Hong Kong helped me to cross the border gently. It was China in some ways, but in others it wasn’t. I could meet English friends for a cocktail in the Captain’s Bar at the Mandarin Oriental, or I could watch live fish being dismembered in the Wanchai wetmarket; I could windowshop in the glitzy designer boutiques of Central, or lose myself in the feverish backstreets of Kowloon. I remember, on that first trip, entering a Chinese temple, the Man-Mo, in the old Chinese trading district of Sheung Wan. In the red-glowing, gold-gleaming, cavern-like interior, old ladies shook out their fortune-telling sticks and candles flickered. The strange gilded statues and smouldering coils of incense brought me out in goosepimples. But then I was able to take a taxi back into a more familiar world, meeting Sebastian and his girlfriend for dinner and English conversation. By the time I boarded the train that ran to the border with China proper, my fear had abated and I was ready to face the Mainland for the first time.
香港帮我实现了“软着陆”。从某些方面来说，这里很“中国”；从另一些方面来看，又不“中国”。我可以在文华东方酒店的船长吧见见英国朋友、来杯鸡尾酒，也可以在湾仔的老市场亲眼目睹现杀活鱼；我可以在中环炫目耀眼的设计师流行精品店流连忘返，也能在九龙偏僻的老街巷中不知今夕何夕。我还记得第一次到香港时，进入传统华人贸易区上环的文武庙，里面红墙金壁、闪闪发光，仿佛另一个天地的洞穴；老太太们在摇签问命，香烛摇曳、火光闪烁，奇特的镀金铜像与氤氲环绕的烟气让我浑身起了层鸡皮疙瘩。但接着我就能立刻叫辆出租车，回到一个更为熟悉的世界，和塞巴斯蒂安及其女友见面吃晚饭、用英语聊天。等到上了火车，和一群中国人一起奔向口岸时，我已经不那么害怕，准备好和内地的初见了。
When I finally left Hunan, I stayed for a few days with some English friends in Hong Kong before flying back to London. I felt completely disorientated. I didn’t know how to express myself and had forgotten how to behave like a normal English person. My friend Rob, who I have known since we were teenagers, and his wife Leslie helped me to ease myself out of my Chinese life.
最终我还是离开了湖南，然后去香港跟几个英国朋友住了几天，再飞回伦敦。我特别手足无措，完全不知道如何表达自己，也忘了正常的英国人该怎么表现。我从十几岁起就在牛津认识的朋友罗伯和他的妻子莱斯利帮我平稳地走出了中国生活。
In my years of travelling back and forth, I have come to think of Hong Kong as a kind of decompression chamber, a halfway house between home and China. It’s been like that for me ever since my first visit, when I stayed with my cousin Sebastian in his apartment in Wanchai, on Hong Kong Island. Then, I was so terrified of my impending trip to China that I wondered if I could go through with it. I woke up every morning and looked through the window towards the Mainland, cold with fear.
往返于中西方世界的多年里，我逐渐把香港作为一个“减压舱”（1），作为家乡和中国半路上的一个落脚点和过渡。初次前往中国就是这样，我先去找了表哥塞巴斯蒂安，在他位于港岛湾仔的公寓里住了一阵。那时候我对未知的中国之旅充满了忐忑，怀疑自己能不能坚持下来。每天早上我睡醒起床，站在窗口朝内地的方向遥望时，都怕得浑身发冷。【注：（1）潜水员从深水上岸时，会因为压力急速降低而患上“减压病”；而减压舱的作用就是作为深水与陆地之间的过渡，慢慢减压，在安全范围内让人体慢慢适应。】
Sebastian sat me down and told me everything that had happened while I’d been away: Oasis, Brit Pop, the National Lottery. And there was this new thing, he said, the Internet, that everyone was talking about. It was going to change the way we did everything. Shell-shocked by the sudden assault of news, cars, and Western advertisements, and the frantic pace of life in Hong Kong, I didn’t really understand what he was talking about.
塞巴斯蒂安让我坐定，把我离群索居时外面发生的事情一五一十地讲给我听：绿洲乐队、英伦摇滚运动（2）、英国国家彩票（3）。对了，还出了个新鲜玩意儿，他说，叫互联网，人人都在说。这东西会完全改变我们的生活。突然间的新闻爆炸，突然间的车水马龙，充斥着视觉与听觉的西方广告和香港疯狂的生活节奏叫我一时间适应不了，有点蒙，并没有真正理解他的意思。【注：（2）英伦摇滚运动（Britpop）是二十世纪九十年代中期从英国发起的音乐和文化运动，强调音乐风格上回归英国特色，绿洲乐队是其中的代表乐队。（3）英国国家彩票是英国政府在一九九四年十一月推出的一种新型彩票制度，当时引起了英国的全民关注，很多人都因此做起了一夜暴富之梦。】
Three years later, on my way back from Chengdu at the end of my cooking course, I stayed with Sebastian again. Once more, I was in a state of potentially traumatic transition. For eighteen months I had been completely immersed in China, and had had very little contact with anyone at home, even my family. My perfect Oxford English was going to seed, because I had become used to speaking with people for whom English was a second language. In the Sichuan University dormitory, we had coined our own lingua franca, a mixture of English and Chinese with a bit of Italian and French thrown in. So I’d picked up all kinds of English phrases and neologisms that weren’t really English, and my syntax was often a little foreign. I was badly dressed too, as I remember, with my army boots and cheap Chinese clothes. I felt like a peasant, completely out of touch with the slick modernity of Hong Kong.
三年后，我上完烹饪课从成都返回时，又到塞巴斯蒂安那里暂歇。我又一次陷入身份转变的危机，还是也许会造成心理创伤的那种。十八个月以来，我完全沉浸在中国的生活当中，很少和家乡联系，连家人都没怎么理。我原本流利的牛津英语退化了，因为长久以来对话的那些人英语都只是第二语言，而我已经习惯了。在川大的宿舍里，我们发明了“内部通用语”，中英文混杂，偶尔还夹杂点意大利语和法语。所以我习惯了一些并不地道的英语短语和词汇，我的语法也带上了点儿异域风情。我的穿衣品味也变得土里土气：脚蹬军绿解放靴，身穿廉价中国衣。我觉得自己就是个乡巴佬，与光鲜又摩登的香港完全格格不入。
When I haven’t visited the Hong Kong decompression chamber on my way into deepest China, or at least spent some time in the lesser decompression chambers of Shanghai or Beijing, I have been struck with the bends. Flying direct from London to Changsha, for example, pausing only to change planes in Beijing, is a disaster. I feel uprooted and horribly confused every time. My tongue gets lost in a linguistic soup of English, Mandarin and dialect, and I find it hard to function socially for at least a couple of days. Hong Kong gives me the space to brace myself on my way into China, and to collect my thoughts and impressions on the way home.
