As I began to explore new culinary regions of China beyond my old stamping grounds of Sichuan and Hunan, I found my thoughts drifting towards Fujian Province. Fujian lies on the south-eastern coast of China, sandwiched between Guangdong and the southern Yangtze region, and although it is now little known abroad, it was once at the forefront of Chinese international trade. In the Song Dynasty, Arab merchants sailed their galleys into the Fujianese ports of Quanzhou and Xiamen or Amoy, where they exchanged their cargoes of East Indian spices and luxury goods for Chinese porcelain and silk. Europeans traded at Xiamen from the sixteenth century until the mid-eighteenth. Later, the Chinese closed it to foreigners, but the British forced its re-opening as an international treaty port in 1842, after the first Opium War. As an entrepôt, Fujian has long exerted a steady, though rarely recognised, influence on the outside world: it is one of the most important sources of Chinese tea (the word ‘tea’ itself, and all its European variants, derive from Amoy dialect), and Fujianese immigrants, though less conspicuous than the Cantonese, are a powerful economic force in Western Chinatowns.
我准备走出四川和湖南这两个老地方，在中国进行新的美食探索，结果思绪飘到了福建省。福建位于中国东南沿海，夹在广东和江南之间，尽管现在在国外知名度不大，但这里曾经是中国国际贸易的前沿阵地。宋朝时，阿拉伯商人们都把帆船开进福建的港口泉州和厦门，用一船船东印度的香料和奢侈货品换取中国的瓷器与丝绸。欧洲人从十六世纪就在厦门做贸易，一直做到十八世纪中叶。后来，中国关闭了这些港口，禁了对外贸易。但在第一次鸦片战争后的一八四二年，英国人又用坚船利炮重新轰开了这个国家的通商口岸。作为海上贸易中心，福建虽然不怎么出名，却一直稳定有力地影响着外面的世界：这里是中国茶叶最重要的来源之一［英语中的“茶”（“Tea”）这个单词，以及几乎所有的欧洲变异词，都是从福建口音延伸而来的］。而福建移民，虽然不如广东人那么高调显眼，却也是西方华人世界一支重要的经济力量。
Fujian, like most provinces, has its own style of cooking, which the Chinese call min cuisine. Xiamen and the Fujianese coast are known for their oyster pancakes and other seafood delicacies; the mountainous areas of the north for wild foods that include bamboo shoots, mushrooms and all kinds of creatures. Fine oolong teas, including Tie Guanyin or ‘Iron Buddha’, and ‘Big Red Robe’ (da hong pao), are produced in many parts of the province. Living in Hunan, I had acquired a taste for Fujianese teas, and I’d sampled min cooking in the new Fujianese cafes of London’s Chinatown, but I was hungry for more. And so I arranged to visit the scenic area of Wuyishan in the north with some old Sichuan University classmates who were living in Shanghai, before travelling to southern Fujian on my own.
福建和中国大多数省份一样，有自己独特的烹饪风格，也就是中国人所说的“闽菜”。厦门和其他沿海地区的蚝煎等海味美名在外，北部山区的竹笋、蘑菇等山珍野味也是惹人垂涎。省内很多地方还出产上好的乌龙茶，比如铁观音、大红袍。住在湖南的时候，我就爱上了福建的茶叶，也在伦敦唐人街新开的福建菜馆里稍稍领略过闽菜的风味。但我渴望更多的探索和体验。于是我计划了一下，先和目前定居上海的一些川大老同学去福建北部的武夷山风景区游玩一趟，再自己去南部。
We had set off along the Nine-Bend River in blazing sunlight, on a bamboo raft, the soft plish-plash of the poles in the water lulling us into a stupor. The famous karst limestone peaks of Wuyishan loomed up on either side. ‘We call that one the tortoise,’ said our young guide, pointing to a low bank of rock rising out of the water, ‘and that’s the Great King’s Peak.’ He improvised too, for fun: ‘Over there we have the han bao, the hamburger’ (of a fat stack of slabs), ‘and that’s the Titanic’ (of a mighty prow of rock, facing downriver).
炎炎烈日下，我们乘着竹筏沿九曲溪行进，有种恍恍惚惚的感觉。两边隐现着高耸的山峰，武夷山著名的喀斯特地貌一览无余。“那个，我们叫双龟石，”年轻的导游指着水上一块低低的岩石说，“那个是大王峰。”他还搞起了即兴创作：“那边是汉堡”（几层厚厚的板岩），“那个是泰坦尼克号”（很有冲击力的一块巨石，面朝着溪水）。
But the clouds gathered quickly, the rain spat, and then a torrential deluge began. Briefly, we took shelter under a vast overhanging cliff, but it was nearly nightfall, and we had to press on. By the end we were all sodden, shivering. Our guide dropped us off in pitch darkness by the bank. We clambered up to the road, and flagged down a lift in a passing vehicle.
然而天边风起云涌，雨点砸下来，很快便成倾盆瓢泼之势。我们在一片突出的巨大峭壁下暂时避雨。但天快黑了，我们还是得往前赶路。到最后，全体淋个透湿，冷得瑟瑟发抖。导游把我们扔在岸边的一片漆黑之中，我们跌跌撞撞地来到大路上，招手拦了辆过路车才回了住处。
That evening I was more in the mood for shepherd’s pie than an extreme gastronomic experience, but it was my last night in northern Fujian and I felt I had to eat snake. Restaurant owner Mrs Liu had a few, coiled slinkily, in cages out the back, by the kitchen. Her husband stubbed out his cigarette and lifted the lid of one of the cages. A poisonous snake reared up angrily, hissing. He slammed the lid down again. When the snake had calmed down, he raised the lid more gently and grabbed it by the neck with a long pair of tongs. It lashed and writhed until he snipped off its head with a pair of scissors. He had two shot-glasses of strong rice vodka at the ready. The blood he shook into one of them, and then he pierced the ripped-out gall bladder and let it leak its greenish juices into the other.
那天晚上，我可不想体验什么极致怪异的饮食，只想来个牧羊人派（1）。但我在福建北部这个地方只剩下这么一晚了，还是得尝尝当地的蛇啊。餐馆老板娘刘太太在厨房旁边的笼子里养了几条，细细的，全都盘成一团。她老公把烟头往地上一扔，踩熄了，打开其中一个笼子。一条毒蛇顿时愤怒地打挺起来，发出可怕的嘶嘶声。他“砰”一下又把笼门关上了。等那条蛇平静下来后，他动作放轻，再一次打开笼子，用长长的火钳夹住蛇的脖子，把它拎出来。蛇猛烈地甩动着、翻滚着，直到他拿剪刀剪掉蛇头。旁边已经准备好了两杯高度白酒。把蛇血弄进其中一个杯子里，接着把从蛇肚子里扯出来的胆囊也给剪开，让里面绿色的汁液流进另一杯酒里。【注：（1）牧羊人派（shepherd’s pie）是英国的传统料理，用土豆、肉类和蔬菜做成，是一种主食。】
Mrs Liu’s restaurant looked out over teabushes towards craggy mountains. In daylight the view was spectacular; at night it was a dark and peaceful place. The picture windows were unglazed, so you heard the loud hum of the insects as you ate, and felt that you were part of the landscape. Mrs Liu specialised in local ingredients, many of them wild. Her fridges were stocked with exotic fungi: finger-like ‘dragon’s claws’, golden trumpets, grey ‘thousand hands’, slices of a large mushroom named locally after the Great King’s Peak. Wildflowers with bright pink petals sat on the shelves alongside bamboo shoots and clawlike bulbs. There was another fridge too, for the meat. It contained some run-of-the-mill pork, but that wasn’t really why people went to Mrs Liu’s. The customers who frequented her establishment wanted the wild muntjac, wild rabbit, wild pheasant, wild turtle, snake…
刘太太很擅长利用当地食材，而且很多还是野生食材。她的冰箱里放满了奇异的菌菇：龙爪菇、金喇叭、灰色的千手菇、以当地的“大王峰”命名的巨大的大王菇，还有嫩粉色花瓣的野花和竹笋与爪子一样的姜笋摆在一起。另外还有个冰柜，专门用来放肉类，里面的猪肉品质一般。但大家来刘太太这里，可不是为了吃猪肉的。这家店的常客们想吃的是野麂子、野兔、野鸡、野甲鱼、蛇……
‘Drink them immediately,’ he told me. So I put my lips to the rim of each glass in turn, and drank the traffic-light cocktails, the blood swirling scarlet in the first, the second bitter and invigorating. The strong liquor scorched my throat and brought tears to my eyes, while the sight of the raw swirling blood made me feel a little queasy. Then I watched Mrs Liu’s husband slip off the snake’s skin easily, like a piece of silk underwear, eviscerate and chop its carcass, and throw it into a pot of boiling water, with a handful of wolfberries.
