5 minute Coffee chat with Uncle Reggie: Spitting
与曾叔叔闲聊: 吐口水 (Rebecca 翻译)

Reggiegram: from the worst of spit to the best of spit
曾叔叔短信: 从“最坏”的口水到 “最好”的口水

Part 1 The lowdown on spitting
第一部分. 有关吐口水的真相

Saliva! I have had bad experiences with saliva, often considered a lowly body product. Implausibly, saliva literally made me lose one year of my career. Worse, it was saliva from a lowest creature, the cockroach. Please read my real, sadly fun story, “Cockroaches and Humility”, from my Coffee with Uncle Reggie book 1. To be fair, it truly became a humbling blessing to me. A salivary blessing.
唾液! 唾液通常被视为一种粗鄙的体液，我有一些关于唾液的不愉快的经历。你可能无法想象，唾液甚至剥夺了我整整一年的职业生涯，更糟糕的是，那还是蟑螂这种最最粗鄙的生物的唾液。如果你对此感兴趣请翻阅《蟑螂与谦卑》（详见《与曾叔叔闲聊》P95），那是一段让人忧伤而又有趣的往事。话说回来，那段经历对我而言也是一种谦卑的祝福，“唾液”的祝福。

No spitting! I grew up in a huge, sophisticated city. At that time, signs were everywhere, jarringly, in big bold English and Chinese words, “No spitting!” On the streets, in parks, in school; literally, there did not seem to be any place that didn’t show the ugly sign. I think the sign was particularly ugly, because it reminded people of the ugliness of spit itself. Even the word sounded ugly, in both languages. Unbelievably, spit indeed seemed to be everywhere also, especially on sidewalks and near gutters. Or was I just imagining that, because the signs were so vivid? There were even some spittoons (do you even know what those are?) at strategic locations, but that assumed that spitting was accurate, which was not necessarily so. Everyone seemed to agree it was a vile, unpleasant habit. Plus, it spread infectious diseases, including the then prevalent and dreaded tuberculosis (TB).
禁止随地吐痰! 我在一个繁华的大都市长大，那会儿醒目的中英双语警示牌『禁止随地吐痰！』随处可见，显得特别刺眼。街道上、公园里、学校里，这些丑陋的警示牌可谓无孔不入。我认为这些标识特别难看，因为它们总让人想起随地吐痰这个令人作呕的行为。甚至吐痰这个词无论中文还是英文发音，听起来都让人反胃。令人难以置信的是，随地吐痰行为随处可见，像是在嘲讽那随处可见的警示牌，尤其是在人行道和排水沟附近。或者这都是我的臆想，只因为那些禁止吐痰的符号太生动了。在一些特别的场合放置了痰盂（你知道痰盂是什么吗？）决策者的初衷是希望人们准确地将口水和痰液吐在痰盂内，但最后却事与愿违。每个人似乎都同意随地吐痰是一种令人讨厌的恶习，而且还会传播疾病，包括当时流行且令人恐惧的结核病。

Pollution! In rapidly developing countries, as pollution got worse, especially in dry conditions, big city dwellers often felt that their throats had something dirty in them, especially in their saliva. To some, spitting it out made more sense than swallowing it. I even heard, to my horror that recent arrivals in these big cities, who had never spat before, began to acquire this vile habit.
污染! 在快速发展的国家，污染越来越严重，特别是在干燥的情况下，大城市的居民经常感到喉咙里有脏东西，尤其是唾液里。对一些人来说，把口水吐出来比吞下去感觉更好。我甚至听说有些刚到这些大城市的人，以前从来没有，现在却开始有了这种恶习，这让我感到很恐惧。

Don’t think about it! Frankly, most of the time you do not even want to think about your saliva. Especially when you are feeling affectionate, and you might be thinking of planting some kind of affectionate peck somewhere. Thinking of that would really ruin the moment. And during flu season, you don’t really want to think about it too much, since then you can barely shake hands with the friendly church usher who insists on welcoming you with a warm handshake. And definitely, when teenagers share their soft drinks with their beloved friends, they definitely just block out of their minds what is really happening in this transaction, much more than meets the eye.
眼不见为净! 老实说，大多数时候你根本不愿意去想唾液这个事。特别是当你情之所至，想在某处留下深情一吻之时。如果此时你想到了唾液，一定会意兴阑珊。在流感季节，你更不愿意去想这些，不然你几乎不能愉快地与教堂引座员握手了，而他坚持这样做只是想表达他欢迎你。毫无疑问，当青少年和他们心爱的朋友们分享饮品时，他们肯定不愿意深思共用一根吸管背后发生的事情，“眼不见为净”吧。

Part 2 The plot changes
第2部分 剧情变化

“Fine spitting.” However, there are light moments in spitting. The finest spitting event I ever observed was in the movie, “Titanic”, when the hero tried to demonstrate to his newfound girlfriend how far he could spit into the wind, on the front deck of the great ship. A spit to win a heart, and possibly ours. Sorry, I didn’t think that movie was that great but the spitting was dramatic, ha.
唾液的“高光时刻”。然而，吐口水也有高光时刻，我见过的最美妙的要数电影《泰坦尼克号》中的桥段。男主角试图向他的新女友演示他可以在这艘大船的前甲板上对着风把唾液吐到多远。这一口唾液吐出去不仅赢得了女友的芳心，还赢得了观众的心。抱歉，我并没觉得这部电影有多么好，但吐口水的事确实非常棒，哈哈！

