在中國演藝圈打拼的美國人

When Jonathan Kos-Read moved to Beijing in 1997 he became an English teacher or, as he describes it, “one of the burger flippers of globalisation”.

1997年，當喬納森•考斯-瑞德(Jonathan Kos-Read)移居北京時，他成了一名英語教師，或者用他的話來說，“全球化時代的打工仔”。

Today Kos-Read is a movie and television personality in China better known by his stage name Cao Cao. For the past 15 years, the US actor has performed in some of the country’s biggest blockbusters alongside China’s most loved actors.

如今，考斯-瑞德是中國的一名電影和電視人物，他的藝名“曹操”更爲人所熟知。在過去15年間，這名美國演員在中國一些最有名的大片裏扮演角色，合作的都是中國最受歡迎的演員。

“I would see white guys on TV occasionally and they were awful,” says the 41-year-old. “They couldn’t act, they had bad Chinese, and they looked funny. I thought, you know, I could do better than them. My Chinese was pretty good, I’d studied acting and I was cognitive of the fact that I had a look that Chinese people associate with the regular American guy.”

“我在電視上偶爾能看到白人男性，而且他們都不怎麼樣，”41歲的考斯-瑞德稱，“他們不會演戲，中文很差，而且看起來很滑稽。我當時想，你知道的，我可以比他們做得更好。我的中文很棒，我學過表演，我也知道我長着一張中國人會聯想到典型美國人的臉。”

His big break came in 1999 when he spotted an ad for a western actor in an English-language magazine. He won a part in the movie, Looking for Trouble, and was promised Rmb3,000 ($482). Yet, the actor never received his cash: the producers claimed they had “run out of money”. Despite this, the film give him guanxi (Mandarin for “connections”) in the Chinese film industry, whose box office is second only to that of the US. In 2013, box office returns in China reached Rmb21.7bn, up 48 per cent from the previous year.

1999年，他迎來了自己的大轉機，當時他在一本英文雜誌上看到了一則招聘西方演員的廣告。他贏得了電影《沒事找事》(Looking for Trouble)中的一個角色，被許以3000元人民幣（合482美元）的報酬。不過，他從未拿到過那筆錢：製片方聲稱他們“沒錢了”。儘管如此，這部電影讓他在中國電影業擁有了一些關係，這裏的票房僅次於美國，排在全球第二位。2013年，中國電影票房收入達到217億元人民幣，同比增長48%。

Kos-Read’s latest film — an action-packed, zombie movie called Ghouls — involved him shooting for a month in the wilds of Inner Mongolia. However, he is best known for hosting Here Comes Cao Cao on Beijing TV, where he asks people to do stupid things on camera, and for his role as a romantic interest in the popular TV series Beijing Love Story.

考斯-瑞德最新的電影是一部名爲《鬼吹燈》(Ghouls)的殭屍動作片，涉及他的鏡頭將在內蒙古的荒野拍攝1個月。不過，他最出名的還是主持北京衛視的《曹操來了》（他讓人們在鏡頭前做傻事），以及在觀衆喜愛的電視連續劇《北京愛情故事》中扮演的一個浪漫對象。

Kos-Read has always acted: he attended a high school in Los Angeles that specialised in the arts before switching to study molecular biology at New York University. When he first arrived in Beijing he made a pact to speak nothing but Chinese for the first four months. It was “lonely because you talk like a five-year-old,” he recalls.

考斯-瑞德從小開始表演：他在洛杉磯就讀的高中以藝術爲特長，進入紐約大學(New York University)後轉向學習分子生物學。剛來到北京時，他跟自己約定在前4個月內只說中文。他回憶稱，那感覺“是孤獨的，因爲你說起話來就像5歲的孩子。”

He is now fluent in Mandarin, and has a Chinese wife, Li Zhiyin, with whom he has two daughters; Roxanne, seven, and Persephone, two. Both girls are bilingual (Roxanne does simultaneous translation for her extended American family).

現在，他的普通話很流利，而且有個中國妻子——李之茵，夫婦倆有兩個女兒：7歲的羅克珊(Roxanne)和2歲的珀耳塞福涅(Persephone)。兩個女孩都說雙語（羅克珊爲她的美國親戚擔當同聲傳譯）。

Kos-Read loves the fact that his daughters are growing up in “this complex soup of international people”. It is a world away from his own childhood in a tree-lined suburb of LA. “We played football in the streets and I thought the whole world was like that when I was seven,” he says.

考斯-瑞德很喜歡他的女兒成長於“國際人士雜湯”的現實。這個世界與他在綠樹成蔭的洛杉磯郊區的童年很不一樣。“那時我們在街上踢球，在我7歲時，我以爲全世界都是那樣的，”他稱。

The family home, a two-storey penthouse overlooking a lake in Beijing, is Kos-Read’s second property. He bought his first in 2001 when he received a cheque for Rmb150,000 — then the single largest sum of money he had ever earned. His wife, “a conservative Beijing girl”, convinced him to invest: they bought an apartment that year for just Rmb300,000 in cash. Since then the property market has boomed.

