‘Transmit the viands!’ called the young Emperor Pu Yi, imperiously. Dinner time was whenever he felt like eating, there were no fixed hours. ‘Transmit the viands!’ called the junior eunuchs to the other eunuchs standing in the main hall. The order passed like a Chinese whisper from eunuch to eunuch, until it finally reached the yu shan fang, the Imperial Viands Rooms, as the kitchens were called. The cooks leapt into action. Before long, the eunuchs, in procession, were scurrying towards the emperor’s quarters with dozens of red lacquered food boxes painted with golden dragons, and the tables on which to serve them. There were no dining rooms in the palace, so they set the tables up wherever the emperor happened to be, six or seven of them: two for main dishes, another in winter for the various soups and stews that sat over flickering flames, one for cakes, one for rice, one for congees, and another for salted vegetables.
“传膳！”年轻的皇帝溥仪专横地喊道。晚餐时间都是按照他是不是想吃来决定的，并不固定。“传膳！”随侍太监对其他站在大殿里的太监喊道。太监们就像玩传话游戏一样，把这命令一级级传下去，直到传到御膳房，也就是皇宫的厨房。御厨们立刻行动起来。不一会儿，太监们一个接一个地拿着好些红漆食盒以及专门布菜的桌子，朝皇上的所在地小跑而去。宫里没有专门的餐厅，所以皇上在哪儿，他们就在哪儿把桌子支起来，有六七张的样子：两张桌子上摆的是平日菜肴；一张是冬日专用，摆着各色汤菜与一直在火上烧着的砂锅；一张摆着点心；一张摆着米膳；一张上是粥品；一张上是咸菜。
Chinese emperors dined off yellow porcelain decorated with dragons, the imperial motif. There were strips of silver on the dishes, and silver chopsticks, because the metal was known to discolour in the presence of poison. (This was just a final precaution, because each dish had already been tasted by one of the eunuchs, who was watched carefully for signs of sickness before the emperor was fed.) The last emperor, Pu Yi, was presented with a mere thirty dishes at a sitting; the Empress Dowager Longyu, dining in her own quarters, with a hundred. The emperor ate alone, scrutinised by the eunuch servants. Whatever he had really eaten, their report to the senior concubines would be the same, dictated by ritual: ‘The Lord of Ten Thousand Years consumed one bowl of old-rice viands (or white-rice viands), one steamed breadroll (or a griddle cake), and a bowl of congee. He consumed it with relish.’
中国皇帝吃饭用的瓷器是黄色的，上面有龙的图案，正是天家威严的象征。每道菜上都会放银牌，用的也是银筷子：这是试毒的，因为银遇到毒会变色。（这是最后一道防线，因为每道菜都已经被试毒太监事先尝过了，在皇上开吃之前，会有人严密注意这位太监，看他有没有中毒或生病的迹象。）末代皇帝溥仪每顿饭“只不过”三十道菜而已；在自己寝宫吃饭的隆裕太后，每顿饭有一百道菜。皇上是一个人吃饭，旁边有太监仔细观察。不管他真正吃了什么、吃了多少，他们给太妃的回话都是一样的，很具仪式性：“万岁爷进了一碗老米膳（或者百米膳）、一个馒头（或者一个烧饼）和一碗粥。进得香！”
Although I had been travelling in China for many years, I had never spent much time in the great northern capital, Beijing. I passed through every couple of years on my way to somewhere else, meeting up with journalist friends and eating the odd Peking duck, but I can’t say I really knew the city. So, eager to move beyond Hunan and to broaden my culinary horizons, I spent a few weeks there after Christmas one year, researching Chinese imperial cooking.
我在中国算是畅游多年了，但从未在北方那座硕大的首都北京长时间待过。每隔几年我去别地的时候，会经过北京，见见记者朋友，吃吃富有特色的北京烤鸭。但我不能说自己真正了解这座城市。所以，某一年的圣诞节后，急于离开湖南、开开烹饪和美食眼界的我，在那里待了几个星期，研究中国的皇家烹饪。
These days the Forbidden City is just a museum. Pu Yi abdicated in 1912, at the tender age of five, when Republican forces had overthrown the Chinese imperial system after more than two thuousand years. Yet, under a bizarre agreement with the new government, he remained in the palace with the wife and senior concubines of his predecessor, and a vast staff of eunuchs, for a further thirteen years, until he was evicted by the warlord Feng Yuxiang’s National Army in 1924. During that time, his life continued in all its pomp and ceremony, but his power ended abruptly at the dark-red perimeter walls. After the communist takeover of China in 1949, the palace was maintained as a museum and some of its workers lived within its confines, but later they too were shunted out, because of the risk of fire. Now, when the gates close at night, the citadel known as the Great Within (da nei) is deserted.
现在，紫禁城不过是个博物馆。一九一二年，辛亥革命爆发，推翻了中国两千多年来的封建帝制，年仅五岁的溥仪被迫逊位。然而，和新政府达成匪夷所思的协议之后，他继续和原来的皇后与先帝的太妃们一起住在宫里，仍然有一大批太监。这一住又是十三年，直到一九二四年军阀冯玉祥的军队把他赶出紫禁城。那十三年间，他依然过着奢侈浮华、夜夜笙歌的生活，但一切的权力到紫禁城那深红的城墙脚便戛然而止。一九四九年，共产党掌权，紫禁城成为故宫博物院，有专人进行维护，一些工作人员就住在里面。但后来他们也被分流了，因为怕有火灾隐患。现在，故宫晚上关门时，整个大内空无一人。
Central Beijing in January is magnificent, with its wide boulevards, stately architecture, and imperial yellow tiles glistening in the pale midwinter sun. At its heart lies the Forbidden City, which is being repainted and refurbished after years of neglect. Parts of it have been restored to gleaming splendour, but in the rest the paint is peeling, and the courtyards are worn and tufted with weeds. I sat, one bright morning, on the steps leading down towards the Inner Court, with the Last Emperor’s autobiography in my hands, trying to imagine the smoke rising from the chimneys of the Imperial kitchens; the processions of eunuchs, their feet padding along the drafty colonnades; and the young emperor Pu Yi, surrounded always by his suffocating retinue of staff.
一月的老北京城是相当宏伟的：宽阔的大道，庄严的建筑，象征天子威严的黄色琉璃瓦在冷冷的隆冬阳光下闪烁着。老北京城的心脏地带就是紫禁城，多年疏于维护之后，现在有人对其进行修复，重新上漆，翻修一些地方：有部分已经完成修复，金碧辉煌、光彩壮丽；但还没修复的那部分则墙漆斑驳、院落颓败、荒草丛生。一个晴朗的早上，我坐在通往内宫的台阶上，手上拿着末代皇帝的自传，试着去想象：炊烟从御膳房的烟囱袅袅升起；太监们列队小跑，无数双脚在柱廊之间引起一阵风；还有年轻的皇帝溥仪，像往常一样前呼后拥，被乌泱泱的仆人围绕着。
In theory, Pu Yi might have been blessed with the finest of diets. Imperial Beijing, after all, as the more-or-less continuous Chinese capital for 600 years, should have been one of the best places in the world to eat. The sumptuous cuisine of north-eastern Shandong Province, once the home region of Confucius, formed the bedrock of palace cooking. It was grandiose in style, with its fine stocks, rich soups and liberal use of fiendishly expensive ingredients. But it was always augmented by the tastes and techniques of other regions. When, during the Ming Dynasty, the Yongle Emperor moved his capital north to Beijing in 1403, the flood of officials who accompanied him brought with them chefs well versed in the kitchen lore of Nanjing, the old southern capital. During the Qing Dynasty, the Qianlong Emperor enjoyed lengthy sojourns in the southern Yangtze region, where he was seduced by the region’s luxurious ways and fine gastronomy. He brought back with him chefs from centres of fine-dining like Yangzhou, who wove their own recipes into the imperial menus.
