Two years without smiles or precious faces! 2020/2021 were two years of minimal in-person interactions, two years of hiding, two historically notorious years that shockingly swept the entire globe. It was a tragedy of global import! Smileless, a new word I made up.

看不见宝贵的面孔或笑容的两年！2020和2021年是人与人互相躲避和接触极少的两年，也是震撼和触及到全球的历史性的两年。是一个影响整个地球的悲剧！我创造了一个新词：“无笑容”。

I’m Asian, you’re American! In the very early days of the pandemic, when Americans were not yet into putting on masks, I met an Asian woman at the mailbox. She was as Asian as I was, and had also been in the country for decades. She had a face mask on and I did not.

我是亚洲人，你是美国人！在流行病疫情初期，美国人还没开始戴口罩。有一次我去打开邮箱的时候，遇到了一位亚裔女士。她跟我同样有亚洲血统，也同样在美国已经住了几十年。她的脸上戴了口罩，而我没有。

She gave me a glaring look and a solid round of scolding as to why I had not put on a mask. This was at a time when there were no mask mandates. I responded with some “scientific comment” about how, as a physician myself, I understood that masks were not really proven to be effective (agreeing at the time, funny enough, with the later-to-be-famous Dr. Fauci). And, since we were standing out in the spacious open air (actually even on a windy hillside), it wasn’t really a concern.

她瞪了我一眼并严厉责备我为什么不戴口罩。那时还没有口罩强制令的政策。我用“科学观点”回答她——作为医生我知道口罩的效果并没有被证明（很有趣的是，当时这个观点与后来成名的福奇医生是一致的）。而且，因为我们在宽敞的露天下（甚至是一个多风的山坡），这不是一个真正的问题。

Unconvinced, she continued to berate me. Finally, in a last burst of exasperated logic, she pointed her finger at me and declared, “I know, now I know, the reason is, I’m Asian and you’re American!” This was the first time I had been so strongly accused of being an American, and I was dumbstruck! Truly speechless. Scolded for being an American!?

她没有被我说服，继续训斥我。最后她以一阵恼怒的逻辑用手指指我宣称：“我知道，我现在知道原因了，我是亚洲人，而你是美国人！”这是我第一次因为是美国人而受到如此强烈的指责，我目瞪口呆！真的无话可说。我因为是一个美国人而被指责！？

Later on, I realized that this kind of thinking was happening all around the world. In Asia, throughout the pandemic era, if you were a foreigner walking around with no mask, you were instantly labeled essentially as a barbarian. There were even restaurants which refused to serve foreigners.

后来，我发现这种思维在世界各地都出现。在亚洲，在整个疫情期间，如果你是一个外国人不戴口罩走在大街上，你马上就会被贴上野蛮人的标签。有的餐厅甚至拒绝服务外国人。

However, in many parts of America, if you were an Asian during the earlier days of the pandemic and you were wearing a mask, you would look very strange, and would stick out like a sore thumb! There were even mocking comments about the Asian origin of the virus. Remember, the first American recommendations on masks implied if you were feeling sick, you should wear a mask to prevent your spreading any disease to others.

然而，在疫情初期美国的很多地方，如果你是戴着口罩的亚洲人，你会看起来很奇怪，显得格外与众不同！有人甚至嘲讽病毒来自亚洲。要记得，美国刚开始关于口罩的建议是，如果你感觉不舒服，就应该戴上口罩以防止把疾病传染给别人。

So in a sense, my jumpy neighbor may have been sort of right!

所以，在某种意义上，我紧张的邻居可能也是对的！

Sliding past each other with fear in the eyes. During the pandemic years, it seemed like everyone lived in a world of fear. There was fear of neighbors, fear of friends, fear even of family. People slid past each other as quickly as possible. Nobody seemed to be willing to stop and talk. A grunt might be all we heard. The so-called 6-foot separation became a chasm. Since we couldn’t see people’s faces well, we couldn’t remember others well, and we made practically no new friends. It was like time stood still.

互相擦肩而略，眼神充满惧怕。在这疫情的几年间，大家似乎生活在一个充满惧怕的世界里。惧怕邻居，惧怕朋友，甚至惧怕家人。人们会尽快擦肩而过。好像没人愿意停下来谈话。可能最多会听到咕噜一声而已。所谓相隔两米的距离 成为了一道鸿沟。因为我们看不到别人的脸，也很难记住别人，基本上没有交新朋友。时间似乎静止了。

When we passed by people, we often didn’t even know who was who! That’s why robbers all over the world instinctively mask up when committing a crime, since masks can evade even the most sophisticated Asian electronic surveillance systems.

