It was February 2003. I’d just arrived in China to start researching my second book, a collection of recipes from Hunan Province, and now I was in the midst of a major health panic. Hordes of frighted migrant workers were fleeing the centre of the growing epidemic in Guangdong Province, and many of them were returning to Hunan, which is precisely where I was planning to spend the next four months. And, of course, most of that time would be spent in the company of chefs, now pinpointed as the main human vectors of the epidemic.
那是二零零三年二月，我刚刚到中国，开始为我的第二本书做研究。这本书主要是搜集湖南省的地方菜谱，结果我却陷入了一场健康大恐慌。广东是“非典”肆虐的中心，惊恐的农民工成群结队地逃散，很多人要回湖南，那儿正是我接下来四个月要待的地方。而且，我的大部分时间肯定是和厨师们在一起，但现在他们成了湖南感染率最高的人群。
It was one particular paragraph in the China Daily cover story that caught my eye. ‘After four days of examination and investigation, the World Health Organisation team has found that most of the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) patients in Guangdong, apart from local medical workers, are employed in the province’s restaurant and food industries.’ Oh shit.
《中国日报》头版一篇文章中，有一段吸引了我的注意。“经过四天的检测和调查后，世界卫生组织团队发现，广东的‘非典’感染者中，除了当地的医疗工作者，大多受雇于该省的餐厅和食品工业。”啊，不要啊！
In retrospect, my decision to write the book was altogether naïve. In my many years of travelling in China, I had never visited Hunan, and I knew no one who lived there. Furthermore, I knew virtually nothing about Hunanese cuisine, my attempts at preliminary research having been thwarted by the almost total absence of authentic Hunanese cookery books in either English or Chinese. In a way, that was the point: I wanted to write about an unexplored culinary region, and to discover it for myself. I was attracted, too, by the knowledge that Hunanese cuisine was hot and spicy like Sichuanese, that it was popular in the restaurants of Beijing and Shanghai, and that everybody told me it was delicious. There was also the intriguing fact that Chairman Mao had come from Hunan, and had retained a lifelong affection for its food. For a couple of years, I’d had the notion of writing a book in which recipes were interwoven with stories of China’s revolutionary history, and Hunan struck me as being the perfect place to do it.
现在回想起来，我决定写那本书本身就很幼稚。在中国那么多年，从没去过湖南，在那儿也没有认识的朋友。而且，我对湘菜可谓一无所知，研究的起步阶段就非常受挫，因为不管是英文书还是中文书，都找不到一本地道的湖南菜谱。从某种程度上来说，这就是我的写作目的：我想写写英文世界还没人深入探索过的地方菜系，自己去摸索、去发现。而且，我知道湘菜和川菜一样讲究香辣，在北京和上海的餐馆很受欢迎，人人都跟我说湘菜很好吃，这对我很有吸引力。另外，毛主席是湖南人，一辈子都爱吃湘菜，这个故事也让我好奇心大增。几年来，我一直打算写本书，把菜谱和中国革命史上的故事结合在一起，湖南正是不二之选。
But as I scanned that newspaper report, I began to think that I might have made a serious mistake. I cast my mind back to the restaurant kitchen where I had spent that very morning — a crowded, oil-blackened room where feeble extractor fans had done little to combat the savage fumes of sizzling chillies, which made us all choke and weep. Every so often, a junior chef had come up the stairs with a few freshly slaughtered chickens from a nearby poultry market, where birds and other creatures lurked in cramped cages, and the air was filled with drifting feathers and the smell of chicken waste. It was an ideal breeding ground for infection. Was this research project a good idea, I wondered?
但浏览了那个新闻报道之后，我开始觉得自己可能犯了个严重的错误。回想当天上午我待的那个餐馆后厨：拥挤不堪，到处都沾着厚厚的黑油；排风扇有气无力，根本抽不走爆炒辣椒那残暴勇猛的油烟，我们都被呛得喉咙发紧、眼泪直流。常有小厨子顺着楼梯上来，拿着几只从附近家禽市场现杀的鸡。在那个市场，禽鸟和其他动物被挨挨挤挤地关在笼子里，羽毛四处飘散。这可真是流行病毒滋生感染的温床啊。我不禁暗想，来做这个研究，真的好吗？
It was a question that returned to me often over the next few weeks. I thought of it when I travelled on crowded minibuses, surrounded by coughing, spitting people. I thought of it after a banquet at a fashionable restaurant near the Hunanese capital, Changsha, to which I’d been invited by a new acquaintance, a local restaurateur. We sat in a pavilion decked out in Qing Dynasty style as the rain roared down outside. The ladies dominated the party, with their outrageous laughter and witty repartee; the men sipped their tea quietly, or knocked back cupfuls of strong and anaesthetising spirits. Towards the end of the meal, one of the waitresses brought in a clay pot of soup in which pieces of bony flesh mingled with slices of ginger. ‘Civet cat!’ announced my host, proudly. A few days later, civet cat was highlighted in the media as the possible source of the whole SARS epidemic.
接下来的几个星期，我一直在扪心自问。挨挨挤挤的小巴上，周围的人在咳嗽，唾沫飞溅，我想起这个问题；新认识了个本地的餐厅店主，她邀请我去湖南省会长沙附近一家很时尚的餐厅参加了个宴会，吃完以后我也想起这个问题。我们坐在一座装饰成清朝风格的楼台上，外面大雨如注。宴会的主角是一位位女士，笑声爽朗、妙语如珠；男人们则安静地啜饮香茶，或者仰头喝下麻醉神经的高度酒。菜快上完的时候，服务员端进来一只砂锅，里面是瘦肉混合着姜片的汤菜。“果子狸！”邀请我来的人很骄傲地高声宣布。几天后，媒体专门强调，果子狸可能就是整个“非典”疫情的始作俑者。
With the benefit of hindsight, and the knowledge that SARS fizzled out after a few months, it is hard to remember how terrifying it was at the time. It really did seem for a while as if the whole of China might sicken, and many, many people die. There were those first, mysterious deaths in Hong Kong, traced back to a secret plague in Guangdong, covered up by the local authorities. Then came the spread of the virus across the country, the rapid explosion of cases in Beijing, the incarceration of the sick in makeshift hospitals.
我是个神经大条的“事后诸葛亮”，而且“非典”在几个月后就得到了控制，现在很难想起来当时自己有多害怕了。不过那段时间真的好像全中国，也可能是全世界，都在生病，而且死了很多很多人。先是香港有人离奇地死去，后追溯到广东被当地部门瞒报的疫情。接着病毒就在全国传播；北京迅速爆发疫情，病人被隔离在临时医院中。
In the end, of course, I decided to stay. This was partly because I had a limited window of time in which to research my book, on account of my BBC commitments: if I missed this opportunity, I didn’t know when I could come back for so long to China. But it was also out of a kind of fatalism. In the course of my Chinese adventures I had been in many risky situations. I had rattled along the brink of plunging chasms in clapped-out lorries, been caught in a blizzard late at night on a Tibetan mountain pass, eaten all kinds of questionable and unhygienic foods. I had spent my twenty-sixth birthday at a sinister party hosted for me by a branch of the Lanzhou mafia, and had narrowly escaped a lynching in the anti-foreigner riots that blew up after NATO bombed China’s Belgrade embassy in 1999. More mundanely, I had spent more days than I could remember in restaurant kitchens with slippery floors, dodging chefs who rushed around with sharpened cleavers and unsteady woks filled with boiling oil.
当然，最后我还是决定留下来。一是因为我为书做研究的时间有限：要是没抓住这次机会，我也不知道什么时候才能再在中国待这么长时间。但也有宿命论的驱使。我在中国的旅程本身就是一场探险，遇到过很多危急情况。我曾经坐着快要散架的卡车行驶在深渊的边缘；在西藏的山路上被困深夜的暴风雪中；还吃了各种各样不卫生的可疑食物。我的二十六岁生日是在一场凶险的聚会中度过的，是一群兰州的“黑帮分子”帮我办的；而一九九九年，北约炸毁中国在贝尔格莱德的大使馆时，中国爆发了“反外国人”的情绪，我也是万分幸运才免遭“私刑处死”的命运。举更普通一点的例子：我呆在后厨的日子数也数不清，而这些厨房很多都地上滑溜溜，厨子手里拿着锋利的菜刀到处跑，灶上的锅也摇摇晃晃不稳当，里面烧着滚烫的油。
I remember one winter in Yunnan Province, taking a bus back to Lijiang after hiking the perilous Tiger Leaping Gorge. Three other English people were on the bus too, and they pointed out that our driver was falling asleep. It was true: I looked in the windscreen mirror, and his eyelids were drooping, he could barely keep them open. Meanwhile the bus was lurching down a multitude of hairpin bends, the mountainside falling away in a sharp drop to one side. An anxious Englishman urged me to go and speak to the driver in Mandarin. So I asked the driver if he was feeling all right, to which he replied that he was perfectly fine, and would not fall asleep. I shrugged my shoulders and returned to my seat, but the driver’s eyelids continued to droop, and the Englishman, far from reassured, went and sat next to him, and spent the next two or three hours singing to him, trying to keep him awake. ‘What shall we do with the drunken sailor, what shall we do with the drunken sailor…’ all the way down the mountain. The driver glanced at him from time to time, as if he were mad. It was a measure of how blasé I had become that I, too, thought the Englishman was overreacting.
