????“我們這些熱愛中國的年輕美國人被放逐到香港和臺灣這樣的地方去學習中文，感覺就像是被逐出圣地的猶太人，”斯切爾說。“我們與我們的研究對象（和愿望）被無情地隔絕，只能羨慕那些我們認識的、成功穿過中國帷幕的少數法國人、加拿大人和英國人。”斯切爾把他那一幫人比作“在戀愛中孤立無助的天鵝。就像馬塞爾?普魯斯特筆下的平凡主角對奧德特的單戀一樣，因為無望引起對方關注，更別說追求成功，我們對中國的熱戀反而變得更加強烈。”

????然而，突然之間，他們就身在其中了。最初的那一刻（乘坐軍事運輸機飛越喜馬拉雅山脈，踏上北京首都機場的柏油碎石路面，或者更為常見的是，穿過羅湖橋從香港步行到中國大陸），所有人都深受震動，留下了永生難忘的記憶。但接著就是幻想的破滅（并非總是如此，但常有發生，而且通常很快）。

????記者喬納森?米爾斯基在1972年時還是大學教授。那時他參加了一個由政府發起的、為期六周的訪華之旅。這次行程從參觀廣東省某高樓里一個“普通中國工人家庭”的住房開始。那是所漂亮的房子：三個顏色鮮艷的房間，私人廚房和浴室，收音機、電視和閃閃發光的新自行車一應俱全。這些令米爾斯基印象深刻，直到第二天早上，他在無人陪同的情況下散步時碰巧遇見昨天見過的那個人。“他招手讓我到他家喝點‘白茶’，也就是白開水，”米爾斯基寫道。“但不是原來的那套房子。單調，簡陋，墻壁斑駁，只有兩間屋子，沒有私人廚房和浴室。”米爾斯基受騙了。他回到酒店，“被所聞所見弄得震驚不已”。

????史蒂文?曾現任諾丁漢大學（the University of Nottingham）中國政策研究所（the China Policy Institute）負責人。他是避居香港的中國造反派之子。1978年，他抵達羅湖橋時，真想要跑過橋去。他寫道：“我迫不及待地想踏上祖國，呼吸那里的空氣，欣賞那里的美景，認識那些‘結束了百年恥辱’的英雄人民。”然而，他見到的是一種新的、但卻似曾相識的不平等：為特權人物準備的優惠機票；漓江渡船上層與下層甲板之間不可逾越的柵欄；為了從外國人手里得到十塊錢，互相大打出手的街頭乞丐。史蒂文很想回香港。

????斯切爾寫到，對很多外國人來說，“與中國的首次接觸是我們職業生涯中最重要的時刻之一”。我要補充一點，很多人至今仍然難以理解他們當年看到的景象。佩里?林克在上世紀六十年代曾是位反戰積極分子，因此，“我對社會主義中國抱有很高的期望”。但他在1973年抵達中國后不久便開始心生疑慮。當時，他在蘇州一個白色石桌上拍到了一只蒼蠅。直到那時他還真的相信研究生院里教授的那一套，也就是大躍進時期開展的除四害運動已經成功地消滅了中國所有的蒼蠅。

????"we young American China followers who found ourselves marooned in places like Hong Kong and Taiwan studying Chinese were left to feel something like Jews exiled from the Holy Land," Schell continues. "So inexorably isolated from the object of our study (and desire) were we, that we could only envy those few French, Canadian, and British nationals of our acquaintance who had managed … to penetrate the Chinese veil." Schell goes on to compare his cohort to "a group of forlorn Swanns in love. And like Marcel Proust's anti-hero's unrequited passion for Odette, our infatuation with China was only made more ardent by the hopelessness of any possibility of attention, much less consummation."

????Then, suddenly, they were in, and in those first few moments (flying over the Himalayas in a military transport, stepping onto the tarmac at Beijing's Capital Airport or, more commonly, crossing the Lo Wu Bridge on foot from Hong Kong to the mainland) all were powerfully affected in ways they would never forget. What followed -- not invariably, but often, and usually pretty quickly -- was disillusionment.

????Journalist Jonathan Mirsky was a college professor in 1972 when he joined a state-sponsored six-week tour that began with a visit to the home of a "typical Chinese worker family" in a Canton high-rise. It was a nice place: three brightly painted rooms, private kitchen and bath, a radio, a TV, and shiny new bicycles for all. Mirsky was impressed -- until he went for an unescorted walk early the next morning and happened to run into the same guy he'd met the day before. "He gestured to me to come in and have some 'white tea' -- boiling water," Mirsky writes. "But it was a different flat, shabby, poorly painted, only two rooms, no private kitchen or bathroom." Mirsky had been had. He returned to his hotel, "stunned by what I had seen and heard."

????Steve Tsang directs the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham. In 1978, Tsang was the rebellious son of Chinese refugees living in Hong Kong. When he arrived at the Lo Wu Bridge, he wanted to run across it. "I could not wait to set foot on the motherland, breathe its air, take in the scenery, and get to know the heroic people who 'ended a century of humiliation,'" he writes. What he discovered instead was evidence of a new, if familiar, inequality: preferential plane tickets for the elite; an impenetrable barrier between the upper and lower decks on a Li River ferry boat; and beggars in the streets, willing to fight one another for a foreigner's 10 yuan. Tsang was glad to get back to Hong Kong.

????Schell notes that for many non-Chinese, "these moments of first contact were among the most important in our ongoing professional lives." To which I would add, many are still struggling to make sense of them. Perry Link was an antiwar activist in the 1960s whose views "led me to look at socialist China with very high hopes." He began to doubt soon after his arrival in 1973, when he photographed a fly on a white stone table in Suzhou. Until then he actually believed, as he had been taught in graduate school, that the Anti-Four Pests Campaign carried out during the Great Leap Forward had succeeding in eliminating all flies in China.