SAM ROBERTS2025年9月30日Tess Johnston, a former U.S. foreign service officer who was posted to South Vietnam during the war and documented her experience as a woman there, then spent many years in Shanghai rallying support for the preservation of its vanishing colonial architecture, died on Sept. 14 in Washington. She was 93.江似虹(Tess Johnston)曾任美国外交官，在越战期间派驻南越并记录了她作为女性在那里的经历，此后长居上海，为保护这座城市逐渐消失的租界建筑奔走呼吁。她于9月14日在华盛顿去世，享年93岁。Her death, from complications of Covid-19 in an assisted living facility, was announced by Tina Kanagaratnam, a founder of the organization Historic Shanghai. Ms. Johnston, Ms. Kanagaratnam and her husband, Patrick Cranley, started the group in 1998, aiming to help safeguard the architecture and culture of Shanghai that predates China’s Communist revolution. In recent years, much of the cityscape has given way to gleaming skyscrapers.她在一家辅助生活机构中离世，死因是新冠并发症。这一消息由“上海旧踪”(Historic Shanghai)组织的创始人之一蒂娜·卡纳加拉特南宣布。江似虹与卡纳加拉特南及其丈夫帕特里克·克兰利于1998年创办了该组织，旨在帮助保护上海在中国共产党革命之前的建筑和文化。近年来，这座城市的大部分景观都被闪亮的高楼大厦所取代。Through her books and lectures, Ms. Johnston called attention to the importance of preserving “the historic city before it changed beyond recognition,” Historic Shanghai said in a statement, adding that “she generously shared her knowledge with a generation of writers, scholars and Shanghailanders.”“上海旧踪”在一份声明中表示，江似虹通过她的书籍和讲座呼吁人们关注保护“这座历史名城，以免其面目全非”的重要性。声明还说：“她慷慨地与一代作家、学者和老上海人分享了她的知识。”Ms. Johnston, who had no formal training in historic preservation, focused on Shanghai’s eclectic colonial architecture — its early-20th-century Spanish villas, onion-domed Russian Orthodox churches and Art Deco structures — all built by expatriates from 1842, when China ceded control of the urban core to the British after the First Opium War, until World War II and the Communist takeover in 1949.并非历史保护科班出身的江似虹专注于上海兼收并蓄的租界建筑——包括其20世纪初的西班牙式别墅、洋葱头圆顶的俄罗斯东正教堂和装饰艺术风格的建筑。这些建筑是由侨居者在1842年至1949年（即从中国在第一次鸦片战争后将市中心割让给英国，直到“二战”结束和共产党接管）期间建造的。Those structures predominated in the French quarter and peppered the American, Russian and Japanese sections of the city. Ms. Johnston documented the architecture on virtually every street. With the Shanghai photographer Er Dong Qiang (also known as Deke Erh), she published “A Last Look: Western Architecture in Old Shanghai,” the first of her two dozen books on architectural history and walking tours, in 1993.这些建筑主要集中在法租界，也散布在美国、俄罗斯和日本人在该市的聚居区。江似虹记录了几乎每条街道上的建筑。她与上海摄影师尔冬强合作，于1993年出版了《最后一瞥——上海西洋建筑》(A Last Look: Western Architecture in Old Shanghai)，这是她关于建筑历史和徒步旅行的二十多本书中的第一本。江似虹著有多部有关上海建筑史的书籍，第一本出版于1993年。 Old China Hand PressShe also recorded oral histories and collected a trove of ephemera — cricket cages, phone books, tables with secret drawers. She later donated her archives to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.她还录制口述历史，并收集了大量具有时代印记的小物件——包括蟋蟀笼、电话簿和带有秘密抽屉的桌子。她后来将全部的档案资料捐赠给了斯坦福大学的胡佛研究所。Ms. Johnston, who spoke fluent Mandarin but never lost her Southern accent — she was born in North Carolina — served at the U.S. Consulate General in Shanghai from 1981 until she retired in 1996. Having grown to love the city, she then decided to remain there. By the time she returned to Washington, in 2016, few if any foreign residents of Shanghai had lived in the city longer than she had.