“马上喝。”他跟我说。于是我用嘴唇分别碰了每一个杯子的杯沿，把这两杯红绿灯一样的“鸡尾酒”给喝了：先是那杯血丝还在里面旋转翻滚的红酒，再是那杯苦涩到令人精神一振的绿酒。烈酒让我的喉咙火辣辣的，泪水泛在眼眶里，而生血的腥味又让我胃里翻江倒海。接着，我目睹刘太太的丈夫习以为常地剥了蛇皮，好像那是一条丝绸内裤。他把蛇的内脏清理干净，把尸体剁成小段，扔进一锅开水里，加了把枸杞。从刘太太的餐厅望出去，就是陡峭的山与连绵的茶树。白天风景壮阔美好，漆黑的晚上则是宁静悠然。观景窗都没有安玻璃，所以吃饭的时候能听到响亮的虫声，我觉得自己也融入了此情此景当中。
As a foreigner who had made a decision, long before, to eat everything, I should have been in my element. But ethical dilemmas were creeping up on me, more and more. By now I knew that some species of muntjac were endangered. How was I to know whether the one on the table was among them? It was the same with almost everything in Mrs Liu’s fridge, when I thought about it. I hoped that the snake whose blood and gall I’d just drunk was not a wild five-pace snake (the long-noded pit viper is known in Fujian as the wu bu she, because you’ll drop dead after five paces if it bites you), but I was no expert on snake markings, and Mrs Liu was open about her sale of endangered species.
很久以前，我这个外国人就下定决心什么都要吃。这下算是来对地方了。但我心中悄然升起良心道德上的自我谴责，而且越来越强烈。我已经知道某些麂是濒危动物，那怎么知道桌上的盘中餐是不是其中一种呢？这么想想的话，刘太太冰箱里还有一些食材也是一样。希望那条刚刚被我喝下鲜血和胆汁的蛇不是那种野生的五步蛇（这是福建人对一种响尾蛇的俗称，因为传说要是被这种蛇咬了，你走五步就死了），但我也不是什么蛇类专家，看不出来。刘太太也相当坦白地谈自己卖濒危动物的问题。
The kitchen was a simple affair, clean, white-tiled, with a sink and a couple of gas burners. The cooking was straightforward too, but the ingredients so fresh and fine that it all tasted magnificent. Our snake soup was refreshing, the flesh tender and savoury on its snagged, spiny nuggets of backbone. We ate sliced muntjac with fresh red chilli and onion, robust and gamey; wild mushrooms; pheasant red-braised with carrot and chilli; rabbit with sweet peppers, ginger and garlic; and a wild green known as ‘ginseng vegetable’. Mrs Liu had run out of eggs, so when we ordered some egg-fried rice, she sent her son out into the live, twittering darkness to find a villager who kept hens.
厨房布置简单，干净整洁，墙上镶了白瓷砖，有一个水池和两个煤气炉。烹饪方法也是简单直接，但因为食材新鲜上乘，所有的菜都是无上的美味。我们的蛇汤令人神清气爽，蛇肉软嫩，那粗糙的蛇骨啃起来也是回味无穷。我们吃了新鲜辣椒加洋葱做的麂子肉片，味道很强烈，充满了原始的野性；还有山里的新鲜蘑菇、胡萝卜红烧辣野鸡、甜椒姜蒜炒野兔以及一种绿色的野菜——“人参菜”。刘太太没有鸡蛋了，但我们又点了蛋炒饭，于是她就叫儿子走进四处虫鸣的黑夜中，找个养了母鸡的村民要了几个鸡蛋。
‘Oh, they carry out inspections from time to time,’ she rattled away, with a vague smile, ‘but we usually know when they’re coming.’ Once she was caught red-handed with a fridgeful of illegal wild creatures, and the inspectors wanted to fine her 50,000 yuan. But she buttered them up by inviting them for dinner, and got away with paying just five thousand. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘local officials themselves eat endangered species. Of course they daren’t do it publicly, in fancy city places, but in a quiet, out-of-the-way spot like this, it’s okay. And there are different grades of protected animals. There are heavy, heavy penalties for killing Grade One State-Level Protected species, like the panda.’ She mimed a knife slitting her throat. ‘For Grade Twos, you’re looking at six months in prison. But Grade Threes are sold openly on the market, like the muntjac you just had for dinner.’ (A sharp pang of guilt.)
“哦，他们时不时来视察一下，”她毫不避讳地说，脸上有种淡淡的笑容，“但我们经常都提前知道他们要来。”有一次她被抓了个现行，检察员看到一冰柜的非法野生动物，想罚她五万元。但她好言好语地巴结他们，请他们来吃饭，结果给了五千就了事了。“反正，”她继续说，“本地这些当官的自己也吃濒危动物。他们肯定是不敢在城里那些豪华酒店里公开这么干，但是这个地方这么安静，很少有人来，干什么都行。还有保护动物也是分等级的。要是弄了国家一级保护动物，比如熊猫，那就是重罪了。”她拿手做出抹脖子的动作。“二级的话，就是半年牢。但是三级在市场上都公开买卖的，就比如你刚刚吃的麂。”（一阵强烈的罪恶感刺痛了我的心。）
‘Bao hu dong wu (protected animal),’ she said in a stage whisper when she showed me a dead turtle in the fridge. She had one live five-pace snake in a cage, and a cobra curled, dead drunk, in a jar of spirits and medicinal herbs. ‘Isn’t it risky selling these things?’ I asked her. ‘Don’t you get raided?’
“这是保护动物。”打开冰箱给我看里面一只死乌龟时，她告诉我，虽然是压低了声音，却没有掩饰的意思。外面一个笼子里关着一条活的五步蛇；还有一条眼镜蛇，被浸泡在装满烈酒和草药的罐子里，已是烂醉如泥。“卖这些风险不大吗？”我问她，“警察不会来抄你的店？”
Like most Chinese peasants, my driver was a walking materia medica, eloquent on the edible and medicinal properties of the countryside. ‘This herb,’ he said, stopping to pluck a leaf or two, ‘can be infused in water as a treatment for heatstroke.’ In the late summer he worked as a mushroom picker, supplying the tables of local restaurants. The most valuable, he said, was the ‘red mushroom’, which dyes a soup broth pink.
和大多中国农民一样，我的司机简直就是一本活的《本草纲目》，说起农村里能吃和能入药的东西如数家珍。“这个草药，”他停下来摘下一两片叶子，“可以泡水，治中暑。”夏末的时候他会帮当地的餐馆采蘑菇，他说最贵的就是“红菇”，一放进碗里整碗汤都变成粉色了。
‘What kind of person spends two thousand yuan on a bear’s paw?’ I asked Mrs Liu.