还记得某年冬天，在云南危险的虎跳峡远足之后，我搭大巴回丽江。车上还有三个英国人，他们提醒我，司机要睡着了。是真的：我看了看挡风玻璃上的镜子，他的上下眼皮都打架了，拉都拉不开。同时大巴正东倒西歪地行驶在九曲十八弯的山路上，一边是很陡峭的悬崖。有个英国人很紧张，恳求我过去用普通话提醒下司机。于是我就走过去，问司机是不是不舒服。他回答说，他很好，不会打瞌睡。我耸耸肩回到座位上，但司机的眼皮又沉重起来。而那英国人特别不放心，就走过去坐在他身边，接下来的两三个小时一直在唱歌给司机听，以免他睡着了。“这酒鬼水手啊我们该怎么办，这酒鬼水手啊我们该怎么办……”（这是一首英国民谣）一路唱到下山。司机偶尔瞟他一眼，眼神像看疯子似的。我也觉得这英国人反应有点夸张了：这想法说明，我已经成了个多么无动于衷、见怪不怪的人。
When I first went travelling in China, I was a worrier, rinsing my chopsticks and rice bowls in boiling water before I ate, asking bus drivers if they really needed to drink half a bottle of rice vodka before driving over the Tibetan plateau in pitch darkness. Later, I realised that if you want a real encounter with another culture, you have to abandon your cocoon. It is necessary to dine with the natives in a metaphorical as well as a literal sense, and danger is part of the territory. Over time, I became nonchalant about risk.
刚到中国的时候，我真是个忧心忡忡的“事儿妈”。吃饭之前要用开水烫洗碗筷；大巴司机在青藏高原一片漆黑的晚上开车之前习惯喝半瓶白酒，我还要去询问阻止。后来，我逐渐意识到，如果你想在不同的文化中来一场真正的冒险，就得丢掉过去的桎梏。你要跟那里的人们“分享食物”，这话既是现实又是比喻；而危险正是这旅程的一部分。日子长了，我对危险也很迟钝了。
For the few few days, I was in a state of shock. I had expected Hunan as a neighbouring province to be akin to Sichuan, but in fact it was like another country. The local dialect was totally incomprehensible: for the first weeks I could understand nothing, unless people I met switched to standard Mandarin. The sounds of Hunanese, too, were a world away from the soft melodies of Sichuan dialect: the local tongue had a staccato beat, impatient and in-your-face, faintly aggressive. People in the streets, unused to foreigners, just stared at me blankly, without the warmth and curiosity I’d encountered in Chengdu. I had thought I knew China, but as always I had underestimated its vastness and diversity. In Hunan I realised, to my dismay, that I had to learn the workings of another culture, all over again.
接下来的几天，我都处在强烈的震惊当中。本来我想，湖南与四川相邻，应该很像吧。结果感觉跟到了另一个国家似的，方言完全听不懂。最初几个星期我什么也听不明白，除非对方换成标准普通话。湖南人的语气和声音也跟四川话的温柔顿挫天差地别。当地人说话不太连贯，有很多断音，比较火爆，常常劈头盖脸给你说一堆，完全没有我在成都遇到的温暖和好奇。我还以为自己很了解中国，但还是如往常一样，低估了这个国家的广大和多样。我很沮丧地意识到，我要从零开始，再学习和了解另一种文化了。
But there was another reason for my decision to stay in Hunan: somehow I felt that I had bound myself to China, through thick and thin. It was an emotional as well as a professional commitment. My Chinese friends couldn’t leave the country if a little trouble flared up; why should I? It was part of my life, like a marriage.
但我决定留在湖南，还有另一个原因：不知怎么，我觉得自己和中国之间有紧密的纽带，要风雨同舟。这既是出于职业道德，也是一种强烈的情感。我的中国朋友们不可能遇到什么突发状况就离开祖国，我为什么就要逃呢？这是我生命的一部分，就像一场婚姻。
When I first arrived in Hunan, the slow train to Changsha disgorged me before dawn, at a forbidding Soviet-style station. Although I had no friends in the city, I had in my bag a clutch of phone numbers and letters of introduction from people in Chengdu food circles, including the number of a friend-of-a-friend who had found an apartment for me to rent. But it was not quite five in the morning, and far too early to call him or anyone else. Having nowhere to go, I hauled my luggage into the seedy station café, and sat for hours over a cup of tea, as shifty figures wandered around in the twilight. Later, I called my contact, and he came to pick me up on his scooter.
初到湖南，那辆慢吞吞的火车在黎明前把我放在长沙火车站。火车站的建筑是苏联风格的，令人望而生畏。我在这城里一个朋友也没有，但包里有一叠电话号码，还有成都烹饪圈的人们写的介绍信以及帮我找了公寓租住的朋友的朋友的电话。但还没到凌晨五点，打给他或者别人都太早了。我无处可去，拖着行李走进火车站附近一个简陋的咖啡厅，点了一杯茶，坐了好几个小时，看晨光中来来去去的各色人物。之后，我打给了那个人，他骑着“小电驴”来接我。
Talking about food is a particularly good way to make friends in China, because everyone talks about it all the time. As soon as I mention my area of research, the floodgates of conversation open. And I have discovered more about China in general through my food explorations than I ever did when I was interested in explicitly social or political issues. People let their guard down over dinner. Yet, while researching my Sichuanese cookery book was a joy from beginning to end, the Hunan book was a completely different experience, shattering in many ways.
在中国，聊美食是特别好的交友方式，因为人人都随时随地在说吃的。我一提起自己研究的领域，对方的话匣子就打开了，兴致盎然、滔滔不绝。我以前很喜欢跟人讨论明确的社会或政治话题，结果通过对美食的探索，我对中国的整体发现和认识比以前多多了。然而，为川菜食谱做研究从头到尾都很愉快，但湖南食谱的研究经历就完全不同了，而且很多时候还非常困难。
I had no particular plan when I arrived in Changsha. My methodology for researching and writing about Chinese cookery is simple but chaotic. I just go somewhere with interesting food and find out everything I can about it. Usually I try to make contact with local chefs, food writers and members of the official culinary association. I comb bookshops and libraries for printed sources. Mainly, though, I just do what comes naturally to me, which is to talk to everyone I meet about food, and then follow them into their kitchens with my notebook. My work is like a treasure hunt, because I never know what each day may bring. I might waste days on a futile expedition, or, conversely, meet someone who in half an hour presses five out-of-print cookery books into my hands.
到长沙的时候，我也没什么具体计划。我研究和写作中国烹饪的方法很简单，又很混乱。我就去那些食物很有趣的地方，尽可能地了解相关的一切。通常我会跟当地的厨师、美食作家和烹饪协会会员联系，也会到书店和图书馆仔细搜寻书面资料。不过最主要的方法，还是顺其自然，跟每个我遇到的人聊美食，然后拿着笔记本跟他们走进自家的厨房。我的工作就像寻宝，因为永远不知道每天会发生什么。可能一连好几天空忙一场；或者恰好相反，遇到某个人，聊上半小时，对方就塞五本绝版菜谱到我手里。
I moved into my apartment, a sub-let in a concrete block that was part of a state work unit. It was grim, like most of Changsha. The Hunanese capital must have been beautiful, once. It has a recorded history of some three thousand years, and has been a cultural centre for more than two millennia. But the city was torched in 1938 as part of a botched response to the Japanese invasion. Temples, courtyard houses and grand old restaurants all went up in smoke and flames. Little survived apart from a small section of the Ming-Dynasty city walls, and the Yuelu Academy, a school of classical learning that was founded in the year 976 and now forms the heart of Hunan University. The ‘old’ part of town that I found in 2003 consisted of one or two shabby streets by the river, dating back mainly to the post-war years; the only older remains were some ancient flagstone slabs with which one of these streets was paved (even they have since been removed, to make way for a pedestrianised shopping precinct). The rest of the city was a grim miasma of concrete and flyovers, shrouded in a suffocating pall of pollution. And in the spring of 2003, it rained almost every day.
我搬进的公寓是别人转租的水泥房，属于一家国有单位的一部分。我从这里开始探索眼前的城市。长沙，湖南省会，古时一定是很美的城市。这里有记载的历史就达到三千多年，而且两千多年来都一直是个文化中心。但在一九三八年，面对日军进攻，当局采取焦土政策，将整个长沙付之一炬。寺庙、庭院楼台和宏伟的老餐馆全都化为火焰和青烟。幸存下来的只有始建于明朝的天心阁城墙，以及成立于公元九六七年的私塾岳麓书院，现在是湖南大学老校区的中心。和在中国的大多数外国人一样，我钟爱参观中国传统建筑；相比起现代化的大道，也更偏爱绿树成荫的小街。但二零零三年，我发现的“老长沙”只有河边的一两条街道，历史也只能追溯到抗战前的岁月；唯一历史更悠久的遗迹，是其中一条街道上铺的古代石板（那之后很多石板又被撬掉了，为步行购物街让道）。这城市的其他地方毫无特色，全是纵横交织的混凝土建筑和立交桥，而且二零零三年春天的长沙，几乎天天都下雨。
Living in Hunan made me realise how exceptional Sichuan was, and how easy it had been to live there as a foreigner. The Sichuanese are so laid-back and charming; there is always an undertone of sweetness to their manner, as there is to their food. The spiciness of Hunan, by contrast, is bold and uncompromising. People have no patience with sweetness, here. Dishes are seasoned with fresh, dried and pickled chillies, more aggressively hot than they are in Sichuan, combined with the punchy sourness of vinegar and pickled vegetables, the forthright saltiness of fermented black soybeans. The mellow, autumnal red of Sichuan chilli-bean paste plays but a small part in the local cuisine: people in Hunan prefer the striking scarlet of fresh and pickled chillies.