要是在“深潜”入中国腹地和上岸的往返旅程之间没有到香港（或者稍差一点意思的上海、北京）这个“减压舱”待一待，我就会得“减压病”。比如，要是直接从伦敦飞长沙，只是在北京短暂停留转机，那简直就是灾难。我每次都觉得自己像突然被连根拔起，异常困惑迷茫。英语、普通话和湖南方言像一锅乱炖，让我舌头打结，不知如何开口，而且至少有两三天很难去社交。香港给了我一个空间，去中国的路上能先稍微适应一下，做好心理建设；回家的路上能整理下思绪，找找做英国人的感觉。
My heart was heavy that week: leaving Sichuan had wrenched me. I stood one sunny afternoon in a secluded spot on the shore of the Tai Tam reservoir on Hong Kong Island, practising the qi gong movements I’d learned from my elderly teacher in that temple garden in Chengdu, trying to create a sense of continuity between the present, the immediate future and the life I was leaving behind. By the time I finally arrived at my parents’ home in Oxford, I was ready to do what felt like stepping on to dry land again, after years at sea.
那个星期，我的心情一直很沉重，离开四川的感觉是很痛苦的。一个阳光明媚的下午，我站在香港岛大潭水库岸边一处人迹罕至的僻静之地练气功，这还是我在成都那个寺庙院子里跟老师父学来的。我想由此创造一种当下、不远的将来和我已经告别的生活之间的接续之感。等我回到牛津的父母家中，心理准备已经做好，就像多年漂泊在海上的水手，下定决心重新踏足陆地。
It works like this because everybody there is on the brink, like the place itself. My Hong Kong friends know what it’s like to be juggling cultures on a daily basis. We can all swing either way, East or West, and we eat ambidextrously. In conversation, there is much that doesn’t need to be explained, which is a huge relief. And Hong Kong is multicultural and international in a way that China still isn’t. Even the taxi drivers speak a mix of Cantonese, Mandarin and English.
香港能起到这种作用，是因为这里的每个人都和这座城市一样，位于交界之处。我香港的朋友早就习惯了每天在不同文化之间游刃有余。我们都能东西转化、来去自如，饮食习惯也是随遇而安。和他们聊天不用多解释什么，这实在让我轻松自在了许多。那时香港的文化多样性与国际化是中国大多数地方所不及的，就连出租车司机也能粤普英三语混杂着跟你聊上一段。
Sometimes these days, when I’m in a totally English environment — a Fulham dinner-party scenario, say — I feel like a foreigner, with my altered perspectives and traveller’s tales. And in China, of course, I’m all too often still a big-nosed barbarian. But Hong Kong has been a hybrid ever since the British Crown wrested the unlikely island, with its deep and sheltered harbour, from China at the end of the first Opium War in 1842. Hong Kong people will choose, in an evenhanded way, whether to have croissants and Italian coffee or steamed chickens’ feet with oolong tea for breakfast. They might go out for a bit of ‘soy sauce Western food’, or shop in a delicatessen that sells both dried abalone and Spanish membrillo. Everybody dips their deep-fried prawn dim sum in salad cream; their beancurd rolls in Worcestershire sauce. To visiting tourists this seems like a bastardisation; in Hong Kong, it makes perfect sense.
那些日子里，我有时会身处完全的英语环境，比如富勒姆区的晚宴（4）。这种时候我总感觉自己是个外国人，看问题的角度与众不同，脱口而出的也是旅途中的故事。而在中国呢，我大多数时候当然还是一个大鼻子“蛮夷”。但香港就不一样了，自从一八四二年第一次鸦片战争后，英国从中国手里抢走了这个看上去没什么发展前途却有着避风深港的弹丸小岛，这里就变成了个“混血儿”。香港人的早餐多种多样，可以毫无压力和偏见地随意选择牛角面包加意式咖啡，或者蒸鸡爪配乌龙茶。他们也能出去吃吃“酱油西餐”（5），或者逛逛同时卖鲍鱼干与西班牙甜橘酱的熟食店。所有人都习惯了炸虾点心蘸上沙拉酱、豆皮卷佐以伍斯特酱。游客可能会深感古怪不适，但香港让这一切都顺理成章。【注：（4）富勒姆区是伦敦非常有英国味的区域。这个区举行的晚宴通常都是英国中上层阶级参加的，具有典型的英伦特色。（5）“酱油西餐”指的是用中餐的原材料和烹饪手法来料理的西餐，是具有广东及香港特色的西餐。】
I first met Rose through some old friends who thought we might get along. And although at first it seemed as though we might have little in common — Rose is a slick, international businesswoman after all, while I am a writer living in a dodgy part of East London — we never run out of things to say. Because despite her appearance — as petite and delicate as a fawn, and always impeccably well dressed — Rose is a gourmet extraordinaire and a restaurant sleuth.
有几个老朋友介绍我认识了“冷玫瑰”，觉得我俩能成为好朋友。乍看上去我俩好像没什么共同之处。冷玫瑰是位女商人，成熟老练、打扮光鲜，浑身上下一股国际范儿；而我是个作家，住在伦敦东部一个挺偏僻的地方。结果两个女人一见如故，聊起来没完没了。玫瑰看上去苗条精致，像只优雅的小鹿，而且穿着打扮总是无可挑剔；在这副好皮囊之外，她还是位出色的美食家，用舌头来探查各家餐馆。
Whenever I’m planning to visit Hong Kong, I email Rose, and before the day is out, I’m at the receiving end of the first of a volley of replies, each one outlining suggestions of yet more restaurants and food shops to visit, delicacies to try, and food people to meet. Rose is a social chameleon, like many glamorous and well-heeled Hong Kong Chinese. Raised in Chicago by her Chinese parents, she speaks fluent English, Cantonese and Shanghai dialect, and passable Mandarin. She is equally at home in Chinese or international society, and with Chinese or Western food. One weekend she will be flying to Barcelona for dinner at the world’s most exclusive restaurant, El Bulli, the next she will be crammed into a tiny upstairs room in Sheung Wan, eating raw crabs with her fingers and chomping her way through a Chiuchow stewed goose with garlic vinegar.