“什么样的人才会花两千元吃个熊掌啊？”我问刘太太。
‘Oh, you know, rich company bosses and Party or government officials,’ came the reply.
“嗯，反正就是那些有钱的公司老板啊、当官的啊。”她这样回答。
‘You won’t find bear’s paws in anyone’s fridge, that’s for certain. It’s too dangerous. But you can have anything if you set your heart on it. Want a bear’s paw? Let me know the day before, and I’ll make sure I get it. You’ll have to give me a deposit of a thousand yuan upfront, and another thousand after dinner. I get that kind of stuff from a middleman, so we don’t have to keep it hanging around.’
“熊掌是哪家的冰箱里都没有的，这是肯定的啦，太危险啦。但是如果真的想要，什么拿不到呀。要是哪个有钱的客人想吃熊掌，只要提前几天打个招呼，一般都能吃到的。可能要先交一千元的订金，吃完了再给一千元。餐馆的人会去找中间人拿这些东西，就不用保存在自己这里啦。”
The next day my friends returned to Shanghai and, alone, I hitched a ride on a motorbike up a wildly beautiful valley. My driver and I passed terraced fields neat with tea bushes, bamboo groves, and stubbly ricefields where a few water buffalo grazed. At the foot of a mountain, we left the bike and climbed stone steps to a Buddhist temple, high, high above, that clung to the ragged rock of a sheer cliff-face.
第二天我的朋友们回了上海，而我独自一人搭了辆摩托车，顺着充满山野之美的河谷前进。司机和我经过种着整齐茶树的梯田、竹林以及低矮的稻田，有几头水牛在悠闲地走着。我在一座山脚下了摩托，沿着石阶而上，来到一座佛寺，在很高很高的地方，旁边就是粗糙的岩石与陡峭的山崖。
‘What about wild animals? Snakes and bears?’ I asked him.
“野生动物呢？蛇和熊之类的？”我问他。
A couple of hours later, our small motorbike puttered back along the road, and we turned up a steep driveway which brought us into the courtyard of a modern concrete building. This was the farm my driver had talked about. We dismounted, and he led me through a smart, well-appointed hall with a display of boxes and jars of pharmaceutical products made from snakes and bears, and into a long room where snakes lay around in glass cages. A few sightseers were peering at them through the glass. ‘These are five-pace snakes,’ said my driver, pointing out the markings on their skin.
几个小时以后，我们的小摩托又“突突突”地上了路。我们沿着险峻的车道来到一个院子里，那里有一座现代的混凝土建筑。这就是司机说的那个养殖场。我们下了车，他带我穿过一个客厅，这里麻雀虽小、五脏俱全，有很多箱子罐子，展示着用蛇和熊做的中药制品。接着我们来到一个狭长的房间，玻璃柜里关着很多蛇。有几个观光的正透过玻璃看着它们。“这些就是五步蛇。”我的司机指着蛇皮上的花纹说。
‘Well, there aren’t many left!’ he laughed. ‘I mean, snakes are good money if you can catch them, and as long as no one sees you, it’s fine. But you won’t find any bears around here, at least in the wild. There’s a farm down the road where they rear them for their bile.’
“嗯，也没剩下多少啦！”他笑起来，“嗯，要是抓得到蛇，那能卖很多钱的。只要没人看见你抓，就没事。但是这一带是找不到熊的，反正野外是没有的。沿着那条路走，有个养殖场，是养熊、取熊胆的。”
In an inner courtyard, a viewing gallery had been constructed above a deep concrete chamber, where three enormous black bears shambled around. Tourists were invited to buy whole cucumbers and steamed buns to feed them. The bears reared up on their hind legs to catch the food. This was not the kind of place where foreigners were normally welcome. The rearing of bears for their bile is a sensitive subject: the medicinal bile is drained from the gall bladders of live animals, and animal rights activists regard it as an abomination. I half-expected to have my way barred, or to be thrown out by an officious manager. But nobody stopped me, and the staff members who caught sight of me were shy with surprise. Was this where Mrs Liu sourced her bear’s paws for high officials’ tables, I wondered.
到了内院，就是一个专门修建的看台，中间深深凹陷下去的水泥大坑里有三头巨大的熊，蹒跚地走来走去。有专门的地方卖整根黄瓜和馒头，游客可以买来喂给熊吃。熊后腿撑地站起来接食物。一般这样的地方都不太欢迎外国人的。在国外，养熊取胆是个非常敏感的话题：有时候他们是从动物活体的胆中取胆汁入药，动物权益保护积极分子认为这实在是穷凶极恶。我想着自己可能会被拦住，或者被某个多事的经理赶出去。但没人拦我，看到我的工作人员都是一副吃惊又羞赧的样子。我心想，这里是不是也给有钱人提供熊掌啊？
I desire fish, and I desire bear’s paw; but if I may not have them both, I will forsake the fish and have only the bear’s paw. I desire life, and I desire righteousness; if I may not have them both, I will forsake my life and choose righteousness.
鱼，我所欲也；熊掌，亦我所欲也。二者不可得兼，舍鱼而取熊掌者也。生，亦我所欲也；义，亦我所欲也。二者不可得兼，舍生而取义者也。
There has always been an appetite in China for rare culinary exotica. Bear’s paw was a courtly delicacy in the Warring States period; until then only emperors were allowed to touch it. One early Han Dynasty text refers to a primitive ‘red-braised bear’s paw’, cooked with medicinal peony root and fermented sauce. And nearly two and a half millennia ago, the Confucian philosopher Mencius used it as an allegory for virtue in a disquisition on the inherent goodness of human nature:
中国人一向对新奇的东西有胃口。战国时期，熊掌是宫廷佳肴，只有帝王才吃得到。汉朝早期有篇文章写到了很原始的“红烧熊掌”：加了芍药根，还要抹酱发酵。将近两千五百年前，儒家学派的孟子将熊掌写进了讨论人性本质的名言当中：
Bear’s paw was only one in a pantheon of ancient delicacies that included owl, jackal and leopard foetus. Later, more modern exotica like shark’s fin and bird’s nest (the dried nests of swifts, made from their saliva, which are eaten in soup) attained the highest culinary status. The first written mention of bird’s nest as an ingredient is in a Yuan Dynasty text; shark’s fin was eaten widely from the Ming. Both were among the indispensible luxuries of the Qing Dynasty court.
远古的珍馐佳肴千千万万，熊掌只是其中之一，还有豺、豹胎之类的。后来出现了更现代的珍稀名贵食材，比如鱼翅、燕窝（雨燕分泌出来的唾液，再混合其他物质做成的巢穴，晾干以后制成，做成汤来喝）就在厨界享有至高无上的地位。将燕窝入菜，最初是在元朝一篇文章里提到；而从明朝开始，鱼翅就成为较为普及的食材了；到了清朝，两者都成了宫廷餐桌上不可或缺的奢侈品。
Although leopard’s foetus appears to have gone out of fashion, many rare and exotic ingredients are still widely eaten by the rich and privileged in China, or they were until very recently. One cookery book in my collection, a compendium of state banquet recipes published in the mid-eighties, includes lavish colour plates of the famous delicacies served to national leaders and foreign dignitaries. And there, among the shark’s fin, bird’s nest and abalone, is a photograph of a hairy black bear’s paw arranged on a ruched tablecloth, next to a dish bearing another, red-braised, paw, with an elaborate vegetable sculpture in the background.
