While preparing for my first trip to China twenty years ago, George Orwell’s dark masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four, seemed a useful lens through which to view this “people’s republic.” Control in China was not nearly rigid enough to make it the embodiment of an all-embracing, authoritarian Big Brother state, but there were parallels, from the disparagement of many forms of “bourgeois” enjoyment and entertainment to periodic propaganda campaigns insisting that two plus two equaled five.
当我在二十年前准备中国之行的时候，乔治·奥维尔的黑色名著&lt;&lt;1984年&gt;&gt;看起来就是一个观察这个“人民共和国”的有用的镜片。当时中国的专制还没有严重到使其成为极度独裁的“大哥”国家的化身，但与之也有相似之处，如对各种“资产阶级”享受和娱乐活动的轻视和定期的坚持声称二加二等于五之类的宣传运动。