A communist party flag fluttered above the glass-topped desk in Mr Chen’s office, next to an ornamental hammer-and-sickle.
陈先生的办公桌上盖着玻璃板，上面飘扬着一面中国共产党党旗，旁边摆着一面锤子镰刀的装饰物。
‘You see,’ said Mr Chen, ‘the feng shui of Shaoshan village is among the best in China. That’s why it produced a Mao Zedong. Mao is like an emperor to the Hunanese people, a true Son of Heaven! He was a politician, a military man, a writer, a calligrapher, a poet and a thinker — a really outstanding genius!’
“你看啊，”陈先生说，“韶山冲是中国风水最好的地方，所以出了个毛泽东。湖南人觉得毛泽东就像皇帝一样，真正的天子！他是政治家、军事家、作家、书法家、诗人和思想家，真正优秀的天才！”
Mr Chen used to be a policeman in the northern Hunanese city of Changde, but, so he told me, he admired Mao so much that he decided to come and live here in Mao’s home village instead. Now he is a rose-growing entrepreneur. His investment — row after tidy row of rose bushes — flanks the main road into the village.
陈先生过去在湖南北部当警察，但他告诉我，因为特别崇拜毛泽东，他决定来这位伟人的家乡定居。现在，他是位种玫瑰、卖玫瑰的企业家，投资的是一行又一行整齐的玫瑰田，就位于这个村主路的两侧。
I thought it strange that an entrepreneur, of all people, should be so devoted to the man who wiped out private business in China, persecuted capitalists and wrecked the national economy for at least two decades. Shouldn’t his hero really be Deng Xiaoping, the architect of the reforms of the eighties and nineties that launched the Chinese economic boom?
我觉得所有人里面，企业家是最不应该这么崇拜毛泽东的：毕竟，他亲手消灭了中国的私营企业，让资本家们日子不好过。难道他崇拜的英雄不应该是邓小平吗？他是八九十年代改革开放的总设计师，揭开了中国经济腾飞的序幕啊。
‘Aha!’ he replied, undaunted by my counter-arguments. ‘But you see, Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening up was only possible because of what happened before, under Mao Zedong!’
“啊！”他回答，对我的质疑并不羞恼，“但是你看哈，邓小平搞改革开放就因为之前毛泽东时代发生的事情才有可能啊！”
As far as I could see, this was like asserting that the dropping of an atom bomb on Hiroshima was useful because it enabled the rebuilding of the city, but I realised there was no point in arguing with him, so I just smiled sweetly and said good night.
在我看来，这就像是说在广岛投下一颗原子弹是件好事，因为之后可以重建一座城市…但我也发现，跟他争论是无济于事的，所以就露出乖巧的笑容，说了晚安。
I had gone to Shaoshan to research Maoist cookery — or, rather, the spurious offshoot of Hunanese cuisine that canny Shaoshan restaurateurs have named ‘Mao’s family cuisine’ (mao jia cai). I was intrigued by the idea that a small culinary school could be named after a brutal dictator, not to mention the contradictions of Chinese people’s relationship with Mao, their great national hero and nemesis. And I had long been fascinated by the ways in which Chinese cuisine had been influenced by the political upheavals of the twentieth century. Since I wanted my Hunanese cookery book to be not only about the food of the region, but about its social and political background, Shaoshan was one of the places that I felt I had to visit. It turned out to be a surreal weekend.