和湖南一比，我在四川的经历实在宛若天堂。在成都当个外国人，真的太安逸了。首先，我在一所大学里住了很长时间，社交圈早就形成了，我自然而然地加入进去，想都不用想就交了很多朋友。而且，那时候的我年轻、充满理想主义，愿意撕破人生既定的地图重新开始。而到湖南的时候，我年纪大了，头脑更清醒了，而且孤身一人，真不知道从哪里开始。四川也一定是中国最热情的地方了。四川人本身的闲散和可爱就是出了名的，他们的一言一行里总有微妙的体贴，正如川菜中若隐若现的甜味。而相比之下，湖南的辛辣就莽撞而刚烈。湘菜的调味有鲜椒、干辣椒和泡椒，那辣味比川菜更猛更冲，还大量地放醋和泡菜，里面的豆豉也有种直白干脆的咸味。四川那带着秋之枫红的醇香豆瓣酱在湘菜里也会用，但用得很少：湖南人更喜欢鲜椒和泡椒那种夺人眼球的鲜红。
The Hunanese are often similarly brusque in manner. The professional culinary people to whom I had been introduced were largely friendly, but they were busy, and not especially interested in either me or my work. Most of them were sceptical at the idea that an alien might write a book about their cuisine: the Hunanese themselves had barely written anything about the cultural and historical background to their food; how on earth could an outsider attempt it? (I once spent an amusing afternoon in a teahouse with two local journalists who chatted to me in Mandarin, and to each other in Hunanese. By then I was already becoming acquainted with the local dialect, but they didn’t know it. So I listened to one of them explain to his friend that my ludicrous project was doomed to fail. To me, in Mandarin, he offered some patronising words of encouragement.)
湖南人的举止给我留下的第一印象一如湘菜：莽撞直率。由旁人引荐的烹饪专业人士都很友好，但不清楚该怎么对待我或者我的工作；有几个直截了当地表达了对外国人写湘菜的怀疑。这也很合理：当时连湖南本地都不大有人去写湘菜的文化和历史背景，一个外人干吗做这个无用功？（有一天下午，我和两位湖南记者在茶馆聊天，他们对我就说普通话，互相之间就说湖南话，真是有趣。那时候我已经比较熟悉当地方言了，但他们不知道，所以我就那么听着其中一个对另一个说我这个可笑的行动一定会失败，然后又用普通话对我说了些鼓励的话，当我三岁小孩儿似的。）
Hunan also seemed to me, after ten years of travelling in China, to be provincial and old-fashioned in many ways. It was inward-looking, and way off the map for tourists. No foreigners went to Hunan unless they had to, for business or to adopt a Chinese baby. But to the Hunanese, as I quickly discovered, their province is the centre of the universe, no question. For the last two hundred years, it has produced a disproportionate number of movers and shakers, from the Qing Dynasty General Zuo Zongtang (the General Tso of chicken fame) to Mao Zedong and a whole host of communist luminaries. More recently, Hunanese television has gained a reputation for being the most advanced and creative in the nation.
湖南有丰富的文化遗产和壮阔的景色风物，那会儿却不怎么受西方旅行者的欢迎。很少有外国人会没由来地跑去湖南，一般都是出差啊、领养中国小孩这样的事情。大多数英国人都没听说过这个地方。但我很快发现，湖南人觉得自己的省就是毫无争议的宇宙中心。过去两百年来，这里走出了很多推动历史进步与改变历史进程的革命者，从清朝将军左宗棠（就是美国每家中餐馆菜单上都有的“左宗棠鸡”里那个左宗棠）到毛泽东等共产主义革命的伟大领袖。近期来说，湖南卫视也是全国最超前、最有创意的电视台。
In the eyes of the Hunanese, their province is the beating heart of the nation, an engine of talent that has powered China forth on its road to modernity since the nineteenth century. They see themselves as clever, capable and straightforward: an ideal blend of northern strength and southern softness, without the slippery cunning of the Sichuanese. Likewise, they think Hunanese cuisine is perfectly balanced, unlike the sickly-sweet fare of the East, and the irritating food of Sichuan, which is so tingly and numbing that you can’t taste anything. Often, I had the impression that people in Hunan considered the rest of China, not to mention the rest of the world, to be largely irrelevant.
在湖南人眼里，他们这个省就是中国跳动的心脏，从十九世纪开始就输送人才，像发动机一样推动着中国在现代化的道路上前进。他们自视聪慧、能干和干脆，理想地融合了北方的刚强与南方的温柔，又不缺少四川人那种可爱的圆滑。同样的，他们觉得湖南菜也达到了十分完美的平衡，不像东部那样过于甜腻，又不像川菜那样麻得你什么味道也尝不出来。多年来，我一直听四川人说湖南菜太辣了；现在再从另一边来观察这一场美食竞赛，真是好笑极了。
Some of the people I met in those first weeks were immensely kind to me. One female restaurateur took me under her wing. She gave me free rein in her kitchens, and had a habit of whisking me away in her chauffeur-driven car for day trips that involved lavish banquets, market shopping, and indulgent sessions in foot-washing emporia. The manager of the old Guchengge restaurant let me study in his kitchen, too, and it was there that I learned many of my favourite Hunanese dishes. Otherwise, it was hard going. Changsha felt deeply foreign to me, and I met no one with whom I really clicked. The few overseas teachers I ran into in my first week or so fled the country as the SARS epidemic spread, and I never saw any tourists. Most nights I spent hours on the phone to old friends in Chengdu, Beijing and Shanghai, but my days were long and lonely. Unwilling on principle to sacrifice my personal life for my work, I came to the brink of abandoning my entire Chinese food-writing career. That’s when I met Liu Wei and Sansan.
在长沙的最初几周，我遇到了一些特别好的人。有个餐馆老板娘对我就像亲姐姐一样。她允许我自由进出餐馆厨房，还经常叫她的私人司机开车带着我来个“一日游”，去吃大宴、逛市场，还到足浴中心去享受放松。老字号餐馆“古城阁”的经理也放我进了后厨，我在那里“偷师”，学了很多最喜欢的湖南菜。然而除此之外，日子还是挺难过的。长沙让我产生一种深深的陌生感，也没遇到一个真正一拍即合的人。第一个星期前后遇到的几个外国老师随着“非典”的蔓延都逃离了中国。我也没遇到什么游客。大多数晚上我都会跟成都、北京和上海的老朋友煲电话粥，但白天就又漫长又孤独了。按照我的原则，是绝不愿意为了工作牺牲个人生活的，所以差点就要中断整个中国美食写作生涯了。正当那时，我遇到了刘伟之和三三。
Lei Feng himself met a tragic end — he was killed by a falling telegraph pole in 1962 — but his spirit lives on. Even today, Chinese schoolchildren are occasionally obliged to take part in ‘Learn from Lei Feng’ campaigns, although a certain cynicism has crept in to the public view of him. Lei Feng is not alone as a communist role model: in the nineties the party sought to revive flagging public morals with a campaign based on the heroism of another young soldier named Xu Honggang, who was reportedly stabbed in the stomach by thieves while defending a woman bus passenger. (The official media gave a memorable description of Xu’s brave deed: ‘Holding his dangling intestines with his sleeveless sweater, he jumped out of the window of the bus to chase the criminals despite acute pain.’) But if Lei Feng is not the only star in the firmament of socialist heroes, he has always been my favourite.
雷锋本人并没有善终：一九六二年，一根电线杆倒下将他砸死。但雷锋精神世代流传。雷锋不是唯一的共产主义榜样：二十世纪九十年代，共产党想要重振有些颓靡的社会道德风气，于是发起了学习另一个年轻士兵的活动。这位榜样叫做徐洪刚，据报道，他乘坐公共汽车时遇到歹徒勒索欺侮一个妇女，于是见义勇为、挺身而出保护这名乘客，结果被歹徒拿匕首刺伤。（中国官方媒体很生动地描述了徐洪刚的英雄事迹：“徐洪刚用背心兜住往外流的肠子跳下车来，用全部的力气往前追出了五十多米。”）然而，就算社会主义的苍穹中闪烁着很多明星般的英雄，雷锋只是其中一颗，却一直是我心中最耀眼的一颗。
It was another grey, wet, wind-swept day, and I took a minibus out of town to visit the Lei Feng Memorial Hall. I’d always had a soft spot for Lei Feng, the communist model soldier known as the ‘rustless screw’. He was born in 1940, into an impoverished household just outside Changsha, and was orphaned at a very young age. Later, he joined the People’s Liberation Army, where he distinguished himself by doing good deeds like darning his comrades’ socks and making tea for his superiors. In 1963, his diary, a paean to the glories of communism, was ‘discovered’ by Chairman Mao and propagated as an inspiring set-text for generations of schoolchildren. A cheerful song was written in his honour: ‘Learn from Lei Feng! What a good role model! Loyal to the revolution, loyal to the Party!’
仍然是个晦暗潮湿的大风天，我坐了辆小巴出城去参观雷锋纪念馆。我一直对雷锋很有莫名的好感。他是共产党的模范好战士，有“永不生锈的螺丝钉”之称。一九四零年，他出生在长沙郊县一个贫穷家庭，小小年纪就成了孤儿。后来，他加入了中国人民解放军，做了很多好事，什么帮同志们补袜子啊、给领导沏茶啊，等等。一九六三年，为共产主义大唱赞歌的“雷锋日记”获得毛主席重视，从此成了官方宣传资料，成为好几代学生的榜样。还有人专门为他写了首节奏铿锵、情绪高昂的歌：“学习雷锋，好榜样！忠于革命，忠于党！”
The Lei Feng Memorial Hall was disappointing. Lei’s childhood home, a mud-brick cottage, had been engulfed by a vast sprawl of pavilions filled with boring communist propaganda, and there were almost no visitors besides me. The children of Changsha, I supposed, were these days glued to the TV or the computer screen, their role models David Beckham and Britney Spears. At the foot of the Lei Feng statue near the entrance to the park, I fell into conversation with a stranger. When he saw the sketches in my notebooks he seemed to feel a certain affinity with me, so he gave me his phone number and told me to call if I felt like it. Two days later, desperately lonely, I did, and Li Rui took me out for dinner. Afterwards, he said he wanted to introduce me to some friends.
