????我的第一次中國之行是在2007年春天。當時，我正在報道邁克爾?戴爾的一次訪華行程。他定期都會前往他全球電腦帝國的這個遙遠地區。我下榻上海四季酒店（Shanghai Four Seasons），當晚在頂層的酒吧里喝了杯酒，一邊俯看周圍燈光絢麗多彩的摩天大樓，一邊傾聽一支中國搖滾翻唱樂隊的演奏。第二天早晨，我和戴爾上了輛豪華轎車，前往戴爾公司（Dell）中國總部參加公司全體會議。本來需要半小時的行程只花了10分鐘，這得感謝警車的鳴笛護送和不怕跨過道路中線的司機。

????那段行駛路程最令我吃驚，因為這個人民共和國的車流竟然為了一位財富500強CEO而讓道。好吧，這是我的第一次中國之行，我哪知道還有這種事？

????當然，在21世紀頭十年，我早就該知道才對。但30位先驅們不可能早就知道。現在，他們的筆觸生動、富于揭示性的散文已經結集成冊，匯編成《我的第一次中國之行：學者、外交官和記者回憶他們與中國的首次相遇》（My First Trip to China: Scholars, Diplomats, and Journalists Reflect on their First Encounters with China）。這本書的編輯是劉建民（音譯），書中記述的最早中國之行發生在1942年抗日戰爭時期，最晚是1986年，但所有行程都發生在中國成為全球經濟大國之前。

????這本書的撰稿人包括：洛伊斯?惠勒?斯諾，她是《紅星照耀中國》（Red Star Over China）的作者埃德加?斯諾的遺孀，1970年首次到訪中國；西德尼?里頓伯格（1945年），這位美國人曾加入中國共產黨，在中國呆了35年，其中16年都是在監獄中度過；哈佛大學（Harvard）學者埃茲拉?沃格爾（1973年）。此外還有幾位商界人士，例如香港“中國會”（China Club）創始人鄧永鏘（1979年）和《財富》（中文版）董事長高德思（1975年）。

????有些話題頻繁出現，比如：對工業化之前中國自然美景的贊美；對中國人民的喜愛；對中國社會和經濟迅猛發展的敬畏。但把這些引人入勝的故事串起來的，不是他們在抵達中國時發現了什么，而是他們帶來了什么。不管怎么說，這些故事都是關于中國的純真、中國的失落以及后來之事。

????經驗豐富的中國通奧維爾?斯切爾在引言中寫到，“當時，我們星球上最后一塊未經探索的區域正在消失，沒有為我們留下慣常所見的那種混雜著新奇與冒險的產物”。此時，冷戰“意外地成為了新的禁地替代形式”，其中最吸引人的莫過于毛澤東時代的中國。

????My first trip to China was in the spring of 2007. I was covering Michael Dell on one of his periodic expeditions to the far reaches of his global computer empire. I stayed at the Shanghai Four Seasons, where I had a drink that night in the top-floor bar overlooking colorfully lit skyscrapers and listening to a Chinese rock-and-roll cover band. The next morning I got into a limousine with Dell, and we rode across town to a company-wide rally at Dell's (DELL) China headquarters. What should have been a half-hour trip took 10 minutes, thanks to a honking police escort and a driver unafraid to cross the centerline.

????It was that limo ride that surprised me the most, the way the traffic parted in the People's Republic for the benefit of a Fortune 500 CEO. Well, it was my first trip, how was I supposed to know?

????By the first decade of the 21st century, of course, I should have known. Not so the 30 pioneers whose vivid and revealing essays appear in My First Trip to China: Scholars, Diplomats, and Journalists Reflect on their First Encounters with China, edited by Kin-ming Liu. The earliest visit recounted here took place in 1942, during the Japanese occupation; the latest, in 1986. All took place in the years before China's sprint to the top of the global economy.

????Contributors include Lois Wheeler Snow, widow of Edgar Snow, author of Red Star Over China, whose first visit was in 1970; Sidney Rittenberg (1945), an American who joined the Chinese Communist Party and spent 16 of his 35 years in China in prison; Harvard scholar Ezra Vogel (1973); and a smattering of business types, including David Tang (1979), owner of Hong Kong's China Club, and Fortune's own Tom Gorman (1975), publisher of Fortune China.

????Certain themes abound: appreciation of China's pre-industrial natural beauty; affection for its people; and awe at the distance travelled on the country's path to social and economic development. But what binds these compelling stories is not what the visitors found when they arrived; it's what they brought with them. In one way or another, they're all stories about innocence, its loss, and what comes after.

????"Just as the last geographically unexplored pockets of our planet were vanishing and leaving us without our accustomed fix of exotica and romance," veteran China hand Orville Schell writes in his introduction, the Cold War served up "a surprising new surrogate form of the forbidden," no part of it more alluring than Mao's China.