I learned from childhood that spitting contests in the Wild West of America were pretty much a normal way for teenagers and cowboys to show off their manhood. And apparently hearts were indeed won that way. In fact, I understand that the volume that flew out could be so large that it may have generated the strange comment, that a son who looked just like his dad could be the “spitting image” of the dad. A good spit.
我从小就听过这样的传说：在蛮荒的美国西部，年轻人和牛仔通过吐口水比赛，炫耀他们的男子气概。显然，这种方式深得人心。我听说, 可能吐出来的口水实在太多，以至于引发一些奇怪的说法——用『像是从父亲嘴里吐出来的一样』(A spitting image) 来形容儿子跟父亲太像。

Physiology of spit. Amazingly, even the lowly spit has been found to have many physiologic benefits, including digestion of foods right in our mouth, many chemicals and factors protecting us from bacteria and viruses, and even promoting wound healing. Actually, each component of the body seems to be valuable in ways never realized before, and even the lowly spit now has its moment in the sun.
唾液的生理作用. 你可能想不到，这种看似粗鄙的体液，却发挥着重要的生理功能。唾液可以消化我们口中正在咀嚼的食物，唾液中的化学物质和细胞因子可以保护我们免受细菌和病毒的侵袭，甚至促进伤口愈合。现在的我们更加了解身体的每一部分都发挥着重要的作用，无论我们是否知悉其具体的作用机制，即使像唾液这样粗鄙的体液也是如此举足轻重.

Saliva in healing. Historically, saliva has been used in folk culture, often as an agent of healing, though we have no idea how useful it really was. When the very blind (from birth) man called out to Christ to heal him, Christ, surprisingly, used the very lowly spit, mixed with mud, on the blind man’s eyes, in an initial ritual, before he performed the actual miracle of complete healing. As a symbol of hopelessness to hope, blindness to sight, it was totally dramatic and life-changing for the formerly blind man. Love from the midst of spit.
唾液的“治疗”作用. 从历史上看，唾液在民间文化中一直被视为治疗手段，尽管我们不知道它到底有多大作用。当生来就失明的瞎子呼求耶稣医治他时，耶稣做出了令人惊讶的举动，他首先将唾液与泥巴混合涂抹瞎子的眼睛作为最初的仪式，然后才施行神迹和真正的医治。天生瞎眼的重见光明象征着从绝望走向希望，这一戏剧性的改变影响了他的一生。爱藏在唾液之中。

Modern Eye Missions. Numerous modern-day eye surgery mission teams, driven by this history, have impacted tens of thousands of people worldwide. These mercy missions usually operate in primitive places, without benefit of fancy, expensive operating rooms. No lowly spit is involved, but lowly local basic facilities are used, and the life-changing effects are clearly evident. The organization we helped to start in China, MSI, Medical Services International, which included a key Operation Eye Project to serve blind villagers in rural minority villages, is just one example. An example of love, inspired amazingly by a sight restoration account 2000 years ago.
现代眼科的使命. 在这段历史的感召下，无数现代眼科手术团队前赴后继，帮助了成千上万的人。这些公益行动通常在偏远地区实施，远离昂贵的手术室。他们没有使用粗鄙的唾液，但他们却使用着相当简陋的设备，创造着一个个显见的改变生命的奇迹。我们在中国成立的国际医疗服务组织（MSI），包括一个为少数民族农村盲人服务的手术项目。这是一个爱的例子，灵感来源于2000年前那个使盲人复明的神迹。

Spitting as insult. However, when you hear or read about someone spitting directly onto another person, you instantly recognize, that this is the opposite of love. Anywhere in the world, this is a universal insult of the lowest kind. In history, you may remember that when Christ was tortured mercilessly, in addition to the awful lashings, his tormentors also spat all over him. It was an action of utter disdain for him, and for his message of love.
被唾弃的主. 然而，当你听到或读到关于一个人直接向另一个人吐痰的文字，你马上就会意识到，这是爱的反面。在世界的任何地方，这都是一种最粗俗的侮辱形式。在历史上，你可能还记得，当基督被残酷地折磨时，除了可怕的鞭打之外，折磨他的人还在他身上吐口水。这是对他的一种完全的蔑视，这同样也是对他所传达的爱的一种蔑视。

Love and spit. Images or paintings of Christ on the cross are literally all over the world, especially in beautiful cathedrals and historic locations, in Turkey, Israel, Ethiopia, Singapore or Korea. When you look at them, try an exercise of imagining him with spit all over him. How absolutely disgusting that would be, deliberately part of the humiliation and torture of a wonderful and humble teacher, by cruel oppressors. Profound thinkers have taught that in the depths of humiliating misery and suffering of Christ, we actually find lasting love. Think about that. Love from the depths of spit…..
唾液下的爱. 基督被钉在十字架上的图像或绘画遍布世界各地，甚至是在土耳其、以色列、埃塞俄比亚、新加坡或韩国等美丽的教堂和历史遗迹中。当你看到这些图画的时候，试着想象他浑身上下被吐口水的样子。这是多么令人厌恶啊！残忍的反对者，故意让一位优秀而谦逊的拉比遭受羞辱和折磨。深刻的思想家教导说，在基督的羞辱、苦难和苦难的深处，我们确实能找到永恒的爱。想一想。这份爱藏在满身唾液的深处……

Postscript: from hate to love
In this greatest love story of the world, the lowly spit was not meant as healing agent, but misused to cruelly abuse and humiliate. That humiliation, however, became the focus of dramatically changing the world, literally a healing from blindness into sight, from cruel hate to love.
后记:从恨到爱. 在这个世界上最伟大的关于爱的故事中，粗鄙的唾液并不是用作治病的良药，而是被滥用来残忍地虐待和羞辱的工具。然而，那次羞辱却成为了戏剧性地改变世界的焦点，从瞎眼到看见，从残忍的恨到爱，真的是一种治愈。