从最早的穿越蓝本《穿越时空的爱恋》，到现在的各式清宫剧：《金枝欲孽》、《宫》、《步步惊心》、《甄嬛传》等等，这无疑掀起了全民对于辫子戏还有明争暗斗的后宫戏又一轮热潮。这些偏离正剧的穿越戏也让一些导师心里不痛快，不过最不痛快莫过于我们繁忙的雍正皇帝了，四处赶场，忙里忙外，于是乎网友们突发奇想，称这些剧是《那些年，雍正追过的女孩》。

　　Visions of the 18th century

　　回顾18世纪

　　The charms of Qing TV

　　清宫剧的魅惑

　　IT'S a good time to be a Manchu on television. Costume dramas such as “Palace” and “Bu Bu Jing Xin”, which feature modern-day protagonists flung back in time to the days of the Qing emperors, rank among the most-watched programmes on China's video-sharing sites. And while these series would seem to mine every possible fish-out-of-water plot element for effect, nobody seems to question that a young woman speaking modern Mandarin would have any trouble communicating with her new Manchu boyfriend.

　　清宫剧的黄金时代来临，《宫》《步步惊心》等讲述现代人穿越回到清朝宫廷的古装电视剧，成为了中国网络视频点击率的节目。然而，这些电视剧里充满了各种不合逻辑的情节，但却没人质疑说一口现代普通话的年轻女孩能和她的满族新男友毫无障碍地交流。

　　On yet another popular programme, the breathy 76-episode epic “Hou Gong Zhen Huan Zhuan”, the warring wives and battling concubines of the Yongzheng emperor have sparked their own internet meme. Fans of the show have taken to converting short messages, microblog posts, and even government pronouncements into the elegant and stylised speech of the show's characters. Yet even with that attention to detail, all of the fighting, wailing, and backstabbing is done in a language that is perfectly understandable to the modern-day urbanites who tune in nightly on their laptops.

　　另一部热播的76集长篇连续剧《后宫甄嬛传》，情节紧凑，描述了雍正王朝期间后宫妃嫔之间如何勾心斗角、尔虞我诈，剧里的台词更受到了网络热捧。剧迷们使用剧中的“甄嬛体”发短信、写微博，甚至连政府公告也使用了这些优雅风范的文体。但是，所有的宫廷斗争、哭天抢地、背后插刀的情节都用同一种语言表达出来，这些细节问题很好地阐释了现代一族用笔记本电脑熬夜看剧的现状。

　　It's a distinction with a difference. The Manchus were a Tungusic people from beyond the Great Wall, distantly related to the Jurchens, who conquered northern China in the 12th century to form the Jin dynasty. In the early 17th century various groups who claimed descent from the Jurchen came together under the leadership of a chieftain named Nurhaci and his family, who had grown wealthy as tributaries of the Ming emperors in Beijing. They had provided the court with ginseng and furs while building their own state in what is today north-eastern China. They spoke a language decidedly different from that of the Chinese. By the time of Nurhaci his people had begun to develop a written script for their language that was derived from written Mongolian, rather than from Chinese characters (it's the one on the right, in the picture to the right, a snapshot from the Forbidden City). By the middle of the 17th century, this nation—now calling themselves the Manchus—were strong enough to challenge the decrepit Ming state. They seized their chance to sweep beyond the Great Wall in 1644 when a Ming general, Wu Sangui, agreed reluctantly to ally with the Manchus. Bandits had already stormed the capital and the last Ming Emperor had committed suicide. With few options left, General Wu turned to the Manchus to support his troops and help restore order. The Manchus readily agreed, annihilating the bandit army and then staying on for the better part of three centuries as the Qing dynasty.

　　然而当中差距相当之大。满族人是来自长城以外的通古斯民族，系属女真一脉，女真人曾在12世纪称霸中国北方，建立金朝。17世纪初，首领努尔哈赤和他的家族集聚了女真后裔的各个部落，作为明朝的附属逐渐变得强大起来。他们边向明朝进贡人参和皮毛等物品，边在现中国东北建立自己的王朝。他们说的语言与中原人的决然不同，当时，努尔哈赤命人根据蒙古文字而非汉字造出满文(下图中右侧文字为汉字，该图摄于故宫)。到了17世纪中期，这个民族——现自称为满族——已有足够的实力与腐朽不堪的明朝对抗。1644年，他们把握好时机，横扫关外，明朝总兵吴三桂勉强同意与清兵结成联盟，因为当时的寇贼已经扫荡了北京城，明朝亡国皇帝也自尽了。无奈之下，吴总兵转而投降清兵，并协助恢复秩序。满族人亦已同意消灭寇贼军队，留在关内，并建立大清王朝，为其接下来三个世纪的统治奠定了良好的基础。

　　Mark Elliott, the Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History at Harvard, is the author of “The Manchu Way”, one of the first studies in any language to use Manchu sources in the research of Qing history. Is he bothered by TV's monolingual Manchus?

　　欧立德是哈佛大学中国与亚洲内陆史Mark Schwartz教授，他的著作《满洲之路》是首部基于满文文献而成的清史研究著作，他是否也纳闷电视剧里的满人只会说一种语言?

　　I'd say there is little doubt that the Manchu emperors could all speak decent Chinese. Kangxi's was almost certainly not as good as that of his son and grandson, but he could get by just fine. Still, it seems he was more comfortable speaking Manchu, and preferred communicating with the Jesuits at court in Manchu rather than in Chinese. So the issue is not so much that the emperors are speaking Chinese, but that they are never found speaking Manchu, which they most definitely could and did do, especially in dealings with Manchu officials.

　　我认为满清皇帝能说一口正宗的汉语这点毫无疑问，可以肯定康熙的汉语还不如他的子孙好，但是他也不差。然而，他更习惯说满语，他和天主教传教士交流的时候更多使用满语而不是汉语。因此，问题并不在于皇帝说汉语，而是他们从未说过满语，他们肯定会说，也曾经这么做，特别在与满族大臣交流的时候。

　　Now we can hardly blame the writers and directors of period pieces for taking creative licence with their linguistics. Actors in Chinese film and television productions routinely speak standard Mandarin, even when portraying historical figures, such as Chairman Mao or Sun Yat-sen, who are well known for their colourful dialects and accents. Although most Chinese TV and film productions have Chinese subtitles anyway, few directors would choose to inflict an impenetrable—if historically accurate—Babel of dialects, regionalisms and dead languages on their audience. “Julius Caesar” probably wouldn't have been quite the same play had Shakespeare been forced to write all the dialogue in Latin.

　　现在，我们不能责怪历史剧的编剧和导演，他们的语言能力只能带来这种程度的创作。在中国电影和电视剧里，演员们通常都说标准的普通话，即便是如毛主席和孙中山这样众所周知带着浓厚口音的历史人物也是如此。尽管大部分中国电视节目和电影都有中文字幕，但很少导演会选择挑战难以克服的困难——如果遵照历史，那么各种各样的口音、宗教主义、死语都会困扰观众。如果莎士比亚被迫用拉丁语写所有对白，《凯撒大帝》可能就极为不同了。