理论上，溥仪大概是最有口福的人。毕竟，天子所在的北京，六百年来基本上都是帝都，那必须是汇集天下美味的地方。从孔夫子家乡、北京东南方向的山东省传过来的奢华鲁菜成为宫廷菜的基石。鲁菜从风格上便是富丽堂皇的：悉心熬煮的高汤，浓郁的汤菜，穷奢极欲地肆意使用昂贵的食材。不过，宫廷菜也会利用其他地区的味道与烹饪技巧对鲁菜加以改良发展。一四零三年，明朝的永乐皇帝把都城北迁到北京，大批的官员跟随他北上，也带着他们自己的厨子，都是旧都南京厨界的精英。清朝的乾隆皇帝很喜欢长时间地微服出巡江南，那里浮华精致的生活与妙不可言的美食时时都在诱惑着他。他从苏州这类高级餐饮的中心带了些厨子回紫禁城，厨子们就把自己的菜谱写进了御膳。
Into Beijing’s melting pot of regional and ethnic foodways poured the finest produce from every corner of the empire. Tealeaves came in tribute from the hills of Zhejiang and Yunnan in the appropriate seasons; candied ginger from Yangzhou; Sichuan pepper from Qingxi in western Sichuan; and exotic delicacies like dried mushrooms and seafood (‘treasures from the mountains and the seas’) from far and wide.
北京就像个大熔炉，融合了各个地区与各个民族的饮食文化与顶级特产。浙江与云南的茶山会在应季时供奉上好的茶叶，扬州送来美味的姜糖，四川西部清溪供上最香的花椒，还有四面八方远道而来、特别少见的干菇与干海鲜（所谓“山珍海味”）。
The Qing emperors were Manchus from the northeast, not Han Chinese. Their ancestors had been nomads, eaters of bread and mutton, nibblers of pastries and candied fruits that were easy to transport on horseback across the northern grasslands. They drank milky tea, like the Tibetans and Mongols. After their conquest of China in 1644, the Qing ruling class never entirely lost their taste for such barbarian fare, and ensured that roast meats and certain sweet pastries became part of the repertoire of palace cooks. They also introduced Manchu dining customs, combining them with the more delicate eating habits of the Han Chinese: they carried knives in sheaths that had a pocket for chopsticks, so they could slice off chunks of meat and then eat them in the Chinese fashion. The blending of Han and Manchu culinary cultures at court reached its peak in the ‘Man-Han’ imperial banquet, a legendary three-day extravaganza of feasting that is said to have included more than 200 different dishes and snacks.
清朝的皇帝都不是汉人，而是来自东北的满人。他们的祖先是游牧民族，吃馒头、啃羊肉，偏爱方便带在马背上穿越北边大草原的点心和果脯。他们和西藏人、蒙古人一样，爱喝酥油茶。一六四四年清朝建立以来，统治阶级还一直保留着对“蛮荒”食物的口味，把一些烤肉与甜味点心送上了宫廷菜的保留名单。他们还引进了满族进食的习俗，和汉族那种更为精巧讲究的进食习惯结合起来：满人的靴子上都有个小袋子，里面既装刀子又装筷子，这样大块的肉上来时，就可以拿刀割下一片，然后按照汉族人的样子用筷子夹着吃。汉族和满族饮食文化在宫廷里融合的高峰就是“满汉全席”，这是非常传奇的三日豪宴，据说有两百多道不同的菜肴和小吃。
The emperor himself normally took two main meals a day: breakfast early in the morning, and the so-called ‘evening viands’ at around one o’clock. And then at six in the evening or thereabouts, he had an ‘evening snack’. Every menu had to be formally approved by the Imperial Household Department before it could be cooked, and each was filed afterwards in the palace archives. (One, dating back to the reign of the Jiaqing Emperor records, for a day in 1799, a light breakfast served to the emperor’s father at the start of the Lunar Year. It lists more than forty dishes, including soups made from bird’s nest, duck, chicken, deer’s tail and pork, vegetables, little steamed buns, New Year’s cake, and ‘all kinds of pastries and snacks’.) While the main Imperial kitchens supplied the emperor’s grand daily provisions, smaller tea-kitchens provided informal refreshments, and pastry kitchens were at hand for buns and cakes.
皇上本人一天主要吃两顿：大上午的早膳和下午一点左右所谓的“晚膳”。到傍晚六点左右，他会吃个“晚点”（晚上的点心）。上灶开火之前，每顿的菜单都必须通过内务府的审批，吃完后每顿的菜肴都要记录到宫廷档案当中。（嘉庆皇帝时期的档案中记录了一七九九年的一顿比较简单的早膳，是农历大年初一呈给太上皇的，上面列出了四十多道菜，包括燕窝汤、鸡、鸭、鹿尾、猪肉、蔬菜、小笼包、年糕以及“各样点心”。）御膳房负责皇上每日可观的吃食，底下还有分工明确的小厨房，比如御茶房提供非正餐时间的小吃点心，饽饽房则负责包子、馒头、糕点。
Outside the palace, civil servants from all over China, working on rotation in Beijing and elsewhere, kept grand official residences. Highly educated, and often with discerning palates, they developed their tastes as they travelled, and goaded their private chefs to innovate at the stove. And so evolved a number of individual culinary styles that blended the flavours and cooking arts of different regions: some of them became so well known that they have survived until the present day, like the Tan Family Cuisine (tan jia cai) served in a restaurant of that name in the Beijing Hotel.
出了宫，还有全中国轮职的公务官员。他们有时候在北京，有时候被派遣到地方，都拥有豪华宽大的宅邸。这些人通常都受过良好的教育，味蕾也是相当挑剔，轮职各地的过程中，他们的口味不断变化，并命令自己的私厨创新进步。于是乎，融合了各个地区味道与烹饪艺术的私家菜系应运而生：有些菜系名扬天下，一直传承延续到今天，比如北京饭店有家“谭家菜馆”，做的就是“谭家菜”。
Sometimes the grand eating habits of the palace spilled out into the life of the common people. It was ex-palace chefs of Shandong origin, for example, who joined a man named Yang Quanren in setting up a roast-duck venture in Beijing in 1864. Roast duck had been around for centuries, but the traditional way of making it was in a covered oven (men lu) with a fire beneath it. Yang introduced the people of the capital to the roasting techniques of the palace kitchens, in which the birds were suspended over a fruitwood fire that gave their skin the most delectable crispness. His restaurant, Quanjude, became a national institution, and gave the world Peking Duck as we know it today.
有时候，宫里穷奢极欲的饮食习惯也会扩展到平民生活中。比如一八六四年，宫外一些来自山东的厨师和一个叫杨全仁的人一起开了家烤鸭店。烤鸭作为一道菜已经存在了好几个世纪，但传统做法是把鸭子放进一只焖炉，下面烧着火来烤。而杨全仁把御膳房的烘烤技术介绍给了京城百姓：果木烧火、鸭子挂炉，这样烤出来的鸭皮更脆、更美味。他这家叫做“全聚德”的烤鸭店成为国家的标杆，今日扬名世界的“北京烤鸭”就出自这里。
If the emperor’s daily meals were lavish, state banquets were arranged on an improbable scale: at the inaugural feast of the Jiaqing Emperor, for example, the kitchens laid on 1550 hotpots. When the British government first attempted to make contact with the Chinese court in 1793, the Qianlong Emperor entertained the British envoy Lord Macartney and his party to a ‘sumptuous banquet’. Small tables, one for every two guests, were stacked with a ‘pyramid of dishes or bowls piled upon each other, containing viands and fruits in vast variety’. The serving and removing of the dinner was conducted with such silence and solemnity that the Englishmen likened it to ‘the celebration of a religious mystery’.
如果说皇上的日常饮食已经算铺张浪费，那国宴的规模就是常人难以想象的了，比如嘉庆皇帝的登基大宴上，御膳房端出了一千五百五十只火锅。一七九三年，英国政府初次与中国朝廷联系，乾隆皇帝为英国使臣马嘎尔尼伯爵及其代表安排了“豪宴”。每两位客人坐一张小桌，上面摆满了“盘子和碗，一层又一层地堆叠起来，装着各式各样的食物和水果”。不管上菜还是撤菜，气氛都威严肃穆，在场的英国人将其比作“神秘的宗教仪式”。
That January in Beijing, I set myself a mission to find the old kitchens of the Forbidden City. Several times I went there, buying my ticket at a booth in the outer courtyard, walking through one of the inner gates, a mousehole at the foot of towering red walls. I spent my first few visits exploring the grand halls, losing myself in the limitless lanes and the vast, abandoned courtyards.