今天，豹胎似乎已经过时了，但很多珍稀食材依然受到中国权贵阶级的偏爱，或者说直到近年来都是如此。我收藏的一本菜谱，是八十年代中期出版的，里面概括了国宴的菜谱，有很多相当奢侈浮华的著名佳肴，都是用来招待国家领袖和外国高官显贵的。书上除了鱼翅、燕窝和鲍鱼之外，还有一张照片：毛茸茸的黑熊掌放在有荷叶边的桌布上，旁边的菜盘里是另一只熊掌，红烧的，靠着一个无比精细的瓜雕。
One book of recipes for the fabled Man-Han imperial banquet makes for eye-popping reading, even for me. Not only does it tell readers how to prepare well-known extreme delicacies like sheep tendons, shark’s lip, camel’s hump, deer penis, bear’s paw and the ovarian fat of the Chinese forest frog, it includes a recipe for dried orangutan lips. And this book was published in 2002! Fortunately, in a gesture to emerging environmental concerns, it offers readers the alternative of cooking deer lips in a similar sauce, and of using skin-on mutton squashed into a paw-shaped mould as a substitute for bear’s paw. (A note at the foot of the real bear’s paw recipe reminds them that bears are a National Grade Two Protected Species, and may not be served at dinner without official approval.)
有本书里记载了传说中满汉全席的菜谱，就连我都看着眼珠子直往外爆。里面不仅告诉读者如何处理那些著名的珍稀食材，比如羊蹄筋、鱼唇、驼峰、鹿鞭、熊掌和雪蛤，竟然还有一种猩唇的菜谱，而且这书是二零零二年出版的！好在，菜谱告诉读者，不要真的用猩唇，用鹿唇代替即可。书里还为日益进步的生态保护意识做出了姿态，写明可以用带皮羊肉做成熊掌的样子，来代替真品。（真熊掌的菜谱下面加了一条脚注，说熊是国家二级保护动物，没有官方许可，不能作为食材。）
Theoretically, much of the appeal of these rare delicacies lies in their tonic properties, and their luxurious mouthfeels. Shark’s fin, for example, is rich in protein, contains some minerals, and is thought to combat arterioschlerosis; it is also prized for its strandy silkiness in the mouth, and its gelatinous bite. Bird’s nest has a pleasantly slithery crunchiness and contains several minerals, as well as glycine: it is one of the most important yin tonics in Chinese medicine. The ovarian fat of forest frogs is a snow-white cloud of diaphanous slipperiness. Other banquet ingredients such as bear’s paw and camel’s hump, and presumably dried orangutan lips, subside, after a long, slow cooking, into smooth, soothing, rubbery waves.
理论上来说，这些珍稀食材的主要吸引力，都是其养生价值和奢侈口感。比如，鱼翅富含蛋白质，还有一些矿物质据说能缓解治疗动脉硬化，绸缎一般爽滑和咬下去那种凝胶状的脆嫩口感也为人追捧。燕窝也是吃进来滑滑的，咬下去脆脆的，令唇齿愉悦，其中也含有几种矿物质和甘氨酸，是中药中一味重要的阴补药材。雪蛤就像一团雪白透亮的云朵，吃着也很滑嫩。还有熊掌、驼峰以及传说中的猩唇这些盛宴食材，经过长时间的文火慢煮，入口应该都是绵密悠长、安慰口腹、萦绕于心的味道。
Yet however much one pontificates about their nutritional benefits, or waxes lyrical about their textures, in the end, one has to admit that much of their appeal lies in their snob value. After all, a simple pig’s foot or a bit of seaweed would be just as rubbery, and just as rich in nutrients. As the editor of one food magazine told me, ‘People want to eat delicacies like shark’s fin just because they are rare and expensive, and because they are the kind of thing emperors used to eat!’
然而，无论如何去吹嘘这些东西的营养价值或是赞叹它们的上佳口感，不得不承认的是，它们还有很大的吸引力来自在世人眼中的价值。毕竟，简单平易的猪蹄或者海藻口感也很好，营养也同样丰富。正如一位美食杂志的编辑告诉我的：“大家想吃鱼翅一类的东西，就是因为少见、昂贵，因为这是过去皇帝才吃得着的东西！”
Food and drink are at the heart of Chinese social relationships. Plying friends and business associates with expensive delicacies not only shows respect and conviviality, it also binds them into a web of mutual back-slapping (or guan xi) that might last for decades. Serve a whole shark’s fin at a feast, and your guests will know that you are a person of substance. Offer one to an influential official and, with a bit of luck, he or she will feel sufficiently indebted to remember you for future favours. The exchange of fine foods is well established as a system of subtle bribery.
吃喝是中国社交关系的核心。用昂贵的菜肴招待朋友和生意伙伴，不仅能显示你的尊重与热情，还能把彼此纳入一张共同的关系网，也许能持续个几十年。宴会上端出一整碗鱼翅，客人便知道你财力雄厚、能成事。要是给某个影响力颇大的官员送上这么一道菜，再加上一点运气，他／她可能会心里记着你，以后能给你些好处。以上等菜肴进行说不清、道不明的贿赂，是由来已久的传统。
In the past, one imagines, when bears ran wild in the Fujianese mountains, sea cucumbers wriggled in vast numbers in the East China Sea, and turtles swam in lakes and streams, the traditional Chinese gourmet’s penchant for eating such things wasn’t too much of a problem. Only the richest and most well connected could afford them: just eating meat was a privilege. But the Chinese economic boom of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has put a new strain on the market for exotic animals, as the aspirational middle classes seek to join in the feast.
可以想象一下遥远的过去，黑熊在福建的群山间尽情奔跑，中国东海里有无数的海参爬行蠕动，江河湖海中随处可见悠游的乌龟……中国美食家想吃这些东西的嗜好不是什么大问题，但也只有最富有、最有办法的人才吃得起：本来吃肉就是一项特权。但二十世纪末到二十一世纪初，中国的经济繁荣又为珍稀动物市场增加了新的动力，野心勃勃的新贵中产们也想成为这盛宴的座上客。
In the nineties, the entrepreneurs of the Special Economic Zones in the Cantonese south were the first to get rich in the wake of the Chinese economic reforms, and they revived the old art of conspicuous consumption, splashing out on exotic animals and imported brandy. Later, as business people in the rest of China caught up, they followed the Cantonese lead. Suddenly, the nouveaux riches all over China were ordering shark’s-fin soup just as English footballers order magnums of Cristal champagne — to show everyone how rich they were.
九十年代，华南经济特区的企业家们成了中国经济改革中先富起来的人。他们复兴了挥霍性消费的传统，一掷千金地吃珍稀动物、喝进口白兰地。后来，中国其他地方的生意人也迎头赶上挣了钱，于是学起了那群广东人的样子。突然之间，全中国的新贵们都进餐馆点起了鱼翅，就像英国的足球运动员们点大瓶大瓶的水晶香槟，都是为了炫耀自己的富有。
The rapacious appetite of the Chinese elite is now not only threatening wild creatures within the country’s borders: it has become an international issue. The Chinese, for example, devoured almost all their own freshwater turtles some time ago; and most of those served in restaurants are farm-bred. But wild turtles are still held to be more potent in taste and tonic properties. For years they were imported from mainland Southeast Asia, until the Chinese gobbled up most of the turtles in that region too. Now they are being brought in from North America. It’s a similar story with the pangolin, and the sea cucumber: sea cucumbers, commercially extinct in China, are being harvested as far afield as the Galapagos Islands.
