七年后，纪念一个曾经鲜活美好的灵魂|章莹颖_新浪财经

导读

2017年6月30日，美国联邦调查局宣布，已逮捕一名涉嫌绑架中国访问学者章莹颖的27岁男子，并称相信章莹颖已经死亡。7年后的今天，谨以此文纪念一个曾经鲜活美好的灵魂。

2018年8月一个炎热的日子，侯霄霖站在位于北京西北部的一栋爬满藤蔓的红砖宿舍楼的二楼窗户下，抬头望着。

“我通常就是站在这里来叫她下来的。”他说。

章莹颖 (1990-2017) 照片于2017年5月拍摄于美国伊利诺伊州一个公园内。受访者供图

侯霄霖说的是他已故的女友章莹颖，她于2016年到2017年初住在这里。

2017年4月，章莹颖前往美国伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校攻读博士学位。就在她到达两个月后的6月9日，她被布伦特·克里斯滕森（Brendt Christensen）绑架、强奸并残忍杀害。

On a sweltering August day in 2018, Hou Xiaolin stood below a second-story window of a vine-covered redbrick dormitory building in northwestern Beijing and looked up.
"This is where I would come and call out to her," he said.
Hou was speaking of his late girlfriend Zhang Yingying, who lived there from 2016 to 2017. In April 2017 Zhang, a research assistant for a scientist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, left for the US to study for a doctoral degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. There, on June 9, just two months after she arrived, she was abducted, raped and brutally killed by a man named Brendt Christensen.

布伦特·克里斯滕森

从那时起直到2019年7月凶手最终被判处终身监禁，侯霄霖经历了炼狱：他曾经在希望与绝望的交替中进行着大海捞针般的搜寻，又在开庭前忍受了无法忍受的漫长等待；在法庭上面对凶手时他不得不压抑住自己随时可能喷涌而出的愤怒；而在整个寻求正义的过程中，他时时感受到几乎要将他摧毁的无助与愤懑。这些都是他不曾想过的——曾经，他只想和她共度余生。

然而，在章颖莹去世一年多之后的那个2018年夏日的下午，侯霄霖望向楼上的脸上没有任何他正在经受着的痛苦的痕迹，惟有平静的柔和，那是一种经历风暴后的平静，是一种人在回忆微不足道的暖心细节时所无法不流露出的柔和。

“偶尔我会来这里给她收收衣服。”侯霄霖指着楼下系在两棵树之间晾晒的衣物说。

From then until July 2019, when he was sentenced to life in prison, Hou had been through hell: he had gone on a needle-in-the-haystack search, clinging hopelessly to hope, had endured an unbearable wait, subdued all-consuming anger and prevailed over crippling frustration seeking justice for the woman he had planned to marry.
Yet on that summer afternoon in 2018, a little more than one year after Zhang's death, any signs of the toll that a long, continuing legal battle had taken on Hou were absent from his face. There was only softness — the kind one exudes reminiscing on what may seem like trifling details of life but that are nevertheless somehow reassuring.
"Occasionally, I would come here to pick up clothes for her," said Hou, pointing to laundry hanging from a clothesline tied between trees.

2019年7月18日，在克里斯滕森被判处终身监禁后，侯霄霖对等待的媒体发表了讲话。受访者供图

在摄像机另一侧聆听这一切的是施佳妍（Jiayan “Jenny” Shi）。她是美国西北大学（Northwestern University）新闻学院的硕士毕业生。从2017年7月到2019年9月，施佳妍与她的搭档孙仕凛一直在跟拍章莹颖的家人。

从美国到中国，300余个小时的拍摄，记录了那些最初的希望，不断的失望，最终的绝望和绝望之后噬骨的痛苦和思念。所有的努力最终化为一部98分钟的纪录片《寻找莹颖》（Finding Yingying），该片在2020年在三月份获得美国西南偏南电影节（South by Southwest）评审委员会大奖。

Listening to this on the other side of a video camera was Shi Jiayan. With a master's degree from the journalism school of Northwestern University, Shi, with her partner Sun Shilin, followed Hou and members of Zhang's family between July 2017 and September 2019, shooting 300 hours of footage that was eventually edited down to 98 minutes in a documentary titled Finding Yingying.
In March 2020, Finding Yingying, Shi's debut feature documentary, was awarded the Special Jury Prize for Breakthrough Voice at the renowned South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival, an annual celebration of independent film and music in Austin, Texas.