我们从别人身边走过时，经常甚至不知道谁是谁！这就是为什么强盗准备做坏事的时候都会本能地戴上面具，因为用面具甚至可以躲避最先进的亚洲电子监控系统。

Everyone had leprosy. The Biblical analogy is that everyone had leprosy. Don’t touch them, don’t get too close to them, stay far away. “Them” being everyone else. Whatever they have, it might be catching. Just for the record, contrary to common folklore, even leprosy is actually not really very contagious. See my story, “The Best Pain Doctor”, on Reggietales.org.

大家都得了麻风病。这个情况可以比喻成大家得了麻风病。不要触碰他们，不要靠近他们，远离他们。“他们”就是指其他所有人。不管他们得了什么，都有可能会传染。顺便提醒一下大家，实际上和民间传说相反，麻风病也不是很容易传染的。你可以打开reggietales.org看看我的故事“世上最好的疼痛治疗医生”。

Everyone locked inside prisons. Another way to put it is that we locked ourselves in prisons and even poetically threw away the keys. Prison used to be a place where we were sent involuntarily as punishment for crimes. Yet during the COVID-19 years, millions voluntarily jumped into prisons, with or without government coercion.

大家被锁在监狱里。换句话说，我们都把自己锁在监狱里，甚至诗意般地丢弃了钥匙。在过去，监狱是强制惩罚罪犯的地方。可是，在新冠病毒疫情年间，数百万人自愿地跳进监狱里，无论有没有政府的强迫。

Any food delivered to homes might be just left on the ground at the door, just like in darkest dungeons. Some families did not even dare to open the door for relatives, even when they were delivering food.

外卖食物可能只会放在门口的地上，就像那些最黑暗的地牢一样。有的家庭甚至在送饭时都不敢给他们的亲戚开门。

Should we evacuate our mission team in an epidemic? During our early medical mission time, there was an epidemic one year in the area where we served in the mountains. The question was raised whether, for safety’s sake, our mission team should be evacuated. As a Christian medical doctor in leadership, I quickly quashed that idea.

在疫情爆发时我们应不应该撤离援助队伍？在我们早年的医疗援助工作期间，有一年我们所服侍的山区爆发了流行病疫情。人们就提出我们的队伍是否应该出于安全因素而撤离。作为基督徒医生，也是队伍的带领人，我很快就否决了这个想法。

Definitely we should not! It was a time of great need and that’s why we were supposed to be there: to help, to heal, and to bring hope. As did early believers during the great plagues of Europe, who plunged in and helped the sick, poor and dying, with touching and long-lasting inspiring effect.

我们绝对不应该！那是一个急需帮助的时刻，而我们在那里就是为了援助：帮助、医治和带来希望。就像经历欧洲大瘟疫的早期信徒们，他们投身于帮助生病的、贫穷的和濒死的人，留下了感人，深远和积极的影响。

Did we evacuate the world spontaneously? For two years, throughout the world, except for a few brave churches, there was a massive evacuation of nearly everyone from churches. In Biblical terms, it was like a rapture had happened, when believers are understood to be taken out of this world. The physical church disappeared spontaneously, replaced by smartphone, laptop and TV screens.

我们是否自发地撤离了这个世界？两年来，除了几个勇敢的教会之外，全世界几乎所有人都大规模地撤离了教堂。用经文来说，好像信徒们“被提升天”而离开了这个世界。实体的教会自发消失，被智能手机、笔记本电脑和电视屏幕所替代。

Landing on Planet of Ghosts. Many years ago during the SARS epidemic, I wrote about the Masked Hysteria in Hong Kong then for the Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper opinion page. Fear was so great then that it was like a horror movie.

登陆幽灵星球。多年前亚洲非典疫情时，我给当地报纸辛辛那提问询报写了一篇关于香港蒙面狂热的评论文章。那时恐惧气氛浓得像恐怖电影。

I happened to land in the Hong Kong Airport at the height of the scare. The airport had been built for 80 million passengers a year, but when I walked off the plane, it was dimly lit, and eerily and totally deserted. It was like I had landed on a deserted planet of a few masked ghosts.

我就在恐慌的巅峰时期到了香港机场。这所机场是按一年可以接待8000万旅客而建造的，但我下飞机时里面灯光昏暗，空无一人，给人诡异的感觉。我好像登陆了一个荒凉的，只有几个戴着面具的幽灵星球一样。

I had gone through this airport countless times, but never before had I seen it essentially empty. It was a prophecy of what was to come.

我以前无数次经过这个机场，但从未见过它如此空荡荡的样子。那是将要发生的事情的预兆。

Good out of bad. But, as usual, some good does come out of even the worst of situations. Zoom meetings, although not that pleasant, were efficient. They mostly saved travel time. More grandmas getting used to seeing grandkids on electronic gadgets thousands of miles away was good, even though face-to-face is a lot better! It was certainly better than nothing.