中国显贵们贪婪的胃口威胁到的不仅仅是国内的野生动物，这已经成为一个国际问题。比如，中国的野生淡水龟已经被吃光了，现在餐馆里的基本都是人工养殖的。但要论味道和药用价值，还是野生龟最好。多年来中国都从东南亚进口野生龟，直到该地区的龟也快被吃光，现在又转而从北美引进。穿山甲也是一样。还有海参：中国的海参已经珍稀到无法商业流通的地步，所以他们不惜远涉重洋，去厄瓜多尔的加拉巴哥群岛捕捞。
The threat to sharks from the insatiable hunger of the Chinese market for their fins has received most international publicity, partly because of the practice of ‘finning’ (where fishermen reportedly slash the valuable fins off a live shark, and throw the rest of the fish back into the water, bleeding and disorientated). Shark’s fin is de rigeur at Cantonese wedding banquets; half the global trade in sharks’ fins is conducted in Hong Kong, where entire shops are devoted to them. The notorious traffic in fins is, however, just the tip of the iceberg, the fin of the fish. The Chinese are the world’s most rapacious consumers of endangered species in general. Wild creatures from every corner of the planet fetch up in Chinese hotpots and medicinal brews.
国际上关注和曝光最多的，是中国市场对鱼翅的贪得无厌威胁到鲨鱼的生存。之所以关注度高，部分是因为取鱼翅的行为过于残忍（据说渔民会直接从活鲨鱼身上割下昂贵的鱼翅，再把它们扔回海里，任其鲜血直流、慌乱失措、自生自灭）。南粤的婚宴上流行用鱼翅招待客人，全球有半数的鱼翅贸易是在香港进行的，很多店专门做这个生意。然而，臭名昭著的鱼翅贸易只不过是冰山一角、“巨鲨一翅”。总体来说，中国是全世界最贪婪的濒危动物消费国，这个星球上每个角落的野生动物都能出现在中国的火锅与药膳里。
The Chinese authorities make sporadic attempts to crack down on the illegal trade in endangered animals. The SARS crisis of 2003 lent an urgency to their efforts, because the epidemic was thought to have been caused by the virus leaping from wild civet cats (a traditional tonic food) into the general population. But it is hard to change an age-old culture of exotic eating. The officials nominally in charge of the heralded crackdowns are often those who like to slurp snake soup and turtle stew on the sly. And as for the peasants — well, if you were a Fujianese peasant living on 2000 yuan a year, struggling to pay for your children’s education and your parents’ healthcare, and you saw a five-pace snake curled innocently in the bracken, what would you do?
中国官方也会不时打击制裁濒危物种的非法贸易。二零零三年的“非典”危机更让他们的行动有了紧迫感，因为据说“非典”病毒一开始是从果子狸（传统的补药食材）身上传染给人的。但要改变自古以来偏爱猎奇与豪奢的饮食文化，实在很难。这些制裁打击行动通常都会先给餐馆通风报信，因为那些名义上领导行动的官员们自己私下里也好喝一口蛇汤、吃一点鳖裙。而农民们呢？如果你是个福建农民，年收入只有两千元，交完孩子的学费和父母的医药费之后就捉襟见肘，此时你看到草丛中盘着一条可爱的五步蛇，你会怎么办呢？
In May 2007, a rickety wooden ship was found floating off the coast of Guangdong Province, a cross between the Marie-Celeste and a gruesome Noah’s Ark. It was stacked with wooden crates in which wild animals languished, most half-dead with dehydration in the tropical sun. There were 31 pangolins, 44 leatherback turtles, nearly 2720 lizards, 1130 Brazilian turtles, and 21 bears’ paws wrapped in newspaper. All of them rare and threatened creatures, they were on their way from the jungles of Southeast Asia to the dinner tables of the Cantonese south. The engine of the ship that carried them, stripped of identifying marks, had run out of power. Local news reports did not explain why its crew had abandoned such a valuable cargo.
二零零七年五月，广东沿海海面发现了一艘破破烂烂的木船，有点像“玛丽·塞勒斯特”号（2），又有点像阴森恐怖版的诺亚方舟。船上堆叠着木条箱，里面关着死气沉沉的野生动物，很多都因为在热带的烈日下脱水而奄奄一息。船上发现了三十一只穿山甲、四十四只棱皮龟、将近两千七百二十只蜥蜴、一千一百三十只巴西龟，还有报纸包着的二十一只熊掌。这些全都是珍稀濒危动物，它们从东南亚的丛林启程，正往南粤人的餐桌上“走”去。运送动物的船只上，所有可以辨认的标志都撕扯掉了。发动机没电了。当地的新闻报道也没有解释船员为何抛弃了这一船十分值钱的货物。【注：（2）Mary Celeste，是一艘帆船。一八七二年的大西洋上，有人发现这艘船全速向直布罗陀海峡航行，但船上一个人也没有。这艘船因此有了很多传说，更有“鬼船”之称。】
The animals, thirteen tonnes of them, were taken into the custody of the Guangdong Wild Animal Protection Centre. ‘We have received some animals,’ a staff member at the centre was quoted as saying by the local media. ‘We are waiting to hear from the authorities what we should do with them.’ Given the appetite of Cantonese officials for rare animals, the high market-prices for such delicacies, and the corruption endemic all over China, one hopes that the creatures were allowed to remain in the protection centre rather than eaten. Mr Fox, will you take care of my poor lost chickens?
这些动物共重十三吨，被暂时送到广东野生动物保护中心。“我们接收了一些动物，”当地媒体报道该中心的一位员工说，“正在等待上级指示如何处理。”想想广东官员们对珍稀动物的胃口，这些珍馐的市价又那么高，以及全中国横行的腐败现象，我衷心希望上级能够指示这些动物继续待在保护中心，而不是成为盘中餐。
The first time I heard the phrase ‘nong jia le’ was on one of my earliest return visits to Chengdu, a year or so after I had finished my course at the Sichuan cooking school. My old friends Zhou Yu and Tao Ping, always a good barometer of trends in local food habits, had invited me out for dinner: ‘Let’s go to a nong jia le!’ cried Tao Ping. I had no idea what she was talking about (‘nong jia le’ literally translates as ‘the happiness of peasant homes’, but might be rendered more loosely as something like ‘place of rural good cheer’).
我第一次听说“农家乐”这个词，是上完四川烹专的课程后一年左右，在开始从英国回访成都时。紧跟当地饮食潮流的老朋友周钰和陶萍邀请我去吃晚饭：“我们去吃农家乐吧！”陶萍高喊着。我完全听不懂她在说什么。
That night at Mrs Liu’s restaurant, I had sat back and sipped my tea after dinner as frogs and insects sang in the velvet darkness outside. Apart from from my moral doubts over some of the delicacies on the menu, it was the kind of place I love to find in rural China: a family business where the food is local, seasonal and freshly cooked. The kitchen was plain but spotlessly clean, the warmth of the welcome genuine. But despite its rural simplicity, of course, it owed its existence to the patronage of tourists like me. Local people, living in their gracious but dilapidated courtyard houses, growing and processing oolong tea for a living, couldn’t afford to dine there. That snake soup alone had cost more than 300 yuan, a seventh of the annual per-capita income of a peasant in a poor place like this. But these days there’s a growing market in China for ‘rustic’ eating.
那天晚上，在刘太太的餐馆吃完晚饭，我靠在椅子上喝着茶，听着外面幽深黑夜中的蛙声虫鸣。除了对菜单上一些内容抱有道德疑问之外，这里实在是我很喜欢的中国农村：自家的生意，靠山吃山、靠水吃水的当地应季食材，现杀现做；厨房很朴素简易，但干净得一尘不染；店家也热情真诚、温暖人心。不过，虽然这里地方偏僻、陈设简单，但能一直开得下去依靠的当然也是我这样掏腰包的游客。那些当地人住着有院子的农舍，看上去倒是山水田园，但其实都是破烂的危房。每天在茶园里忙碌、种植和加工乌龙茶的他们，是吃不起这样的餐馆的。光是那份蛇汤就三百多元，在这种贫困地区相当于农民人均年收入的七分之一。但近年来，中国所谓的“乡村”饮食有了越来越大的市场。
The nong jia le turned out to be a kind of pseudo-rustic restaurant catering to the Marie-Antoinette tendencies of the new Chengdu middle class. We piled into Zhou Yu’s small van and drove a few miles out of the city, until we spied a bamboo gateway festooned in bunting. Driving in, we pulled up outside a bamboo shelter that had been erected next to a concrete farmhouse. Several groups of people were seated at bamboo tables under the shelter, cracking open sunflower seeds with their teeth and playing Mah Jong. Some of them had already begun to eat.