我来韶山，是为了研究“毛式菜”。韶山那些精明的餐厅老板把这叫做“毛家菜”，算是湘菜的一个分支。光是这个小菜系能够用一位共产党领袖的名字命名就够让我好奇的了，更别提中国人民和毛泽东充满复杂矛盾的关系。而且二十世纪政治的动荡剧变对中国菜的影响，也是我长久以来无比着迷，想要一探究竟的。我也希望自己这本湘菜谱不仅涉及这个地区的食物，还要提到其社会和历史背景，所以韶山成为我心中的必往之地。结果，这变成了一个非常离奇的周末。
It turned out that Mrs Liu, or ‘New Army’ Liu as she had been named by her parents in a fit of revolutionary enthusiasm, was the wife of the Shaoshan Communist Party Secretary, Mao Yushi. In their main living room, Secretary Mao and his wife had the largest Mao statue I had ever seen in a private residence: a larger-than-life bronze bust on a black marble plinth, standing in pride of place, right next to the television. Unusually, it was even bigger than the TV. That evening, I sat down with the family and the communist rose-growing entrepreneur (who was lodging upstairs) to a dinner of the red-braised pork I had watched Mrs Liu make, along with some others of Mao’s favourite dishes, including fire-baked fish with chilli and dried radish with smoked bacon.
原来这位刘女士是韶山冲党支部书记的妻子。在他们家的客厅里，毛支书和妻子摆放了一座毛泽东塑像，这是我在私人住宅里见过最大的：比真人还大的铜胸像，黑色大理石基座，就摆在电视机旁边，有种睥睨一切的霸气。这胸像比电视机还大，这就很不寻常了。那天晚上，我和这家人，还有那位种玫瑰的共产主义企业家（他在楼上寄宿）坐在一起吃了晚饭：有我目睹刘女士做的红烧肉，还有其他一些毛主席爱吃的菜——火焙鱼、萝卜干炒腊肉什么的。
After taking the bus from Changsha, I wandered through Mao’s village. It was surprisingly pretty, with its surrounding cradle of hills, its green fields and orchards. In the centre there were stalls and shops selling Mao memorabilia: badges and portraits in gilded frames, cigarette lighters that played ‘The East is Red’. A number of restaurants advertised their Maoist specialities. After a while I found a tranquil guesthouse that stood on the brink of a little farmland and offered its own menu of ‘Mao’s family cuisine’. I fell into conversation with the landlady, and we sat for a hour or more on the terrace, chatting over cups of tea as the birds twittered in the trees. She pointed out her vegetable crops and fruit trees, and recalled her childhood glimpse of Mao in 1959, when she was lifted above an adoring crowd, everyone chanting: ‘May Chairman Mao live ten thousand years!’ Before long, we were in the kitchen, and I was watching her make Mao’s favourite dish, red-braised pork.
我从长沙搭车到了目的地，在毛泽东出生成长的乡村闲逛，惊讶地发现这里还挺美，群山如摇篮一般环绕着绿色的田野与果园。中心地带有很多摊位和商店，卖的都是跟毛泽东有关的纪念品：毛主席徽章、镀金相框的毛主席肖像、能播放“东方红”音乐的打火机。很多餐厅都在宣传他们的“特色毛家菜”。走了一会儿，我找到一家安静的客栈，就在一小片农田的边上，里面也做“毛家菜”。我跟老板娘攀谈起来，在客栈阳台上坐了有一个多小时。我们伴着树上的鸟鸣喝茶聊天。她抬手指向自家种的菜和果树，回忆起一九五九年幼小的自己对毛主席模糊的印象：一群充满着崇拜之情的人们行进着，大人把她抱起来，所有人都在喊：“毛主席万岁！”过了一会儿我俩就钻进厨房，她亲自为我演示毛主席最喜欢的菜——红烧肉。
‘Chairman Mao adored red-braised pork,’ said Secretary Mao. ‘And he got angry with his doctor for suggesting that he should eat less of it because it is so fatty. Actually, though, it’s very healthy — I eat two bowls of it every day, to build my brain. And you should eat it too, because it’s good for the female complexion.’
