听力|精读|翻译|词组

A bao in every steamer

一笼一乾坤

英文部分选自经济学人191221books and arts版块

A bao in every steamer

一笼一乾坤

The apotheosis of Chinese cuisine in America

中餐在美国大受追捧

Its upward trajectory reflects the Chinese-American community’s

中餐的地位上升趋势反映了美籍华人社区的繁荣

FOR SEVERAL years, beginning in the mid-2000s, devotees of Chinese food on America’s east coast obsessed over a mystery: Where was Peter Chang? A prodigiously talented—and peripatetic—chef, Mr Chang bounced around eateries in the south-east. One day diners at a strip-mall restaurant in suburban Richmond or Atlanta might be eating standard egg rolls and orange chicken; the next, their table would be graced by exquisite pieces of aubergine the size of an index finger, greaselessly fried and dusted with cumin, dried chillies and Sichuan peppercorns. Or by a soup made of pickled mustard greens and fresh sea bass, in its way as hauntingly perfect and austere as a Bach cello suite. A few months later, Mr Chang would move on.

从本世纪最初的十年中的某个时间开始，美国东海岸的中餐爱好者一连好几年都沉迷于一个问题：张鹏亮（Peter Chang）在哪？张鹏亮是一位天赋秉异的流动厨师，穿梭于美国东南各地的餐厅之间。这也就是说一家位于里士满或亚特兰大郊区的街边餐馆，前一天可提供的还是（菜单上）标准的鸡蛋卷和橙汁鸡，第二天店里的餐桌上就出现了做工精致的非油炸茄子，只有食指般大小，还撒上了孜然粉、干辣椒片和花椒粒；亦或是腌芥菜鲜鲈鱼汤，整个菜式如巴赫大提琴组曲般朴实又完美。几个月之后，张大厨就会继续转场下一处。

He now seems to have settled down, running a string of restaurants bearing his name between Rockville, Maryland, and Virginia Beach. His latest—Q by Peter Chang—in the smart Washington suburb of Bethesda, may be his finest. The space is vast and quasi-industrial, with brushed concrete floors, massive pillars and not a winking dragon in sight. Order a scallion pancake, and what appears is not the typical greasy disc but an airy, volleyball-sized dough sphere. Jade shrimp with crispy rice comes under what looks like an upturned wooden bowl (perhaps, you think, for the shells). On inspection the bowl turns out to be the rice. Thumping through it with a spoon reveals perfectly cooked shrimp floating in shamrock-green sauce.

张大厨现在似乎已经安顿下来了，在罗克维尔、马里兰和弗吉尼亚海滩经营多家以他名字命名的餐馆。他最近在华盛顿的繁华郊区贝塞斯达开了或许是他最好的一家餐馆——张鹏亮的Q餐馆（Q by Peter Chang）。店内空间宽敞，以准工业化风格装修，地板和高大的立柱进行了粉刷，一眼望去，店内看不到任何龙的图案。如果你点一份葱油饼，端上来的并不是寻常的油乎乎的圆形盘状油饼，而是一个排球大小的空心面球。锅巴翡翠虾仁这道菜像是盖在一个倒扣的木碗下面（可能你会以为是贝壳），但细细观察你会发现这个碗状物是大米做的。等到你用勺子把这层壳敲碎，浸满三叶草酱的熟虾肉就进入了你的眼帘。

注：葱油泡饼

A tab for two at Q can easily top three figures—several times the outlay on an average Chinese meal. Nor is Mr Chang’s the only such restaurant in the area: like many big American cities, Washington has seen a rise in high-end Chinese cuisine. That is good news, and not just for well-heeled gourmands who can tell shuijiao from shuizhu. The culinary trend is underpinned by two benign social ones. Chinese-Americans are becoming wealthier and more self-confident; and customers are shedding old stereotypes about Chinese food. To put it another way: sometimes a dumpling is more than just a dumpling.