雷锋纪念馆让我颇为失望。雷锋小时候居住的泥砖小平房被一大片现代楼宇吞没其中，里面充斥着政治鼓吹的内容，除我之外也看不到几个参观者了。我想，现在长沙的孩子们都沉迷于电视或电脑屏幕了吧，他们的偶像是大卫·贝克汉姆和“小甜甜”布兰妮。纪念馆入口附近的雷锋塑像之下，我和一个陌生人攀谈起来。看了我笔记本上潦草的笔记与图画，他好像顿时和我亲近起来，给我留了电话，说想打就打。两天后，特别孤独的我拨通了这个电话，这位李锐就带我出去吃了晚饭。之后，他说想介绍我跟几个朋友认识。
That night was a turning-point in my hitherto desolate life in Hunan. Through Li Rui I found myself entering a kind of oasis of friendship, with one couple, Liu Wei and Sansan, at its centre. As soon as Li Rui took me to their apartment, I felt at home. Their little son, Xuzhang, was playing on the floor when we arrived, and the main room was decorated with carved wooden panels and other antiques. They invited us to sit down in the ‘tea room’, where a carved Guanyin Buddha presided over offerings of fruit and incense, and old tapestries hung on the walls. Liu Wei set the kettle to boil, and started performing the delicate ritual of gong fu cha, a Fujianese tea ceremony. Sansan called some other friends, a calligrapher, a designer and an antique-collecting businessman, and we stayed up half the night, drinking fine oolong tea, nibbling nuts and sweetmeats, and talking about everything you can imagine. For the first time in Changsha, I was happy.
那天晚上，我在湖南寂寞凄凉的生活发生了转折。我发现有了李锐，自己仿佛进入了一片友谊的绿洲，那里以刘伟之和三三这对夫妻为中心。李锐把我带到他们家，我立刻就有种回家的感觉。我们到的时候，他们小小的儿子徐璋在地上玩儿，客厅里装饰着雕花木板与各种古董。两人邀请我们到茶室坐下，里面摆着一座观音像，供奉着水果与香炉，墙上挂着上了年岁的挂毯。刘伟之用茶壶烧开水，开始表演功夫茶：这套仪式来自福建，十分讲究。三三还叫了几个朋友来，一位是书法家、一位是设计师，还有一位是喜欢收古董的生意人。我们倾谈到半夜，一边喝着上好的乌龙茶，一边吃着花生、瓜子、蜜饯，天南海北、谈笑风生。来长沙这么久了，我还是第一次发自内心地开心。
Liu Wei and Sansan introduced me to a gentler side of Hunanese culture. They and their friends, mostly writers, artists and other ‘intellectuals’, were nostalgic for the lost ways of the Chinese literati. They were hardworking and technologically savvy, but they gathered in the evenings to drink tea, practise calligraphy, and listen to classical Chinese music. Somehow they found, and created, places of beauty and tranquillity in the concrete jungle in which they lived; at weekends they went on day trips in search of Buddhist monasteries and ancient villages. They were curious and open-minded, and with them I could be honest about my thoughts and feelings: I didn’t have to be a foreign diplomat.
刘伟之和三三让我发现了湖南文化温柔的一面。他们结交的朋友大多是作家、艺术家和各行各业的“知识分子”，他们怀念已然失落的中国文人墨客之道。他们平时都是努力工作、紧跟科技进步的人，但晚上常常聚在一起喝茶习字、听中国古典音乐。在这个钢筋混凝土的石头森林里，他们努力寻找和创建了一个充满美好与静谧的乌托邦。周末，他们常常相约去短程探访佛寺与古村落。大家都充满好奇心，思想豁达开明。和他们在一起，我能够直抒胸臆，不用想着自己的外国人身份，跟个外交官员似的。
Once we all drove out of the city on a moonlit night. The neon and high-rise buildings of the centre gave way to dusty suburban streets, and then to looming hills and scattered farmhouses. We left the car in a clearing and picked our way up an overgrown path, the darkness around us alive with the raucous chatter of frogs and the hum of cicadas. A low, mud-brick farmhouse lay at the foot of a hill, flanked by old camphor trees and teeming undergrowth. Its inhabitant, a reclusive painter, came out to join us on wooden stools in the yard, and a few minutes later a young musician arrived with his gu qin, or ancient zither, wrapped up in a cloth.
一天晚上，借着明亮的月光，我们全体开车出城，远离市中心的霓虹灯与高楼大厦，经过尘土飞扬的郊区街道，接着便看到若隐若现的远山与稀疏散落的农舍。我们找了块空地停车，顺着一条小道步行往前。周围漆黑一片，却有生机勃勃的蛙声蝉鸣。山脚下是一座低矮的泥砖房，两侧生长着移来的樟树和茂密的灌木。房子的住客是位隐居的画家，他走出门来，和我们一起坐在院子里的木板凳上。几分钟后，一位年轻的乐师抱着包在布里的古琴现身了。
We set water from the spring to boil and Sansan made the tea, infusing the leaves of oolong in a small clay pot and pouring the hot liquid into tiny bowls. And as the musician plucked the strings of his qin, we sat back and sipped. The music was fluid and beautiful, evoking the strange melodic pulses of wind and water. The musician’s hands moved gracefully over the strings. The fragrant tea, the moonlight, and the plaintive rhythms of the qin combined to make an evening of quite ethereal loveliness.
我们从泉边取水烧开，三三沏茶，拿小小的陶壶泡开乌龙茶叶，把滚烫的茶水倒进小小的茶碗中。乐师拨动琴弦，我们坐下来安静地啜饮。古琴乐悠扬静美，竟带着奇异的风吹水动之声。乐师的双手在琴弦上优雅地移动。香茶水、明月光，古琴的韵律中有种说不清的忧伤，这真是个缥缈超凡的美好夜晚啊。
I spent most of my days in markets and smoky restaurant kitchens, researching my book. But in my free time, I was always with Liu Wei and Sansan, only going back to my apartment to sleep. They welcomed me without question into their extended family, and paved my way to other parts of the province with introductions to relatives and friends. Sansan and I went on several gastronomic excursions together, most memorably to the wild west of Hunan, where we climbed a Buddhist mountain, swam in a crystal-clear river, and bought wild honey in villages of the Miao and Tujia ethnic groups.
很多时候，我都在菜市场游来荡去，在烟气熏人的餐厅后厨观察记录，为我的书做研究。但空闲时，我总是跟刘伟之与三三在一起，到要睡觉了才回自己的小窝。夫妻俩毫无芥蒂地让我融入他们的大家庭，把我介绍给全国各地的亲朋好友，为我以后去其他地方铺路搭桥。三三和我一起做了好几次关于美食的探寻之旅，最难忘的就是去湘西爬了座佛教名山，在清澈的河水里游泳，还到了苗族与土家族的村寨买了野蜂蜜带回家。
The next day Mr Li, shaking with nerves, told me that all my meetings had been cancelled. The chefs and food historians let me know that they’d been warned not to talk to me. The principal, it turned out, had decided that I was intent on ‘stealing commercial secrets’, and issued a blanket ban on any contact with me. So followed a horrible few days of secret late-night assignations in teahouses, where men in dark coats and hats handed over photocopies of essays on culinary history, and chefs, looking furtively around, answered my questions on cooking technique.
第二天，副校长很紧张地告诉我，所有说好的会面都取消了。厨师和美食史学家们也想办法通知我，上面警告他们不许跟我聊。原来，校长认定我是想“盗窃商业机密”，全面禁止任何相关人员与我接触。于是，接下来那糟糕的几天，我们只好深夜约在茶馆秘密碰面，来人都穿着深色大衣、戴着帽子，递给我一些写烹饪美食历史文章的复印件；还有厨师们，一边偷偷摸摸地注意着周围，一边回答我关于烹饪技巧的问题。
Events outside this golden circle of friends were often infuriating. Once, for example, I went to visit a cooking school in a northern Hunanese city. The deputy principal, Mr Li, welcomed me, and we spent a wonderful afternoon and evening together talking about our common fascination with food and cookery. He introduced me to chefs and food historians who offered to share with me some of their skills and knowledge. But then the principal of the school returned from a trip, and the atmosphere suddenly changed.
这是我的“黄金朋友圈”，而圈子外的事情总让我怒气冲冲。比如有一次，我想去湖南的另一个城市看看那里的一间烹饪学校。学校的副校长来接待我，我俩从下午一直聊到晚上，因为对食物和烹饪都有着同样的痴迷，聊得很是投机。他把我介绍给各位厨师与美食史学家，这些人都愿意与我分享技艺、传授知识。但接着，学校校长出差回来了，气氛突然就变了。
While in China, too, I have been assumed to be a spy on more occasions than I can recall. I’ve been shadowed by a plain-clothes policeman through the cornfields of northern Sichuan, and turned back at military checkpoints in the mountains of the far west of China. Most of the time these suspicious officials clearly feared that I was collecting information for human rights groups or news organisations rather than stealing the secrets of red-braised pork. Some Chinese cookery books that fell into my hands over the years were considered classified material: they bore the tell-tale characters nei bu fa xing, ‘for internal circulation only’. But Hunan was the first place I’d actually been accused of culinary espionage.
在中国，我也是不止一次地被当成间谍。曾经有个便衣警察一路跟着我穿过四川北部的田野；在中国西部偏远山区的军事关卡，守军勒令我立刻返回；大多数时候，疑心重重的官员们显然怕我不是在偷红烧肉的秘方，而是为新闻机构探察什么秘密信息。多年来我搜集到的一些中国菜谱的确算是机密资料，上面写着“内部发行”的字眼。但到了湖南，我才首次被安上了“烹饪间谍”的罪名。
Of course it wasn’t the first time I had been taken to be some kind of spy. Some of my English friends have long been convinced that I am a secret agent. To begin with, I studied at an eccentric and notoriously conservative Cambridge college where one of my tutors was said to be a recruiting agent for MI5. Then there was that long spell as a ‘sub-editor’ at the BBC Monitoring Unit at Caversham, a mysterious organisation that most people confuse with the government spy station, GCHQ. Any early suspicions were more or less confirmed by my decision to study Chinese, and by my prolonged stays in remote and obscure regions of China, ‘collecting recipes’.