江似虹能说一口流利的普通话，但从未失去她的美国南方口音——她出生于北卡罗来纳州。她从1981年开始在美国驻上海总领事馆任职，直至1996年退休。她渐渐爱上了这座城市，决定留在那里。到2016年返回华盛顿时，已经很少有——可能完全没有——外国人居住在上海的时间比她长。Of her first impressions of the city, Ms. Johnston once said: “I had never been to a foreign country that looked so utterly and completely Western. It was perfectly preserved, a cross between Warsaw in 1938 and Calcutta, a totally Western city with an Asian population.”谈到她对这座城市的第一印象时，江似虹曾说：“我从未去过一个看起来如此彻底和完全西化的外国城市。它被完美地保存了下来，是1938年的华沙和加尔各答的结合体，一座完全西方的城市，却有着亚洲的人口。”Because the Communist Party was more concerned with doctrine than demolition, she told The Guardian in 1997: “We have the Cultural Revolution to thank for Shanghai’s preservation. Otherwise, we would be 25 years further down the road. There would be nothing left.”她在1997年告诉《卫报》，因为中国共产党当时更关心意识形态而非拆除：“我们还得感谢文化大革命对上海的‘保护’。否则，我们会提前25年走到今天。什么都不会剩下。”Still, she said, when she arrived in Shanghai in 1981, the city’s tallest building was 22 stories, and when she left, there were three skyscrapers taller than the Empire State Building.不过她也提到，1981年抵达上海时，这座城市最高的建筑只有22层；而当她离开时，已经有三座摩天大楼比帝国大厦还要高。1970年前后的江似虹。她在2018年出版的回忆录中记录了自己在越南工作的经历。 via Historic ShanghaiLestine Rebecca Johnston was born on Sept. 17, 1931, in Charlotte, N.C., the only child of Lester G. Johnston, who sold petroleum products, and Alma (Yoder) Johnston, who oversaw the home. She grew up in Charlottesville, Va.江似虹（本名莱斯汀·丽贝卡·约翰斯顿）于1931年9月17日出生于北卡罗来纳州夏洛特市，是家中独女。父亲莱斯特·约翰斯顿从事石油产品销售，目前阿尔玛·约翰斯顿（娘家姓尤德尔）主持家务。她在弗吉尼亚州夏洛茨维尔长大。After graduating from high school, Lestine, who went by Tess, briefly worked for an advertising agency in Richmond, Va. She joined the foreign service in 1953 as a secretary after a relative had tutored her in typing and shorthand.高中毕业后，莱斯汀（她常用泰丝这个名字）曾在弗吉尼亚州里士满的一家广告公司短暂工作。在一位亲戚辅导她掌握打字和速记技能后，她于1953年以秘书的身份加入了美国外交系统。Ms. Johnston was posted to the American consulate in Düsseldorf, Germany, where she became interested in vintage buildings. She soon returned home to pursue a college degree at the University of Virginia. She wanted to major in architectural history, she said, but found that the subject was not available to undergraduate women. Instead she studied English, history and German literature, earning a bachelor’s degree in education in 1961 and a master’s in German in 1963. She also obtained a master’s degree from the College of William and Mary in 1964.她被派往德国杜塞尔多夫美国领事馆工作，在那里对老式建筑产生了兴趣。不久她回到国内，进入弗吉尼亚大学攻读学位。她说，她本想主修建筑史，但发现本科女性不能选择该科目。于是她转而学习英语、历史和德语文学，于1961年获得教育学士学位，1963年获得德语硕士学位。她还于1964年获得了威廉与玛丽学院的硕士学位。That same year, she joined the U.S. Agency for International Development in South Vietnam, where she worked as an aide to Wilbur Wilson and John Paul Vann, military advisers to the South Vietnamese Army. She documented her experiences there in “A War Away: An American Woman in Vietnam, 1967-1974,” a 2018 memoir in which she recounted witnessing the Tet offensive by the North Vietnamese and Vietcong in 1968.