十一点整：停摆第 42 天的退伍军人节
今天上午 11 点整（美东时间），阿灵顿国家公墓将举行第 73 届全国退伍军人节纪念仪式，总统花圈将缓缓安放在无名战士墓前。
选在 11 点，不是仪式感的装饰。1918 年 11 月 11 日上午 11 时，第一次世界大战的停火协议生效，枪声在欧洲战场停了下来。108 年过去，美国每年都在同一个钟点停下脚步，先记住那个时刻，再纪念所有穿过军装的人。今天稍晚，纽约唐人街以北几英里的麦迪逊广场公园，献花仪式定于 10 点 55 分举行；洛杉矶县帕科伊马，圣费尔南多谷的游行队伍将在上午 11 点 11 分起步。11 月 11 日，11 点 11 分，这个国家把纪念钉在了数字里。
一个为所有穿过军装的人设的节日
退伍军人节常被和 5 月的阵亡将士纪念日弄混。区别其实很清楚：阵亡将士纪念日纪念的是没能回来的人，退伍军人节纪念的是所有服过役的人，包括今天还生活在我们中间的近 1,759 万名老兵。节日从停战日走来，1919 年威尔逊总统宣布第一个停战日，1938 年定为联邦法定假日，1954 年艾森豪威尔总统签署法案，把「停战」二字换成「退伍军人」，纪念对象从一战老兵扩到所有战争的老兵。中间有过一段插曲，1968 年它曾被挪到 10 月的星期一凑长周末，各州和老兵组织都不买账，1975 年福特总统又把它钉回 11 月 11 日，从此雷打不动，哪天是周几就在哪天过。今年它落在周三，没有长周末，纪念就在正日子。
今年这一天还有一层底色。2026 年是美国建国 250 周年，白宫的退伍军人节公告已在 11 月 10 日签发；纽约第五大道游行把「美国 250 岁生日」定为今年的主题之一。阿灵顿的无名战士墓本身也刚走过一个世纪，1921 年 11 月 11 日，第一位无名烈士在那里下葬，今年是第 105 年。
纪念的人，正在换代
纪念的对象，正在以肉眼可见的速度换代。按退伍军人事务部的人口模型，全美在世老兵约 1,759 万人，其中女性约 211 万，占 12%。而二战一代几乎走到了时间的尽头，当年约 1,600 万美国人穿上军装参加二战，如今在世者只剩约 4.5 万人。换句话说，每过一个退伍军人节，花圈前能亲自站着的二战老兵就少一批。与此同时，9·11 之后服役的老兵已占老兵总数的 26%，「老兵」这张脸，正在从祖父辈变成父辈、兄辈，甚至是我们自己的同龄人。这是 GSM 看今年退伍军人节的第一层观察：纪念的仪式感没有变，但仪式要留住的记忆，正在从亲历者手里交到整个社会手里，交接的时间比想象中紧。
华人老兵：为一个还不承认他们的国家打仗
对华人读者，这个节日还有另一条线。二战爆发时，全美大陆的华人只有约 7.8 万人。据国会 2018 年《华裔二战老兵国会金质奖章法》的认定，其间多达 2 万名华裔加入美军，相当于每五名华人就有一人从军，分布在各个战场和各个军种。其中约 40% 的人，因为排华年代的法律拒绝给予华人公民身份，连美国公民都不是。他们是为一个还不承认他们的国家去打仗。
这批人里走出了二战中唯一一位获荣誉勋章的华裔军人，陆军上尉魏伯良（Francis B. Wai）。迟到的承认在战后 70 多年才到，2018 年 12 月国会金质奖章法签署，2020 年 12 月颁奖典礼只能在线上举行，许多老兵没能等到那一天。奖章原件如今存放在史密森尼学会。
承认不只在华盛顿，也在各地的唐人街自己长出来。旧金山的美国退伍军人协会华埠分会（Cathay Post 384）成立于 1931 年，起因是参加过一战的华裔老兵在别处不受欢迎，索性自己建会，它是今天全美历史最久的华裔老兵分会，今年 8 月刚过 95 岁。纽约唐人街的金劳分会（Kim Lau Post 1291）1945 年由二战老兵创立，以在新几内亚上空阵亡的华裔轰炸机飞行员金劳中尉命名，他们在唐人街口建起的金劳纪念牌坊 1962 年落成，2021 年被列为纽约市地标；曾任该协会全国总司令的黄宏基（Fang A. Wong）就是这个分会的会员。洛杉矶华埠也有自己的华裔老兵分会，第 628 分会。这些分会逢退伍军人节照例在各自的唐人街举行仪式，那是华人社区与这个节日之间最具体的一根线。
今年的这一天，多了一张今晚的票
2026 年的退伍军人节，落在联邦政府停摆的第 42 天。花圈照放，游行照走，但管理着全美老兵事务的那个政府，截至今天上午还没有全年预算。有两件事值得放在一起看。一是退伍军人医疗系统靠提前一年的拨款结构运转，停摆期间 VA 医院照常开门，老兵看病没有断档；二是参议院周一晚以 60 比 40 通过的拨款法案里，给全年的三部法案之一正是退伍军人事务与军事建设拨款，这部法案今晚将在众议院表决，通过并经总统签字，政府重开，VA 的全年预算也就此落定。
这是 GSM 的第二层观察：退伍军人节的纪念在上午 11 点，兑现在今晚那张票里。仪式表达的是敬意，拨款决定的是敬意能不能变成明年的一间诊室、一笔抚恤金、一座修好的国家公墓。把这两件事放在同一天看，这个节日才算看完整了。