那年一月在北京，我赋予了自己一项使命，就是去寻找紫禁城旧时的老厨房。我去了很多次。在午门外买了门票，走过某一重宫门：在高高的红墙之下，这门看着就像个老鼠洞。头几次去，我几乎都在探索宏伟的大殿，那无数的长街通衢、那寂寂无人的宽大院落，让我流连、让我迷失。
The imperial kitchens were marked on my map as lying just to the east of the Outer Court, but when I eventually found them — two long buildings with tiled rooves — they lay in forbidden parts of the Forbidden City, closed to visitors. After a while, my curiosity overcame me, and I ignored the signs and slipped through a gate. The guards either didn’t see me or turned a blind eye. In the end, however, the kitchens were still unreachable in their locked, walled compound. I stole through an open door into a neighbouring building that was filled with steam and fantastical pipes, the nerve centre of an old-fashioned central-heating system, but there was no way through. Walking deeper into the private office areas of the Palace Museum, I fell into conversation with a member of staff, and before long found myself drinking tea with a friendly and knowledgeable expert on the Forbidden City named Professor Luo. His office, at the side of a traditional courtyard, was stacked messily with books and periodicals.
我地图上标出的御膳房就在外庭东边，但等终于找到那两排琉璃瓦屋顶的狭长建筑时，却发现这里是紫禁城的禁地，不对外开放。犹豫了一会儿，好奇心战胜了一切，我不管门口的标识，从一扇门溜了进去。保安要么是没看见我，要么是懒得管我。然而，我最终还是没能进入厨房，因为周围都是高墙，里面的门也紧锁着。相邻的一座房子门是打开的，里面烟尘缭绕，有很多不再运作的管道，原来是锅炉房，古老的中央供暖系统的神经中枢。我走进去，却也发现此路不通。我往故宫博物院私人办公区的深处走去，和一个工作人员攀谈起来。还没回过神来，我就和一位友好亲切、知识渊博的紫禁城研究专家喝上了茶。我叫他李老师吧。李老师的办公室在一个传统四合院里，里面有些凌乱，堆满了书和学术期刊。
Pu Yi ascended the throne on 2 December 1908, when he was not quite three years old. The formidable Empress Dowager Cixi, who had ruled at court since 1898, had suddenly decided to make him heir to the throne as she lay on her deathbed in November. So the young boy was wrenched, howling, from his family and installed in lonely splendour in the Forbidden City.
一九零八年十二月二日，不足三岁的溥仪登基了。从一八九八年起便掌管宫廷、权倾天下的慈禧太后，在十一月的弥留之际突然决定让他继位做皇帝。于是这个小男孩就被强行从家里拉到了宫里，置身于紫禁城孤独的宏伟辉煌之中。
We talked for a while about imperial dining habits, and then, in an act of spontaneous kindness, he took me on a tour of the imperial collections in the museum. We saw the ritual bronzes of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, patterned with stylised beasts and birds; the heavy jars that were once filled with grain and sealed into tombs; the delicate white ceramics of the Sui. We walked through galleries that explained the ritual of imperial wedding feasts. Most intriguingly, Professor Luo told me that some of the palace storerooms had never been cleared, and were still filled with dried foodstuffs and medicinal herbs from the early twentieth century, when the Last Emperor still lived within its walls.
我们聊了会儿皇家饮食习惯，接着李老师一时兴起，大发善心，领着我去看了博物院里的皇家古董。里面有商周时期典礼用的青铜器，上面有风格相当鲜明的鸟兽；重重的大坛子，里面曾经装满黍麦稻谷，密封起来做了帝王的陪葬；还有精致的隋朝白瓷。走廊里挂着解说，介绍了皇家婚宴的仪式。李老师还跟我讲了件最有趣的事情：宫里的一些仓库从未被清理过，里面还有二十世纪早期的干货和草药，都是末代皇帝还在宫里生活时留下来的。
In his autobiography, Pu Yi condemned the excesses of the old imperial court, and said the Republican government had allowed him and his household to continue ‘our prodigious waste of the sweat and blood of the people in order to maintain our former pomp and continue our parasitic way of life’. But he wrote his autobiography under communist supervision, and the communists clearly wanted to play up the wasteful extravagance of the Qing and the Republicans who succeeded them.
溥仪在自传中批判了旧时朝廷的奢侈浪费，说民国当局纵容以他为首的一伙人“照旧摆着排场，按原来标准过着寄生生活，大量地耗费着人民的血汗”。不过，他这本自传是被审查过的，新政府显然是想要突出清朝和后来国民政府的铺张浪费。
It was just the start of a strange and turbulent life. Pu Yi ruled, with his father as regent, for barely three years before his abdication in 1912. When, at the age of eighteen, he was rudely expelled from the palace, having continued to live there until then under the terms of his abdication agreement, he took refuge in the Japanese concession in Tianjin. In 1934 he became the puppet emperor of the Japanese vassal state of Manchukuo in northern Manchuria — an ill-fated collaboration that led to his being branded a war criminal at the end of the Second World War. Following the armistice, he spent five years in a Siberian prison, and then travelled back to China by train in 1950, where he was imprisoned for another decade in an attempt to ‘reform’ him through labour and ideological indoctrination. In 1959, Pu Yi was formally pardoned by the communist state, and spent the rest of his life as an ordinary citizen in Beijing, working as a gardener and, later, a researcher in the imperial archives.
这不过是个开始，他的一生都注定离奇而动荡。溥仪继位，他父亲也做了摄政王；但皇位还没坐满三年，他就于一九一二年逊位了。那之后，根据逊位协议，他还是继续住在宫里，直到十八岁时被军阀蛮横地赶了出去。流离失所的溥仪来到天津的日本租界避难。一九三四年，他在满洲北部日本成立的“伪满洲国”做了傀儡皇帝：这是注定没有善终的勾结，导致二战结束时他被贴上了“战犯”的标签。战争结束了，他在西伯利亚一座监狱里坐了五年牢；然后在一九五零年坐火车回到中国，又坐了十年牢，接受劳动和意识形态教化的改造。一九五九年，共产党政府正式宣布溥仪刑满释放。他的后半生都是北京城里的一位普通市民，先是做园丁，后来当了皇家档案的研究员。
After my tour of the palace museum with Professor Luo, fantasising about deer’s tail soup for breakfast, I became more and more hungry. But I couldn’t find anything to eat. The chimneys rising from the old tea kitchens were cold, the imperial kitchens boarded up and empty, and there weren’t even any modern snack bars for the tourists. In the end, my energy fading, I came across a few tables and chairs set up outside the hatch of some kind of stall. I laid down my heavy bag. Through a gate in the dark-red walls, I could see the end of the old imperial kitchens. But the only hot food being sold on that freezing January afternoon was pot noodles, cooked in water poured from a thermos flask. So I sat down with my lists of imperial delicacies, and my books about the lives of the emperors, and ate instant noodles with beef-flavoured sauce out of a disposable plastic bowl.
和李老师一起游了博物院，满脑子幻想着早餐喝鹿尾汤，我越来越饿了。但周围什么吃的都没有。旧时御茶房的烟囱是冷冰冰的，御膳房大门紧锁、空空如也，甚至都没有为游客专设的零食摊。饿到神志涣散的时候，我遇到一个小摊，窗口外摆了几张桌椅。我赶紧把沉重的背包放下来。透过开在深红宫墙上的一扇门，能看到御膳房的一端。但在这个寒风刺骨的一月午后，这小摊卖的唯一热食就是方便面：热水瓶里倒出水来一泡了事。于是我拿着皇家菜单和记载宫廷生活的书坐下，在一个一次性的塑料碗里吃起了红烧牛肉方便面。
But was it even necessary to exaggerate? Pu Yi quotes the imperial records of food expenditure for a single month of his reign, when he was a mere four years old. Apparently, the tiny emperor, the empress dowager and four high consorts together consumed about two tonnes of meat and 388 chickens and ducks in that month alone, of which about 400 kilogrammes of pork and 240 chickens and ducks were destined for the emperor himself. That’s about 14 kilogrammes of meat and nine birds every day, for a tiny child! Even in my wildest and most excessive periods of ‘research’ in China, I haven’t come close to this. Needless to say, most of this extraordinary food budget must have been wasted, or siphoned off by the eunuchs, who were notorious for their embezzlement of imperial funds.