“毛主席特别爱吃红烧肉，”毛支书说，“他的医生说红烧肉太肥了，应该少吃点，他还生气呢。其实，这菜很健康的，我每天都吃两大碗，能补脑。你也该多吃，因为女人吃了能美容。”
Secretary Mao was not the only person I met in Shaoshan who was himself surnamed Mao. In fact, almost everyone I met there had the same name, because, as in most Chinese villages, almost everyone is distantly related. (Traditionally, women marry out of a village, while men bring their wives in from elsewhere and sire sons to continue the family line.) So when one senses that people in Shaoshan have a kind of family feeling towards their famous namesake, it’s not surprising.
除了毛支书，我在韶山还遇到很多本身就姓毛的人。其实，我在这里遇到的每个本地人，几乎都是这个姓，因为在大多数中国的乡村，几乎每个人之间都算远房亲戚。（按照传统，女人嫁到村外，而男人会从别的地方娶了老婆带回来传宗接代、延续香火。）所以，你很容易就能察觉韶山冲的人们对村里出的这个著名人物毛泽东有种家人的感觉，这也不是什么稀奇事。
The village comes across as a hotbed of communism, and a throwback to a vanished era. Here, people still call each other ‘comrade’, whereas in the rest of China, the only people who use the term these days are gays and lesbians, for whom it has a subversive, tongue-in-cheek air.
这个村子给人的印象是充满了对共产主义的怀念，仿佛能让你一瞬间回到那早已消逝的年代。这里的人们还在互称“同志”。
Mao’s family home, a mud-brick courtyard house, has been lovingly preserved in every detail; inside, no opportunity for communist propaganda is missed. In the kitchen, racks for smoking meat are suspended over the old wood-burning range, and a blackened kettle hangs on a hook over the open fire. ‘It was by the side of the kitchen fire,’ says a plaque on the wall, ‘that Mao Zedong gathered the whole family together for meetings. He encouraged them to devote themselves to the liberation of the Chinese people.’ In a nearby room, we are told ‘this is the place where Mao Zedong used to help his mother with her household chores when he was a little boy.’ The targets of all this unlikely information, mainly schoolchildren and gullible peasants, troop through the house in large parties, and have their photographs taken outside the front door.
毛泽东故居是个带院子的泥砖房，现在已经作为博物馆对外开放。韶山冲人民满怀爱戴，维护着其中的每个细节，没有放过里面每个宣传共产主义的机会。厨房里老旧的柴灶上方是挂烟熏腊肉的架子，灶火的钩子上挂着一个烧得黑乎乎的水壶。墙上的一块牌子写着：“1921年春，毛泽东在火塘旁召开家庭会议，教育亲人投身中国人民的解放事业。”来到厨房旁边的一间屋，导览告诉我们：“毛泽东年幼时，就是在这里帮母亲干家务的。”这些信息的准确性令人怀疑，其宣传对象主要是学生和农民，他们一大群一大群地在故居里漫步参观，还在正门前留影作纪念。
Of course the inhabitants of Shaoshan have Mao to thank for their thriving tourist industry, so they have a financial incentive for marketing him as a national hero. But it’s not just about money, and the Shaoshan villagers are not alone in their enduring love for the despot who wreaked havoc on their country. All over Hunan, otherwise intelligent and sensible people continue to view Mao as the last great leader of China, and the man who restored the country’s dignity after a century of humiliation. They smile a little sadly when they reflect on his ‘mistake’, the Cultural Revolution, but they forgive him: after all, doesn’t everybody make mistakes?
当然，韶山冲的旅游业蒸蒸日上，本地人自然要感谢毛泽东；把他一直保持在国家英雄的神坛，于他们而言是有经济利益驱动的。但这不光是钱的事。对毛泽东一直心怀爱戴的，也不只韶山冲人民。整个湖南，除开一些知识分子和非常理性的人，民众普遍认为毛泽东是中国百年不遇的伟大领袖，让中国在经历了一个世纪的屈辱之后重获尊严、站了起来。说起他的“错误”，也就是“文化大革命”，他们会露出有些忧伤的笑容，但态度还是原谅和宽容的：毕竟，人非圣贤，孰能无过？
Mao Zedong’s nephew, Mao Anping, drew on his cigarette as he recalled meeting his famous uncle at a dinner in Shaoshan in 1959. ‘He was great fun. A really witty man. And he always spoke with a Shaoshan accent. And the funny thing was, he didn’t smoke the kind of fancy cigarettes you’d expect of someone in his position. He liked the Luojia Mountain brand, made in Wuhan, you know, two mao a packet.’