我当然不是第一次被当成间谍之类的了。我的几个英国朋友一直都认定我是个什么密探。首先，我在剑桥大学的学院就以古怪和保守“闻名”。据说我的一位导师还是军情五处（1）的征兵员。就算他们一开始只是怀疑我而没有证据，但我后来决定学中文，还在那些少有人知的中国偏远地区长居，声称“搜集菜谱”，这些行为算是坐实了他们的猜测。【注：（1）军情五处即英国安全局，是英国反间谍、反恐怖主义的机构，自身也是世界上最具有神秘色彩的谍报机构之一。】
But however sick I felt of Hunan and China during that difficult spring, I had only to return to the tea room in Liu Wei and Sansan’s apartment for my anguish to melt away in love and laughter, and to feel that my struggle to show the world the best of China through its food was worth it. If it hadn’t been for them, I doubt very much that my Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook would have been written.
然而，在那个难熬的春天，不管我对湖南和中国生厌到何种地步，只需要回到刘伟之和三三家的茶室，满腔痛苦和无奈都会在爱与欢笑中融化。那时的我感觉我的抗争都是值得的，能够通过中国菜向世界展示中国最好的一面。如果没有他们，我很怀疑自己还会不会写出那本《湘菜谱》。
In my twenties I adored this kind of subterfuge. But by the time I went to live in Hunan, my patience was wearing thin. ‘Don’t you understand?’ I wanted to say to the old-style bureaucrat running the cooking school, ‘the outside world has barely even heard of Hunan or Hunanese food! Here I am, exhausting myself in this difficult country, with its impossible script and thousands of incomprehensible dialects, trying to tell people that Chinese cuisine isn’t just about junk food and sweet-and-sour pork, and you accuse me of theft and espionage! You should be paying me to take your recipes!’ At times like these, I felt like giving up. I would call my friend Rob in Beijing to vent my exasperation with China, and he would say: ‘Fuchsia, don’t you think it’s about time you wrote a Tuscan cookbook?’
二十几岁的我肯定会觉得这种托词相当有趣好笑。但到湖南的时候，我已经没有那么好的耐心了。“你难道不明白吗？”我真想对管理这个烹饪学校的“老古董”大声说：“外面的世界根本没听说过湖南和湘菜！现在我来了，在这个国家历经千辛万苦，学了天书一样的中国字，听着成千种完全没法理解的方言，努力想告诉西方人，中国菜是人类文明的伟大宝库之一，不仅仅只有便宜的外卖和咕咾肉。结果你说我是个小偷、是个间谍！我记了你们的菜谱，你们还应该给我钱呢！”遇到这样的时候，我总是灰心地想放弃。我会打给北京的朋友罗伯，把我对中国的恼怒一股脑儿地发泄出来，电话那头的他总是说：“扶霞，你该写本托斯卡纳的菜谱了吧？”
Although Liu Wei was a successful designer, with his own business, he looked more like a Buddhist monk, with his shaven head, slight physique, and delicate features. And he exuded an aura of such peace and compassion that people were drawn to him, in search of something. I went to visit him one afternoon when I was in a particularly bleak mood, raw and jagged after another clash with a Chinese bureaucrat. As usual, Liu Wei’s presence was balm. ‘You don’t want to dwell too much on these things,’ he told me. ‘Try to think of your life as a sketch. The world offers everything, but it’s up to you what you include in your drawing. Try to choose the beautiful things, and to leave the ugly things out.’ Perhaps it was this attitude that enabled Liu Wei to live a life of such grace in the unpromising surroundings of downtown Changsha.
刘伟之是个很成功的设计师，自己创业开工作室，但他看上去更像个和尚，光头、清瘦，是个风雅的谦谦君子，浑身流露着一种平和与悲悯，深深吸引着周围的人想从他身上寻觅到一些东西。一天下午，我刚跟某个中国官僚起了冲突，满怀怒气、身心俱疲、心情低落，于是去找他。和往常一样，刘伟之的出现就像镇痛良方。“不要在这些事上太过纠结，”他对我说，“把你的人生想成一幅画。世界上什么都有，但你想画什么就是自己决定的了。你要选美好漂亮的事物入画，丑陋的就别费笔墨了。”也许正是有了这种态度，刘伟之才能在喧嚷的长沙市中心过如此优雅安宁的生活。
As a compassionate man with Buddhist tendencies, Liu Wei refrained from eating the flesh of living creatures. His diet was not only vegetarian, but vegan, and he also avoided the pungent vegetables that are frowned on in Chinese Buddhist monasteries: garlic, onions, chives and their relations. (Eating such smelly foods was traditionally thought to be antisocial for monks who spent hours sitting together in meditation, although some people insist that they must be avoided because they inflame the carnal passions.)
他对世间万物怀着悲悯之心，也信奉佛教，所以不沾荤腥。他是很严格的素食主义者，连中国佛家不喜的葱姜蒜之类的重口味食物都不沾。（传统上，对于整日打坐参禅的和尚们来说，吃味道这么大的食物着实是大逆不道；不过有些人坚持不吃，是觉得这会激起肉体的邪念和淫欲。）
Vegetarianism has a long association with Buddhism in China, but there were no explicit prohibitions on the consumption of meat in the rules of early Buddhism. In ancient India, Buddhist monks were allowed to eat whatever food was put into their begging bowls, including meat, as long as they didn’t suspect an animal had been killed for their benefit. When Buddhism began to enter China around two thousand years ago, Buddhist acolytes fell in with mainstream Indian teachings in their acceptance of meat-eating under certain circumstances. It was Emperor Wu Di of the sixth-century Liang Dynasty who did much to promote vegetarianism as the norm for Chinese Buddhist monasteries. He was a Buddhist convert who became a lifelong vegetarian and advocated vegetarianism on compassionate grounds.
中国佛家的素食历史由来已久，不过早期佛教的训诫中并没明确规定不可吃荤。古印度的和尚可以吃任何放进化缘钵里的东西，肉也可以，只要别人不是专门杀生给他们吃的就行。大约两千年前，佛教刚刚传入中国时，教徒们服从来自印度的主流训诫，在特定情况下吃肉是被普遍接受的。到了公元六世纪，南北朝的梁武帝才大力在中国佛寺中推行吃素的戒律。梁武帝本人也信佛，终生吃素，以慈悲为怀、不杀生的理由来推广素食。
These days Chinese Buddhist monks live on a mainly vegan diet, while lay Buddhists can choose the degree to which they maintain a vegetarian regimen. Some renounce meat on certain days of the calendar or while visiting a temple; others are completely vegetarian. Buddhist monasteries all over China keep vegetarian kitchens, and in many of the larger establishments there are restaurants providing food for tourists and pilgrims. Such restaurants offer astonishing banquets, where vegetarian ingredients are used to create dishes that mimic the appearance, taste and texture of fish and meat. So you might have, for example, deep-fried ‘beef’ slivers made from the stalks of shiitake mushrooms, ‘spare ribs’ fashioned from pieces of wheat gluten impaled on ‘bones’ of hard bamboo shoot, and a ‘fish’ that is really a mass of seasoned mashed potato, wrapped in beanmilk skin, deep-fried and covered in sauce. Such culinary subterfuge enables monasteries to entertain their wealthy patrons in suitably opulent Chinese style, but these grand dishes bear little relation to the everyday diet of the monks themselves, which consists mainly of simple grains, legumes and vegetables.
现在，中国的和尚仍然较为严格地吃素，而俗家弟子们则可以选择吃素的程度：有些会在特定的日子或者进庙里烧香拜佛的时候拒绝荤腥，而有的就是完全的素食主义者了。全中国的佛寺都有斋厨，很多规模较大的寺庙还有为游客与香客提供斋饭的餐厅。这些餐厅的宴席令人惊讶：利用素食食材创造出与大鱼大肉在外观、味道和口感上都相差无几的菜品。比如，你可能吃到用香菇蒂做的“炸牛肉丝”；硬脆的竹笋包裹上面筋做成的“肋排”；还有土豆泥经过调味，包上豆腐皮，炸制之后淋上酱汁做成的“鱼”。在做法上耍一些“手段”，各个佛寺就能迎合那些富有的赞助人，摆一桌体面的中式盛宴。但这些大菜跟和尚们自己每日的吃食没什么关系，日常的饮食都是简简单单的清粥小菜、粗茶淡饭。
I had realised quite how Chinese I was becoming in my tastes when, shortly before I left for Hunan, I went for a walk in a Kentish village and passed a field of geese. In my pre-China life, I would just have seen them as part of the scenery of the village. This time, before I knew it, I was imagining them braised in a sauce of chilli paste and Sichuan pepper, bubbling away on a gas burner. I caught myself at it, and smiled. It was true what they said about the Chinese: everything that moved, everything that ran across the earth apart from the motor car, everything that flew through the sky apart from the aeroplane, everything that swam in the sea apart from the ship, was a potential ingredient. Once in Hunan, embarrassingly, I assumed that a bagful of live frogs that Liu Wei’s nephew had brought on a daytrip with us were for lunch — when in fact he was planning to release them into the wild as part of his Buddhist practice.
深切认识到我的口味已经多么中国化，是在离开湖南后不久，我到英国肯特郡一个小村庄去散心，路遇一大群鹅。去中国以前，这在我眼里不过就是乡村风景的一部分。现在，我下意识地就在想象，鹅肉放在豆瓣酱和花椒里一起炖，锅子在煤气炉上咕嘟咕嘟冒泡。我意识到自己在这么想，笑了。他们评价中国人的话很恰切：只要是能动的东西，地上跑的除了汽车、天上飞的除了飞机、海里游的除了轮船，都能拿来吃了。在湖南有一次我也把自己弄得很尴尬：和刘伟之一起出去一日游，他侄儿带了一袋活青蛙来，我想当然地以为是午饭的食材，其实他是用来放生的，是佛家的一种修行。
At that time I was reaching my own peak of omnivorousness. The Hunanese were almost as extreme as the Cantonese in their wide-ranging eating habits, and in the course of my research, I ate dog hotpot, braised frogs and deep-fried timber grubs without giving it much thought. The carnage of the markets hardly bothered me.