计划去香港的时候，我就会给玫瑰发邮件，不久便能收到她连珠炮似的回复，每一封都列出各种我们要去的餐馆和食品店、要吃的美味佳肴、要见的美食界人士。玫瑰很会社交，是那种典型的魅力四射、荷包充足的中国香港人。玫瑰的双亲都是中国人，但从小在芝加哥长大，所以英语、粤语和上海话都很流利，普通话也还算过得去。不管在中国还是国际社会，吃中国菜还是西方菜，她都同样自在坦然。她可能这个周末会飞去巴塞罗那，在全世界最独特的斗牛犬餐厅吃晚餐；下个周末就挤在上环某间小楼上，直接上手肢解螃蟹，拿潮州卤鹅蘸着蒜蓉和醋，唇齿嚼得吧唧吧唧的。
At home, you might find her tea-smoking her own oysters, sautéeing foie gras, or preserving osmanthus blossoms with salt and sugar. And whenever we meet in London on one of her globe-trotting business trips, she takes out of her elegant designer handbag a stash of Chinese goodies that she has brought especially for me: dried sea-moss and salted bamboo shoots from Shanghai, perhaps, or some special shrimp-and-chilli paste from Hong Kong.
自己在家的时候，她可能亲手茶熏生蚝、煎鹅肝、用盐和糖腌桂花。她总是满世界出差，所以每当在伦敦见面，她就会从优雅的设计师限量款手包里掏出一包专门带给我的美味中国土特产：可能是上海的干苔条、扁尖笋，或者是香港的秘制XO酱。
Soon after our first meeting some five years ago, Rose arranged a Sunday lunch for our mutual friends and me at the Ningbo Residents Association restaurant. It was the kind of restaurant I could never have found on my own, tucked away in an office building and officially open only to the association’s members. Rose ordered for us all in fluent Shanghai dialect, and the meal was a revelation. There were smoked eggs, their yolks like liquid gold; tiny clams steamed in a delicate, savoury custard; braised meatballs with bamboo shoot and shiitake mushrooms; chopped Indian aster leaves with dry beancurd and sesame oil; a scrumptious mash of broad beans with preserved greens and dried scallops; and, most remarkable of all, cold, raw mud snails steeped in sweet Shaoxing wine, their shells so thinly crisp they could be eaten whole. Afterwards, we filled up on sesame flatbreads and sticky rice-cake stir-fried with bamboo shoot.
大概五年前我们第一次见面后不久，玫瑰就在香港的宁波同乡会餐厅为朋友们和我专门安排了周日午宴。光凭我自己是永远找不到这种藏在一座写字楼里、只对同乡会会员开放的餐厅的。玫瑰帮我们大家点菜，说着流利的上海话，点的菜也让人大饱口福、大开眼界。蛋黄像液体黄金的熏蛋；清淡可口的蛤蜊炖蛋；油面筋塞肉（肉馅混了竹笋和香菇）；香油拌马兰头和豆腐干；绝妙好味的蚕豆拌雪里蕻加豆瓣酥；最让人拍手叫好的，是一个冷盘，生黄泥螺浸在绍兴酒里，薄薄的螺壳脆生生的，可以整个放进嘴里。之后我们又大快朵颐地品尝了芝麻大饼和竹笋炒年糕。
It is testament to the diversity of Chinese cuisine that after more than ten years of dedicated research, I encounter new ingredients and new dishes not only every single time I visit the country, but often every single day. Even in Chengdu, which I know better than anywhere else in China, I am constantly surprised, and in Hong Kong, which I dip into every couple of years, the novelties flow thick and fast. Of course, it helps to have friends like Rose, who have their noses to the ground, sniffing out all kinds of delicacies hidden like truffles in the back alleys. By now I associate Hong Kong with these little gastronomic expeditions to basement delicatessens, teeming wet markets, restaurants in unlikely places, and tea shops in the backstreets of Sheung Wan or Central.
经过十多年投入地研究与走访，我每次来到中国，甚至经常是身在这里的每一天，都能遇到新的食材与新的菜肴，这充分说明了中餐的博大精深与丰富多彩。就连我在中国最熟悉的成都，也总能让我连连吃惊；香港这个我每隔几年进行短暂造访的地方就更不用说了，各种新奇的东西总是迎面扑来。当然啦，有玫瑰这种鼻子贴在地面上、能把藏在深宅陋巷中如松露一样珍贵的各种佳肴都嗅到的朋友，我更是如有神助。现在我一想起香港，就觉得那里充满一次次小小的美食冒险，比如地下室的熟食店、热闹的老市场、出其不意的餐馆、上环与中环狭窄小街中的茶社。
One of the places Rose introduced me to was the Lin Heung teahouse on Wellington Street, a rare survivor of the old teahouse culture of Hong Kong. I went there one morning for breakfast and warmed to it immediately. Outside, a woman was laying out the day’s newspapers on a stand; inside, at just after 6 a. m., it was already busy, and the air hummed with Cantonese chatter. Most of the customers were elderly or middle-aged working men. Some sat alone, engrossed in the papers as they slurped tea and ate their breakfast; others gossipped with their friends. Bleary-eyed after my early rising, I found a perch at one end of a glass-topped table, and a waiter swiftly brought me my bowl, teacup and spoon, and a pot of musty pu’er tea. Soon waitresses were passing by with their trolleys, calling out the names of dumplings and other titbits. One lifted the lids of towers of small bamboo steamers to offer me fluffy buns stuffed with pork, and small dishes containing folds of tripe. Another had sticky rice with chicken, wrapped in fragrant lotus leaves. The tea-waiters rushed around with their kettles, replenishing teapots and bowls. Every few minutes, more customers arrived, and the clamour of conversation grew louder, mixing with the clatter of teacups.