祸兮福之所倚。然而，像往常一样，即使最坏的情况也会产生一些好事。视屏会议，虽然让人不太舒服，但有效率。主要是省了出行时间。起来越多的奶奶开始习惯用电子设备与千里之外的孙子孙女见面，尽管面对面的交流肯定更好，但这是一件好事，它无疑比完全看不见好。

And everybody became more conscious of many newish electronic options for communication. I was able to write many more stories and books during this forced prison time. But I sure hope, however, that we don’t just default into this easier, “lazier” approach. Go see Grandma face to face please!

而且大家更加意识到很多比较新的电子通讯方式。在这段强行坐牢的时间里，我有机会写更多新的故事和书。可是，我真的希望我们不把这种更容易，更“懒惰”的方式当一个默认交流方式。请你去当面见见你的奶奶吧！

Even newborn babies instantly prefer real human faces. My good friend, PW, designed a study that demonstrated that at birth, babies already instinctively prefer a human face that looks like a human face, and not something else.

即使新生婴儿也会立即喜欢真实的人脸。我的好朋友PW主导的一项研究表明刚出生的婴儿已经本能地更喜欢看起来正常的人脸，而不是其它样子的“人脸”。

In addition, developing babies need all the features of the real human face of the caregiver, to grow and develop in the right way (1).

此外，发育中的婴儿需要从照顾者身上看到真实人脸的所有特征才能正确地生长和发育（1）。

All the smiles, winces, and even anger likely are important in development! In order to learn language, emotions and communication. The mask-muffled-mumbling of words is going to truly mess up babies’ learning, perhaps for life! Potentially a true “sensory deprivation” period, with life-long implications (1).

所有的微笑、畏缩甚至是愤怒的表情在学习语言、情感和交流的发育过程中都非常重要！被口罩蒙住的含糊不清的话语会扰乱婴儿的学习，这有可能是真正的“感官剥夺”期并会影响终生（1）。

The whole face is important for everyone, even adults. Indeed, for young and old, every part of our face is important, from eyes, nose, cheeks and mouth, even to teeth. Every single part of the face signals some message of feeling, warmth and communication. And when we cover them up, all these communications are distorted.

整个脸庞对所有人很重要，即使是成人。的确，无论老少，我们脸上的每一个部位都很重要，从眼睛、鼻子和嘴巴一直到牙齿，脸的每一个部分都表达着情感、温情和沟通的信息。当我们蒙住它们，这些沟通就会被扭曲。

In fact, to be totally frank, we all sadly became pretty monotonously ugly when masked. When I see pictures of people posing together with masks on, it’s certainly truly ugly. We might as well throw away these expressionless pictures of masks, masks, and masks, since they mean nothing, and it’s plainly silly to save the zombie-looking photos! Nobody wants to point out the obvious, just like no one pointed out the emperor with no clothes! It’s just obviously so ugly.

其实，坦白地说，很可悲的是，戴上口罩之后我们都变得既单调又丑陋。当我在照片上看到一群带着口罩的人，实在是难看的。还不如把这些毫无表情的，只有一大堆口罩的照片丢掉，因为它们没什么意义，而要保留那些如僵尸般的照片简直是很愚蠢的！没人愿意指出这个不言自明的事实，就像没人指出那不穿衣服的皇帝！明明就是如此的丑陃。

Ugly-looking babies? Everyone recognizes that normally babies are really cute and precious. I just adore the beauty of babies. But cover up the baby with a mask, and suddenly, even babies are no longer cute. In fact, they become almost ugly! There’s no beauty in a face that’s covered, sorry. We’re not born to be masked for sure!

长得难看的婴儿？大家都认可，通常婴儿都是非常可爱和宝贵。我特别喜爱婴儿的美丽。可是，只要蒙上口罩，连婴儿们瞬间都不再可爱而几乎变得丑陋！对不起，一张被蒙住的脸没有美丽可谈。我们不是生而戴口罩的！

Flying with totally covered lady. Once I was on a flight out of Saudi Arabia. Next to me in fancy business class was a lady totally covered from top to bottom. When the plane took off, I noticed that she started moving, and even started to pull off the top of her burka covering. I then casually but cautiously asked, “Are we permitted to talk?”

与身披罩袍的女士同机。我有一次坐飞机离开沙特阿拉伯。我乘坐高级商务舱，旁边坐着一位全身被裹得严实的女士。飞机起飞时，我发现她就开始动起来，甚至开始揭下她罩袍(英：burka/burqa)的上部。我随意又谨慎地问：“我们可以谈话吗？”

She instantly tore off her veil and burka head covering, revealing a “surprisingly” pretty lady. She laughed, and declared, “I hate this veil and all these things covering me. I love to talk.”