那时正是我个人“杂食”的高峰期。湖南人吃的东西之杂之广，几乎可与广东人一较高下。我在调查研究的过程中自然也是入乡随俗：我没有多想便吃了狗肉火锅、炖牛蛙和炸昆虫。市场里残忍屠杀的景象并没让我怎么烦恼。
Through my friendship with Liu Wei, I found myself spending much of my spare time with vegetarians. We paid a visit to a sprightly eighty-one-year-old monk in a Changsha temple, who talked to me about the health benefits of a meat-free diet, and assured me that the flesh of the dog was such an inflaming meat that eating it would drive the most devout friar to break his vow of celibacy. One weekend we went to a hilltop monastery where a renowned Buddhist sage was teaching: there, we lunched simply on rice and vegetables.
和刘伟之交上了朋友，我在闲暇时间就经常接触到素食主义者。我们到长沙一座寺庙拜访了一位精神矍铄的老和尚，他给我讲了吃素对身体的种种好处，还言之凿凿地说狗肉会让身体中的恶欲燃烧，就算最虔诚的禅师吃了，也会打破禁欲的誓言。一个周末，我们来到一座山顶寺庙，听一位著名的佛家法师教导佛法，那里的午餐就是简单的米饭加蔬菜。
Any fool could see that the most dangerous place for a healthy person to go at that time was the respiratory diseases clinic of a hospital. But, as usual, I was faced with the simple choice: do I want to be sensible, or do I want to write this book? So I went to the respiratory diseases clinic, where I stood at the centre of a small crowd of spluttering, feverish people, trying not to breathe too much, as a doctor wearing a flimsy gauze mask listened to my chest with a stethoscope. He was apparently satisfied with what he heard, and gave me a certificate covered in official stamps. So I was able to regain access to my apartment compound.
傻瓜都知道，在这种时候，对一个健康的人来说，最危险的地方就是医院的呼吸道疾病科。但我再一次和通常情况下一样，面临简单的选择：是要理智，还是要写这本书？于是我就去了呼吸道疾病科，站在一小群咳得唾沫飞溅、烧得满脸通红的人中间，尽量减小呼吸的频率和强度。戴着薄纱布手套的医生拿听诊器贴在我胸上检查了一下，显然对听到的情况很是满意，给了我一张盖满公章的健康证。所以我又能自由出入自己住的小区了。
Meanwhile, the SARS epidemic raged on. People were sick and dying in many parts of the country. Beijing had got it badly, and everyone suspected that Shanghai would be next. Six people in Hunan were ill with the virus, and one had died, although they had reportedly all caught the disease outside the province. Life in Changsha became increasingly difficult. One day I returned home to my flat and was stopped at the entrance gate by security guards. ‘Health certificate,’ one of them said, holding out his hand. ‘But I live here,’ I said, ‘I’ve been living here for a month.’ ‘No, I’m afraid you need a health certificate,’ he said. ‘We’ll let you in for now, but you’d better go to the hospital for a check-up or we won’t allow you to return to the compound.’
与此同时，“非典”继续肆虐，在中国很多地方都不断有人生病、死去。北京疫情严重，人人都怀疑上海也很快会步其后尘。湖南有六个人感染“非典”病毒，其中一个已经不幸离世，不过新闻上说他们都是在省外染的病。长沙的生活越来越艰难。一天我回到自己的公寓楼，在门口被保安拦下来。“健康证，”其中一个伸手说。“但我就住在这儿的啊，”我说，“我在这儿住了一个月了。”“不行，你得出示健康证，”他说，“这次就放你进去，但是你要去医院做个体检，不然下次就不能进小区了。”
Liu Wei never expressed any disapproval at my rapacious eating, but his own simple and compassionate diet made me feel a little guilty. This sentiment laid the seeds of a doubt that would later come back to haunt me.
刘伟之从来没对我的贪吃与杂食表达过任何不满，但他本身简单而充满悲悯意味的饮食让我有点儿罪恶感。这种情绪播下了怀疑的种子，后来让我时时反思，挥之不去。
The shadow of SARS began to darken every aspect of life in Hunan. Men and women in white coats would leap at me in the entrances of department stores and hotels, and take my temperature with a gun-like gadget. Posters hung all over the city, as they had done during the Cultural Revolution, this time warning not of ‘capitalist roaders’ but of the need for vigilance against coughs and fevers. The Guchengge restaurant where I had spent so many days of study closed down, like many others, because most people had stopped going out to eat. When Liu Wei, Sansan and I had lunch in one of the few fashionable restaurants that had remained open, waitresses in green surgical masks came to take our order, their voices muffled by the gauze. One night, a bored millionaire, a client of Liu Wei’s design business, took us to a luxurious country club, where he hired a former member of the national tennis team to give us lessons on a floodlit court. Afterwards we showered in the vast, unpeopled changing rooms, and drank tea in a drafty café lounge where ranks of empty tables and chairs extended almost as far as we could see.
“非典”的阴影开始笼罩在湖南生活的方方面面。商场酒店的门口总会突然跳出穿白大褂的男男女女，拿着个枪一样的东西给我测体温。全城像闹“文革”一样贴满了海报，但警告的不是小心“走资派”，而是要警惕咳嗽和发烧的症状。我多日以来一直作为学习场所的“古城阁”餐厅以及很多其他的餐厅都歇业了，因为大多数人都不下馆子了。有几家比较时尚的餐厅还开着，刘伟之、三三和我去其中一家吃饭，戴着绿色手术口罩的服务员来给我们点菜，口罩底下的声音十分沉闷。一天晚上，让刘伟之做设计的一个生意人客户觉得无聊了，带我们去了一家很奢侈的城郊会所，在灯火通明的网球场上，叫了原国家网球队一名运动员教我们打网球。之后我们在空旷无人的更衣室冲澡，去一间凉风习习的咖啡厅喝茶，地方很大，目之所及全是一排排空桌椅。
Trips out of town became a nightmare. When I pitched up at the bus station, I had my temperature taken by people clad from head to toe in germ-warfare whites; boarding a bus, I had to write down my name, passport number, address, telephone number, and seat number, just in case I or any other passenger fell sick. One day when I drove to Changde with some friends, our car was surrounded by a swarm of masked inspectors who covered it in disinfectant. And despite the fact that SARS had been hatched and incubated in China by a combination of official secrecy, poor hygiene and nasty slaughter practices, people were often wary of a foreigner like me, because they feared I might recently have arrived from the infected south. Sometimes I had my temperature taken four or five times in a single day.
去城外就是个噩梦。在车站搭车时，像打“细菌战”一样从头到脚包裹着白大褂的人要测我的体温；上了车，我得写下自己的名字、护照号、地址、电话和座位号，这样我或者其他乘客觉得不舒服时好有个信息对应。一天，我和几个朋友开车去常德，路上遇到一群戴口罩的巡视员，围着我们的车喷了一圈消毒剂。还有，虽然“非典”是在中国滋生与传播的，人们基本上还是特别警惕我这样的外国人，因为他们害怕我最近才从疫情肆虐的南方来。有时候我一天会被测四五次体温。
Those were strange, disturbing times, and I felt as though I was moving around in ever-decreasing circles. First, I was unable to travel to other parts of China, later to other parts of Hunan. Then, with most of the restaurants shutting down, I couldn’t continue with my kitchen research. The closure of all the Internet cafés was almost a last straw, as it meant I was cut off from easy communication with the outside world. But by then I had settled into my life in Hunan and I didn’t want to leave.
那真是诡异又烦人的日子，而且我觉得自己在兜圈子，越兜越大。首先，我没法去中国其他地方，后来连长沙都出不了了。第二，几乎所有餐厅都关门了，我没法在厨房里学习研究了。所有的网吧也关门了，这算是最后一根稻草了，因为这让我无法轻易与外部世界取得联系。但那时候我已经习惯了湖南的生活，不想离开。
The epidemic also threatened to have an effect on table manners. In general in China, shared dishes are placed at the centre of the table, and you serve yourself using your own chopsticks. Before the Cultural Revolution, which encouraged a certain proletarian boorishness, more refined people would avoid touching food on the common dishes with the tips of their own chopsticks. Instead, they would use the handles of their chopsticks to transfer food from the common dishes to their bowls, and then turn the sticks around again to eat. Alternatively, they would use gong kuai, ‘public chopsticks’ that would be placed at the side of each serving dish, and would never enter anyone’s mouth.
疫病还影响到了餐桌礼仪。通常，中国人喜欢分享餐食：菜放在中间，拿自己的筷子夹。鼓励大众式朴素与粗野的“文革”开始以前，比较讲究的人们不会用自己的筷子尖去碰菜，而是用筷子头把菜夹到碗里，再转过来用筷子尖去吃；或者就在每盘菜的旁边放一双公筷，专门用来夹菜，不会放进任何人的嘴里。
During the height of SARS paranoia, people in Hunan started talking about gong kuai again. At dinner parties, ‘public chopsticks’ would be laid at the side of each serving dish, so we didn’t have to risk contamination by each other’s saliva. The host would say something ostentatious about the need for gong kuai, and invite everyone to use them, and then we would all talk about how important it was to be hygienic under the circumstances. But no one ever actually used the gong kuai in more than a token fashion. It just felt too artificial, and before long they were left forlornly at the side of the plates, and we all carried on helping ourselves and eating as normal.