玫瑰带我去的其中一个地方是威灵顿街的莲香楼，那里可以说是香港传统茶楼文化中硕果仅存的瑰宝之一。那天早上我去那里吃了早餐，立刻就产生了温暖的归属感。门外有位女士正把当天的早报摆放到架子上；而早上六点刚过，门里已经是一派忙碌，空气里闹嗡嗡的，全是粤语的闲聊之声。食客大多都是上了年纪或者中年的上班族，有的安静坐着，边饮茶吃早餐边埋头于报纸；有的跟朋友东家长西家短地说着闲话。我起得太早，还有点睡眼惺忪，在一块压了玻璃板的桌边坐定。一个服务员迅速给我上了碗筷、茶杯和勺子，还端来一壶普洱。很快就有其他服务员推着小餐车走过来，喊着虾饺之类小点心的名字。一位服务员抬起宝塔一般的竹制小蒸笼，递给我叉烧包和毛肚；另一位给我端上清香的荷叶糯米鸡。茶水员提着茶壶，忙忙碌碌地穿梭来往，往茶壶和茶碗里添茶。每隔几分钟就又有一拨食客进门，谈话之声越发喧嚷，混合着清脆的茶杯碰撞声，很是热闹。
Lin Heung is a rough-and-ready sort of place, with a worn tiled floor, metal spittoons, and ceiling fans whirring away in the corner of your eye. The walls are a clutter of framed calligraphies, and red plastic boards listing the dishes and dumplings on offer. One of my neighbours at the table that day, Mr Wong, fifty years old, had been coming almost daily for four years, to wake himself up before he clocked on for his job as an office cleaner. ‘The tea is good, the water is good, and the boss is a smart man, he doesn’t cheat us, he knows how to keep everyone happy,’ he told me as he prodded the pile of Dragon Well tealeaves in his cup. His friend Mr Lau, eighty-three, said he had been a regular for fifty years. ‘I come every day,’ he told me, ‘and some of the staff have been here for decades, too. Nothing changes, including the quality of the food, that’s why I keep on coming.’
莲香楼是个比较粗糙的地方，磨损的地砖、金属痰盂，眼角的余光还能看到天花板的吊扇在呼呼旋转。墙上杂乱无章地挂满了装裱过的书法作品，还有列出各种点心菜肴的红色塑料板。那天跟我同桌吃饭的有位王先生，五十岁，四年来几乎每天都在这里吃顿早餐振奋精神，再去上办公室清洁工的班。“茶好水好，老板也好叻（6）的，不骗我们，知道要让大家都高兴。”他一边跟我说，一边拨了拨茶杯里的龙井茶叶。他的朋友刘先生，八十三岁，说自己已经是光顾五十年的常客了。“我每天都来，”他说，“有些人也在这里做了几十年的啦。咩都冇变化，吃食是一样的正（7），所以我才一直来嘛。”【注：（6）叻，音“lei”，粤语里“聪明厉害”的意思。（7）这句话翻译成普通话就是：“什么都没变，吃食还是一样的好。”】
Lin Heung, or ‘Lotus Fragrance’, was founded in the 1920s, although it has moved several times from its original location. The first such teahouses opened in Hong Kong in the 1840s, but they began to flourish only after 1897, when the British authorities abolished their night-time curfew for Chinese people. From the 1920s until the 1940s, they sprang up all over the territory, and they acquired a vital social function in the post-war economic boom. Whole families were then living in cramped accommodation, sharing apartments with limited cooking facilities, or even no kitchen at all. Teahouses were cheap and convenient, as much for family meals as entertaining guests or discussing business. Some became known for particular trades, like the Kam Kong restaurant, frequented by dealers of watches and gemstones; others for their board games or musical entertainments. Visiting a teahouse became so central to Hong Kong life that people began to greet one another by asking, ‘Have you had tea yet?’ instead of the more traditional, ‘Have you eaten?’
莲香楼是二十世纪二十年代开办的，不过已经从最初的地址搬迁了好几次。这类茶楼最早出现在香港是十九世纪四十年代，但直到一八九七年英国当局取消了中国人的宵禁之后才兴旺起来。从二十世纪二十年代一直到四十年代，茶楼在香港遍地开花，在战后经济繁荣的背景下被赋予了重要的社交功能。那时候的香港，常有一大家子人挤在小小的住家里，共用厨房设施有限的公寓，有的甚至根本没有厨房。茶楼又便宜又方便，家宴、待客、谈生意都可以。有的茶楼因为某些行业的人常去而著名，比如襟江酒楼就总有很多手表与宝石商人光顾；还有的是棋类游戏或音乐表演聚集地。去茶楼变成香港生活的重中之重，熟人见面问候都会来一句“饮咗茶未吖”而不是比较传统的“食咗未”（8）。【注：（8）“饮咗茶未”意思是“喝茶了吗”，“食咗未”意思是“吃了吗”。】
The har gau, or fresh prawn dumpling, is the best-known of the delicate steamed dumplings, and one of the most perfect when properly made. A dim sum cook will tease the white wheatstarch dough into a perfect circle with the flat of a cleaver blade, and then wrap it around whole prawns, lightly seasoned and mixed with a scattering of crunchy bamboo. After a swift steaming, the faint pink of the prawns glows through the pearly translucence of the wrapper, with its neatly pinched edge. The prawns are simultaneously crisp and tender, the wrapper soft and glutinous in the mouth. Cheung fun, sheets of slithery rice pasta wrapped around deep-fried doughsticks, barbecued pork or fresh prawn, and served with a drizzling of sweetened soy sauce, are made by pouring a thin riceflour batter on to a sheet of muslin, steaming it, and then wrapping it around the chosen stuffing with a few flips of a spatula blade. Steamed char siu buns are soft and fluffy, their white dough breaking open into a smile of barbecued pork in a savoury-sweet sauce.
