2019年经济学人 著名华裔建筑大师贝聿铭(4)（在线收听）

In 1974 he managed to return; later he built, for the government, a hotel complex at Fragrant Hill outside Beijing. He seized on this as a chance to wean the Chinese away from their drab eastern European blocks and back to the domestic traditions they had lost. But their break with the past had been too definite; they now wanted to copy the West, and did not care for the old motifs he combined with his geometry and glass.

1974年，他回到了中国，后来他为政府建造了位于北京郊外香山的一家综合酒店。他抓住了这个机会，让中国人摆脱他们单调乏味的东欧街区，回归他们已经失去的国内传统。但是他们与过去的决裂太明确了，他们现在想要模仿西方，他不喜欢与几何和玻璃结合在一起的旧图案。

He did better with the Bank of China Tower for the bank his father had run, where his shaft of 70 slim, dark storeys, criss-crossed with white lines, was based on the angular growth of bamboo. Visiting shrines in the mountains once in childhood, he thought he heard the bamboo growing. Those mountains, like the gardens, led him to seek tranquillity in the buildings he designed. They sometimes seemed too exciting for that: sweeping stairways, soaring glass, razor-sharp angles,scintillating slopes.

他的中国银行大厦的设计做得更好，因为他父亲曾经营那家银行，这个修长、底部暗黑、有着纵横交错的白线的70层大楼，是基于竹子的角形生长设计的。有一次，他去山里的神祠，他觉得自己听到了竹子的生长。那些山峰就像花园一样，使他在自己设计的建筑里寻找宁静。它们有时似乎太令人兴奋了，以至于无法做到这一点：大规模的楼梯、高耸的玻璃、锋利的角度、闪闪发光的斜坡。

But at their heart lay those perfect forms, triangle, circle and square. Water often lay nearby, offering both transparency and reflection. A pyramid with water round it, as at the Louvre, was the very essence of serenity: harmony of structure and spirit. It might take time to make its case; architecture was a slow art. But as it moved from newness to permanence, he felt beamingly sure that Parisians would agree with him.

但在他们的中心却有着那些完美的形状，三角形、圆形和正方形。水通常就在附近，既透明又有倒影。像卢浮宫一样，金字塔周围环绕着水，那是宁静的精髓：结构与精神的和谐。这可能需要时间来证明。建筑是一种慢艺术。但当它从新鲜走向永恒时，他非常确信巴黎人会同意他的观点。