“非典”恐慌最盛行的时候，湖南人又把公筷拿出来说事了。大家聚在一起吃晚餐时，每盘菜旁边都会放一双公筷，这样就没有被别人唾液感染的风险了。主人会夸张地渲染一番公筷的重要性，号召每个人注意使用，我们也就顺势开始谈论注意卫生清洁有多重要。但其实所有人都只是象征性地用一下公筷，之后就不怎么注意了。公筷的感觉实在太刻意、太做作了，很快就被孤独地遗忘在盘子旁边。我们都自顾自地和往常一样吃起来。
Like many people I knew, I developed psychosomatic SARS symptoms that were quite alarming, including a nasty, hacking cough. I was fever-free, so felt sure I didn’t have the deadly pneumonia, but I knew perfectly well that if anyone saw me coughing in public, I could be carted off to a hospital and kept there under lock and key until they were sure I was clean (or until I caught the fatal bug from another patient). Rumours abounded of people being incarcerated in isolation wards, their mobile phones confiscated. So I concealed my symptoms, trying to avoid breathing as I scuttled past the guards, zoomed across the yard to my staircase, ran up twelve flights of stairs, unlocked my door and threw myself onto my bed, where I could cough and splutter to my heart’s content.
我和很多认识的人一样，也有了些叫人很是警醒的“非典”症状，比如严重的咳嗽。不过我没发烧，所以很肯定没有得这致命的肺炎。但我也很肯定，要是有人在公共场合看见我咳嗽了，就会让医院把我接走，隔离到他们确定我没得病（或者我从别的病人那里染上这致命的疾病）为止。流言纷纷，说某某某被禁闭在隔离病房里，手机也被没收了。于是我极力掩饰自己的症状，匆匆走过保安身边，努力摒住呼吸，飞快地经过院子，走进楼梯间，跑上十二层楼，锁上门，趴在床上尽情地咳嗽，让唾沫星子畅快地飞溅出来。
According to the official media, there was no local transmission of the SARS virus in Hunan. But it was hard to trust the official media, and the rumour mill was active. Was there a cover-up in Hunan? Well, yes, almost certainly to some extent, as I was to witness at first hand. The wife of a Very Important Person in Changsha had invited me back to her home for a family dinner. It was just the VIP (who was probably near the top of the SARS chain of command), his wife, their housekeeper and me. We talked for a while, and they showed me photographs of the VIP with various national leaders and other celebrities. Then we sat down for dinner.
据官方媒体报道，湖南没有sars病毒在当地传播。但很难相信官方媒体，谣言制造者也很活跃。湖南有瞒报吗？是的，在某种程度上几乎可以肯定，正如我亲眼所见。长沙一位重要人物的妻子邀请我回她家里吃晚饭。只有贵宾（可能是非典指挥系统的高层）、他的妻子、他们的管家和我。我们聊了一会儿，他们给我看了贵宾与各国领导人和其他名人的合影。然后我们坐下来吃晚饭。
And to my amazement, because I had thought I was among friends, they carried out a cover-up, right there at the table, in front of me.
令我惊讶的是，因为我以为我是朋友中的一员，他们就在我面前的桌子旁进行掩盖。
Our meal was interrupted by a young man with a clipboard and an ear-piece who strode into the room with an air of urgency. Because he spoke with my hosts in thick dialect, I couldn’t understand every word they said. But I did make out that they were talking about a disturbing development concerning SARS, in which someone who had just returned from Beijing was either sick or showing suspected SARS symptoms. They talked anxiously for a few minutes, and then the young man bustled out again. Naturally, I was worried. Did this mean that the epidemic was now snarling at the ankles of Hunan? I gently asked what had happened.
们的饭被一个拿着写字板和耳塞的年轻人打断了，他迈着急促的步伐走进房间。因为他用浓重的方言和我的主人说话，我听不懂他们说的每一个字。但我确实注意到，他们在谈论一个令人不安的有关非典的事态发展，在这个事态发展中，一些刚从北京回来的人要么生病，要么出现疑似非典的症状。他们焦急地聊了几分钟，然后那个年轻人又忙了起来。当然，我很担心。这是不是意味着疫情正在湖南的脚踝咆哮？我轻轻地问发生了什么事。
‘Nothing has happened,’ said the wife, with a glassy smile. ‘It’s nothing to do with SARS. Do have some more peas.’
“什么事也没发生，”妻子说，脸上露出一种呆滞的微笑。“这与非典无关。再来点豌豆吧。
Like everyone else, she had underestimated my growing comprehension of Hunan dialect. I emerged from that dinner almost hysterical, both with laughter at the brazenness of their evasion and all it said about official attitudes, and with terror that Hunan really was on the brink of a devastating epidemic.
像其他人一样，她低估了我对湖南话日益增长的理解力。那次晚宴让我几乎歇斯底里地站了起来，既有对他们无耻的逃避行为的笑声，也有对官方态度的所有评论，还有对湖南真的正处于毁灭性流行病边缘的恐惧。
Chinese people reacted to SARS either with nonchalance, or with deranged anxiety. Some continued to go out and about, smoking, spitting and coughing in the streets. Many security guards wore their obligatory facemasks slung low, so they could put cigarettes into their mouths. Meanwhile, other people barricaded themselves in their homes, refusing to receive visitors, sipping vinegar as a supposed prophylactic and using fumigation and disinfectant washes in an attempt to sterilise everything around them. But whatever their personal level of anxiety, almost everyone tried to maximise their chances of survival by eating and drinking rather more carefully than usual.
我周围的人对“非典”的态度要么若无其事，要么焦虑不安。有的继续像往常一样外出，在街上想抽烟就抽烟、想吐痰就吐痰、想咳嗽就咳嗽。很多保安按照规定戴的口罩都拉得低低的，这样才好抽烟。而有些人呢，整天待在家里，关门闭户，不邀请别人来做客，整天喝醋来预防感染，还用上了什么烟熏法和消毒液来洗衣洗物，想给周围的一切都杀杀菌。不过，不管焦不焦虑、有多焦虑，几乎所有人在吃喝上都比平时小心谨慎了许多，以此来提高自己的生存几率。
In China, more than anywhere else, you are what you eat. The right foods will sustain your health; the wrong ones will make you ill. As they say: ‘bing cong kou ru (sickness enters through the mouth).’ While the Chinese often find it embarrassing or difficult to discuss emotional matters directly, they use food as a way to address them. At moments when an Italian friend would have thrown her arms around me and encouraged me to talk, a Chinese friend would thrust another bowlful of soup into my hands, urging me sternly to ‘Drink, drink!’ The idea of food as medicine, medicine as food runs through every aspect of Chinese social intercourse: it is a constant background chatter. My private Chinese teacher at Sichuan University used to give me candied fruits or walnuts to ‘build my brain’ if she felt that my spirits were flagging. And that day in Gansu Province, when I disgraced Liu Yaochun’s family by falling ill and weeping, his relatives demonstrated their concern for me by bringing out a frozen melon that they had kept, stowed away under the eaves, since October. Sometimes this ceaseless fussing over my diet would irritate me, but I came to understand that it was an expression of love.
中国可以说是全世界最能体现“我吃故我在”这句话的国家了。吃对了，你能健康长寿；吃错了，你就等着病魔困扰，这就是老话儿说的“病从口入”。中国人常常羞于直接表达感情，于是常把情绪寄托在食物上。比如，同样是表达友爱，意大利的朋友会张开双臂拥抱我，问东问西；而中国朋友就会塞一碗汤到我手里，很坚决地催促我，“喝汤！喝汤！”“以食为药，药在食中”的思想渗透到中国社交礼仪的方方面面，总是挂在大家的嘴边。我那个四川大学的私人中文老师要是觉得我精神萎靡不振，就会给我个蜜饯或者核桃说“补补脑”。在甘肃的时候，我生病，还哭，让刘复兴家没面子了。他家的亲朋好友为了表达关怀，专门拿出从十月开始就藏在屋檐下的冻瓜做来吃了。有时候，中国朋友们这么坚持不懈地过分关心我的饮食，也让我觉得有点儿烦恼，但时间长了我就明白，这是在表达关爱呢。
Food is used to heal and balance the mind and body in many different ways. Chinese folk dietetics have much in common with the humoral systems of the Ancient Greeks, Persians and Indians, all of which classify foodstuffs according to whether they are ‘heating’ or ‘cooling’, and, to a lesser extent, ‘moistening’ or ‘drying’. No one is sure exactly where the roots of these traditions lie, but it seems likely that they influenced China in the early part of the first millennium, when Buddhism was entering the country with all kinds of foreign ideas. The humoral system, anyway, must have resonated deeply with the ancient Chinese concepts of yin and yang.
在很多方面，食物都可以用来疗愈与平衡身心。中国民间的膳食学和古希腊、古波斯和古印度的“体液论”有很多共通性。食物都是按照“热性”和“凉性”来分类，或者分得更细，“湿性”与“干性”。没人能确定这些传统的根源在哪里，但似乎在公元的第一个千年，佛教和各种外国理念传入中国时，就对这个国家有所影响。总之，“体液论”一定是与古中国的“阴阳”概念有强烈共鸣的。
In the heating-cooling scheme of things, some symptoms, like fevers and rashes, are the expression of an excess of fire; they must be countered with cooling foods like lettuce and cucumber; other symptoms, like diarrhoea, may indicate a surfeit of cold, and must be tackled by a warming diet of meat and ginger. The energetic balance of an individual’s body is influenced not only by climate, but also by the seasons: this is why, in Hunan in midwinter, some people like to eat the exceptionally ‘hot’ meat of the dog. The classification of foods is a matter of both empirical observation and superstition: dog, for example, is a high-calorie food and really does help to raise the body heat of someone malnourished in winter, while the idea that walnuts nourish the brain and cashews the kidneys because they resemble the organs has its roots in sympathetic magic.