点心中有很多热气腾腾的美味饺子，虾饺是其中名气最大的，做得好的话，也是最好吃的。点心师用菜刀的平面将洁白的澄粉面团压成完美的圆形，然后包上整只的虾和微微调味的脆竹笋；大火迅速蒸熟以后，澄粉皮闪烁着珍珠般的透明光泽，虾的淡粉色也透了出来，再加上压得整齐美观的饺子边，煞是好看。一口咬下去，虾既脆又嫩，澄粉皮柔韧软糯。还有肠粉，一张张滑溜溜的米浆面皮包裹着炸油条、叉烧或鲜虾，淋上甜酱油端上来：做的时候要把米浆薄薄地倒在细细的白棉布上，隔水蒸成粉皮，用小铲刀稍微脱模整形，包上选好的馅料即成。叉烧包柔软蓬松，咬开白白的包子皮，露出里面包裹着可口开胃酱汁的烧烤猪肉丁，如同一个美味的笑容。
While the teahouse ritual is known as yum cha (‘drink tea’), the dumplings and other ‘small eats’ that are traditionally served are known collectively as dim sum, the Cantonese dialect form of the Mandarin dian xin. Dian xin is a curious term that defies direct translation into English, but means something like ‘touch the heart’. It dates back at least to the Song Dynasty, when historical sources mention it as a name for the snacks customarily served for breakfast. Though dian xin are eaten all over China, it is in Hong Kong and the Cantonese south that they are most dazzling and abundant.
上茶楼说是“饮茶”，更多是吃虾饺一类的小吃，统称为“点心”。点心这个词涵盖很广，很难直接翻译成英语，但中文字面意思也可以解释为“触动人心”。这种小吃的起源一直要追溯到唐朝，当时的一份文献将其作动词用，意思是“正餐之间吃点零食”；到了宋朝，“点心”成了名词，意思是早餐吃的小零食。全中国都在吃“点心”，但香港与南粤的点心大概是最丰富、最让人垂涎三尺的。
Booming properties prices and competition from restaurants spelled the end of the heyday of the Hong Kong teahouses. (‘If it doesn’t move, build on it’, Hong Kong people quip). Their vast, sprawling premises were knocked down and replaced by skyscrapers; some teahouses moved to new locations, but most of them closed down for good. These days people flock to Lin Heung for a glimpse of the past, or the smarter Luk Yu teahouse nearby in Central. Luk Yu, named after the Tang Dynasty scholar who wrote a treatise on tea in the eighth century, was founded in 1933 and retains its old wooden panelling and atmosphere of edgy glamour. In 2002 it was actually the scene of a triad killing: a local property tycoon was shot in the head as he ate his breakfast. Here, in the mornings, you can still find waiters carrying snacks on trays slung around their necks, a style of service that predates the trolley.
房地产价格节节攀升，再加上无数餐馆的激烈竞争，香港茶楼的全盛期宣告结束，逐渐走了下坡路。（有个香港朋友曾戏谑地跟我说：“识郁，食佢；唔识郁，砌佢。（9）”）各种侧翼蔓生的大规模茶楼被拆除，被摩天大厦取而代之；有的茶楼搬迁到其他地方，但大多数茶楼都永久性地关门大吉了。现在，人们又趋之若鹜地来到莲香楼一窥过往遗风，也有的选择去附近中环那家更精巧些的陆羽茶室。陆羽是八世纪中国唐朝的学者，撰写了《茶经》。这间以他命名的茶楼是一九三三年开业的，到现在也保留着老旧的木板门，里头的气氛一如既往的有种独特的魔力，令人迷醉。二零零二年，这里还发生了一场黑社会凶杀案，当地一个地产巨擘在这里用早餐时被一枪爆头。早上进入陆羽茶室，一定能看到托盘挂在脖子上、用两只手托着走来走去的店小二，这是推车出现之前的跑堂传统了。【注：（9）粤语，大意是“能动的就拿去吃掉，不能动的就拿去盖房子”。】
A dim sum breakfast or lunch is a casual and often chaotic affair, but it has a few of its own, particular rituals. You may thank your host for pouring tea into your cup by tapping your index and middle fingers lightly on the table. This practice is said to date back to the late eighteenth century, when the Qianlong Emperor went on one of his fact-finding missions to the south of China. Travelling incognito, as emperors sometimes did in those days in an attempt to understand what was really going on in their realm, he dropped in on a teahouse with his small retinue. When the emperor poured them some tea, his footmen were flustered, because palace etiquette dictated that they should respond by falling to their knees, and yet they knew they should not give away his disguise. So they tapped their two fingers on the table as a miniature form of prostration, laying the foundations of a habit that remains common in Cantonese communities all over the world.
早餐或午餐吃点心比较随意，而且经常是在忙碌嘈杂的环境中进食。但吃点心也有自己的一些专门礼仪。主人家往你杯里添茶，你想表示感谢，就用食指和中指并拢在桌上轻轻敲一敲。据说这个规矩要追溯到十八世纪末，乾隆皇帝和那时候的很多皇帝一样，为了了解国家真实的民情而微服私访。他带了一小队随从到一家茶楼喝茶。皇上亲自奉茶，跟班们慌乱不已，这要是在宫里，他们早就应该下跪磕头、千恩万谢了。可现在皇上在微服私访，可不能暴露了。于是他们伸出手指敲敲桌面，模仿下跪磕头的动作。这个传统流传下来，逐渐成为全世界粤人社区通用的习惯。
After my breakfast in Lin Heung, I wandered out into the streets of Central. In a market, an old woman was stripping the green peel from tangerines, releasing their sharp, citrus fragrance into the air. Nearby, the sweet, heavy scent of freshly baked custard tarts drifted out from a small bakery. Cured meats and sausages hung over market stalls; butchers worked with cleavers on wooden blocks. Behind every shopfront, red lamps glowed before shrines to protective deities. Hong Kong Island may have one of the world’s most hypermodern skylines, and an infrastructure so efficient it makes you think cramming over a million people on to a tiny piece of land in the South China Sea is a great idea, but at street level, away from the designer shops and the grand hotels, you can still find the grit, the intense physical sensations, and the echoes of a much older China that give the city-territory its enduring appeal.