施佳妍（右）和孙仕凛——两人在2017年7月至2019年8月期间跟随章颖莹的家人两年，拍摄了300小时的素材。受访者供图

"To the family, the search hasn't come to an end and probably never will," says Shi, 27, alluding to the fact that Zhang's body, believed to be lying a few meters underground in a private landfill, is unlikely to be recovered.
"But to me, Yingying feels more like a friend than a victim, someone whose struggles, aspirations and self-doubt I share," says Shi, who has lent her own voice to the documentary by reading out excerpts from Zhang's diligently kept diary, words that anchor the movie emotionally and allow it to "forgo the whodunit trope and the lurid violence that characterizes the true crime genre", to quote one critic.

“对莹颖的亲人们来说，寻找还没有结束，可能永远也不会结束。”施佳妍说。根据警方的推断，章的尸体在其被害几天后就在不知情的情况下被运送到了私人垃圾填埋场，并在那里和普通垃圾一起被处理掉了。

“然而对我来说，她更像是一个朋友，而不单单是一个受害者，她曾经内心的挣扎、怀抱的理想和期许甚至是自我怀疑都让我产生了强烈的共鸣。”施继续说到。在记录片中，章的日记中的一些段落由施佳妍平静的语调读出，为整部片子铺上了一层情感的底色。用一位影评人的话来说，《寻找莹颖》“摒弃了凶案题材纪录片的套路和血腥暴力”。

2017年5月，章莹颖在美国内布拉斯加州进行野外研究。受访者供图

“Life is too short to be ordinary (生命太短暂，不能甘于平凡)。” 章在2017年6月1日的最后一篇日记中用英文写道，那是在她去世前八天。

2017年6月29日，章失踪20天后——彼时人们还不确定知道她已经遇害，伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校为她举办了一场音乐会上，在事发后匆匆从北京赶来美国的侯霄霖参加了这场音乐会，他在简短的发言中引用了爱人的这句话。

在另外一篇日记中，章描述了她在美期间一次冒雨独自外出走在街上的情景: “......只有身边一辆辆车飞过又飞过，心里想：‘车里一定很温暖......’”

"Life is too short to be ordinary," wrote Zhang in her final diary entry on June 1, eight days before her death.
On June 29, 2017, that sentence was cited by Hou at a concert held in Zhang's name at UIUC, where the 26-year-old had been doing field research on crop photosynthesis.
Describing her venturing-out amidst a downpour during her brief stay at UIUC, another, earlier entry is drenched in loneliness: "As cars were whizzing by, I was thinking: it must be very warm inside there..."

2017年6月12日，在章莹颖失踪三天后，警方在停车场的监控录像上发现了她此前的行踪，录像显示她在校园内上了一辆黑色的土星阿斯特拉轿车。

“现在我们知道，这辆车是克里斯滕森的。事实上，他当天上午试图诱骗另一位年轻女子上车，在未达目的后他遇到了站在路边的莹颖，并谎称自己是一名警察。”施佳妍说。“莹颖当天原本是要与一位租房中介见面，时间很紧张，而她又不想迟到，情急之下，轻信了克里斯滕森给她搭便车的话。”

On June 12, 2017, three days after Zhang was reported missing by Miao Guofang and Liyan, two of her fellow researchers in UIUC's Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Studies, police located security camera footage from a parking garage that showed her getting into a black Saturn Astra on the university campus.
"Now we know that Christensen, who had failed in his attempt to lure another young lady into his car that same morning, was disguising himself as a cop," Shi says. "Moreover, Yingying was already running late for an appointment she made with a rental manager. She didn't want to be late."