她一瞬间扯下面纱和罩袍的头部，露出一个“出乎意料的”美女。她笑了一声便说：“我讨厌这张面纱和这些遮盖我的东西。我特别喜欢说话”。

So she talked on and on, until we were about to descend into another middle eastern city. She then started putting everything back on, and remained quiet for the last minutes of the flight. Freedom is very precious, even for just one hour!

于是，她继续不断地谈下去，直到我们即将到达另一个中东城市为止。然后她开始戴上一切东西，在飞行的最后几分钟一句话都不说了。自由是珍贵的，即使只有一个小时！

Smile, God loves you. Smiles are so precious. In pre-pandemic times, if a restaurant welcomed you with no smiles, would you want to go back again? No matter how good the food was, I would have little enthusiasm! There’s really no question that smiles make a huge difference in life. But for two years we saw few smiles.

笑一笑，上帝爱你。微笑真的很宝贵。在疫情之前，如果一个餐厅服务员迎接你的时候一点微笑都没有，你还会想再去那里吃饭吗？不管饭菜多么好吃，我都不会有多大的兴趣！毫无疑问，微笑给人带来巨大的影响。可是，整整两年，我们很少看到笑脸。

Indeed, assuming a normal person needs a certain number of smile encounters each day to stay sane, my “smile quotient” fell drastically, by over 90%. The negative effects of “smile deprivation” should be a great topic for lots of research studies. Remember, I’m a clinical scientist and I would love to design such research studies.

确实，假定一个正常人每天需要一定数量的微笑来保持理智的话，那么我的“微笑商数”猛然下降，超过90%的减少。“微笑匮乏”的负面效果应该可以做一个很好的研究主题。要记得，我是一名医疗科学家，非常乐意去设计这种研究项目。

Everyone is meant to be unmasked. A verse in the Greatest Book says that we are to be unveiled in order to ultimately see the glory of our Creator (2). Nothing should block that relationship! Not even a veil. There’s some deep meaning there, I’m sure.

所有人本应揭下面具。最伟大的书有一句话，说我们要成为“脸上不带面纱的”（中文译本为：敞着脸），才能最终看见创造主的荣光（2）。没有任何东西应该阻挡这个关系！即使是一件面纱。我很确定，这里有深奥的意义。

Cosmetic symbol. During the pandemic, I followed orders from the top guys, and wore my mask in public indoor spaces, except for two situations.

表面象征。在疫情期间，除了两种情况外我听从官方的指令，在公共的室内场所戴口罩。

When I was allowed to sit in restaurants, I was allowed to also be maskless. Even when chatting and laughing. But when I stood up in the restaurant, my mask was back on, presumably just a practical approach, but the two practices could be viewed as inconsistent!

当我可以在餐厅里坐下的时候，即使是谈话或説笑也可以不戴口罩。可是，我一旦站起来，我的口罩也随之被戴上，或许这只是一种实用的做法。可是，这两者似乎有点不一致！

Or when I was giving a talk (and presumably spewing forth loads of germs), thankfully (I guess), I was allowed to be maskless, even when the audience was all masked, and not even that far away, which isn’t that totally logical either. Sounds uncomfortably close to the concept of “rules for me aren’t the same as rules for you”.

或者，当我发表演讲时（想必会喷出大量的细菌），令人欣慰的是（我猜），我可以不戴口罩。虽然听众都戴着口罩，而且离我不是那么远。这也似乎不完全合乎逻辑。听起来有点像“你的规则不是我的规则”的概念。

No need to alarm people. Otherwise, masks were my cosmetic symbol that I was “chicken”, and I didn’t want to irritate any sensitive soul around me, even though I knew that, medically speaking, the masks were minimally effective.

不必让人担忧。除此之外，对我来说口罩在表面上象征着我是“胆小鬼”，不想刺激我身边的任何敏感的灵魂，尽管我知道从医学角度而言口罩的效果是极小的。

But I took the mask off as fast as I could, when I stepped out into the open or anywhere with lots of circulating air, to take a deep breath of fresh air!

可是，当我走到露天或任何空气循环良好的地方时，我会尽快取下口罩，深呼吸新鲜空气！

Faces and smiles are precious. I love freedom, freedom to breathe deeply, sing loudly and speak clearly! Freedom to smile openly and preciously. And freedom to see many lovely and precious smiles!

面孔和笑容是宝贵的。我爱自由：深呼吸、大声唱歌和清晰讲话的自由！公开露出珍贵微笑的自由。还有看到很多可爱宝贵的笑容的自由！

References.
参考

1.Baby development.
1. 关于婴儿发展。
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4496551/

2. 2 Corinthians 3:18
2.哥林多后书第3章18节