在莲香楼吃完早餐，我走出门，在中环街市闲逛。走进一个市场，有位老太太正在剥青橘的皮，空气里芳香四溢。附近有家小小的饼店，新鲜出炉的蛋挞厚重的香味也飘了出来。市场摊位上挂着腌肉香肠，屠夫们在木墩菜板上手起刀落。每家店门口都挂着红灯笼、供着保护神，一切都高效而有条不紊地运转着，让你觉得数百万人蜗居在中国南海这个小小的岛上还真不错。在这些世俗平民的街巷，远离高级设计师店铺与豪华酒店，你能感受到红尘滚滚与摩肩接踵的喧嚣，听到一个古老得多的中国那遥远的绝响赋予这个城市持久的吸引力。
It was a soggy, sultry day. Rose had texted me the address of the restaurant. It was hard to find, hidden among the cafés and bars of the entertainment district. There was nothing around the nondescript entrance to suggest that this might be a place to eat: just a street number, and a dank concrete hallway leading inside. But the address seemed right, so I stepped inside, and took the small, dark lift to the fourth floor as instructed. There, I stumbled into a florist’s workshop, where a Chinese woman was trimming leaves from the stems of roses. ‘You here for the restaurant?’ she asked. I nodded, and she pointed me towards an apartment door covered by a steel grill. A sign above bore the name of a company importing household goods. It didn’t look promising, but the number was correct so I rang the bell.
潮湿闷热的一天，玫瑰发短信给了我一家餐馆的地址。地方很难找，夹在那个休闲区满眼的咖啡馆与酒吧之间。门脸特别不起眼，也没有挂招牌，没人说的话根本就不知道还能进去吃东西。上面只有个门牌号，通向里面的水泥走廊也是阴湿的。但按照地址就是这里啊，我走了进去，按照指示上了又小又阴暗的电梯来到四楼。出去就是一家花店，一个中国女人在修剪玫瑰的枝叶。“你是来吃饭的？”她问。我点点头，她给我指了那边一间公寓，房门紧闭，还拉着一道钢条格子的推拉门。上面有个小招牌，写着一家日用品进口公司的名字。看着不对啊，但房号倒是没错，于是我按响了门铃。
A few seconds later, the inner door opened, and a man’s face appeared behind the bars, looking blankly at me. ‘Is this the right place for lunch?’ I asked, doubtfully. He clicked open the grill for a second, and invited me in. The walls of the small, scruffy apartment were lined with cabinets filled with files and stacked boxes of napkins and tablecloths. More boxes were piled up on shelves near the ceiling, just as you’d expect from a company importing household goods. If it hadn’t been for the tempting aromas and sizzly sounds coming from the tiny kitchen, and the three round tables set for lunch, I would have imagined I was in an office, not a restaurant.
几秒钟后，里面那道门开了，一个男人的脸出现在钢条后面，眼神空洞地望着我。“能在这儿吃午饭吗？”我满腹狐疑地问道。他马上拉开推拉门，邀请我进去。这间小小的破公寓脏兮兮的，一排排柜子里放满了文件和一箱箱的餐巾纸与桌布，还有高到接近天花板的架子上面放着更多的箱子，正是一家日用品进口公司的样子。要不是那小厨房里飘出诱人的香味与“滋滋”的声音，以及已经摆好午餐用具的三张圆桌，我差点就觉得自己是闯进人家办公室而不是餐厅了。
Soon, Rose and her Cantonese girlfriends arrived, and we were all seated around a table in what appeared, from the built-in wardrobes, to have once been a bedroom. A few other guests arrived, and then the man who had let us in began to bring food out from the kitchen. There was braised duck with beancurd, an omelette with oysters, deep-fried prawns with white mugwort leaves, Chinese broccoli with dried fish, and a chicken soup with salted lemons. It was all rather delicious, and tasted even better because of the atmosphere of secrecy and adventure that surrounded our lunch.
很快，玫瑰领着一群香港朋友来了，我们选了张桌子坐定。看嵌在墙上的柜子，这里可能做过谁的卧室。又来了几个客人，给我们开门那个男人开始从厨房端出一盘盘菜，有卤鸭、蚝饼、珍珠叶（白色艾蒿叶）炸虾、方鱼炒芥兰以及盐渍柠檬鸡汤。所有的菜都美味无比，再加上这种秘而不宣的探险气氛的烘托加持，味道就更上一层楼了。
The restaurant — I wouldn’t tell you its name, even if it had one — was just one of the so-called ‘private kitchens’ (si fang cai) of Hong Kong. These illicit, small-scale eateries first sprang up in the wake of the Asian economic crisis of 1997. They were a way of making a little money without the interference of the taxman and government bureaucrats, and won their trade by word of mouth. Some were so popular that you had to wait months for a table.
这家餐厅（就算有名字我也不能告诉你）就是香港“私房菜”中的一家。这种规模极小的地下非法小饭馆最初是一九九七年亚洲经济危机催生的。有点手艺的人以此赚点小钱，又不用交税、不用应付政府官僚的繁文缛节。招揽顾客全靠口口相传。有些小饭馆炙手可热，要好几个月才能等来空桌。
Why would a sophisticated businesswoman like Rose want to dine in a cheap hole-in-the-wall restaurant like this? It’s partly because of the thrill of the chase. Tracking down one of these rumoured establishments and bagging a table makes you feel ahead of the crowd. For the locals there’s also, no doubt, a certain pleasure in cheating the government out of its taxes, and getting a slap-up meal at a knock-down price. Most of all, though, there’s that slim but tantalising possibility of finding really marvellous and authentic Chinese regional food.
玫瑰这样干练有为的女商人，怎么会愿意在这么个破破烂烂的廉价餐馆吃饭呢？大概部分是出于那种狩猎的欲望。找到这么一家只存在于市井传说中的餐厅，占个桌子，有种睥睨众生之感。当然，本地人来这里吃饭，肯定还有一种跟政府对着干、偷税漏税的小快感：可以用最低价格吃到一顿味道上佳的饭菜。不过，最重要的原因，大概是那种虽需要历经辛苦，却依然极其诱人的可能性：能够找到真正美妙、真正地道的中国地方菜。
Since those early, heady days, the government has tried to rein them in, and many of the private kitchens have become legitimate restaurants. But if you know the right people, like Rose, you can still find the odd speakeasy, like the one we lunched at, which really is run illegally in the offices of an import company.