同年，她加入了美国国际开发署，派驻南越，担任威尔伯·威尔逊和约翰·保罗·范恩的助手，这两位是南越军队的军事顾问。她在2018年的回忆录《一场远方的战争：一个美国女人在越南，1967-1974》(A War Away: An American Woman in Vietnam, 1967-1974)中记录了她在越南的经历，书中她回忆了亲历1968年北越和越共发动的春节攻势。Ms. Johnston didn’t hesitate to visit hazardous combat zones. Mr. Vann, she wrote, “loved gutsy females,” and she recalled that when visiting dignitaries were reluctant to accompany him on helicopter tours of the battlefields, he would reply, “My secretaries go out with me all the time.”江似虹从不畏惧深入危险战区。她回忆说，范恩“喜欢有胆量的女性”，当到访的政要不愿陪同范恩乘坐直升机视察战场时，范恩会回答：“我的秘书们经常和我一起出去。”(Mr. Vann, who became disillusioned with the war and died in a helicopter crash in South Vietnam in 1972, was profiled by the former New York Times correspondent Neil Sheehan in “A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam,” which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1989.)（范恩后来对这场战争感到失望，他于1972年在南越因直升机失事身亡。前《纽约时报》记者尼尔·希恩在他的著作《闪亮的谎言：约翰·保罗·范恩与美国在越南》(A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam)中为他立传，该书于1989年获得普利策奖。）Following the war, Ms. Johnston rejoined the State Department, serving in New Delhi and Tehran before being transferred to Shanghai in 1981 and named executive secretary to the consul general. Apart from a brief stint in Paris in the late 1980s, she would remain there for 35 years.战争结束后，江似虹重新加入了国务院，先后在新德里和德黑兰任职，随后于1981年调往上海，被任命为总领事行政秘书。除了1980年代末在巴黎短暂逗留外，她接下来将在上海生活35年。2016年的江似虹，她在那一年结束在上海35年的生活，返回美国。In 1986, she was named Foreign Service Secretary of the Year for her role in coordinating President Ronald Reagan’s visit to Shanghai.1986年，她因在协调罗纳德·里根总统访问上海方面发挥的作用，被评为“年度外交秘书”。She left no immediate survivors.江似虹没有直系亲属在世。While Shanghai has designated hundreds of buildings as historic landmarks since she began her crusade, other Chinese cities were neglecting their heritage, Ms. Johnston told The New York Times in 1998.她在1998年告诉《纽约时报》，尽管上海在她开始保护运动以来指定了数百座建筑为历史地标，但其他中国城市仍在忽视它们的历史遗产。“What we learn from history,” she said, “is that we don’t learn from history.”她说：“我们从历史中学到的教训是，我们没有从历史中吸取教训。”She expressed hope, though, that her books would immortalize Shanghai’s split reputation as “the Paris of the East” and what she called the “wickedest city in the East,” associated with the drugging and kidnapping of American sailors in the 19th century.不过，她还是希望她的著作能够使上海作为“东方巴黎”和她所说的“东方最邪恶城市”（因19世纪美国水手被下药和绑架事件而来）的这种双重声誉成为永恒。“Maybe people will look at our books one day and say, ‘So that’s what China looked like,’” she said.她说：“也许有一天人们会看着我们的书说，‘原来中国那时是这个样子。’”In her mind’s eye, as well as in her books and the nearly century-old buildings she helped preserve, Shanghai’s past lived on.在她的脑海中、在她的书中，以及在她出力保护的那些近百年的建筑中，上海的过去一直活生生地存在着。“I found on arrival this perfectly preserved Western-looking city sitting here on the improbable shores of China,” she said in an interview with the Shanghai Daily newspaper in 2010.“我到达时看到了一座保存完好的西式城市，坐落在不可思议的中国海岸上，”她在2010年接受《上海日报》采访时说。“Shanghai seems to have something, some mystique that grabs foreigners and makes it hard to leave,” she added. “So I didn’t.”“上海似乎有一种魔力，抓住了外国人，让他们难以离开，”她还说。“所以我没有离开。”Sam Roberts是《纽约时报》讣告版记者，撰写有关杰出人物生平的简短传记。翻译：经雷点击查看本文英文版。