這家人在北京的家是位於頂層的兩層複式樓，俯瞰着一汪湖水，這是考斯-瑞德的第二套房。2001年，他收到了一筆15萬元人民幣的支票，買了第一套房。這是他當時賺過的最大一筆錢。他的妻子——“一個傳統的北京姑娘”，說服他去投資：當年他們僅用了30萬元人民幣就買了一套公寓。自那以來，北京的樓市已大幅上漲。

It is a long way from where Kos-Read started in the late 1990s. Back then, across the street from his apartment, “it was just potato fields all the way until the next city”. For fun he used to go to a nightclub called The Freezer, while another popular disco was nicknamed “Nightmare”. Today the “buildings are taller, the streets are wider, the cars are nicer, but the people are still the same,” he says. “Its like this enormous city has grown up around people and it’s always a continual surprise to them.”

現在的北京與考斯-瑞德在上世紀90年代末剛開始到這裏的樣子相距甚遠。那時，他住的公寓馬路對面“只有土豆田，一直延伸至鄰近的城市”。作爲娛樂活動，他曾去一家名爲“The Freezer”的夜店，還有另外一家綽號爲“Nightmare”的高人氣的迪斯科舞廳。如今，“建築更高，街道更寬，汽車更炫，但人還是一樣，”他稱，“感覺就像是這座巨大的城市在人們周圍逐漸成長，總是不斷地給人們帶來意外。”

The movie industry, likewise, has been transformed. In the early years it was “hard to get a good cinematographer, a good director, a good art director, a good prop guy”. Yet an ever-growing audience has attracted Hollywood, which is eager to ride the great Chinese movie wave (and attract the millions of movie-goers). “Talented people go where the money is. And so Chinese films and movies look better and more polished and more professional.”

電影業也發生了轉變。早些年，“很難找到優秀的電影攝像師、好導演、出色的藝術總監、出色的道具師”。不過，不斷壯大的觀衆羣體吸引了好萊塢的注意，後者迫不及待地加入中國宏大的電影浪潮（試圖吸引數以百萬計的觀影者）。“財富在哪，人才就在哪。所以，中國影片和電影也越來越好看，製作日益精良，也更加專業。”

Censorship prevails, however. For this reason, Kos-Read prefers doing web serials which enjoy more free rein and attract a younger, hipper crowd than TV. In a Sex and the City-style web-based show, The Intimate Diary of Little Miss Lightning, which came out earlier this year, he plays a bisexual fashion designer. Sex scenes are included — something unheard of on tightly controlled state-run TV.

然而，電影審查仍很普遍。正因如此，考斯-瑞德更喜歡演網絡劇，尺度更自由，而且觀衆羣體比電視劇更年輕、時尚。在去年初面世的風格類似於《慾望都市》的網絡劇《蕾女心經》(The Intimate Diary of Little Miss Lightning)中，他出演一個雙性戀時尚設計師。劇中包含性愛場景，這在受到嚴格管控的官方電視臺是聞所未聞的。

Harder still is breaking out of the token “white guy” role. In 2005 Kos-Read had a part in Operation No Borders, a TV series about Chinese police officers who travel to the US. One scene, shot on location in America, featured a black drug dealer played by a well-spoken British actor. Kos-Read remembers the director yelling in Chinese “cut, cut, cut” and saying to Kos-Read: “Tell the actor he needs to be more black!” The director wanted a cartoonish, “ghetto” portrayal of African-American culture.

不過，更難的是打破“白人男子”角色的框框。2005年，考斯-瑞德在一部講述中國警察前往美國的電視劇《無國界行動》中出演一個角色。在美國實地拍攝的一個場景中，一名談吐得體的英國演員飾演一個黑人毒販。考斯-瑞德記得當時導演用中文吼道“停、停、停”，並告訴考斯-瑞德：“跟那個演員說，他得更像黑人！”這位導演想要刻畫的是漫畫式的、“貧民窟”樣的非裔美國人文化。

This reduction to stereotypes is because scriptwriters rarely come into contact with real foreigners “so they invent a lot of stuff that foreigners do,” says Kos-Read. “The plot . . . hinges on [the character] doing something stupid and ridiculous.”

這種刻板印象是因爲編劇很少接觸真正的外國人，“所以他們臆想了很多外國人會做的事，”考斯-瑞德稱，“劇情讓角色做一些愚蠢和荒謬的事情。”

That is changing, slowly. Kos-Read remains often a token character but in recent years he has had parts that are more complex. And he insists that he has no plans to leave China.

這一點正在慢慢改變。考斯-瑞德仍然經常出演公式化的角色，但近年他飾演了一些比較複雜的角色。他堅稱，自己沒有離開中國的計劃。

“The best thing about working in China as an actor is working,” he says matter-of-factly. “I mean, let’s be realistic. In LA there are 10,000 guys who are just like me. I wanted to be an actor since I was a little kid and I’ve made a good living doing it. And so whenever I’m cold, I’m sad, I’m unhappy with the script or thinking how difficult it is to get paid, I can always say well, you are working doing something you love.”

“在中國當演員最好的事就是有工作，”他就事論事地說道，“我的意思是，我們應該現實些。洛杉磯有成千上萬像我一樣的人。我從小就想當演員，我也因此得到了很好的生活。所以，每當我受到冷落，感到傷心，對劇本感到不滿，或者想到拿到報酬會有多難時，我總是可以說，嗯，你畢竟在做自己熱愛的工作。”

Still, he confesses: “I betray my art every day for a paycheck. There is some of that in any industry. But it gets hard on the soul.”

不過，他坦言：“我每天都爲了收入而出賣自己的演技。每個行業都會有這種問題。但這會讓靈魂受傷。”