全国与南加：今天去哪儿纪念
全国仪式在阿灵顿，定于上午 11 点开始，对公众开放，退伍军人事务部官方渠道将同步直播。退伍军人事务部与退伍军人节全国委员会今年在 24 个州指定了 48 个区域纪念点，地方仪式大多与阿灵顿同一时刻呼应。
纽约的第五大道游行是全国规模最大的一场，将于中午 12 点 30 分从 26 街起步向北，2 万多人参加，今年的大礼官是身兼海军退役军官与宇航员的苏尼·威廉姆斯（Suni Williams）。
南加的选择不少。棕榈泉第 29 届退伍军人节游行将于下午 3 点 30 分从拉蒙路与棕榈峡谷大道出发，游行后有音乐会和烟花，这座城市是退伍军人事务部认定的区域纪念点。圣迭戈游行定于上午 10 点在海港大道举行，今年纪念海湾战争 35 周年。洛杉矶县规模最大的圣费尔南多谷游行将于 11 点 11 分在帕科伊马起步；好莱坞山森林草坪公墓上午 11 点将举行纪念仪式；伯班克定于上午 11 点在麦凯桥公园战争纪念碑前举行仪式，配有飞越表演。河滨县的穆列塔将举行第 24 届游行。长滩的太平洋水族馆今天对老兵和现役军人免费开放。出发前建议再看一眼主办方当天的公告，时间路线偶有调整。
放假的这一天，什么开，什么关
退伍军人节是美国 11 个联邦法定假日之一。今天联邦政府机构关门，邮政停投普通邮件，邮局窗口关闭，普通邮件 11 月 12 日恢复。美联储休假，多数银行网点跟着关门，ATM 和手机银行照常。债券市场全天关闭，但股市照常交易，纽约证交所和纳斯达克正常开市，这也是这个假日常让人愣一下的地方，政府放假，股市不放。学校关不关由各学区自定，比如纽约市公立学校今天关门。国家公园今天免门票，美国公民和居民可免费进入所有收费园区；老兵和金星家庭本来就有终身免费通行证，今天正好用上。各大连锁餐厅今天大多为老兵和现役军人提供免费餐食，退伍军人事务部官网汇总了全国优惠名单，出示军人证件、一般以堂食为准。
回到 11 点
1918 年的 11 点，枪炮声停了。2026 年的 11 点，阿灵顿的花圈将放下，纽约的花圈将放下，相隔一个大陆的帕科伊马，游行将在 11 点 11 分迈出第一步。这个国家用同一个钟点告诉自己，有些付出不能只存在于历史书里。
对华人社区，这句话还要再往前走一步。2 万名华裔士兵里，约 40% 的人出征时连公民身份都没有；他们的奖章等了 70 多年，他们的分会在唐人街守了一个世纪。纪念的意义，从来不只是感谢，而是让迟到的承认不再迟到，让下一个 11 点到来时，没有谁的故事还需要被重新发现。
关联：退伍军人事务部发布退伍军人节指南：第73届全国纪念仪式11月11日在阿灵顿国家公墓举行并直播
Eleven O'Clock: Veterans Day on Day 42 of the Shutdown
At 11 a.m. Eastern today, Arlington National Cemetery will hold the 73rd National Veterans Day Observance, and the presidential wreath will be laid at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
The hour is not ceremony for its own sake. At 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918, the armistice took effect and the guns of the First World War fell silent. One hundred and eight years later, the country still stops at the same hour, first to remember that moment, then to honor everyone who has worn the uniform. Later this morning in New York, wreaths will be laid at the Eternal Light Flagstaff in Madison Square Park at 10:55. In Pacoima, in Los Angeles County, the San Fernando Valley parade will step off at 11:11 a.m. On the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the nation has pinned its remembrance to the numbers themselves.