从这种趋势刚刚冒头准备蓬勃发展的时候，政府就试图进行约束，也有很多地下小馆变成了合法餐厅。但要是你认识玫瑰这样的“包打听”，还是能找到那些完全不为外人所知的私房菜，比如我们吃午饭的那一家，真的就是在一家进出口公司办公室里非法经营着。
Hong Kong is a city obsessed with eating. Everywhere you go, there are people slurping noodles, devouring dumplings, picking up a skewer of deep-fried sparrows at a street stall. Sounds of frying and delicious smells emanate from all around. And if you start a conversation about food among Hong Kong Chinese friends, be warned that you will unleash a runaway train of food reminiscences, cooking tips, and hot restaurant recommendations.
香港是美食之都，无论去哪儿都能看到大家吸溜吸溜地吃面、大口吞着饺子、在某个小摊前拿起一串烤麻雀。耳朵里充斥的是油炸的“滋滋”声，鼻息里全是四面八方美妙的香味。要是在香港跟一群中国朋友一起，你挑个关于食物的话头，可得注意了，大家就会滔滔不绝地回忆自己吃过什么、有哪些烹饪小技巧，还如数家珍地推荐火爆餐馆。
And because the object of all this passion really is eating, rather than glamorous décor or being seen in the right places, people aren’t snobbish at all. They know that you will very likely find the best beef noodles in Hong Kong at a shabby dai pai dong, or a sensational Muslim pastry in a shack in Kowloon. It’s not uncommon to find rich men cracking open seriously expensive bottles of wine in some cramped backstreet café with chipped formica tables. And if you wander through the Wanchai wet market, you can be sure to see chauffeur-driven Mercedes parked nearby, their motors running as the tai tais (the Hong Kong equivalent of Ladies Who Lunch) buy impeccably fresh vegetables and seafood for their Thai or Filipina housekeepers to cook. So if word gets around that a good ‘private kitchen’ has opened, its phone will ring off the hook. Rose only got a table that day by the skin of her teeth.
这种对于吃的热情非常纯粹，不讲究室内装潢，不论去的地方是否高级，人们的势利之心消失得无影无踪。他们知道，香港最好的牛肉面很可能存在于某个简陋的大排档，美味惊人的穆斯林点心也许只能在九龙的某个棚屋里才找得到。在某条后街狭窄简陋的小店里，不难看到衣着光鲜的富人围坐破破烂烂的餐桌，打开价格不菲的红酒。在湾仔市集走一走，肯定能看到有司机守在奔驰之类的豪车里，不熄火，等着富家太太们买特别水灵的蔬菜和海鲜回去让家里的泰国或菲律宾用人做饭。所以，要是坊间传言某某地方开了家很好的“私房菜”，那电话都会被打爆。玫瑰那天也是勉强才搞到一桌。
On my last-but-one trip to Hong Kong, I was researching a newspaper article about restaurants and food shops. My editor had asked for ‘the ultimate guide to eating in Hong Kong’, and since I am very conscientious but had only five or six days at my disposal, I had to eat more-or-less non stop from morning till night. I would begin with dim sum, congee and/or noodles, then have a couple of lunches, spend the afternoon grazing in various food shops and cafés, and end the day with at least one dinner. I ranged widely in my explorations, from the grand Spring Moon restaurant at the Peninsula Hotel, with its fine teas and marvellous barbecued pigeons infused with osmanthus, to Mak’s Noodles, where I lunched on prawn wontons in soup.
我上上一次去香港，是为了写一篇关于餐厅和小食店的报纸文章。编辑希望我写篇“香港美食终极指南”，尽职尽责的我只有五六天时间，所以基本上得从早吃到晚。我早上先去各个店吃些点心、喝点粥，或者来碗面；接着吃好几顿午饭；下午就去小食店探询；晚上至少要吃一顿。我探索的范围很广，无所不包：在半岛酒店豪华的“嘉麟楼”餐厅喝上好的茶、吃妙不可言的桂花烧乳鸽；再溜达到平易近人的“麦奀”云吞面世家，来碗鲜虾云吞面做午餐。
The private kitchens tend to have their charming eccentricities. One I visited was billing itself as Hong Kong’s answer to El Bulli, and my evening there was a riot of fusion experiments such as ‘steamed foie gras, sticky rice, and caramelised green daikon purée’. Another had a chef who worked during the day as a biochemical engineer; his hobby was cooking, so he spent his nights slaving over a hot stove, producing modernised Shanghainese delicacies such as a salad of beansprouts and fresh yellow lilies, and braised pork ribs with honey and vinegar. One of the earliest and most famous private kitchens, Da Ping Huo, was run by a Sichuanese artist and his wife who had shipments of chilli and Sichuan pepper delivered every week from Chengdu. She was a trained Sichuanese opera singer, so every night, after cooking dinner for twenty or so guests, she would come into the dining room and sing.
私房菜馆有着自成一体的古怪与迷人。我去过的有一家，卖点就是自称香港的“斗牛犬”。我在那里吃的那顿晚餐可谓任性放肆，菜品中竟然出现了“糯米蒸鹅肝配焦糖绿萝卜泥”这样试验性的奇葩。还有一家的厨子白天是个生化工程师，下厨是他的爱好，所以晚上就摇身一变，系上围裙站在热腾腾的炉子旁，呈上改良的现代上海本帮菜，比如豆芽与新鲜黄花菜、金沙拉（金针银芽）和糖醋烧腩骨。最早也是最著名的私房菜里，有一家叫“大平伙”，开店的是一位四川艺术家和他的妻子，他们每周都会从成都进一些辣椒和花椒来。妻子本是位受过专业训练的川剧演员，所以每天晚上给二十来个食客做完饭以后，她也会来到餐厅开嗓献唱。
I ate many delicious things during that week, but the best meal of all was the last, a late-night supper in Cheung Fat, an old Chiuchow café in the district of Kowloon called Kowloon City. Chiuchow, or Chaozhou, is a region in the north-east of Guangdong Province with a distinctive cuisine that is little known outside Asia. In the nineties, when Hong Kong people had money to splash around, Chiuchow delicacies made with high-class (and high-price) ingredients like shark’s fin or conch were all the rage. To me, however, the folk cooking of the region is far more inspiring. Chiuchow people specialise in cold cooked meats and seafoods, which are served with a dazzling array of dips and sauces. They are also known for their delectable stewed goose. They eat raw crabs and clams marinated in garlic, chilli and coriander; soupy rice with shellfish; delicate sweetmeats; and an addictive preserve made from Chinese olives and salted mustard greens. Chiuchow is one of my favourite Chinese regional cuisines.
