Nightmares fade into lived dreams 噩梦必将结束，梦想终会抵达

My nightmares have mostly stopped. 我已经渐渐不会再做噩梦了。 I don’t know if theirs have. 不知道其他人的情况怎么样。 Everything convulses and buries me. 2008年中国“汶川大地震”的一切，都让我震撼又为之心痛。 I snap up in bed like a mousetrap. I soon realize it never actually happened — at least to me, in real, waking life. 我躺着床上，感觉就像掉进了捕鼠夹。不久后我就意识到，这一切仿佛做梦一样，至少对我来说是这样，因为在我的真实生活里没有发生过这样的事情。 It did to them. 但是这样的灾难却真实地存在于一些人的命运里。 Many were buried alive. About 90,000 didn’t survive. 在那次地震中，有很多人是被压在废墟下活活埋死的。大约有九万人罹难。 Survivors awoke to a living nightmare every morning then. But some of their life dreams have come true since. 而那些幸存者们，虽然得以获救，可是在他们接下来的生活里，每一天都像活在噩梦中一样。不过他们中也有一些人，实现了自己的梦想。 I spent about eight months in total making 15 journeys through the Wenchuan earthquake zone to chronicle Sichuan province’s recovery after the 8.0-magnitude temblor unleashed its seismic violence May 12, 2008. 2008年5月12日，中国四川省汶川县发生了8.0级地震。此后，我总共花了大概八个月的时间，十五次前往汶川地震灾区，记录震后灾区重建情况。 Ten years ago, the Longmen Mountains slung off their stone skins to blast flash floods of rock that inundated those below. Tectonic vehemence simultaneously warped buildings into real-life M.C. Escher paintings. 在2008年，龙门山爆发洪水般的泥石流。建筑物剧烈摇晃，带来的画面感就像埃舍尔（M. C. Escher）的画作呈现的一样。 Many people were interred. 有许多人都被掩埋在了泥石流中。 Five of my birthdays were spent at the Cave of 10,000 Dead in Sichuan province’s Yingxiu, since the date tends to fall around China’s Tomb Sweeping Day. 我在四川省映秀镇的“汶川地震遇难者公墓”度过了五个生日，因为我的生日就在清明节前后。 Few experiences make you think about meaning like entering into another year of life surrounded by death. That is, while watching parents claw at the earth and scream at the sky, since their children will never celebrate another birthday. 很少有经历会让你思考何为“意义”，这就像进入生命的另一个空间，而这里只有逝去的生命。也就是说，悲痛欲绝的父母们哭天抢地，而他们的孩子永远也无法庆祝人生的下一段岁月了。 Over the years, more of the women I met had babies after losing their only children. Now, these kids have birthdays. 多年以来，我在地震区遇到过的很多女性，她们在地震中失去了唯一的孩子，不过在震后数年里又有了新的孩子。 Yu Zhengyin spent 20 hours fighting to survive after she was buried. She wanted to die once rescued since her legs were lost. 于正茵（音）被压在废墟下面坚持了20个小时后最终获救。但当她得知自己失去了双腿后，万念俱灰，她也曾有过轻生的念头。 Yu learned to love life again. 但如今，她学会了重新拥抱生活。 Many people with spinal injuries wondered how they’d cope without walking. 许多脊椎受伤的人，不知道在无法走路的情况下他们应该如何处理日常生活。 They did. 但最后，他们都做到了。 Then, they told me, they wondered how they’d make love with their spouses. 他们还告诉我，他们也不知道如何和配偶行房事。 Nobody among this group in Mianyang city, at least, divorced. Some say their relationships grew. 但就算如此，在绵阳市，也没有夫妻因为这个原因而离婚。此外，还有一些人表示自己与配偶之间的感情日渐深厚。 I recall driving into the mountains beyond the miles and miles of tents and rubble until these improvised settlements were replaced with miles and miles of landslides that eventually clogged the bone-clattering road. 我回想起我开车进入山区看到的景象：先是路过绵延数英里的瓦砾以及作为临时安置点的帐篷，直到这条颠簸不平的道路最后被泥石流堵塞无法前行。 We’d seen nothing for hours but the fan-shaped ejections of rock and sand that erupted from the mountaintops. Buildings’ top floors sometimes poked out like periscopes with widows for lenses. Other buildings’ bottom floors spat waterfalls from cliffs that had suddenly appeared. 几个小时里我们都没有看到其他的事物，只有一些从山顶滑落的岩石和砂砾。建筑物也全部坍塌，只剩下顶端在这片废墟景象里，孤零零的像海面上的潜望镜。还有其他一些建筑物的底部楼层，通过山崖间的瀑布，出现在我们的视野中。 We stepped out of the car. 我们停下车，从车里出来。 Thickets of incense sticks commemorated those buried beneath like exclamation points punctuating their deaths. 一束又一束的香，是对这些埋在地下的亡灵的纪念，它们就像一个个感叹号一样，表达了对逝者的惋惜。 Tiny green question marks wriggled in a puddle. 绿色的小生物在水坑里扭动。 Tadpoles. 那是蝌蚪。 “Look,” my colleague, a local, said. “Life.” 我的一位当地同事冲我们叫了一声，“看！是一条生命”。 We laughed. And cried. 我们心酸的笑了笑，然后大家又都红了眼眶。 That was shortly after I met Xue Chen. 那次是在我遇到薛晨（音）不久后发生的事情。 I’d volunteered at his prefabricated middle school school half a year after the disaster. 在地震后，我在薛晨创办的预备中学当志愿者，工作了半年。 He said his goal was to master English and become a tour guide to meet people from around the world and travel. 薛晨说过，他的梦想是可以学好英语然后成为一名导游，这样可以去世界各地旅行还能认识很多不同的人。 Today, he leads foreigners along the ancient Silk Road. 现在，他可以带领外国游客，介绍中国古代的“丝绸之路”。 “I had a dream,” he recently texted me. 他最近给我发短信，他说“我有一个梦想”。 “I studied and worked hard … I love my job.” “我努力学习和工作，而且我热爱我的职业。” He invited me to his wedding. 他还邀请我参加他的婚礼。 Indeed, his story is one of the nightmares of a decade ago that’ve turned into dreams come true today. 其实，薛晨也只是十年前那场灾难中诸多幸存者中的一位，如今，他也终于如愿以偿的实现了自己的梦想。