但是，真的有必要突出和夸张吗？溥仪书中引用了皇家记录上他在位期间仅仅一个月内食物上的花费，那时他才四岁。记录白纸黑字地写明了这位“儿皇帝”、太后以及四位贵妃光是在那一个月就消耗了两吨肉和三百八十八只鸡鸭，而皇帝一个人的名下就有四百公斤的猪肉、两百四十只鸡鸭。也就是说，他每天大约要消耗十四公斤的肉食和九只鸡鸭。一个四岁的小孩啊！我在中国为了“研究”吃得最疯狂、最放肆的时候，和他比起来也是小巫见大巫啊。不用说，这么可观的食物消耗，这么大的一个宫廷，肯定也有其他皇室成员的嘴来吃；但肯定也有大部分是被浪费掉，或者被太监们瓜分了。这些侍奉在皇上、妃子身边的人，盗用、侵吞公众物资是臭名昭著的。
Food has always been of exceptional importance in Chinese culture. It is not only the currency of medicine, but of religion and sacrifice, love and kinship, business relationships, bribery and even, on occasion, espionage (legend has it that the Chinese organised a rebellion against their Mongol conquerors in the fourteenth century by hiding messages in mooncakes). ‘To the people, food is Heaven,’ goes the old and oft-repeated saying.
食物在中国文化里总是有着不可替代的重要性。除了前面提过的食为药补，食物还涉及宗教与祭祀、爱情与亲情、生意关系往来、行贿受贿，有时甚至还跟间谍活动有关（传说十四世纪的中国人把密信藏在月饼中，组织了一场针对蒙古统治者的起义）。“民以食为天”是从古时候就代代相传的谚语。
Once, when I was visiting the National Palace Museum in Taipei, I came across a rather peculiar exhibit. There, in a glazed display cabinet, on a delicate plinth tooled with cloud patterns in pure gold, sat what appeared to be a chunk of tender cooked pork. The skin was a rich, glossy brown, flecked with the dots of hair follicles. The flesh, layered unevenly with fat, drooped succulently over one edge of the plinth. It looked delicious, like a piece of belly pork that had been braised for hours in a clay pot with soy sauce, rice wine and sugar. My mouth watered… but the label on the cabinet was a stony reminder that the ‘meat’ was made from a piece of cold, hard agate.
一次，在台北故宫博物院，我巧遇一件很特别的展品：光滑的玻璃展示柜里摆着镶有祥云的纯金底座，上面的展品仿佛是一块煮熟的肥嫩五花肉；肉皮是泛着油光的棕色，毛囊清晰可见；一层层不规则的肥肉中有个地方松松地垂下来，油脂满满的样子，看着实在太好吃了，像是一块猪腩肉放在砂锅里加了酱油、米酒和糖炖了好几个小时的样子。我满嘴的口水……但展示柜上的一块标签却用不容置疑的语气提醒我，这块肉是用一块冷冰冰、硬邦邦的玉石做成的。
This pork chunk is one of the most prized imperial treasures, spirited away from the Forbidden City when China was consumed by war. The Nationalist authorities loaded their pick of the precious objects in the palace onto a convoy of lorries, and drove them deep into the Chinese hinterland. As battle raged around them, and Japanese bombs fell, the custodians of the museum skirted the areas where the fighting was worst, and ultimately shipped their cargo over the straits to Taiwan, where the Nationalists were setting up their exile government. Incredibly, not a single object was damaged or broken in the course of this long and tempestuous journey.
这块“肉形石”算是最价值连城的皇家珍宝之一，在整个中国深陷战火时被偷偷带出紫禁城。国民党当局挑选了包括这块石头在内的一些宫中珍宝，放上一辆辆卡车，深入到中国腹地。战争如火如荼时，日军的轰炸不断，珍宝的保管人们避开了战斗最白热化的地区。最后，这些宝贝都跨越海峡，被送到台湾——逃离大陆的国民党在这里建立了政府。他们说，最令人难以置信的是，如此的长途颠簸，一路状况连连，而珍宝却每一件都毫发无损。
A piece of pork fashioned out of precious stone, displayed on a golden plinth. I tried to imagine a golden joint of roast beef, studded with diamonds, rubies, emeralds and pearls, sitting amid the coronets and sceptres of the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London. But it was absurd, unimaginable. Only in China would you find a piece of common meat fashioned out of a precious material by master craftsmen and displayed among the treasures of the nation. It seemed like a metaphor for the seriousness of the Chinese approach to food, as well as its wit, its levity and its joy.
纯金底座上用玉石做成的一块猪肉，实在神奇。我开始想象黄金做的烤牛肉，镶着钻石、红宝石、绿宝石与珍珠，放在伦敦塔中那些珍贵华丽的王冠与权杖之中。但这太荒唐了，根本不可能。只有在中国，你才能找到能工巧匠用珍贵材料做成一块普普通通的肉，并将其作为国家至宝来展出。这仿佛是中国对待食物态度之严肃的一种隐喻，当然，严肃之中还有智慧、创意与欢乐。
In ancient China, food was not only a pleasure but a grave matter and one of the main concerns of government. Edible sacrifices made to gods and ancestors sustained the social and political order: neglect them, and chaos would surely follow. That was why the Zhou Court of the first millennium BC, according to later historians, assigned more than half its staff, or two thousand people, to matters related to food and drink. There were dieticians and chefs; game hunters and butchers; meat-dryers and turtle-catchers; picklers and icehouse attendants. Some were responsible for preparing sacrificial offerings, others for feeding the king and his consorts.
在古代中国，食物不仅是享受，还是万分重大的事情，也是政府最关心的民生社稷之一。为神仙与祖先献上可以吃的祭品，是维持社会与政治秩序的必须，若忽略了这种礼仪，则一定会天下大乱。所以，根据史学家研究，公元前一千年的周朝，就有超过一半（多达两千人）朝廷官员的职责是饮食相关的，其中有食医和烹人、兽人（打猎）和庖人（屠夫）、腊人（做腊肉）和鳖人（抓鳖）、醯人（制醋酿酒）和凌人（看管冰窖）；有些负责准备祭祀用品，还有的负责满足皇亲国戚们的口腹之欲。
Political power was symbolised by the ding, a cauldron used for cooking meat for sacrifices. In the distant reaches of Chinese history, the number of ding a nobleman was allowed to possess depended on his rank. Steal a man’s ding in a military campaign, and you took away his lordly authority. The ceremonial ding themselves, cast in bronze, covered in geometric patterns, were at the heart of ritual life. These distinctive cooking pots are still one of the most potent symbols of Chinese civilisation: the Shanghai museum that opened with a great fanfare in 1996 takes the form of a ding.
皇权的象征是鼎，做献祭用肉食的大锅。那些遥远的中国历史上，贵族可以拥有的鼎的数量要看他的品阶有多高。要是在一场战事中谁的鼎被偷了，他就没有兵权了。作为祭祀用的鼎是青铜铸造的，上面装饰着几何图案，是仪式的重中之重。直到现在，这些独特的大锅也是中华文明最有力的象征：一九九六年，上海博物馆盛大揭幕，整个建筑的造型就是一个鼎。
Sages often compared the art of government to seasoning a stew. You had to balance the different flavours, the vinegar and pickled meats, the salt and sour plums, to achieve perfect harmony. ‘The cook blends the ingredients,’ said the statesman Yanzi in a text compiled more than 2000 years ago, ‘and equalises them by taste, adding whatever is deficient and decreasing whatever is excessive. His master then eats it and thereby composes his mind. The relationship between lord and vassal also is like this…’
先贤们总用调味烹煮来类比治国的艺术：要平衡各种味道，比如醋与腌肉、盐和酸梅，这样才能达到完美的和谐。“宰夫和之，”两千多年前，政治家晏子撰文道，“齐之以味，济其不及；以泄其过，君子食之，以平其心。君臣亦然……”（1）【注：（1）这段文字引用自《左传》中的《晏子对齐侯问》，引用文字的大意是，“厨工调配味道，使各种味道恰到好处；味道不够就增加调料，味道太重就减少调料。君子吃了这种肉羹，用来平和心性。国君和臣下的关系也是这样……”】
Others offered serious advice in culinary terms. The Taoist philosopher Laozi, author of the Tao Te Ching, warned that governing a state was as delicate a matter as cooking small fish, while Confucius, who lived in the fifth century BC, was as cultivated in his eating habits as he was in other aspects of his life: ‘his rice is not excessively refined, and his sliced meat is not cut excessively fine. Rice that has become putrid and sour, fish that has spoiled, and meat that has gone bad, he does not eat. Undercooked foods he does not eat, and foods served at improper times he does not eat. Meat that is improperly carved, he does not eat, and if he does not obtain the proper sauce, he will not eat.’ In China, knowing how to eat properly has always been a metaphor for knowing how to live.