在Q餐馆，两人消费很容易上3位数——价格是普通中餐的好几倍。该地区也并非只此一家像Q餐馆这样的店铺。和许多美国大城市一样，华盛顿的高端中餐厅数量多了起来。这种现象对大家以及那些能够区分“水饺”和“水煮”的有钱美食家来说，都是个好消息。支撑着这一餐饮业潮流的是两种良性的social趋势。其一，美籍华人逐渐变得富有和自信；其二，顾客们也正在摆脱对中国食物的刻板印象。换句话说：有时候，饺子不仅仅只是饺子。

The comfort of strangers 

外乡人的慰藉

Chinese restaurants began to open in America in the mid-19th century, clustering on the west coast where the first immigrants landed. They mostly served an Americanised version of Cantonese cuisine—chop suey, egg fu yung and the like. In that century and much of the 20th, the immigrants largely came from China’s southeast, mainly Guangdong province.

19世纪中叶，美国开始有了中餐馆，它们大多聚集在最早期移民居住的美国西海岸。这些餐馆卖的大多是美国化的粤菜——炒杂碎、芙蓉蛋等等。在19世纪和20世纪的大部分时间里，中国移民都主要来自中国东南部，尤以广东省移民居多。

After the immigration reforms of 1965 removed ethnic quotas that limited non-European inflows, Chinese migrants from other regions started to arrive. Restaurants began calling their food “Hunan” and “Sichuan”, and though it rarely bore much resemblance to what was actually eaten in those regions, it was more diverse and boldly spiced than the sweet, fried stuff that defined the earliest Chinese menus. By the 1990s adventurous diners in cities with sizeable Chinese populations could choose from an array of regional cuisines. A particular favourite was Sichuan food, with its addictively numbing fire (the Sichuan peppercorn has a slightly anaesthetising, tongue-buzzing effect).

1965年，美国进行了移民改革，取消了限制非欧洲地区移民的配额制度。自此，中国其他地区的人也纷纷开始移民美国，接着打着湘菜、川菜旗号的餐馆也陆续出现。尽管这些餐馆的味道和真正的湘菜、川菜相差甚远，但相比于那些以甜口和油炸为主要特征的早期中餐菜式，它们的菜品更丰富，用辣也更大胆。到20世纪90年代，在华人人口已达到一定规模的城市，爱尝鲜的食客就可以吃到中国各个地区口味的菜品了，其中川菜因其麻辣的口味尤为火爆（四川的花椒会让人的舌头有麻木感）。

Yet over the decades, as Chinese food became ubiquitous, it also— beyond the niche world of connoisseurs—came to be standardised. There are almost three times as many Chinese restaurants in America (41,000) as McDonald’s. Virtually every small town has one and, generally, the menus are consistent: pork dumplings (steamed or fried); the same two soups (hot and sour, wonton); stir-fries listed by main ingredient, with a pepper icon or star indicating a meagre trace of chilli-flakes. Dishes over $10 are grouped under “chef’s specials”. There are modest variations: in Boston, takeaways often come with bread and feature a dark, molasses-sweetened sauce; a Chinese-Latino creole cuisine developed in upper Manhattan. But mostly you can, as at McDonald’s, order the same thing in Minneapolis as in Fort Lauderdale.

在过去的几十年里，中餐馆不再仅仅在小范围内流行，而是遍地开花，并渐渐有了一套标准。如今在美国，中餐厅的数量达41000家，几乎是麦当劳的三倍。基本上每个镇都会有一家中餐馆，菜单也基本一致：猪肉饺子（蒸饺或煎饺）、两种汤（酸辣汤或者馄饨）和用辣椒图案或星级表示辣度的爆炒类菜品，超过10美元的菜肴则被归进“主厨推荐”一栏。但不同地区也略有差异：在波士顿，外卖餐通常都配有面包，并附送深色的甜酱；在曼哈顿上城，出现了中国混拉丁克里奥尔风味的餐品。但总体来说，就像麦当劳一样，你可以在全国各地吃到相同的中餐菜品。

注：

1. 熟词僻意：

niche:relating to selling goods to a particular small group of people who have similar needs, interests etc。

2. Minneapolis：明尼阿波利斯，明尼苏达州首府，位于美国北部地区，是美国的寒极。

3. Fort Lauderdale：劳德代尔堡，佛罗里达州城市，位于美国南部沿海。

Until recently, the prices varied as little as the menus—and they were low. Eddie Huang, a Taiwanese-American restaurateur turned author and presenter, recounts how his newly arrived father kept his prices down because “immigrants can’t sell anything full-price in America.”