施佳妍和孙仕凛是在一个手机聊天群里认识的，这个群是在章失踪后由当地的中国学生组建的，目的就是提供任何他们可以提供的帮助。孙仕凛当时刚刚从厄巴纳-香槟分校物理专业本科毕业不久，并且正对电影摄影感兴趣。当听说施想记录整个事件的想法后，两人一拍即合。

上面提到的那场音乐会上是两个人第一次将想法付诸实施。当时他们并不知道，他们的摄像机捕捉到的参加人群中就包括克里斯滕森和他的女友特拉·布利斯（Terra Bullis）。那个时候的布利斯已经和警方有过接触，并且已经在配合警方对克里斯滕森进行监听。

巧合的是，当时克里斯滕森刚刚从厄巴纳-香槟分校的物理系获得硕士学位，也就是说，他和孙仕凛曾经在同一个系读书，虽然两人并不相识。

当侯霄霖在音乐会现场弹唱起一首大学时为章颖莹写的歌曲时，会场一片沉寂，克里斯滕森拿起布利斯的手机，在屏幕上打出“是我”（"It was me"），接着又打出“她消失了......永远” （"she is gone ...FOREVER"）。

Shi and Sun met on a mobile chat group formed as a direct result of Zhang's going missing in mid-June, by mostly Chinese students in the Chicago-Champaign area who wanted to help. Sun, a physics student who had just discovered his interest in cinematography at the end of a four-year bachelor's program in UIUC, was instantly drawn to Shi's idea of filming the fast-unraveling event.
The concert was the first event Sun had filmed. Little did he know at the time that among those whom his camera had captured was Christensen and his girlfriend Terra Bullis, who by that time had been wearing a wire for the FBI for nearly two weeks. Christensen had just graduated with a master's degree from UIUC's physics department, the same one as Sun had been attending.
As Hou brought an aching silence to the venue with a guitar rendition of a song he wrote for Zhang, Christensen took Bullis' mobile and typed the words "It was me", followed by "she is gone ...FOREVER".

克里斯滕森（左中侧面者）和当时的女友布利斯（中间辫发者）参加了2017年6月20日为章莹颖举行的游行活动和之后的音乐会。受访者供图

克里斯滕森接着向布利斯详细描述了他是如何先在卧室里对章进行了性侵和折磨，然后把她拖进浴缸，在那里用棒球棒“尽可能地猛击她”。凶手的语气中是对自己凶残的炫耀和对章顽强抵抗所表现出的不可思议，后者在他用刀刺向她脖子的瞬间还伸出手抓住了他的手。

“她就是不肯屈服。”这名杀人犯说。根据他的说法，他最终将章的头割了下来。

In graphic detail Christensen described to Bullis how he tormented and sexually assaulted her in his bedroom, before carrying her into a bathtub, where he hit her "as hard as he could with a baseball bat". Despite his seemingly uncontrollable urge to brag about the atrocity, Christensen expressed disbelief at the valiant defense of his victim, who even "reached up to grab" his hand as he stabbed her neck.
"She just didn't give up," said the killer, who eventually decapitated her.

美籍华人王志东是为章莹颖的家人在美国提供法律服务的两名律师之一，在章失踪8天后的2017年6月17日，他在机场见到了从国内老家赶来的章父以及章的姨妈和未婚夫侯霄霖。（由于健康原因，章母直到8月才在儿子的陪同下抵美。）

在接下来的两年中，王志东一直与章家人并肩作战。“考虑到章莹颖的尸体下落不明，如果不是布利斯秘密对他们的对话进行了录音并且之后在法庭上出庭作证，克里斯滕森很难被定罪。”王志东说。

One of the Zhang family's two lawyers, Wang Zhidong, partner of the Chicago law firm Wang, Leonard & Condon, was at the airport to meet Zhang's father, maternal aunt and Hou when they flew in on June 17, 2017, eight days after Zhang went missing. (For health reasons Zhang's mother was able to come to the US only in August, accompanied by her son, Zhang's younger brother.)
For the next two years Wang was with the family every step of the way as they negotiated the country's daunting legal labyrinth, heavy-hearted. "Given that the whereabouts of Yingying's body still remain unknown, it would have been extremely hard to convict Christensen if it was not for the secret recordings of their dialogues made by Bullis, who also turned up to testify in court when Christensen went on trial in June 2019," he said.