其他圣贤也巧借烹饪饮食来提出严肃的建议。道家先贤、《道德经》的作者老子认为“治大国若烹小鲜”；而公元前五世纪的孔子不仅生活上各个方面十分讲究，饮食习惯也是极尽繁琐：“食不厌精，脍不厌细。食饐而餲，鱼馁而肉败，不食；色恶，不食；恶臭，不食；失饪，不食；不时，不食；割不正，不食；不得其酱，不食。”（2）在中国，知不知道怎么吃得对、吃得好，往往代表了懂不懂生活。【注：（2）出自《论语》，引用文字的大意是，“食物不嫌做得精，鱼肉不嫌切得细。食物变质馊臭，鱼肉腐烂，不吃。颜色难看，不吃。气味难闻，不吃。火候不当，不吃。不是时候，不吃。切得不合刀法，不吃。没有合适的调味酱，不吃。”】
A gentle wind stirred in the trees as we passed the great red gateway, and crossed the hump-backed stone bridge into Beihai Park. Red lanterns glowed along the edge of the dark, rippling lake. We walked through a curved colonnade, beneath a roof of richly painted rafters, watching the shifting, silent waters. The traffic and general mayhem of the city were forgotten. From here, the skyline appeared mysteriously bereft of high-rises.
温柔的风吹得树叶沙沙响，我们穿过大红门，走过石拱桥，进了北海公园。夜色中的北海荡起一圈圈涟漪，周围点着一圈红灯笼。我们走过一条弯曲的柱廊，抬头的屋顶上有色彩鲜艳的椽木，放眼望去就是静静摆荡的湖水。
The emperor himself ruled by divine appointment, and his first duty was to ensure that his subjects were fed. Droughts, bad harvests and famine were signs that the gods had tired of him, and that his mandate had expired. So every spring he ploughed three furrows at the Temple of Agriculture, and every winter solstice he fasted for three days before the annual sacrifice to Heaven. This was the most solemn religious ceremony of the year. A bullcalf, a sheep, a pig and a deer were killed in the sacred abbatoir of the Temple of Heaven in the southeast of Beijing. And then the emperor mounted the great stone altar, where he made offerings of wine and food, and banged his head on the cold marble floor.
帝王的皇权天赐，而其第一职责就是确保填饱子民们的肚子。如果发生干旱、欠收、饥荒等灾害，说明神厌倦了这个皇帝，委托给他的权力“过期”了。所以每年春天皇上都要在先农坛亲自耕种一亩三分地，每年冬至他会斋戒三日，然后举行祭天大典。这是一年中最庄严隆重的宗教仪式，在北京东南的天坛举行，每次大典会在那里的宰牲亭宰杀一头小公牛、一只羊、一头猪和一只鹿。接着皇帝登上神圣的圜丘坛，向上天献祭美酒与食物，并在冰冷的大理石地面上虔诚磕头。
If the best food the Forbidden City itself could offer in the post-imperial era was instant noodles, I’d heard of a Beijing restaurant that specialised in palace cooking. One evening I persuaded my Sichuanese friend Xun, who was also staying in the capital, to accompany me there for dinner.
后帝国时代，紫禁城能提供的最好食物好像就是方便面了。但我也听说了有家北京餐馆，是专门做宫廷菜的。一天晚上，我拉着也是住在帝都的四川朋友洵陪我去那儿吃晚饭。
Fangshan specialises in Chinese imperial cuisine, with an emphasis on dishes derived from the repertoire of the great Man-Han banquet. When Pu Yi left the Forbidden City, four or five of the former palace chefs opened this restaurant, then on the northern edge of the lake in Beihai Park, on the advice of a former palace eunuch, Zhao Renzhai. ‘There were no recipe books in those days, and most chefs were illiterate,’ the manager Wang Tao told us, ‘so all their skills were passed from generation to generation by word of mouth. During the Cultural Revolution, for about ten years, this place was not open to the general public, although it continued to serve political insiders; later it was opened to important state guests; and finally in 1989 to the public once again. So although the original chefs were all dead by the sixties, we have an unbroken chain of teaching and tradition that extends right back to the Forbidden City.’
仿膳饭庄是专门做中国宫廷菜的，特别注重那些从满汉全席的代表菜品中衍生而来的菜。溥仪仓皇离开紫禁城后，有四五个过去的宫廷厨师合伙开了这家饭庄。当时是在北海的北端，出这个主意的是原来宫里的一个太监赵仁斋。“那时候根本没有菜谱这种东西，大多数厨师都是文盲，”经理汪涛告诉我们，“所以一切的记忆都是一代代口口相传下来的。‘文化大革命’的时候，有大概十年的时间，这个地方都不对外开放，不过还是会接待政府内部人士的，后来就开始接待重要的国宾，一九八九年又重新对外开放了。所以，虽然原来那些创始人厨师都去世了，我们教学和传统的这个链条没断，还是能一直追溯到紫禁城的。”
Soon the grand entrance of the Fangshan restaurant beckoned. We passed the fierce stone lions, crossed a cold flagstoned courtyard lit by lanterns, and entered the dining room. It shimmered in a haze of yellow and gold, almost hallucinatory. Yellow curtains hung behind tables draped in yellow cloths and laid with yellow plates and bowls. Waitresses in embroidered yellow robes bore trays of yellow teabowls. Golden dragons curled up golden pillars, and writhed on the painted ceiling. The old-fashioned lanterns dripped with yellow tassels. It was overwhelming, this golden evocation of the imperial past. (‘When I think of my childhood,’ said Pu Yi, ‘my head fills with a yellow mist.’)
很快仿膳饭庄那宏伟的大门就在召唤我们了。我们与面相威严的石狮子擦肩而过，穿过一个铺了石板路、挂了红灯笼、冷飕飕的四合院，进入餐厅。一切都沉浸在模糊的黄金色微光中，像个幻梦。桌子上铺着黄色桌布，摆着黄色的盘子和碗，后面是黄色的窗帘。女服务员身穿黄色的刺绣袍子端着托盘，上面是黄色的茶碗。金色的柱子上金龙盘绕，颜色鲜艳的天花板上也是神龙腾飞。旧式的灯笼周围垂着黄色的穗子。这金色的一切仿佛是在为远去的帝国招魂，实在太震撼了。（“每当回想起自己的童年，”溥仪说，“我脑子里便浮起一层黄色。”）
Xun and I began our meal with a selection of delicate palace appetisers. There were small blocks of a paste made from peas, subtly sweetened and ice-cold on the tongue; and slices of a roll made from sugared haricot beans stuffed with red-bean paste and crushed sesame seeds; cold meats and vegetables. Naturally, we were then offered a parade of showy delicacies: shark’s fin soup, slices of gelatinous camel’s foot in a dark, velvety sauce; soft-shelled turtle; sea cucumber and abalone. Some of the snacks were of particular imperial interest, like the small sesame flatbreads with a minced-pork stuffing. The Empress Dowager Cixi is said to have dreamt of these one night, only to find them served for breakfast the following morning, to her delight. Cixi is also associated with small steamed cones of maize flour: she was given these wo tou by a peasant when she fled to Xi’an after the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, and enjoyed them so much that her cooks recreated them in a more elegant fashion on her return to Beijing.