共产党对毛泽东的官方评价是“七分对，三分错”。但有个朋友告诉我，在湖南，大家都觉得他是“九分对，一分错”。毛泽东的堂侄，当然也姓毛，他坐在我旁边，一边抽烟一边回忆一九五九年一次晚饭时见到自己那名扬海内外的叔叔的场景。“他很幽默，真是个智慧风趣的人，而且总有点韶山口音，特别好玩。他都那个地位了，抽的还不是什么好烟。他就喜欢武汉的‘珞珈山’烟，嗯，两毛一包的。”
They won’t even blame Mao for his most atrocious crime, the man-made famine of 1958-61 that killed at least thirty million people. ‘The weather was bad, the harvests were poor,’ people tell me, time after time, and I can’t tell if they really believe this, or if they say it because the truth is too painful to admit. The official Communist Party verdict on Mao is, bizarrely, that he was ’70 per cent right and 30 per cent wrong’. But in Hunan, as my friend Liu Wei told me once, ‘It’s more like 90 per cent right and 10 per cent wrong.’
他们甚至不会责怪毛泽东犯下的最残暴的罪行，1958—61年的人为饥荒造成至少三千万人死亡。“天气不好，收成不好，”人们一次又一次地告诉我，我不知道他们是否真的相信这一点，也不知道他们说这句话是因为真相太痛苦了，无法承认。中国共产党对毛泽东的官方裁决是，奇怪的是，他“70%是对的，30%是错的”。但在湖南，正如我的朋友刘伟曾经告诉我的那样，更像是90%对10%错。
We were having lunch in the Shaoshan Guesthouse. Mao Anping, an official in the local government, was a friend of my landlord’s, and he had agreed to talk to me about Maoist cookery. We sat before a table covered in dishes. Inevitably, there was a dishful of red-braised pork, seasoned with star anise, ginger and chilli. We also ate shrimps in their shells with garlic and chilli, deep-fried fish with black beans, and a soup of pig’s tripe with medicinal herbs. But most of the food was the simple peasant fare that Mao enjoyed most: spicy beancurd, wild ferns with a little pork, bitter melon with chives and pumpkin soup.
我们正在韶山宾馆吃午饭。这位毛先生是当地政府的一位官员，也是我的房东村支书的朋友。他同意跟我讲讲毛家菜。我们面前的桌上摆满了一盘盘菜肴：肯定是有盘红烧肉的，放了八角、姜和辣椒；还有干锅香辣虾、豆豉鱼和肚片药膳汤。不过其他大多数的菜都是毛泽东最爱吃的简单农家菜：家常豆腐、蕨菜肉丝、小炒苦瓜和南瓜羹。
By all accounts, Mao remained a Hunanese peasant in his eating habits to the end of his life. He was addicted to spicy food, and famously told a Soviet envoy that you couldn’t be a revolutionary if you didn’t eat chillies. He was also said to have retorted to a doctor who advised him, in his old age, to cut down on chillies for the sake of his health: ‘If you are scared of the chillies in your bowl, how on earth will you dare to fight your enemies?’