他们带我去的农家乐，原来是一家模仿农村环境的餐厅，专门招待那些追求多种享乐方式的成都新兴中产阶级。我们挤进周钰的小轿车，往城外开了一段，看到一扇竹门，上面拴着些彩色的布条。我们开车进去，停在一座竹棚子外面，棚子旁边是水泥盖的农舍。棚子下面有几拨人围坐在竹桌子旁、嗑着瓜子、打着麻将，有些已经吃起来了。
Everything about the place was studiously bucolic. The sunflower seeds were served on the kind of chipped enamelled trays with stencilled flower patterns that you find in peasant homes. Raincoats made of straw and woven bamboo hats hung on the walls. We were invited to catch our own fish for dinner, in a pond by the door, and to select a live rabbit for the pot.
这个地方的一切都充满了刻意为之的田园牧歌情怀。装瓜子的盘子是那种斑驳的搪瓷，上面有刻板的花纹，正是农民家里常见的那种。墙上挂着蓑衣斗笠。店家请我们自己去抓鱼当午饭，就在门口的池塘边；还要去亲手点一只活兔来做焖锅。
For a slightly older generation of urban people, the countryside is a place of bitter memories. After the chaos of the early Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards, teenagers who had gone wild in their vicious attacks on Chinese tradition and so-called ‘capitalist roaders’, were rusticated, en masse, to ‘learn from the peasants’. For the young Red Guards, it was like a penance for the thrilling freedoms they’d enjoyed, travelling ticketless all over China to spread revolution, waving their Little Red Books at Mao in the rock-concert hysteria of Tiananmen Square.
年纪较大的城里人通常都对乡村有比较苦痛的回忆。“文化大革命”最初的混乱过后，那些疯狂攻击中国传统和所谓“走资派”的十几岁的红卫兵们被大批地派遣下乡，“向贫下中农学习”。年轻的红卫兵们之前在全中国不买票地跑来窜去闹革命，像开摇滚巨星演唱会一样在天安门广场挥舞着红宝书，朝毛主席声嘶力竭地呐喊。享受了这令人浑身震颤的自由之后，他们一下子又被送去苦修忏悔。
Many were sent to remote areas where they lived in dire poverty for years. One friend of mine shared a disused storehouse in the mountains with some female friends, and had to eke a precarious living from the rocky soil. They slept on beds made from cornstalks and leaves, had no electricity or running water, and were always hungry. This friend returned to Chengdu after three years, but other, unfortunate girls married village men and were never allowed to go home, condemned for the rest of their lives to hardship and deprivation.
很多都被派往相当偏僻的地区，过了多年极端贫困的生活。我的一个朋友就被派往山区，和几个女性朋友一起住在某个废弃的仓库里，还要去坚硬贫瘠的土地上耕田，勉强为生。她们睡的床用秸秆与草叶铺成，没有电、没有自来水，而且大家经常是饥肠辘辘。这个朋友下乡三年之后回了成都，但另外一些运气不好的女孩子就跟乡下的男人结了婚，再也回不了家，余生都要在困苦与匮乏中煎熬。
The younger generation to which Zhou Yu and Tao Ping belong was never forced to live the grinding life of a Chinese peasant. Newly mobile, with their private cars and vans, they have begun to see the countryside as a playground, and a refuge from the pollution and hurly burly of city life. Nong jia les have sprung up all over the country to cater for them. Some are straightforward restaurants, others tourist farms where you can stay for a few days and try your hand at digging the land, grinding soybeans for tofu, or gathering fruit. Real peasants, more accustomed to being viewed with withering disdain by urbanites than romanticised like this, must be amazed at such a turn of affairs. The more ‘backward’ the village, the more primitive its conditions, the more attractive it is to city-dwellers! Furthermore, city people are willing to pay good money for the kind of wild ferns and weeds that real peasants only eat if they are starving to death!
周钰和陶萍这一代年轻些的城里人从来没被迫过过中国农民那种艰难的生活。很多人刚买了私家车，出行方便了，觉得乡下就是游乐场，还能暂时逃离城市生活的污染与喧嚣。全国上下开了很多农家乐来满足他们这种趣味。有些就是单纯的餐馆，有些是可以住宿的农场，能待上几天，亲自挖挖土、磨豆做豆腐或者摘果子。真正的农民们早就习惯了城里人鄙夷嫌弃的眼神，一定是万万没想到，潮流变了，这些人竟然觉得他们的生活很浪漫、很理想。村子越落后、越原始，城里人就越喜欢呢！还有，这些人竟然会花很多钱去吃乱七八糟的野菜野草，要知道，真正的农民只有快饿死的时候才会吃这些东西呀！
We pulled in at the most horrendous Disneyland version of rural simplicity you can possibly imagine. ‘There you are!’ said our driver proudly, gesturing towards a vast sprawl of covered walkways and private dining rooms, jerry-built out of wood and bamboo. My heart sank, but it was late and we were hungry. A waitress dressed in a fake peasant tunic made of flower-printed cotton led us to our private dining room. I glanced through the open doors of the other rooms as we passed. Each one framed a scene of greed and devastation. Round tables were piled with plates, bowls, claypots, miniature woks on tabletop burners. The food left on them was ruined, but unfinished, and the filmy plastic that covered each table was scattered with detritus: spat-out chicken bones, fishy fins and prawn shells, pools of spilt bai jiu spirits and beer. And around the tables, rows of red, dishevelled faces, bleary with alcohol, lolled at various angles.
车开到地方了，可真是能想象到的最浮夸、最商业化的“田园牧歌”农家乐了。“到啦！”司机骄傲地说，指着一大片室内走廊和包间，整个建筑内部是用木头和竹子做的。我的心一沉，但已经很晚了，大家都饿得发慌。穿着花棉衣、打扮成农家女模样的服务员领着我们进了包间，路上经过一些开着门的包间，我瞥了一眼，每一间都是一派贪婪与颓靡：圆桌上堆叠着盘子、碗、陶罐、卡式炉上的小锅；里面的食物都是一片狼藉，都没吃完；盖在每张桌子上的塑料薄膜上散落着各种垃圾：鸡骨头、鱼鳍、虾壳、洒出来的白酒和啤酒。围坐在桌边的一张张脸都是通红的，一副喝多了酒精神涣散、眼神蒙眬的样子，个个以不同的角度懒洋洋地靠着椅背。
Some nong jia les offer a ridiculous pastiche of rural eating. One night in northern Fujian, before we stumbled upon the delicious haven of Mrs Liu’s, my Shanghai friends and I asked a taxi driver to help us find a restaurant serving local specialities. We imagined a Fujianese version of a Tuscan agriturismo, a tranquil farmhouse in a bamboo grove. Of course we should have known better. The driver’s face lit up: ‘Yes, I know a place, it’s very rustic, you’ll love it.’