直到最近，中餐的价格和菜单一样几乎没有变化——而且价格很低。艾迪•黄祖籍台湾，是一名餐馆老板，后转行兼做作家和主持人。他讲述了他父亲来到美国后一直把菜价保持在低位的原因是“移民做的东西哪能卖得出高价？”。

That, in truth, was a consoling simplification. Americans have traditionally been willing to pay through the nose at French or Italian joints (where, in fact, Latinos often do most of the cooking). And every city has its pricey sushi bars and exorbitant tapas restaurants (tapas, as one joke goes, is Spanish for “$96 and still hungry”).

事实上，这句话是一种简短的安慰。美国人习惯在法国或意大利餐馆高价消费（事实上，这些餐厅大多由拉丁美洲人掌勺）。每个城市都有昂贵的寿司店和塔帕斯餐馆（塔帕斯，西班牙餐前小吃，被戏称为西班牙语的“掏了96美元还不够垫饱肚子”）。

注：

Pay through the nose：大笔开销

But Mr Huang is right that Americans have long expected Chinese food to be cheap and filling. One step up from the urban takeaway, with its fluorescent lighting and chipped formica counter, is the stripmall bistro with its imposing red doors and fake lions standing guard —sufficiently exotic to be special, but still affordable enough for a family to visit once a week when nobody feels like cooking.

黄先生的想法有一点是对的，那就是美国人一直认为中餐既便宜又能填肚子。通常中餐馆位于距城中心外卖店一步之遥的路边商业区内，闪烁着霓虹灯，放置着缺了一角的胶木柜台，拥有气派的红色大门，还有石狮子蹲着守门——既充满异国风情，又价格实惠，能让一家人每周在不想做饭的时候光顾一次。

American dreams

美国梦

Even the superior outlets were cheap for what they served (and often still are). Consider the hand-ripped noodles with lamb at Xi‘an Famous Foods in lower Manhattan. A tangle of long noodles, each about the width of Elvis Costello’s ties in the late 1970s, is tossed with curls of braised lamb and a complex, incendiary sauce laced with cumin and chillies—all for just over $10, a fraction of the price of comparably accomplished dishes at smart restaurants nearby. True, Xi‘an Famous Foods has no waiters (diners carry their plates on plastic trays to bench seating). But its noodles are handmade, and the lamb dish may be the single best thing to eat in New York at any price.

曾经就算高档中餐厅也是物超所值（现在依旧如此）。拿下曼哈顿区的“西安名小吃”出售的手撕羊肉面举例，一卷长面条，宽度接近埃尔维斯▪科斯特洛在20世纪70年代末戴的领带，拌着炖熟的羊肉卷和配料丰富的辣酱，再撒上孜然和辣椒——只需要10美金多一点，价格是附近高档餐厅招牌菜的零头。确实，“西安名小吃”没有服务员（顾客把碗放在托盘上，然后端到长凳上吃），但面条是手工做的，而且羊肉可能是全纽约最美味的。

But now things are changing. Mr Huang sells deliciously pillowy stuffed buns in New York and Los Angeles for $5.50 each—or, as he puts it, “full fucking price”—and encourages other immigrants not to undervalue their work. Restaurants in Q’s bracket are cropping up not just in America’s Chinatowns but in the suburbs, where Chinese immigrants and their families have settled, following the classic strivers’ path. The median income of Chinese-Americans’ households is nearly 30% higher than the average. They are more than twice as likely as other Americans to have an advanced degree.

但是现在情况有所改变。黄先生在纽约和洛杉矶经营的餐馆卖一种松软的含馅包子，一个卖到了5.5美元——用他的话讲就是“他妈的全价”，并且他还呼吁其他移民者不要低估自己的劳动成果。与Q餐馆同等级的餐馆不仅开在美国的唐人街，还出现在有中国移民及其家人定居的郊区，与当年第一批中餐馆的奋斗轨迹如出一辙。美籍华人家庭的中位收入比平均水平高出30%，高学历人数占比是其他美国人的两倍多。

Chef’s special relationship

厨师的特殊关系

Meanwhile, although racism persists, the pervasive discrimination of earlier ages has waned. Witness the presidential campaign of Andrew Yang, in which his ethnicity has scarcely been mentioned. Since the Chinese-American population is six times as big as 40 years ago, Americans overall are much more familiar with Chinese people and their cooking. All of which means that, in your correspondent’s fairly extensive experience, the new fancy breed of Chinese restaurants draws a heartening mix of Chinese and non-Chinese diners.