大家都说，毛泽东一直到去世都维持着湖南农民的口味。他嗜辣成瘾，对苏联公使说过一句很著名的话：“不吃辣椒不革命。”据说曾经有位医生建议他，上了年纪，为了身体健康，还是要少吃辣椒。结果他反驳说：“连碗里的辣椒都怕，还敢打敌人？”
Mao’s macho attitude to chillies was echoed by his dislike of the effete style and exotic ingredients of Chinese haute cuisine. While living in Changsha, I met Shi Yinxiang, the master chef who catered for him during his return visits to Hunan. The first time he had to cook for Mao, Master Shi was almost paralysed with nerves, so he questioned everyone close to the Chairman about his tastes, in order to work out a suitable culinary strategy. Fortunately for him, Mao was delighted with the rustic dishes he prepared, the steamed bacon and smoked fish laced with chilli, the beancurd and cabbage, the wild vegetables that were generally disdained as peasant food, and the coarse grains that were normally the last resort of the rural poor. In fact, Mao like them so much that he ordered the other chefs in his retinue to take some lessons from Master Shi.
毛泽东在辣椒的问题上，的确是有点大丈夫气概的。同时，他也对中国高级烹饪中的清淡风格和外来食材颇为不屑。我在长沙的时候见到了石阴祥，他是毛泽东回湖南时专门负责其饮食的大厨。石师傅告诉我，第一次给毛主席做菜时，他紧张得手足无措，问遍了主席身边的每一个人，打听他的口味，只为了制订一份合理的膳食计划。幸运的是，毛主席很喜欢他做的朴素农家菜，有辣椒炒腊肉腊鱼、豆豉白菜、被一些人弃之如敝履的农家野菜、乡下贫农们但凡有点余钱也不会吃的杂粮。毛泽东对这些却喜欢得不得了，还让随行的一些厨师从石师傅那里学点手艺。
It is tempting to suppose that Mao’s own unsophisticated tastes and his loathing of fancy food played a part in his willingness to oversee the destruction of elite and bourgeois culture. Fine dining had always been one of the foremost trappings of wealth in China. In the dying days of the Qing Dynasty, the great mandarins still kept private chefs in their official residences, and threw lavish dinner parties. The Hunanese capital Changsha was known for its grand and glittering restaurants, ten of which were known as the ‘pillars’ of the trade. After the overthrow of the emperor in 1911, the Nationalist elite took on the culinary mantle of their imperial predecessors. Tan Yankai, for example, the Hunanese scholar-gentleman who served as premier in the Nationalist government, was obsessed with food. He stood over his personal chef, Cao Jingchen, in the kitchen, issuing minute instructions and detailed criticisms. Between them, the two men developed a style of cookery so extravagantly delicious that people talked about a new culinary school, Zu’an Cuisine, named after Tan Yankai’s nom de plume.
这样的情况很容易让人产生一种设想：毛泽东口味朴素，厌恶繁复精致的菜肴，这也许是他致力于消灭精英与中产文化的原因之一。高级餐饮一直是中国富人们最重要的标志之一。清朝末年，国运衰退，满洲贵族们的宅邸里仍然有私家大厨，晚宴依旧排场奢华。湖南省会长沙就曾经因为很多引人瞩目的大餐馆而闻名，其中有十大菜馆更是被称为餐饮业“十柱”。一九一一年推翻封建帝制后，国民党的精英阶层沿袭了帝国时代的烹饪传统，比如在国民政府担任主席的谭延闿就是个对饮食相当着迷的“老饕”。私厨曹敬臣在厨房里忙活时，他就站在人家背后，不时地发号施令，详细地给出批评建议。两人发展出一种极为奢侈美味的烹饪风格，人们将其归为一种新的菜系，“组庵湘菜”，用了谭延闿的字。
Meanwhile, the poor in China were starving, and the communist movement was growing. The American writer Graham Peck described seeing a party of Nationalist officials dining lavishly in a restaurant during the hard years of the Japanese invasion, as a family of refugees stood by in silence, gazing at the food ‘with narrowed, starving eyes’. For the communists, food was a political issue. In Mao Zedong’s own 1927 report on the peasant movement in Hunan, he described how impoverished farmers were taking revenge on the landlords who had oppressed them. Women and children were gate-crashing temple banquets, and the new peasant associations were banning the recreational activities of the rich, including fine dining. In Shaoshan itself, it was decided that ‘only three kinds of animal foods, namely chicken, fish and pork’ should be served at a banquet.