王志东（左）与章莹颖的父亲在2019年7月18日法庭宣判后见当地媒体。受访者供图

2017年6月30日，音乐会的第二天早晨，克里斯滕森被捕。那天下午，警方召集章家人到办公室，告诉他们章莹颖被认为已经死亡。

那是施佳妍和孙仕凛第一次见到了章的亲人们。这个消息显然对他们造成了巨大的打击——父亲章荣高看起来异常憔悴，大部分时间他都沉默不语。而章的姨妈叶丽琴则不停地说“莹颖应该还活着”。“如果她死了，她应该到我的梦里来啊！”她说。

On June 30, 2017, the morning after the concert, Christensen was arrested. That afternoon the police summoned the family to their office, where they were told that Zhang was believed to be dead.
That was when Shi and Sun met the Zhang family for the first time in the university dormitory where they stayed. The news had clearly taken its toll — the father, Zhang Ronggao, looked haggard and was for the most part silent. On the other hand, Ye Liqin, the maternal aunt, was still speaking of the possibility of "Yingying being alive". "If she's dead, she would have appeared in my dreams," she said.

2018年8月，在前往北京探望侯霄霖之前，施佳妍去了章莹颖位于福建一个小山城的家里。章的书房兼卧室在一座略显简陋的四层砖房的顶楼，离鸡舍只有几步之遥。

在她的镜头下，章莹颖的房间还保持着原样：窗前的书桌上，一盏台灯和一堆奖状积满了灰尘，那是作为学生的章莹颖曾经的努力和辉煌的见证。在这间屋里，年少的莹颖常常学习到深夜。偶尔，她可能会抬起头，目光触及床头的那张世界地图。

那是一个她曾经努力去探索的世界。从家乡出发，高中毕业的她来到850公里外繁华的大都市广州，进入了中国顶尖大学之一——中山大学，并在那里遇到了她的同班同学侯霄霖。

“莹颖的母亲从未学过读书认字，而莹颖就是她的眼睛和耳朵。”王志东说。“如果她当初像镇上其他普通女孩一样，囿于周遭狭小的世界中，那她就无法为母亲打开那扇窗。”

In August 2018, before visiting Hou in Beijing, Shi went to Zhang's home in a small mountainous town in East China's Fujian province. Zhang's study-bedroom was on the top floor of the family's sparsely decorated and slightly rundown four-story brick house, a few steps away from the chicken coop.
The room was kept as it had always been: on a writing desk in front of the window, a lamp and a pile of award certificates, proof of Zhang's striving for excellence as a student, was collecting dust. A teenage Zhang once sat there studying into the wee hours. Once in a while she might have looked up and peered into the world map covering an entire wall on her right side.
It's a world she had set out to explore, as she journeyed from her native town to the bustling coastal city of Guangzhou 850 kilometers away to attend one of China's top universities, where she met Hou, her classmate.
"Yingying was the eyes and ears for her mother, who has never learned to read or write," said Wang, the family lawyer. "If she had lived the life of an average girl in town she wouldn't have been able to open that window for her mother, trapped in her own shuttered existence."

章莹颖生前的书房和卧室。受访者供图

然而，当施佳妍在2018年8月探访这个家庭时，她看到的只是一对心碎的父母和他们破碎的生活：章母叶丽凤躺在床上，用手反复摩挲着曾与女儿共用的草席。

当被问及章莹颖和她的父母有什么共同特点时，孙仕凛回答道：“单纯。”

Yet when Shi visited the family in August 2018 she saw only broken lives. The camera rolled when an inconsolable Ye lay in bed rubbing her hand against the woven straw mat she once shared with her daughter.
Asked what trait he thought Zhang had in common with her parents, Sun said, "Trusting."