与此同时，尽管种族主义依然存在，但是早年间泛滥的歧视现象已经减少。比如，在杨安泽(Andrew Yang)参加总统竞选时，很少有人提及他的种族。如今美籍华人的数量是40年前的6倍，美国人也因此普遍更加了解中国人和中国美食。根据本文作者相对丰富的经验，所有这些都意味着新型中餐馆能同时吸引中外食客，令人欣慰。

Not everyone is enticed. The same cult of authenticity which decrees that good tacos only come from trucks posits that the best Chinese food is found in humble settings. That is as inaccurate as the snobbery that Mr Huang decries. Chinese chefs are as ambitious as any others; a bowl of noodle soup no more stands for all of Chinese cuisine than a slice of pizza does for Italian.

并非每个人都买账。就像有人认为好吃的玉米卷（tacos）都来自于流动餐车一样，有人坚持认为在朴素的环境中才能品尝到最正宗的中国菜。这种看法和黄先生一直嗤之以鼻的偏见一样，并不准确。中餐厨师和其他厨师同样雄心勃勃；一片披萨难以代表意大利菜，一碗面汤也不足以代表所有中国菜。

注：

Taco：玉米卷，原产于墨西哥，与我国西安地区的肉夹馍有相似之处。进入美国后，为适应当地人口味，开发出了硬皮玉米卷（hard taco），后逐渐演变成美国特有的墨西哥鸡肉卷（burrito）。

In any case, authenticity is a slippery commodity. Recipes constantly evolve as people move and mingle. The chillies now considered essential to Sichuan dishes were actually brought to China by Iberian traders in the late 16th century. Hot dogs were originally German, pizza Neapolitan, bagels Polish—but now they are all American, and like America, infinitely varied.

无论如何，正宗的口味都是众说纷纭。菜谱随着人们的迁移和交往而演变。现在公认的川菜标配辣椒，实际上是在16世纪晚期被伊比利亚半岛的贸易商传入中国的。源于德国的热狗、那不勒斯的披萨和波兰的百吉饼现在都成了美式菜，它们就像美国一样，一直在变。

注：

Slippery: elusive in meaning because changing according to one's point of view

The goat ribs at Duck, Duck Goat, in Chicago’s trendy meatpacking district, are more Chinese-ish than Chinese. So is the place itself— headed by a non-Chinese chef and kitschily decorated with paper lanterns and bright red walls. The ribs come as a mesh of burnished meat stilettos with a wonderful chew, the sweetness of the glaze giving way to the goat’s irresistible gaminess. They spark fights over who gets the last one. They are as inauthentic, and as imaginative and lovingly created, as Mr Chang’s scallion dough sphere—and as delicious, which in the end, is what counts.

在芝加哥繁华的肉库区（meatpacking district），Duck Duck Goat店里的羊排比中餐厅的羊排更具有中国特色。店面本身也是如此——厨师是非华裔，店内挂着艳丽的纸灯笼，墙壁也染成了大红色。羊排端上来的时候，表面发亮，如同一只高跟鞋，嚼起来很香，表皮的甜味也遮不住羊肉那难以抵挡的野味，令人们为谁能吃最后一块而争执不休。这些菜像张先生的葱油面饼一样，虽然不那么正宗，但富有想象力和充满爱意，而且美味至极，这才是最重要的。

注：

Kitschily: considered to be in poor taste because of excessive garishness or sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in an ironic or knowing way.

Gaminess: the taste or odor of game (wild mammals or birds), especially when slightly tainted

翻译组：   

Frank，男，小硕，经济学人的死侍

Helga，女，笔译民工，经济学人爱好者

Chao，爱读书思考的DPhil Candidate，TE粉丝

校核组：

Nikolai，子承父业，蛋糕厂员工，AKB49

Rachel，学理工科，爱跳芭蕾，热爱文艺的非典型翻译

Helen，女，坐标武汉，职业翻译，翻硕已毕业英语二笔二口，爱好陶笛洞箫古诗词

3