上菜了，我和洵的面前摆上了一系列精致的宫廷开胃菜：有小块小块的豌豆黄，在舌尖上留下微妙而幽凉的甜味；有芸豆卷，糖渍芸豆里面塞了红豆沙和碾碎的芝麻；还有冷盘的肉与蔬菜。自然，接下来就是一道道相当华丽的美味佳肴了：罐焖鱼翅、葱扒驼掌、（鳖）裙边、海参和鲍鱼。有的风味小吃是特别受皇室成员喜爱的，比如肉末烧饼。据说慈禧太后一天晚上梦到这道小吃，结果第二天早膳就吃到了，“龙”颜大悦。小窝窝头也跟慈禧有关：一九零零年义和团起义后，她逃到西安，一个农民给了她些小窝窝头，她吃得香极了。回到北京以后，御厨们又以更精妙的手法对此民间小吃进行了再创作。
Sadly, Xun and I didn’t have three days and three nights available for the full Man-Han banquet experience, so we had to content ourselves with a mere seventeen or so dishes and snacks. We emerged at the end of the evening lost in yellow, well-fed, and rather enchanted with the whole palace dining experience. But of course I was aware that the dishes at Fangshan bore as much relation to the real foodways of Beijing as the menu of a restaurant with three Michelin stars does to the diet of a dustman in Peckham. And while I was in the capital, I wanted to experience the local food at its grittiest. The secretary of the Chinese Culinary Association had told me that, if I really wanted to taste the city’s street food, I should try lu zhu huo shao, which loosely translates as ‘flatbread in broth’. He warned me that it was not for the fainthearted, but I brushed off his words with a breezy smile.
很遗憾，我和洵没有三天三夜的时间体验完整的满汉全席，所以只好细细品味眼前这仅有的十七道左右的菜肴和小吃。那天晚上饭吃完后，我们几乎要迷失在这一片黄色当中，甚至深深陶醉在这宫廷菜的用餐体验里。但我当然清楚，仿膳饭庄的菜和北京真正的大众饮食文化关系不大，正如一家米其林三星餐厅之于伦敦贫穷地区清洁工的饮食。反正我都在中国首都了，自然想要体验最接地气的当地饮食。中国烹饪协会会长告诉过我，要是真想尝尝北京的街头小吃，那一定要吃卤煮火烧：不全面地说，就是“烧饼泡在汤里”。他警告我说，胆子小是吃不成这东西的，我听了只是云淡风轻地一笑。
Over the next few days, I kept an eye out for lu zhu huo shao. And when, one frosty morning, wandering in the hutongs that run alongside the eastern edge of the Forbidden City, I stumbled across a grungy snack shop that had a sign outside advertising ths dish, as well as other local ‘small eats’, I strode right in and, with my usual bravado, asked them to serve me with their most important specialities. It was a decision I regretted almost immediately.
接下来的几天，我一直在寻觅卤煮火烧。一个严寒的早上，我在紫禁城东墙根儿的胡同里游荡，无意中碰到一家破旧的小食店，店门口支着个牌子写着这道菜和其他北京小吃。我忙不迭地走进去，拿出通常那种虚张声势的劲儿，请老板给我上店里最招牌的特色菜——我几乎立刻就后悔了这个决定。
After all my gastronomic adventures, there is only one thing that I really dislike eating, and that is the digestive apparatus of the pig and other large animals. I’ve eaten tripe and chitterlings enough times to feel that I am not prejudiced against them — I eat them with an entirely open mind, and still I hate them. Their textures don’t bother me at all. What I find loathsome is their rank, stealthy taste, that insidious reek of digestive juices that no amount of garlic or coriander can dispel. It stirs up in me a profound, visceral anxiety that I cannot quite explain.
我也是在饮食上冒险无数回的人了，真要说特别不爱吃的，只有一种，就是猪和其他大型动物的消化系统。肚条和肥肠我吃了多次，可以说是没有任何偏见了，吃的时候也怀着非常开明的心态，但还是觉得讨厌。口感没有任何问题，让我恶心的是那种隐隐的臭味，就是胃酸一样隐秘而强烈的恶臭，管你加多少大蒜和香菜都不能驱散。吃了这些东西，会搅动我内心深处一种本能的焦虑，说不清道不明。
On that freezing morning in Beijing, the cheery staff of the café brought forth their finest dishes and laid them on the table. The steaming stench of offal rose up and engulfed me. Here was the stuff of all my worst food nightmares lined up before me in a gruesome parade. There was a tangle of slivered sheep stomach with a sesame dip; a vile mess of pig’s liver and chitterlings in a thick, gloopy sauce; and a murky broth in which floated pieces of sheep’s liver, tripe, heart, lung and intestine. Most ghastly of all was the proud centrepiece of the feast, lu zhu huo shao, which one of my Chinese food books renders in English as ‘Boiled pig’s entrails with cake bits’. Beads of oil quivered like sweat on the surface of a dismal broth that was a casket of animal extremities: chunks of purplish pig’s lung, pale tubes poking out of their sponginess; pieces of stomach and liver; slices of wobbly intestine… A fetid aroma emanated from the squashy tubes and chambers. This was hardcore streetfood, fuel for the bellies of tough working men.
北京那个寒冷刺骨的清晨，小食店情绪高昂的店员端来店里最棒的招牌菜放在桌上。内脏的恶臭随着热气升腾席卷而来，将我吞没。我面前摆的这一溜，大概会出现在我关于食物最可怕的梦魇中：羊的胃切成细丝，纠缠在一起，配上麻酱（3）；猪肝与猪大肠混合在黏糊糊的浓油赤酱中（4）；羊的肝、肚、心、肺和肠混在一起，变成一碗灰蒙蒙的羊杂汤。最让人生畏的便是这场“大宴”的中心——卤煮火烧，我的一本英文中餐谱中将其介绍为“Boiled pig’s entrails with cake bits”（煮沸的猪内脏配小块饼）。一串串油珠像汗水一样在汤面上滚动，这碗汤像个棺材，里面装满了动物的残骸：大块大块的猪肺，泛着微微的紫色，软乎乎的像海绵，还有苍白的血管凸出来；东一块西一块的猪肚和猪肝；一片片歪歪斜斜的肠子……湿软的内脏中散发出难闻的气味。这还真是属于勇者的街头小吃，只有那些干苦活累活的男人，吃了这个才会觉得如充电加油般浑身是劲。【注：（3）按照描述，这道菜应该是北京小吃中的羊爆肚。（4）即炒肝。】
When I first began thinking about the emperor’s banquets, I have to admit that I felt a little envious. Imagine, whenever you were hungry, being able to snap your fingers and summon a procession of eunuchs bearing seven tables laden with food! Imagine being followed at all times by servants from the Imperial Tea Bureau carrying boxes of cakes and other delicious titbits, teacups and flasks of hot water.
刚开始了解皇宫御膳时，我得承认自己是有些羡慕和嫉妒的。想象一下，你只要饿了，拍拍手就能招来一群太监搬着七大桌吃的！想象一下，随时随地都有御茶坊的仆人，拿着一盒盒点心与其他风味小吃，还随时好茶热水伺候着。
I felt faint and nauseous. It would have been bad enough at any time of day, but for breakfast… I found myself reverting to the kind of disdainful thoughts you’d expect of an adopted Sichuanese like me. ‘The diet of these northerners is so rank and stinky! What muttony brutes they are!’ I swallowed a few foul-smelling slices of gut and liver and fled to a dumpling shop across the way.
我只觉眩晕恶心。不管哪餐吃这个都是够糟糕的了，而这还只是早餐啊……此时此刻我感觉自己变回了一名“编外”四川人，满心都是轻蔑和鄙视。“北方人吃的东西膻味太大了！真是浑身羊骚味的野人啊！”我勉强咽下几根肠子和猪肝，飞奔着逃到了街对面一家饺子馆。
But Pu Yi says in his autobiography that he never touched the food from the main imperial kitchens. Those thirty dishes had all been prepared long in advance, since they had to be ready to be whisked into the imperial presence at a moment’s notice. They had sat around for hours on the stoves, sagging. According to Pu Yi, the eunuchs set up these official meals some distance away from him, where presumably the fats in the thirty dishes congealed, the soups grew cold, the vegetables wilted, and the pastries staled in the open air. Some of the dishes may even have been fake: one of my sources in Beijing told me wooden roast chickens and other models were used to heighten the impression of plenty.