克里斯滕森的审判于2019年6月开始，直到这时，有关章莹颖死亡的可怕细节才被公之于众。

据侯霄霖说，虽然FBI早在2017年就通过克里斯滕森当时的女友布利斯对其进行的秘密录音获取了这些细节，直到2018年底，章家的律师才通过电子邮件将这些细节告诉侯，而他们那时候也刚刚从联邦检察官那里获取了这些信息。

由于一直找不到合适的方式把这个消息告诉章的父母，侯在开庭前特意找到了庭审翻译。“我告诉他们不要把那些可怕的细节用中文翻译出来，莹颖的爸妈会受不了。但是没多久，莹颖的爸爸就知道了一切——美国和中国的媒体上到处都是。”

参加了整个庭审的施佳妍回忆说：“从那天起，他变得更加沉默，长时间地坐在临时住所的台阶上不停地抽烟。偶尔他也会叹一口气，似乎是在释放胸中郁积的苦痛和愤懑。”

The trial of Christensen began in June 2019 and that’s when the gruesome details of Zhang's death came to light.
"Although the FBI must have obtained those details through Terra's audio surveillance back in 2017, it was only toward the end of 2018 when our lawyers emailed me about what they had just been told by federal prosecutors about Yingying's death," Hou said.
Unable to find a way to break the news to Zhang's parents, Hou alerted the volunteer translators before the court opening. "I told them to bypass the details," he said. "But it didn't take long before Yingying's father knew — it was everywhere in the American and Chinese media."
"He became more silent from that day on," said Shi, who sat in the courtroom every day with Sun throughout the trial. "For long hours he sat on the stoop of the family's temporary residence, smoking nonstop. Occasionally he would let out a sigh, as if to release some of the anger and anguish that had been brooding inside his chest," Shi says.

庭审期间，章莹颖的亲人们被告知，据克里斯滕森自己说，他将章的尸体装进垃圾袋，扔进他公寓楼外的垃圾桶里，而垃圾桶内的东西则在不久后被运送到一个私人垃圾填埋场。如果克里斯滕森说的是事实的话——即使到现在这一点仍然无法被确认，那么到2018年底的时候，章的尸体至少已经被30英尺的填土所覆盖了。

Also during the trial, the Zhang family were told that "after killing Zhang Yingying, Christensen placed her bodily remains into garbage bags in the dumpster immediately outside his apartment building", to quote Steve Beckett, the family's other lawyer.
"The contents of the dumpster were taken to a private landfill. It was determined that by the time Christensen's attorneys disclosed his statement to the federal authorities (in late 2018), the content of the dumpsters that contains Yingying's remains would have been covered by at least 30 feet of fill," Beckett told media after the trial.

伊利诺伊州皮奥里亚（Peoria）法院外的场景——此案在美国和中国都引起了强烈的媒体关注。受访者供图

克里斯滕森的前女友布利斯提出希望在审判结束后与章莹颖的家人们私下见一面，她的要求被满足了。为了这次见面，高中就学习中文的她提前和施佳妍做了一些练习。在现场，布利斯用中文向章父章母朗读了一封信她写给他们的信。

“在我按照FBI的要求对凶手秘密录音的那段时间里，我是靠着你们对女儿的爱来战胜内心的恐惧的。”布利斯说道。当章母告诉她，“你很勇敢，并且和我女儿一样善良”时，布利斯如释重负地泪流满面。

Upon her own request, Bullis sat down with the Zhang family at the end of the trial. Having practiced with Shi, Bullis, who learned Chinese in high school, read a letter to Zhang's parents in Chinese.
"I drew on your love for Yingying to fight off the terror I constantly felt doing what I was doing for the FBI," said Bullis, who burst into tears with relief when Yingying's mother told her that "you are brave and just as kind as my daughter".

2019年7月18日，30岁的克里斯滕森因绑架致章莹颖死亡被判处终身监禁且永远不能假释。走出法庭，侯霄霖用英语对等候着的媒体说：“对我来说，今天的结果似乎在告诉我，一个人可以用各种残忍的方法去杀死一个无辜的人而不需要为此付出生命的代价，我个人永远不会同意这样的结论。”

On July 18, 2019, Christensen, convicted of kidnapping resulting in the death of Zhang Yingying, was sentenced 30-year-old Christensen to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Walking out of the courtroom, Hou told the waiting media in English: "For me, the result today seems to tell me that I can kill anyone with all kinds of cruel methods and I will not need to die for it. Me, myself, will never agree with that."