A holiday for everyone who served
Veterans Day is often confused with Memorial Day in May. The distinction is simple. Memorial Day honors those who did not come home. Veterans Day honors everyone who served, including the roughly 17.59 million veterans still living among us. The holiday began as Armistice Day, proclaimed by President Wilson in 1919 and made a federal holiday in 1938. In 1954, President Eisenhower signed the law that struck the word Armistice and inserted Veterans, widening the day from the veterans of one war to the veterans of all wars. There was one detour. In 1968 the holiday was moved to a Monday in October to make a long weekend. States and veterans organizations objected, and in 1975 President Ford restored it to November 11, where it has stayed, observed on the day itself whatever the weekday. This year it falls on a Wednesday. There is no long weekend. The observance is on the day.
This year's observance carries one more layer. The year 2026 is the 250th anniversary of American independence. The White House issued its Veterans Day proclamation on November 10, and New York's Fifth Avenue parade has taken the nation's 250th birthday as one of its themes. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier has reached a milestone of its own. The first unknown serviceman was buried there on November 11, 1921, one hundred and five years ago.
The honored are changing generations
The people being honored are changing, visibly and fast. By the VA's population model, about 17.59 million veterans are alive in the United States, of whom about 2.11 million, or 12 percent, are women. The World War II generation is nearly gone. Some 16 million Americans served in that war. About 45,418 are still living. Every Veterans Day, fewer of them can stand at the wreath laying in person. Meanwhile, veterans who served after September 11 now make up 26 percent of all veterans. The face of the word veteran is passing from our grandfathers' generation to our parents', our siblings', our own. That is GSM's first observation this year. The ritual has not changed, but the memory it guards is being handed from those who lived it to the whole of society, and the handover is on a shorter clock than most people realize.
Chinese American veterans: serving a country that would not yet claim them
For Chinese American readers, this day carries a second thread. When the Second World War began, there were only about 78,000 Chinese Americans on the U.S. mainland. As Congress recorded in the Chinese-American World War II Veteran Congressional Gold Medal Act of 2018, as many as 20,000 of them served, one in every five Chinese Americans, in every theater and every branch. About 40 percent of them were not United States citizens, because the exclusion-era laws denied citizenship to people of Chinese descent. They went to war for a country that would not yet claim them.
Among them was the only Chinese American to receive the Medal of Honor in that war, Army Captain Francis B. Wai. Formal recognition came more than seventy years later. The Gold Medal act was signed in December 2018, the award ceremony had to be held online in December 2020, and many veterans did not live to see it. The medal itself now rests with the Smithsonian Institution.
Recognition also grew at home, in the Chinatowns. Cathay Post 384 of the American Legion in San Francisco was founded in 1931, because Chinese American veterans of the First World War were not welcomed in other posts and built their own. It is the oldest predominantly Chinese American veterans post in the country, and it turned 95 this August. In New York's Chinatown, the Lt. B.R. Kim Lau Post 1291 was founded in 1945 by World War II veterans and named for a Chinese American bomber pilot killed over New Guinea. The Kimlau Memorial Arch the post raised at the entrance to Chinatown was unveiled in 1962 and designated a New York City landmark in 2021. Fang A. Wong, a past national commander of the American Legion, is a member of that post. Los Angeles Chinatown has its own Chinese American post, Post 628. On Veterans Day, these posts hold their ceremonies in their Chinatowns, the most concrete line between the Chinese American community and this holiday.
