保安带走了不止一次。

▲2010年，黄君仪为自己加冕为全美华埠小姐季军