美国伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校校园内章莹颖的纪念碑。受访者供图

孙仕凛说，他希望《寻找莹颖》能够让人们不再以“刻板印象”来看待在美的中国留学生。“在美国主流媒体中，海外华人学生常常被视为一个整体，一个数字，而他们中的个体往往得不到应有的关注，特别是在伊利诺伊州这样一个高失业率引发一些当地人对移民和留学生持有敌对态度的地方。”他说。

“在上克里斯滕森车的几分钟前，莹颖刚刚错过了一辆公交车，公交车上的摄像仪的记录显示，莹颖在车后面奔跑着，试图追上……”

For Sun, the documentary represents an effort to "look beyond the stereotype". "In American mainstream media we overseas Chinese students often appear as a group, a number, whose individual members are seldom given the attention they deserve. This is especially true in a central state like Illinois, where high unemployment has antagonized some against immigrants and foreign students."
Minutes before Zhang got into Christensen's car, she failed to catch a bus. A camera on that bus shows her running behind it...

2019年审判结束后，侯霄霖就回到了中国，他在广东一所偏远的山区小学里当了两年志愿者教师，这里距离章莹颖在福建的家乡并不远。

“读大学期间，我和莹颖曾利用假期时间做过志愿者教师，但是时间太短了，我们从未有机会像我们希望的那样长时间地去做这件事情。”他说。

侯霄霖的学生绝大多数是留守儿童和少年。在语文课上，他引导高年级学生把他们自己的青春懵懂写成诗歌；在音乐课上，他弹吉给学生们听。

“莹颖喜欢音乐。”侯霄霖在克里斯滕森被捕前的音乐会上告诉观众。“我为她写了很多歌，现在我要弹奏的这首也是她最喜欢的一首：《像孩子一样梦想》。”

After returning to China at the end of the trial in 2019, Hou spent two years teaching in a village school tucked deep in the mountain wrinkles in Guangdong province, not far away from Zhang's hometown in neighboring Fujian province.
"Both Yingying and I had volunteered to teach during our holiday breaks at university, but we never got a chance to do it for as long as we would have wished," he says.
The overwhelming majority of Hou's students are children left behind by their migrant-worker parents. In Chinese class, students from higher grades wrote poems revealing their tender adolescent love. For music class, Hou played guitar.
"Yingying loves music," Hou told an audience who were out for Zhang in the concert one day before Christensen was arrested. "I wrote many songs for her, and this is her favorite: Dream Like a Child."

在2018年北京的那个炎热夏日，侯霄霖带着施佳妍在章莹颖生活过的地方转了一圈。两人正准备离开，听到身后“咚”的一生，回头看，是一只小鸟在路边人行道上扑打挣扎，拼命扇动翅膀却无法飞起。

侯霄霖蹲下来，轻轻把手放在它身上，帮它把翅膀合拢。鸟儿很快平静了下来，等他把手慢慢移开后，它已经没有了气息。侯霄霖就地找了一块石头，在旁边的草地上挖出一个坑，把鸟儿安葬了。走在他身后的施佳妍用镜头记录了这不可思议的一切。鸟儿如何会突然从天而降重重摔在地上？它是之前就受伤了吗？没有人知道。

谈到影片中的这个镜头，侯霄霖说：“当时没觉得什么，等到看佳妍的片子时，才觉得这只小鸟就是莹颖，她来和我道别，并且给我一个机会让我做那件最想为她做的事情：好好地安葬她。”

On that hot summer day in Beijing in 2018, after showing Shi the place where Zhang had lived, Hou was about to leave. As he was walking away, Hou heard a thumping sound, and looked back to see a bird, seized by apparent pain, flapping and thrashing itself on the pavement in a futile effort to fly.
"I don't know where the bird came from — it seemed that she had dropped from somewhere quite high and had severely injured herself," says Hou, who, under Shi's camera, stooped down and put his hand gently over the little creature.
The bird soon became quiet. When Hou lifted his hand moments later, the bird's life was gone.
Hou put the bird into the small hole he had dug out on the grassy ground with a stone chip, covered it with dirt, smoothed the earth, and then they left. Nothing seemed to have happened.
"I wasn't thinking much at that moment," Hou says. "But as I was watching the movie, it became so clear that it was Yingying. She came to say goodbye, and to give me what I'd always wanted: a proper burial for her."