有些农家乐里的农家菜真是七拼八凑、闻所未闻。在福建北部的一天晚上，巧遇刘太太那个“美味欢乐乡”之前，我和上海的朋友们请出租车司机帮我们找家专做本地特色菜的餐馆。想象中应该是富有福建特色的“托斯卡纳式”农家，柴扉轻掩、农舍静谧。不过我们不该那么天真的。司机一听要他推荐，满脸放光，“哦哦，我知道一个地方啦，非常有农村特色啦，你们肯定喜欢的啦。”
The restaurant tried to spin out the illusion of farmhouse eating by making us give our order in a kitchen ante-room where fish and eels swam in tanks, ‘wild’ vegetables filled enormous fridges and bee larvae squirmed in the remains of their nest. But this was rustic catering on an industrial scale. After a desultory meal, we returned to our hotel, a mountain-villa complex that was a favourite among the ruling classes. That weekend it had been invaded by junketing officials who were pretending to hold a conference while savouring the pleasures of rural life. They wandered around drunkenly in the small hours, shirts untucked, shouting in the corridors, knocking randomly on the doors of our rooms. Dolled-up young women from the massage parlour in the grounds hurried to and fro, giggling.
这家餐馆想维持我们田园牧歌的幻觉，特意叫我们站在厨房外面一个游着各种鱼类的大缸前点菜。巨大的冰箱里放满了所谓的“野”菜，还有个残破的蜂窝，蜜蜂的幼虫在里面蠕动着。但这种所谓的“农家菜”，可是用相当工业化的规模和手法来做的。
I had hoped to find more genuine rural simplicity in southern Fujian. My path took me through Xiamen, where I stayed for a few nights on the small island of Guliangyu, just off the coast, once the home of the foreign treaty port residents. It was still clustered with colonial buildings, and home to China’s largest collection of pianos — another legacy of its cosmopolitan history. My destination, however, was not coastal Fujian, where the snakeheads run their illegal immigration rackets, and the friendly people eat sea worms in aspic with mustard sauce, sharkballs stuffed with minced pork, and all manner of delicious seafood snacks. Instead I was headed for an area near the border with Guangdong Province where the Hakka people live. The Hakka, which roughly translates as ‘settler households’, are traditionally the wanderers among the Han Chinese. Centuries ago, they migrated south, in several stages, from their homelands in northern China, to avoid insurrection and war. In the early years of the Qing Dynasty, many of them put down roots in the mountainous areas of Guangdong and Fujian, because others had already claimed the more fertile, low-lying lands. They became known for their preserved vegetables and robust peasant cooking. And there is one area of south-western Fujian that I had longed to visit for years, where the Hakka clans still dwell in their ancestral clanhouses.
我希望在福建南部找到更地道简朴的乡村田园。我先去了厦门，在鼓浪屿上过了几夜。这个小岛离海岸不远，中国签了不平等条约开放厦门为通商口岸后，搬迁而来的外国人就住这儿。岛上还保留着很多殖民时代的建筑，还有中国最大的钢琴收藏馆，这也是厦门接纳各国来客的历史遗产。福建沿海的人们用甜辣酱蘸土笋冻、塞碎肉的鲨鱼丸，还有各种各样美味的海鲜。不过，这里不是我的目的地，我要去的是福建与广东省交界处附近，那里是客家人聚集区。客家人，顾名思义，是那些流离失所、到此客居的汉族人。几百年前，他们为了躲避战乱，从华北的家乡分期分批迁移到南边。清朝初期，很多客家人在广东和福建的山区扎了根，因为那些地势比较低也比较肥沃的土地早就被别人占了。客家人做的腌菜与朴素的农家烹饪逐渐美名远扬。福建西南部有片地方，我已经向往多年，那里的客家人仍然按照家族，住在祖祖辈辈栖居的土楼里。
The Lin brothers were sitting at the side of their courtyard, drinking Iron Buddha tea. They invited us to join them. Lin the Elder poured hot water from a flask into a small clay teapot, brewed the leaves for a few moments, strained the green-golden liquid into a jug, and then filled four tiny teabowls.
林家兄弟坐在自家院落的一边，喝着铁观音。他们请我们也坐下喝茶。林家哥哥把水瓶里的热水倒进小小的陶壶，让茶叶泡了一会儿，再把金绿色的液体倒进公道杯，然后分到四个小小的茶杯里。
‘Drink some tea’, he told me, so I did.
“喝点茶。”他跟我说。我照办了。
The Lins are the great-great-grandsons of the wealthy tobacco farmer who built the mansion in which they still live. It’s a magnificent, fairy-tale extravagance of courtyards and grey-tiled rooves, framed by mountains, overlooking the stream. Now, of course, most of the drafty halls are empty and unused; no incense burns in the ancestral shrine. But in recent years, this area has been discovered by tourists and foreign designers, attracted by its distinctive architecture, and the Lins have turned one wing of their mansion into a guesthouse. It’s a simple place, with rudimentary plumbing, but I’m not sure I’ve ever stayed anywhere so enchanting.
林家兄弟是一位富有烟农的玄孙。他们这位高祖修了这栋大寨，几代人都住在里面。这座宅子雄伟壮丽，像童话里才会出现的建筑，有几重院落，灰瓦的屋顶，四面环山，下临河流。当然，到今天，穿堂风所过之处，很多地方都是空的，没人住、没人用；祖先的灵堂前也没有袅袅的香火。游客和外国建筑师们发现了这个地方，被独特的建筑吸引，于是林家兄弟把宅子的一侧改建成客栈。非常简单朴素的地方，水管之类的设施都是最原始的，但我觉得这可能是我住过最让人着迷的地方了。
Having left Xiamen by bus in the afternoon, I arrived in the village itself after darkness had fallen. It was a slow, winding drive from the nearest county town, along a hilly road littered with the aftermath of landslides. My driver was mostly silent, but whenever he answered his mobile phone he shouted into it as if his voice might otherwise be drowned out by the silence of the night. Eventually we stopped, and when I left the car I could hear the sound of water tumbling over stones. We picked our way along a path by a river, and through a gateway on to a long terrace, and then he led me through a small doorway in a great wide wall.
下午，我搭上大巴离开厦门，天黑以后才到村里。从最近的县城乘车来的一路上，山路崎岖，车开得很慢，山上看着像刚经历过滑坡，路上散落着石块。这一路司机基本上很沉默，但每当接手机的时候都是用吼的，仿佛不这样的话，声音就会被这寂静的黑夜吞没。车终于到地方停下了，我下了车，听到清泉石上流的声音。我们沿着河边的一条路往前走，穿过一扇大门，来到一条狭长的露台上。接着他又领着我穿过一面大墙上的一扇小门。
The Lins’ grand house lies at the heart of tu lou (‘earth-building’) country. For more than ten centuries, until as late as the 1960s, the Hakka who migrated here constructed fortified compounds to protect their extended families from rival clans and marauding gangs. Many of the buildings are roundhouses, a little reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. Their towering outer walls are windowless on the lower floors, punctuated only by a single, easily defended gateway. Inside, tiered galleries rise up around a courtyard, each one opening into a ring of rooms. On the ground floor are the kitchens, the wells, the chicken coops, and the ancestral shrines; on the first floor the granaries; and above them the bedrooms and living rooms. Some of the roundhouses are very small; others have room for dozens of families. Similar clan-houses are built around square or rectangular courtyards, like the Lins’. In times of conflict, the Hakka could simply barricade their gates, and hold out for months with their fresh water and eggs, their stores of grain, tea, and preserves.
