上海菜市场一

上海菜市场（一）

季羡林

上海有看不够数不清的高楼大厦，跑不完走不尽的大街小巷，满目琳琅的玻璃橱窗，车水马龙的繁华闹市；但是，我们的许多外国朋友却偏要去看一看早晨的菜市场。这是完全可以理解的。我们刚到上海的时候不是也想到菜市场上去看一看吗？

那还是几年前的一个早晨，在太阳刚刚升起的时候，踏着熹微的晨光，到一个离旅店不远的菜市场去。

到了临近菜市场的地方，市场的气氛就逐渐浓了起来。熙熙攘攘的人群，摩肩擦背，来来往往。许多老大娘的菜篮子里装满了蔬菜海味鸡鸭鱼肉。有的篮子里或与在摇摆着尾巴，肥鸡在咯咯地叫着。老大娘带着一脸笑意，满怀愉悦，走回家去。

Shanghai has countless eye-catching skyscrapers and innumerable streets and lanes, with beautiful shop windows and busy market quarters. Nevertheless, many foreign friends of mine would rather pay a

morning visit to the food markets there. That is understandable. Didn't we ourselves choose to go and see a food market there on our first visit to the city?

It was on an early morning of several years ago, when the sun was just coming up, that I went at the first light to see a food market near the hotel when I was staying.

The nearer I went, the more prevalent the atmosphere of the food market. The surrounding streets were thronged with shoppers milling around. The shopping baskets carried by many elderly women were filled with vegetables, seafood, chickens, ducks, fish and meat. Some fish were wagging their tails and some hens clucking. The elderly women, with a happy smile spread across their faces, were on their way home.

Once inside the market, I felt like landing in a new world. The rich assortment of hues and colors were dazzling.All goods

were kept neat and tidy and arranged in perfect order at a vegetable stall, meat stall, seafood stall, fruit stall, etc. And each stall, being specialized, showed a characteristic of its own. Take for example the vegetable stall with its display of colors: purple eggplants, white radishes, red tomatoes, greenish cabbages. It also displayed various shapes:round clumsy wax gourds, long narrow bean pods, flat wide cabbage leaves. Hence, different colors and lines merged into an organic whole showing diversity in unity. I looked here and there until my eyes became blurred, taking the vegetables stall for an oil painting or watercolor with ydistinct colors and lines done by a famous painter.