friends, romans, countrymen: yongchang lends more than its earsjames miles

朋友、罗马人、同胞：这些话，永昌人可不是听听就算了

mr jia was promoted to become head of the provincial tourism authority in 1998. soon afterwards, he published a script about the arrival of the romans, and officials say he is negotiating film rights with an american company. the authorities meanwhile had declared that a 30-metre stretch of battered earthen wall was to be considered part of the city wall of the roman settlement. locals say the wall was about 200 metres long until the 1970s, when peasants blew up most of it in order to scatter the earth on their increasingly barren fields.

1998年贾笑天被提升为甘肃省旅游局局长。此后不久他发表了一部讲述罗马人如何到来的电影脚本，官员们说他正在与一家美国公司谈判电影改编权。政府也宣布，他们认为，一段坍塌了的30米长土墙就是当年罗马人定居地城墙的一部分。当地人说这段墙在上世纪70年代以前还有大约200米长，但70年代时大半被农民炸掉了，为的是把土撒到他们越来越贫瘠的田地里。

yongchang is relatively well off by the standards of impoverished gansu, but the town's museum does not have enough money to buy from the local peasants the ancient pots and coins that they dig up on their land. even so, to get visitors in the mood, the county paid for a little roman-style pavilion to be built atop the foundations of an old temple.

按照贫困的甘肃省的标准，永昌算是相对富裕的地方，但县城博物馆资金不足，无法从当地农民那里购买他们从自己的地里挖出来的古代盆罐和硬币。尽管如此，为了培养旅游者的情绪，县政府还是出资在一座旧寺庙的地基上修建了一座罗马风格的小亭阁。