林家大宅就位于这土楼之乡的中心地带。持续到一九六零年代的十个多世纪以来，迁徙到这里的客家人建造了非常坚固、堡垒一般的建筑群，用来保护大家庭不受外来部族的侵犯和强盗小偷的入侵。很多土楼都是圆圆的，有点像伦敦的莎士比亚环球剧院。低楼层高高的外墙是没有窗户的，只有一扇易守难攻的大门。走进去是个院落，层层叠叠的走廊围绕着它拔地而起，每一层都有一连串的房屋。第一层是厨房、水井、鸡笼和祖先的灵堂；第二层是粮仓；再往上就是客厅与卧室。有的圆形土楼很小，有的则住得下几十家。也有些土楼是围绕着正方形或长方形院落建起来的，结构类似，比如林家。起了什么争端冲突，客家人只要把门关好守好，家里的活水、鸡蛋、存粮、茶叶和腌菜够他们撑上好几个月。
The day after my arrival, I rose early, took breakfast in the courtyard, and then wandered out into the village. It was harvest time. Along the riverbanks, old women were peeling persimmons and laying them out to dry on bamboo trays. Fresh, they were fleshy and orange; after a few days they darkened and became toffee-sweet. Hisbiscus flowers also lay in the sun, shrivelled and purple, like witches’ hands.
到了那里的第二天，我起了个大早，到院子里吃了早饭，然后到村子里闲逛。正是收获的季节，河岸边老太太们正在削柿子皮，把它们一个个摆在竹篾子上风干。柿子新鲜水灵，果肉丰满，黄澄澄的；几天之后颜色会变深，成为果脯一样的食物。
I spent the next few days exploring the clan-houses, first on foot, and then, in the surrounding valleys, by motorbike. Some had been spruced up for the new tourist trade; the majority were falling into dereliction. Like most parts of rural China, the society of the tu lou region had been hollowed out by the effects of economic reform. Almost all the young adults had migrated to the cities to work, leaving behind only the elderly and children. Courtyards that had once echoed to the sound of a dozen sizzling woks were desolate. Chickens pecked around the discarded agricultural tools and cooking pots on the ground.
接下来的几天我都在探索各个土楼。一开始就在村里步行，后来骑着摩托跑到周围的村里去。这里的村子有的因为旅游业的发展修复一新，但大多数还是年久失修、摇摇欲坠的样子。和中国广大农村地区一样，土楼地区的社会已经被经济改革掏空了。几乎所有的青壮年都进城务工，村里只剩下老人和孩子。那些院落里曾经回荡着十几口大锅“咕嘟咕嘟”与“滋滋滋”的美食之声，现在则悄无声息、荒凉颓败。在地上那些废弃不用的农具和锅碗瓢盆之间，一只只鸡在啄食着小虫和米粒。
On my last evening in the village, I had dinner in the Lins’ courtyard, with the other two guests, a Eurasian photographer and his British-Chinese girlfriend, both visiting from Hong Kong. We chose from a printed list of Hakka specialities that the Lins had produced for their foreign visitors. They made us a soup from a whole duck simmered with tea-tree mushrooms, and stir-fried chicken with shiitake mushrooms; there was stir-fried musk-melon, and ‘blood vegetable’, a wild local green. The fowl were inconceivably delicious, as real farmyard birds usually are. And then we had that most famous Hakka dish, steamed belly pork with preserved mustard greens. There was far more than we could possibly eat. The elder Lin brought us a jug of a Hakka home-brew made from glutinous rice, warm and heady like cider. We lingered in the courtyard, mellow with wine, as the candles burned down.
在村里的最后一个晚上，我在林家的院子里吃了晚饭，同桌还有两个客人：一个欧亚混血的摄影师，还有他的华裔英国女朋友，两人从香港来。我们从打印的菜单上选了些客家的特色菜，这都是林家为外国旅客准备的。他们给我们做了茶树菇炖土鸭汤、香菇炒鸡、炒蜜瓜和当地的野菜“血菜”。鸭肉真是不可思议的美味，通常土生土长的农村鸡鸭都是这样。接着我们吃了最著名的一道客家菜：梅菜扣肉，分量多得我们吃都吃不完。林家大哥给我们拿来一大罐自酿的客家糯米酒，喝下去暖身暖胃，有点上头，像苹果酒。我们流连于宽大的院落里，美酒喝到微醺，蜡烛渐渐燃尽。
An old crone sat on a wooden chair in one vast, empty roundhouse, overgrown with weeds, scattered with rubbish. She was shelling dried soybeans, hunched up over a bamboo tray, shaking the yellow beans out of their papery pods. She murmured in thick local dialect: too old to have studied Mandarin, she could neither speak nor understand it. In another roundhouse, two elderly men in blue Mao suits showed me around. They had resurrected their family shrine, retrieving the wooden statues of their ancestors from their Cultural Revolution hidey-hole. Their clothes were worn and they looked at me eagerly, hoping for a tip. In the late afternoon, I came across a small, grubby boy wandering around with a ricebowl and chopsticks, eating a supper of noodles without meat or relish.
在一幢宽大空旷的圆形土楼里，木椅子上坐了个干瘪的老太太。这里荒草丛生、垃圾遍地。老太太在给干豆子剥壳，她弯腰对着一个竹篾子，把黄色的豆子从纸一样干脆的豆荚里晃出来。她嘴里嘟囔着浓重的方言。是啊，她年纪很大了，没学过普通话，不会说也听不懂。在另一幢土楼里，两个穿着毛式中山装的老爷爷带我参观了一圈。他们把祖宗灵堂修整了一番。“文革”时，家里祖宗的木雕像都被藏了起来，他们又找回来摆上。两个人的衣服都很旧了，他们目光热切地望着我，希望能拿到点小费。下午接近傍晚的时候，我撞见一个个子矮小、身上脏兮兮的男孩子端着一个饭碗和一双筷子转来转去，吃着一碗清水面，里面没有肉臊子，也没加什么调味料。
At the entrance to the roundhouse next door, he discussed prices with two elderly men. One of them, frail and dignified in his threadbare Mao suit, ended up coming to a deal, and then walked home, clutching his purchase, unwrapped, in his hand. It was a single pork bone, a small one, with a knuckle at one end, to which clung a few ragged shreds of meat.
在隔壁土楼的门口，他和两个老头讲了讲价。有个老头一副体弱多病的样子，身上的毛式中山装也磨破发白了，但还是整洁体面的。他们谈妥了价格，买了肉，就把肉那么光溜溜地拿在手里回家了。那就是一条瘦瘦的猪排骨，比较小，一边有关节部位的脆骨，挂着几缕碎碎的肉。
I thought back to the vulgar extravagance of the nong jia le in northern Fujian, and the easy abundance of our ‘rustic’ dinner the night before — the plentiful dishes of duck and chicken, the steamed pork that we had barely touched — and my heart stuck in my throat. Then the man disappeared from view as he descended the stony path by the riverside, and the younger Lin brother arrived on his motorbike to take me to my bus.
我的思绪突然回到福建北部那粗俗而奢侈的农家乐，以及昨晚上我们那顿所谓“乡野”却浪费铺张的晚饭：那么多的鸡鸭，那碗我们几乎一点也吃不下的梅菜扣肉。我的心好像卡在嗓子眼，难受极了。接着屠夫沿着河边的石板路一路往下走，消失在我的视线里，而林家阿弟骑着摩托来接我去车站了。
The next day I had to catch the early bus back to Xiamen. As I waited in the courtyard for my lift to the bus stop, the local butcher was doing his rounds. A slight, scruffy man bearing two bamboo trays on a bamboo shoulderpole, he shouted out ‘Meat-for-sale! Meat-for-sale! Mai rou! Mai rou!’ He paused in the gateway, and I caught a glimpse of his wares. He didn’t have much to sell, just a few rather mean-looking hunks of pork, and some bones.
第二天，我得搭一早的大巴回厦门。在院子里等人来接我去车站时，村里的屠夫正挑着肉到处转悠。他是个身材瘦长、穿着破旧的男人，一根扁担挑着两个竹篾子，喊着“卖肉！卖肉！”他在门口停了一会儿，我瞥见了他一身的装备行头。竹篾子里没多少肉，只有几块卖相不怎么好的猪肉和一些骨头。
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