与此同时，中国的穷人正饥肠辘辘，共产主义运动蓬勃发展。美国作家格雷厄姆·派克写过，日军入侵的艰难时期，他亲眼见到一群国民党军官在餐馆里吃着山珍海味，而一家子难民沉默地站在旁边，“用饿得快睁不开的眼睛”盯着那些食物。共产党把粮食上升到政治的高度。一九二七年，毛泽东写了《湖南农民运动考察报告》，其中描述了穷困潦倒的农民如何向压迫他们的地主报仇：女人带着孩子们不请自来，结队拥入祠堂坐下吃席（1）；新成立的农民组织禁止了很多富人的“反动行为”，包括丰盛精致的酒席。就在韶山地区，农民们决议，“客来吃三牲，即只吃鸡、鱼、猪”。【注：（1）原文中，这一举动是要打破“女子和穷人不能进祠堂吃酒的老例”。】
When the communists took over Mainland China in 1949 at the end of the civil war, the defeated Nationalists fled to the island of Taiwan. With them, they took their household retinues, including some of the country’s finest chefs, and for forty years they laid claim to being the custodians of Chinese gastronomic culture. Meanwhile, on the Mainland, the communists implemented their socialist economic reforms. In 1956, they nationalised private businesses, including restaurants, and Chinese cuisine embarked on a long, sad period of decline. But if the levelling policies of the new government had been implemented with the aim of putting food on the tables of the masses, they ended in catastrophe. In 1958 Mao Zedong launched the Great Leap Forward, a mass movement intended to kick-start industrialisation, revolutionise agriculture and enable China to catch up economically with the Western powers. Peasants were organised into communes, and encouraged to build backyard furnaces to make steel. Their cooking pots were melted down to feed the furnaces, private cooking was banned, and they were allowed to eat only in commune canteens. Lunatic agricultural policies took root all over the country.
一九四九年，内战打完了，中国大陆由共产党掌权，溃败的国民党逃往台湾岛。他们带走了家里的一些随从，包括全中国最优秀的厨师。四十年来，他们都以中国美食烹饪文化的保管人自居。而在海峡那头的大陆，共产党发起了社会经济改革。一九五六年，他们将私营企业公有化，其中包括餐厅，中国烹饪走上了一条漫长而忧伤的颓败之路。然而，虽说新政府实施这样“一碗水端平”的政策是为了让大众都有饭吃，但也是以灾难收场。一九五八年，毛泽东发动了“大跃进”的全民运动，意在拉开工业化序幕，对农业进行彻底改造，让中国经济赶上西方列强。农民按照公社来分配组织，还被鼓励在自己后院建造锅炉大炼钢铁。他们把炒锅熔化了投入锅炉，由于禁止私自做菜，只能到公社食堂吃大锅饭。疯狂的农业政策在全国扎了根。
Mao survived the Great Leap, politically. And then in 1966 he launched the Cultural Revolution, in an attempt to discredit his rivals in the Party. This violent attack on bourgeois culture and Chinese tradition affected every aspect of Chinese life, including its food. Famous old restaurants were encouraged to ‘serve the revolution’ by offering ‘cheap and substantial food’ for the masses instead of the expensive delicacies for which they were known. Many were given new, revolutionary names. In Changsha, the old Heji noodle restaurant was renamed ‘The present is superior to the past’, while in the northern Hunanese city of Yueyang the Weiyu Restaurant became ‘Love the masses’, and its former owners were persecuted as capitalists. Huogongdian, the old fire-temple restaurant in Changsha, was vandalised by a neighbourhood committee, who ripped down its most important wooden tablet and took it away to be used as a tabletop.