那个星期我吃了很多很多好吃的，但最棒的还是最后的那顿晚餐：吃得有点晚，地方是在创发潮州饭店，位于九龙区的九龙城。潮州是广东东北部的一个地方，有自己独特的美味菜系，亚洲之外少有人知。九十年代香港人钱多没处花的时候，潮州菜里高级（且高价）的鱼翅海螺等盛行一时。然而，我却觉得这个地区的平民饮食启发性要强得多。潮州人很擅长做冷肉与海鲜，还要配上种类丰富、味道诱人的蘸酱。他们的美味烧鹅也很出名；生螃蟹、生蛤蜊用大蒜、辣椒和香菜腌好了也能做一道菜；汤饭里混上贝壳，其鲜美无与伦比；还有好吃的果脯蜜饯；用中国橄榄与芥菜腌的橄榄菜更是一吃上瘾。总之，潮州菜算是我最钟爱的中国菜系之一了。
Unfortunately I only realised that Cheung Fat was going to be the gastronomic highlight of my trip after I had entered the café, and by then I had already eaten one dinner at another Chiuchow restaurant on the Kowloon waterfront. At the first place, I had intended to order modestly, just for a taste, but the food was so good that I had ended up eating rather a lot of sweet-sour e-fu noodles, pigeon casserole, salted radish omelette and green beans with Chinese olive preserve. By the time I reached Cheung Fat, I was already full, and was planning on just having a quick sniff around before going back to my hotel to sleep. But when I saw the crabs hanging in the window and the extraordinarily delicious-looking fare on the tables all around, I realised that this would not be possible. So I tried to impress upon the waiter that neither I nor my Cantonese dining companion was actually hungry, while asking them to give us a kind of tasting menu of all their unmissable specialities.
遗憾的是，我进了创发的门，才后知后觉地意识到这里将是此次美食之行的最高潮；而在那之前我已经在九龙海边另一家潮州菜馆吃了顿晚饭了。在那家餐馆我本来想少点些菜、只尝尝味道的，但真的太好吃了，结果我又没收住，吃了糖醋伊面、家乡酱焗鸽、菜脯煎蛋和榄菜肉碎四季豆。到创发的时候我已经很饱了，想着就看一眼便回酒店睡觉。但窗上挂着新鲜的螃蟹，周围的桌上摆的菜看着都好好吃，我知道自己之前的打算是不可能了。于是我努力向服务员强调，我和同行的那位香港“饭友”都不饿，请他们推荐几个不可错过的特色菜即可。
Thus we ended up with another fourteen dishes for dinner. Of course they were all irresistible. Although Cheung Fat looks like a grotty little café, with its canteen-style furniture, humming fridges, scuffed vinyl floor and walls covered in pieces of paper scrawled with the names of dishes in Chinese characters, it is probably the best place in Hong Kong for grassroots Chiuchow cooking.
于是，我们面前摆上了十四盘菜。当然啦，每一道都是无法抗拒的美味佳肴。创发的门脸很小、很简陋，桌椅看着像食堂，旧冰箱“嗡嗡嗡”吵得严重，塑料地垫磨损厉害，糊墙的纸上用汉字写满了菜名。然而，这里可能是香港最棒的平民潮州菜馆。
We munched our way through various cold, cooked fish dipped in Puning yellow-bean sauce; red-and-white crab with brown rice vinegar; aromatic cold meats that included the famous goose and also cuttlefish; large shrimpy creatures with plum jam; prawn cake with hair fungus and a treacly dip; deep-fried Puning beancurd; an amazing taro cake studded with pork and water chestnut; and a typically Chiuchow soup of bitter melon, soybeans, spare ribs and salted mustard greens. We ended the meal as we had begun it, by drinking tiny bowlfuls of roasted Iron Buddha tea. As you can imagine, by the time I arrived in Taipei the next day to begin intensive gastronomic research for another article, I felt ready to have a heart attack. But that’s another story.
我们又开始大快朵颐，就着普宁豆酱吃了好几种冷盘鱼，加上花蟹蘸米醋、著名的烧鹅与墨鱼等卤味、梅酱琵琶虾、甜酱发菜虾饼、普宁炸豆腐，还有一道特别好吃的猪肉马蹄芋头糕，以及典型的潮州靓汤，里面加了苦瓜、黄豆、排骨和咸菜。开吃和吃完的时候，我们都喝了铁观音。你应该能想象，第二天我到台北开始为另一篇文章做密集的美食探访时，感觉自己快要得心脏病了，不过这是另一个故事，按下不表了。
After that decadent dinner, I took a taxi back from the run-down ghetto of Kowloon City to the Peninsula Hotel, where I was staying in a four-roomed suite with picture windows overlooking the harbour, a private telescope and its own marble-clad jacuzzi. As always, Hong Kong seemed like a place of almost violent contrasts. There was my own personal seesaw between the pull of China and the longing for home, and between the conflicting desires of my Chinese and English selves; and then there were the contrasts of the place itself, between wealth and poverty, East and West, skyscrapers and street stalls, shrines to the ancient god of wealth and temples to modern mammon. Somehow, I reflected as I lay back in the froth of my jacuzzi, it had been a very typical Hong Kong day.
那顿吃得筋疲力尽的晚饭后，我从破旧的九龙城打了辆车回到半岛酒店。我在那里住着一间四室的套房，大大的落地窗能俯瞰海港，还有专门的望远镜和大理石按摩浴缸。香港一如既往地充满了最为鲜明的对比。就我个人而言，中国的吸引力与回家的渴望，以及中国与英国的不同自我在互相拉锯冲突，跷跷板一般一上一下；而香港本身也充满各种截然不同的角力，贫富、东西、摩天大厦与街边小摊、古代的财神与现代的拜金。不知怎么的，躺在按摩浴缸里陷进满池的泡泡时，我心想，这真是很典型的香港一日啊。
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