如果用热性和凉性的学说来解释，像发烧皮疹这些症状，就说明体内火气太旺，要吃莴苣、黄瓜等凉性食物来降火；而腹泻等症状则说明体寒、摄入凉性食物过多，要吃肉、吃姜来暖胃、暖身。人体精力的平衡，不仅受到气候变化的影响，四季的流转也是重要的因素之一。所以，在湖南的隆冬，有些人会吃狗肉这种特别燥热的食物。食物的归类，不仅是通过观察、积累经验的结果，也有迷信的成分：比如，狗肉的卡路里很高，的确可以让冬日里手脚冰凉的人身体热乎起来；而核桃能补脑、腰果能补肾的说法，则是因为其本身的样子和相应人体器官形似，这就接近一种“交感巫术”了。
In Chengdu, there is a famous restaurant, Tong Ren Tang, that specialises in medicinal foods. The place is an offshoot of a long-established herbal pharmacy of the same name. Its menu, which changes with the seasons, lists the tonic properties of every dish. Salt-water chicken with Astragalus or milkvetch root, for example, ‘nourishes the kidneys and boosts yang energy’, while lotus root with carrot ‘relieves internal heat and detoxifies’. In general, the most serious Chinese tonic dishes have bland and understated flavours: think, for example, of a broth, unsalted, made with a whole duck and the fabulously expensive Tibetan caterpillar fungus, or an unseasoned black-rice congee with barley, foxnuts, lily bulb, lotus seeds, jujubes and wolfberries. Tong Ren Tang, however, is a fashionable restaurant, where people go to enjoy themselves as well as to restore their health, so everything tastes delicious. Ironically, the last time I dined there, I ate so many dishes intended to rebalance my body that I thought I would simply explode.
成都有家著名的餐厅叫“同仁堂”（2），是专做药膳的，和历史悠久的“同仁堂”中药房同名，也是其分支。餐厅的菜单是按季节变化的，每道菜都会列出其滋补功效。例如，黄芪盐水鸡的作用就是“补肾壮阳”，而金银凉瓜可以“清热解毒”。大体上来说，做得比较严谨认真的中国药膳味道都比较清淡，比如：一碗肉汤没放盐，整只鸭子放里面，加上天价的西藏虫草炖煮；不调味的黑米粥，加薏仁、芡实、百合、莲子、红枣和枸杞子。然而，同仁堂是一家比较时尚的餐厅，人们在这里既能补身健体，也能满足口腹，每道菜都十分美味。讽刺的是，上次我在那里吃饭，调节身体平衡的菜吃得太多，觉得自己胀得快要爆炸了。【注：（2）准确的名字应该是“御膳宫”，在同仁堂药店的楼上。】
In China, there is no strict boundary between ingredients that are considered primarily as foods, and those that are considered to be medicinal herbs. The white radish, a common vegetable, is cooling and can be used in the treatment of ailments of the lung and stomach. Ginseng is an expensive and age-old tonic medicine that you might find in your herbal prescription from a Chinese doctor, but you might equally well be served it in a venison soup. Some foods are taken to rebalance the body; others to enhance its functioning. Women seeking to become pregnant might cook with gou qi zi or Chinese wolfberries, because they act as a tonic on the reproductive organs. And if you see a group of businessmen tucking into an ox-penis hotpot — well, you can easily guess what they have in mind.
中国的食材与药材之间没有严格的界限。白萝卜是种常见的蔬菜，凉性，可以用来治疗肺部和胃部的小毛病。昂贵的人参从古时候起就是上好的补药，中医可能会在给你的药方里写上这味补药，而鹿肉汤里面也有可能加这个作食材。有的食物可以平衡体内的气血，有的则能加强某些部位的功能。备孕心切的女性可以在食物里加点枸杞子，可以加强生殖器官的机能。要是你看见一群生意人围坐吃着牛鞭火锅，嗯，很容易就猜得出他们肚子里打的什么如意算盘吧。
Chinese bookshops now have enormous sections devoted to medicinal cookbooks that offer advice on the properties of different foods and the treatment of ailments. They might be modern and glossy, but they have ancient roots. Ritual texts on the staffing of the ancient Zhou Dynasty court referred to the lofty status of the 162 dieticians in charge of the daily menus of the royal family; while the Ming Dynasty Compendium of Materia Medica listed the curative properties of many ordinary foodstuffs, and included forty-four recipes for medicinal porridge. In China today, the older generation don’t usually need to consult books on dietetics. They just know that you shouldn’t eat aubergine with cucumber, and that the dangerously cold flesh of the hairy crab should be counterbalanced with Shaoxing wine and heating ginger. When they fall sick, they will self-medicate through diet long before they consider visiting the doctor. ‘Yao bu bu ru shi bu’ is a Chinese saying: ‘repairing and nourishing with medicine is not as good as repairing and nourishing with food’.
现在，中国的书店里摆了很多药膳菜谱，列出了不同食物的滋补功效和可以治疗的疾病。这些书都有着现代书籍精美的装帧，但根却是来自远古。《周礼》中就记载了周朝皇室的日常餐食有一百六十二名营养师把关，他们在朝廷的地位也相当崇高；明朝的《本草纲目》则列出了很多普通食材的疗效，里面还有四十四种养生粥的做法。在今天的中国，老辈人们通常不用参考药膳菜谱，他们本身就很清楚茄子与黄瓜不能同吃；大闸蟹肉虽美味，却是大寒，必须用绍兴酒或者热性的姜来中和；生病的时候，他们最先并不是去看医生，而是用食物来自我治疗。中国人有句老话说得好：“药补不如食补。”
Over the years, I have found myself deeply influenced by the Chinese approach to treating mind and body through food. If I have an outbreak of spots on my face, I steer clear of heating foods like pork and lychees; I know to drink green tea and eat cucumbers on a hot summer’s day. This is partly an irrational response to familiarity with Chinese ways — I’ve no idea if these food practices actually work. Yet it is also a rational acceptance of the pervasive Chinese notion that I as an individual should take responsibility for my own health, that I can’t just gorge myself on inappropriate foods and then expect my doctor to sort me out with a pill. In China, people try to treat their illnesses at their roots, and now that’s what I try to do, too. I accept the need for Western medicine in times of acute illness, but I rarely take pills for low-level complaints like headaches. Instead, I interpret such symptoms as a sign that I need to treat myself better, with healthy food, rest and exercise. And occasionally, of course, with a soup of caterpillar fungus.
多年来，我发现自己也深受中国人用食物疗愈身心的影响。要是脸上爆痘，我会远离猪肉、荔枝等上火的食物；而炎热的夏天，我会喝点绿茶、吃点黄瓜，清爽降火。这算是熟悉中国人养生之道后比较不理智的反应吧，因为我也不知道这样到底有没有用啊。不过，这是一种很合理的结果：接受中国人所普遍认同的、要为自己身体健康负责的理念，所以不能想吃什么就敞开吃，然后指望医生能开个药就把我的病治好。在中国，人们讲究消除病根，我现在也在努力践行这一点。生急病的时候，我当然也会吃西药；但遇到像轻微头痛这种小毛病时，我已经很少吃药了，而是把这种症状解读为身体在告诉我要更好地对待自己，吃得健康点、多休息、多锻炼；当然，偶尔也可以喝上一碗虫草汤。
In the plague days of 2003, the people of Changsha tweaked their diets in an attempt to boost their immunity to SARS. Waitresses in restaurants offered customers cups of anti-SARS herbal teas as an aperitif. People queued up to fill bottles with spring water from the ancient White Sand Well because they were sure it had curative properties.
二零零三年疫情泛滥的日子里，长沙人为了增强对“非典”的免疫力，饮食上可谓做到了极致。餐厅服务员会在上菜前为顾客奉上预防“非典”的草药茶；历史悠久的白沙井前排起了长龙，大家都想去接几瓶泉水，笃定这是包治百病的神水。
One day the manager of the Changsha Food and Drink Company, Liu Guochu, invited me to lunch at the historic Huogongdian restaurant with some longstanding members of its staff. The dishes we ate included a whole stuffed duck, wrapped up tightly in lotus leaves and rice straw, stir-fried asparagus with the flesh of crayfish, and sticky-sweet glutinous rice dumplings. We talked at length about the history of the restaurant: its origins as a temple to the Fire God, and its heyday as a place where storytellers, musicians and snack sellers gathered to entertain the crowds of temple pilgrims. The conversation was fascinating and the food delicious, but the spectre of SARS hung over the feast. ‘You must drink more of the chicken and papaya soup,’ said Manager Liu, ‘it’ll be good against the pneumonia’.
一天，长沙饮食公司的经理刘先生邀请我去当地历史悠久的餐厅“火宫殿”，和一些老员工一起吃饭。我们吃了八宝鸭，是用荷叶和稻草紧紧裹缠、肚子里塞了很多料的整鸭；芦笋炒小龙虾肉；还有糖油果子。大家详细聊了聊这家餐厅的历史：一开始是供奉火神的庙宇，全盛时期前来朝拜的香客络绎不绝，庙里还有说书人、乐师和货郎供香客们娱乐。我和他们谈得很投机，菜也很好吃，但整顿宴席仿佛都笼罩着“非典”的阴影。“多喝点那个木瓜炖鸡汤，”刘经理说，“预防肺炎很好的。”
All spring, we worried about the disease. I listened every night to the BBC World Service for bulletins on the progress of the epidemic, and kept my ears open anxiously for every rumour in Changsha. My cough worsened, and I slept fitfully. But despite the flood of labourers returning to Hunan from infected regions, the public spitting, and the steady march of the disease across parts of northern China, it never really hit Hunan. Most people were convinced that this was because they ate chillies. ‘Look at the map,’ they would say. ‘Do you see any SARS in Sichuan, Hunan, Guizhou, Yunnan: all the places where they like to eat spicy food?’
整个春天我们都因为这疫病而忧心忡忡。每天晚上我都听BBC的广播，关注疫情进展，还特别注意长沙城里的各种传言。我的咳嗽加重了，觉也睡不安稳。不过，尽管大量务工人员从疫情严重的地区回到湖南，大众在公共场合吐痰的坏习惯依旧不改。疫情在华北部分地区稳步扩散，湖南并没有真正大规模爆发感染。大多数人都坚信，这是因为他们爱吃辣。“你看看地图嘛，”他们会说，“四川、湖南、贵州、云南，有没有‘非典’嘛？这些地方的人都爱吃辣。”
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