但溥仪在自传中说，他从来没碰过御膳房传出来的菜。这些所谓的“食前方丈”一共有三十道上下，都是很早就准备好的，因为必须谕旨一下迅速奉上，只能长时间地煨着候着，早已经是过了火候的。溥仪说，这些御膳房的菜，太监们都是远远摆在一边。想来三十道菜应该是油脂凝固、热汤冷却、蔬菜蔫儿了、点心陈腐。有些菜可能还是假的：有个北京朋友告诉我，那时候还会用木头做成烤鸡和其他样子，让菜肴显得很丰富。
Meanwhile, the young emperor actually ate from a quite separate selection of dishes produced in the Dowager Empress Longyu’s own private kitchen. Like the eunuchs, many of whom had their own catering arrangements, she knew better than to trust the central palace kitchens. The chief imperial cooks, according to Pu Yi, were aware that their food had not been eaten for more than a decade, since the reign of his predecessor Guangxu. Did they even care how it tasted? The food Pu Yi ordered the cooks to send to the High Consorts on their birthdays was, he says, ‘expensive and showy without being good… neither nutritious nor tasty.’ One can imagine the apathy, the creeping negligence of the chefs, after years of producing these untouched feasts.
而年轻的皇帝真正吃的，是隆裕太后寝宫膳房里做出来的菜。连太监们都知道去别处寻摸好吃的，隆裕太后自然也是不信任御膳房的。溥仪说，御膳房的厨子们也是知道的，从光绪皇帝起的十几年来，他们做的东西早就没人吃了。他们到底还在不在意这些菜味道如何呢？溥仪说，每到年节或太妃的生日，他命令厨子们做给太妃的菜肴可以用四句话予以鉴定：“华而不实，费而不惠，营而不养，淡而无味。”应该可以想象，多年来做的都是没人碰、没人吃的菜肴，厨师们该变得多冷漠、多不在意。
The grand state banquets can have been little better. Think of food cooked in enormous cauldrons, on a vast scale, and then transported long distances across lanes and courtyards, before being laid out in front of state guests seated according to a rigid hierarchy in the drafty halls. Imagine the endless toasts, the stifling ritual. How cold and dreary the food must have become. Sometimes, it’s true, they set up chafing dishes to keep some of it warm. But it was all show food, fusty and bombastic, a pageant of expensive delicacies to flaunt the wealth of the Chinese empire.
大型的国宴大概也好不到哪儿去。想想吧，大锅里批量做出的菜，经过无数条小巷、无数个院子的长途传送，摆到一群国宾面前。他们在冷风嗖嗖的大厅里，按照严格的等级落座。想想吧，不停地举杯祝酒、觥筹交错，长时间沉闷压抑的仪式，那些菜该变得多冷、多不新鲜啊。是，有时候他们会在底下架个火炉给某些菜保温。但那都是些为了排场摆出来的菜，陈腐霉烂、华而不实，只是把昂贵的山珍海味拿出来虚张声势地炫耀一番，以显示天朝上国的无限财富。
I wondered if anyone had really enjoyed their meals in the Forbidden City. It is a solemn, intimidating place, especially in winter, its beauty austere. From outside, you see only roofs and watchtowers, bounded by faceless walls and a wide, frozen moat. It looks more prison than palace, forbidding as well as forbidden. The hearts of the newly selected imperial concubines must have sunk as its gates clanged shut behind them.
我不知道紫禁城到底有没有人真正享受过美食。这个地方太过庄严肃穆，令人望而生畏；尤其是在冬日里，这里的美就更显得冷峻起来。从外面你只能看到殿宇的屋顶和角楼，围着一圈冰冷漠然的墙壁和一条宽阔封冻的护城河。看着不像宫殿，倒像监狱，既禁入又禁出。那巨大的宫门在身后轰隆关上的一刻，新选入宫为妃为嫔的秀女们一定是心里一沉的。
The diets of the concubines were strictly regulated, like everything else in their lives. They were graded by rank: in the Qing period, first below the empress was the imperial consort, then there were two high consorts and four ordinary consorts, eight so-called gui ren (another lower rank of consort), and any number of lesser concubines. They were only allowed to eat really well when, or if, they fell pregnant, because it was thought that in normal circumstances a rich diet would breed lustful thoughts. So at other times they were assigned quotas of meat, poultry, vegetables and grain foods according to their status. The imperial consort, for example, might get 12 jin (about 6 kilogrammes) of pork and ten aubergines a month, and a chicken or duck every day; but a woman at the bottom of the heap would be given only six jin of pork and six aubergines, and a mere ten birds every month. (Imagine the bickering, the bitchiness, as the top concubine savoured her piece of succulent pork at the end of the month, while lesser concubines were left with vegetables and beancurd!) The chance to eat more richly would have been just another incentive to get pregnant, an achievement that might enable a low-ranking concubine to rise up the sexual pecking order: a secondary concubine who produced a son might even end up as empress dowager, like the formidable Cixi.
和宫内生活的方方面面一样，妃嫔们的膳食也是有严格规定的，主要按照位份品级来定。清朝时，皇后下面是皇贵妃，然后是两个贵妃、四个后妃、六个嫔、八个贵人，剩下的低阶侍妾数量随意。她们唯一能真正吃得好的时候，只能是怀了龙胎。因为当时普遍认为，在平常的日子里，饱暖思淫欲，所以没有怀孕的妃嫔，肉、禽类、蔬菜和谷物都是根据地位来定的。比如，皇贵妃每月大概能分到十二斤猪肉和十个茄子，每天能有一只鸡或鸭；但最底层的侍妾每月就只有六斤猪肉、六个茄子和十只禽类。（想想看吧，到月底，位份最高的妃子津津有味地品尝着她那肥美多汁的猪肉，而低阶侍妾们只能靠青菜豆腐过日子，这该引起多么激烈的争吵和嫉妒啊！）吃得更好、更丰富，也是妃子们削尖脑袋要怀孕的动力之一。只要怀了龙胎，身份低微的侍妾也可能在这属于女人们的等级制度中节节高升；要是生了儿子，地位不高的妃子最后说不定就是太后，比如垂帘听政、独揽大权的慈禧。
Supposedly, the emperor could have eaten anything and everything. The world was his abalone, in a golden shell. Yet, as a child, Pu Yi had no appetite. He was taken from his mother before he was three, and the grandmother who had doted on him had a breakdown when he left. He didn’t see either of them again for seven years, and his father only visited him for a couple of minutes every two months. Eventually his mother committed suicide, with an overdose of opium. His wet-nurse was the only person who awakened in him feelings of empathy for other human beings, and she was dismissed when he was eight years old. The high consorts of the two previous emperors officially became his ‘mothers’ when he was adopted into the palace, but it was a formal relationship and he says he never knew any motherly love. The heart of the empire was a cold-hearted place. Starved of affection, Pu Yi developed a stomach ailment.
想来皇帝应该吃遍天下美食奇珍，整个世界都像他筷子下包裹着金壳子的一块鲍鱼。然而，小时候的溥仪一点胃口也没有。三岁就被迫和母亲分离，那时视他为掌上明珠的祖母精神崩溃、一病不起。此后的七年里，无论是妈妈还是奶奶，小溥仪都没再见过。父亲也是每两个月才来跟他相见几分钟。最终，生母吸食过量鸦片自杀。只有乳母，唤醒了他的人性，让他为别人有所考虑。而太妃们背着他把这位乳母赶出去的时候，溥仪才八九岁。被收养到宫里之后，两位先帝（同治和光绪）的妃子成了他官方的“母亲”，但这关系是非常正式刻板的，他说自己并没有得到过真正的母爱。帝国的心脏，却是一个冷漠的冰窖。从没被关爱“喂饱”过的溥仪，得了胃病。
Life in the palace was ridden with filthy intrigue, whoever you were. Even emperors could be its victims, like Pu Yi’s predecessor Guangxu, who was humiliated and imprisoned by the Empress Dowager Cixi after a virtual coup d’etat, and who later died in suspicious circumstances. Many of Cixi’s enemies came to sticky ends: suicide, decapitation, imprisonment and exile. She disliked one of her daughters-in-law so much she deprived her of food and drink until she died, had one imperial consort drowned in a well, and was also suspected of poisoning a rival dowager empress with some tainted soup. At one point, Pu Yi himself was so terrified of being murdered that he was unable to sleep, and he says in his autobiography that theft, arson, murder, gambling and opium-smoking were common within the palace walls.
