大 象

前3天，分别去了北京的3个公园：紫竹院公园、地坛公园、陶然亭公园，于是留下了对北京公园的不错的回忆。

刚才看书，看到很有意思的一段，是处在美国与加拿大交界处的Nacriema人对于我们这些所谓“现代人”的刷牙的看法。写这本书的作者是Horace Miner，他从Nacriema人的视角对我们的刷牙文化做了一段很有意思的描述，粗看第一遍我还看不懂里面说了些什么，再看第二遍之后就觉得这实在太有意思了。他者的视角让很多事情变得有趣，所谓的不刷牙在我们的文化中表示了不卫生，不清洁，可是在他者的文化中并非如此。反过来一个角度想，他们对疾病的看法与我们是如此的不同。

“Horace Miner demonstrates that "attitudes about the body" have a pervasive influence on many institutions in Nacirema society.  Basically, he uses this entire article as a way to describe American
rituals from an outsider's point of view.   If you understand that "Nacirema" is “American" and re-read the essay, it will perhaps be more apparent to you how other cultures could view our own.”

原文：

The daily body ritual performed by everyone includes a mouth-rite. Despite the fact that these people are so punctilious about care of the mouth, this rite involves a practice which strikes the uninitiated stranger as revolting. It was reported to me that the ritual consists of inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain magical powders, and then moving the bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures.（Nacriema人认为，我们的刷牙是一个仪式。这种仪式容易激起人的反感情绪，因为现代人用了一种夸张的姿势将毛茸茸的棒子捅进自己的口腔中，然后挤入一些魔幻药粉。）
In addition to the private mouth-rite, the people seek out a holy-mouth-man once or twice a year. These practitioners have an impressive set of paraphernalia, consisting of a variety of augers, awls, probes, and prods. The use of these items in the exorcism of the evils of the mouth involves almost unbelievable ritual torture of the client. The holy-mouth-man opens the client's mouth and, using the above mentioned tools, enlarges any holes which decay may have created in the teeth. Magical materials are put into these holes. If there are no naturally occurring holes in the teeth, large sections of one or more teeth are gouged out so that the supernatural substance can be applied. In the client's view, the purpose of these ministrations is to arrest decay and to draw friends. The extremely sacred and traditional character of the rite is evident in the fact that the natives return to the holy-mouth-men year after year, despite the fact that their teeth continue to decay.（此外，他们还寻找Holy-Mouth（牙医）去治疗他们的牙齿。这个Holy-Mouth呢，他有一些带有螺旋等物件的怪异设备，他让他的顾客张开嘴，并使用超物质的成分去弥补嘴中产生的洞隙。顾客年复一年来看他的holy-mouth，不管他们的牙齿越来越decay）。

国庆献礼。