This year, the day comes with a vote tonight
Veterans Day 2026 falls on the 42nd day of the federal government shutdown. The wreaths will be laid and the parades will march, but the government that runs the nation's veterans programs woke up this morning, as of this writing, without a full-year budget. Two facts belong side by side. First, VA health care runs on advance appropriations, funded a year ahead, so VA hospitals have stayed open through the shutdown and care has not been interrupted. Second, the funding package the Senate passed 60 to 40 on Monday night carries full-year appropriations for three bills, and one of them is the veterans affairs and military construction bill. The House will vote on it tonight. If it passes and the president signs it, the government reopens and the VA's full-year budget is settled with it.
That is GSM's second observation. The honoring happens at 11 a.m. The delivering happens in tonight's vote. Ceremony expresses gratitude. Appropriations decide whether that gratitude becomes, next year, a clinic room, a benefits check, a repaired national cemetery. The day is only complete when both are seen together.
Where to observe today, across the country and in Southern California
The national observance at Arlington will begin at 11 a.m., is open to the public, and will be carried live on the VA's official channels. The VA and the Veterans Day National Committee have designated 48 regional sites in 24 states this year, and local ceremonies in most places echo the Arlington hour.
New York's Fifth Avenue parade is the largest in the nation. It will step off at 12:30 p.m. from 26th Street and march north, with more than 20,000 participants. This year's grand marshal is Suni Williams, a retired Navy officer and NASA astronaut.
Southern California offers plenty. Palm Springs will hold its 29th annual parade at 3:30 p.m., from Ramon Road and Palm Canyon Drive, followed by a patriotic concert and fireworks. The city is a VA-designated regional site. San Diego's parade will begin at 10 a.m. on Harbor Drive and this year marks the 35th anniversary of the Gulf War. The San Fernando Valley parade, the largest in Los Angeles County, will step off at 11:11 a.m. in Pacoima. Forest Lawn in the Hollywood Hills will hold its ceremony at 11 a.m., and Burbank's 11 a.m. ceremony at the McCambridge Park War Memorial will include a flyover. Murrieta, in Riverside County, will hold its 24th annual parade. The Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach admits veterans and active-duty service members free today. Check the organizer's same-day notice before heading out, as times and routes occasionally shift.
What is open, what is closed
Veterans Day is one of the eleven federal holidays. Federal offices are closed today. The Postal Service makes no regular deliveries and post office counters are closed, with regular service resuming November 12. The Federal Reserve is closed, and most bank branches follow it, though ATMs and mobile banking run as usual. The bond market is closed all day. The stock market, however, is open. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq trade on their normal schedules, the small oddity of this holiday. The government takes the day off. The market does not. School closures are set district by district. New York City public schools, for instance, are closed today. National parks waive entrance fees today for U.S. citizens and residents, and veterans and Gold Star families hold free lifetime passes in any case. Many restaurant chains offer free meals to veterans and service members today. The VA maintains a national list of Veterans Day discounts on its website. A military ID is generally required, and most offers are dine-in.
Back to eleven o'clock
At eleven o'clock in 1918, the guns stopped. At eleven o'clock in 2026, the wreath will go down at Arlington, the wreath will go down in New York, and across a continent in Pacoima, a parade will take its first step at 11:11. The country uses a single hour to tell itself that some debts cannot live only in history books.
For the Chinese American community, the sentence runs one step further. Of those 20,000 Chinese American soldiers, about 40 percent went to war without citizenship. Their medal waited more than seventy years. Their posts have kept watch in America's Chinatowns for a century. Remembrance was never only about thanks. It is about making sure recognition stops arriving late, so that when the next eleven o'clock comes, no one's story still needs to be rediscovered.
发布：GSM·美国（发布链接）
图片来源：配图：阿灵顿国家公墓无名战士墓前，一名老兵俯身安放花圈，身后坐着同行的老兵姐妹。她们是全美首个全女性「荣誉航班」（Honor Flight）老兵团，成员来自二战、朝鲜战争与越南战争年代。美国陆军官方照片，公共领域，经 Wikimedia Commons（2015年9月22日资料图）。 / Photo: A veteran lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery as fellow veterans look on. The group, the first all-female Honor Flight in the United States, brought together veterans of World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. U.S. Army photo, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (file photo, September 22, 2015).
GSM Global · 本篇英文版 English edition of this story