不管你是谁，只要在宫廷里，生活就会充斥着肮脏卑劣的阴谋诡计，就连九五之尊的皇帝也可能成为牺牲品，比如溥仪的前任光绪。他发动了一场劳而无功的夺权政变后，被慈禧太后百般羞辱并软禁起来，后来很可疑地死去。慈禧的很多敌人都不得善终：要么自我了结，要么人头落地，要么坐穿牢底，要么流放到苦寒之地。有个儿媳很不得她欢心，于是不给吃不给喝，一直到死；有位妃子被她投了井；还有人怀疑她用汤毒死了和自己地位不相上下的一位太后。有段时间溥仪自己也特别怕被谋害，夜间辗转难眠。他在自传里说，宫里时常发生盗案、火警以及行凶事件，至于烟赌就更不用说了。
It probably wasn’t just a lack of love that contributed to his digestive problems. Pu Yi’s diet was tightly controlled, because the health of the emperor was paramount. ‘Your Majesty’s body is a sacred body,’ Pu Yi remembers his mother telling him when she finally did visit him in the palace. And as Professor Luo explained to me, when we met for tea one day in a café just outside the Forbidden City, ‘in those days they thought fever was a symptom of inner fire, which would be exacerbated by the consumption of rich and highly seasoned food. So whenever children in the imperial family fell sick, they were given only congee to eat, to cool them down. Of course such a diet was inadequate, and many of them, over the years, actually died of malnutrition.’ Pu Yi himself describes how once ‘I stuffed myself with chestnuts, and for a month or more afterwards the empress dowager… only allowed me to eat browned rice porridge; and although I was crying with hunger, no one paid me any attention.’ He was so desperate to eat, he says, that he snatched a little cold pork that some princes had sent in tribute to the empress dowager, to the fury of his minders.
不过，缺爱大概并非胃病的唯一原因。溥仪的饮食是受到严格控制的，因为天子的健康是重中之重。“皇帝的身子是圣体。”溥仪记得母亲终于到宫里看自己的时候，嘱咐了这么一句话。有天我和李老师约在紫禁城外喝茶，他向我解释说：“那时候他们觉得发烧是心里有火，要是吃了营养丰富和加工过多的食物，心火就烧得更旺。所以皇家的孩子要是生病了，就只能喝粥，好败败心火。当然光吃粥怎么够呢，这么多年，很多孩子其实就是营养不良死掉的。”溥仪自己也在书里写道：“我六岁时有一次栗子吃多了，撑着了，有一个多月的时间隆裕太后只许我吃糊米粥，我天天嚷肚子饿也没有人管。”他说，自己饿到抢吃抢喝的地步，有一天把某王府给太后上贡的冷酱肘子抓起一只就咬，结果跟随的太监大惊失色，连忙来抢。
With Pu Yi, they didn’t have to worry. Professor Luo, sipping his jasmine tea in the café, lowered his voice as he told me that the last emperor was impotent. ‘One of my grandmother’s closest friends was his concubine,’ he told me, ‘and she wrote many letters to my grandmother. In them she said how lonely and miserable she was, and made veiled allusions to the emperor’s incapacities. Of course no one could speak of this openly, but his lack of “face” made him bitter and tormented, and he mistreated his wives.’
对于溥仪，他们是不必有这方面顾虑的。李老师一边喝着茉莉花茶，一边压低声音告诉我，这位末代皇帝有阳痿的毛病。“我奶奶有个好朋友，是他的侍妾，”他对我说，“她给我奶奶写了好多信。信里说，她特别孤独，心情不好，还特别隐晦地说了皇上不行的事儿。当然不会有人把这事儿拿出来公开宣扬，但他因为这事儿觉得没脸啊，心里不好受，性格很坏，对妻妾们都不好。”
Pu Yi’s sexual life was no more successful than his gastronomic life. Of course he was provided with a wife and concubine when he came of age (a mere two ‘dishes’, compared with the hundreds of some of his predecessors). Later, he took another consort and another wife. But sex for an emperor wasn’t meant to be enjoyable, any more than dinner. The Chinese have long memories, and no one had forgotten the dissipated life of the Xuanzong Emperor of the eighth-century Tang. He fell badly in love with his favourite concubine, Yang Guifei, and when his reign collapsed after a bloody rebellion, his romantic infatuation was blamed. After that, the sexual lives of the emperors were strictly regulated. Bedmates were not allowed to stay the night, lest they exhaust the Son of Heaven. Whispering eunuchs kept an eye on things, to make sure no dangerous attachments developed.
溥仪的性生活也不比饮食生活幸福。自然，到了年龄，宫里也给他婚配了一后一妃（就给他上了这么两道“菜”，而先帝们却有三宫六院、数百佳丽）。后来，他又纳了两个妃子。但皇上的性生活注定和用膳一样，不会快活。中国人记性好，忘不了八世纪唐玄宗沉迷酒色的奢侈生活。他深爱杨贵妃，而一场血腥起义导致皇权岌岌可危后，很多人把这祸水归于他痴迷的爱情。那之后，皇帝的性生活就受到严格的制约和管束：妃嫔可以上床，但不可过夜，唯恐把天子给累着了。总有太监注视着他们的一举一动，窃窃私语地传话，确保皇帝和妃嫔之间不会产生危险的情感。
It was the emperor’s duty to feed the people, but his own personal appetites were irrelevant. ‘Appetite for food and sex is nature,’ the philosopher Gaozi once said. But the emperor wasn’t an ordinary man, he was the Son of Heaven, and for him food and sex were political events. Eunuchs watched him eat, and they waited by his bedroom door. All in all, the last emperor was a pitiful figure. Like his ancient imperial predecessor, Shi Huang Di of terracotta-army fame, he was incarcerated in an opulent tomb, provided with endless servants, riches beyond imagining, and every delicacy in the empire. The difference was that, when he was incarcerated, Pu Yi was still alive.
皇帝要填饱天下万民的肚子，但他自己的胃口是不相干的。“食、色，性也。”哲学家告子曾经说过。但皇帝不是普通人，他是天子，他的饮食与性生活都是政治事件。吃饭的时候，有太监在一旁看着；床笫之欢的时候，太监就在卧房门外守着。观其一生，末代皇帝令人同情唏嘘。和自己古老的始祖、创设了著名兵马俑的秦始皇一样，他也被监禁在一个财物丰裕的“坟墓”里，有无数的仆从，享尽荣华富贵，帝国的珍馐佳肴任他享用。不同的是，溥仪被困“坟墓”中时，还活着。
Pu Yi himself confessed to a ‘taste for cruelty’ in his autobiography, and wrote that he abandoned his new empress on their wedding night in 1922 because he preferred to sleep alone. Though he married four girls, he said ‘they were not real wives, and were only there for show [and] they were all my victims.’ Rumours of homosexuality dogged him when he lived in Changchun under Japanese protection in the thirties and forties. He never had a son, or a daughter for that matter, which rather neatly solved a potential problem for the communists who took over in 1949. There were no loose ends for the Chinese to tie up, as there had been, with such bloody consequences, in Russia.
溥仪也在自传中承认自己“冷酷无情”，还写了一九二二年新婚之夜时，把皇后孤零零地扔在新房，因为还是觉得自己睡好。他先后有过四个妻子，但“如果从实质上说，她们谁也不是我的妻子，我根本就没有妻子，有的只是摆设。虽然她们每人的具体遭遇不同，但她们都是牺牲品”。三四十年代，他在日本人保护下生活在长春时，那时曾一度传出流言说他是个同性恋。他也从未有过一子半女，这也算是给一九四九年掌权的共产党省了很大的麻烦。中国人不用去收拾废帝子女这种烂摊子，不像俄国十月革命那样造成血腥残忍的结果。
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