“大跃进”并未毁掉毛泽东的政治生涯。一九六六年，他又发起了“文化大革命”，意在消灭党内的反对之声。“文革”是对中产文化与中国传统的猛烈攻击，影响了中国人生活的方方面面，包括饮食。著名的老字号餐馆不再出品它们那些昂贵精致的名菜，而被鼓励要“面向大众、经济实惠”，以此来“为革命服务”。很多餐馆还被冠以富有革命色彩的新名字。长沙的老字号“和记粉馆”改名“今胜昔”，而湖南北部城市岳阳的“味腴酒家”改名为“爱群饮食店”。长沙火神庙改建而成的“火宫殿”被一个居委会捣毁，人们把里面最重要的木牌匾抢走做了桌板。
In an atmosphere of collective self-deception, local officials vied with one another to impress their superiors with outlandish claims of grain and steel production. Convinced that they were living in an age of unprecedented plenty, people gorged themselves, and by the winter of 1958-9 the village granaries were bare. The little food that was available was directed to urban centres, and some of it was even exported. Meanwhile, the rural population starved. Over the following three years, at least thirty million people died. Bodies lay in the fields because no one had the strength to bury them; peasants gnawed at shoe leather and the bark they stripped from trees; and the most desperate of all resorted to cannibalism.
那时候，到处都弥漫着集体性自欺欺人的气氛。地方官员争先恐后地向上级报告他们的粮食与钢铁产量，极尽夸张之能事。人们坚信，自己生活在一个前所未有的繁荣富裕的年代，于是狼吞虎咽、暴饮暴食。一九五八年到一九五九年的那个冬天，村庄的粮仓已经见了底。仅剩的一点粮食都被送到城市，还有些甚至供给了出口，而农民们就只能挨饿了。接下来的三年有很多人不幸丧生。田地之中尸横遍野，因为没人有力气让他们入土为安；乡亲们还吃皮鞋、吃树皮；到最最走投无路的时候，吃人的事情也有发生。
China has been trying to recover from Maoism for the last 30 years, and since Deng Xiaoping began his programme of reforms in the eighties, the country has experienced an economic boom. After years of rationing of basic foodstuffs, there is meat on the table for many Chinese households. Perhaps some aspects of Chinese culture were damaged beyond repair by the Cultural Revolution, but in many ways the country is finding its feet once again. And one of the symptoms of this recovery has been the revival of Chinese gastronomy and haute cuisine. As they did half a century ago, the glamorous rich sit down to banquets of exotic delicacies, men (and now women) of letters write essays about food, and talented chefs seek to dazzle their customers with their skills. Mao, that coarse-mannered eater of roast corncobs, farmhouse pork and wild vegetables, must be squirming in his mausoleum in Tiananmen Square. There is no evidence that he ever regretted the mayhem that he caused in China. Indeed, he seemed to relish it. You can’t change the world through political debate and polite conversation, Mao believed, violence and struggle are the key. ‘Revolution,’ as he famously said in his report on the Hunan peasant movement in 1927, ‘is not a dinner party.’
三十年来，中国一直在从“文革”的创伤中慢慢恢复。邓小平从八十年代开展改革以来，这个国家迎来了经济腾飞。经历多年的基本粮食定量分配之后，很多中国家庭的餐桌上终于有了肉食。也许“文革”中某些中国文化已经遭到了无法挽回和修复的破坏，但从很多方面来说，这个国家都重新找到了方向、站稳了脚跟。恢复的表现之一，就是中国美食烹饪和高级料理的复兴。体面讲究的富人们再次和一个世纪前一样，享受摆满异域菜肴的豪宴；文人（现在也包括女性文人）们的笔下出现了美食文学；天才厨师们极力表现高超的厨艺，让食客们如痴如醉。安放在天安门广场的那座棺椁里，不讲究餐桌礼仪、爱吃烤玉米棒子、农家炒肉和野菜的毛泽东一定睡得不太安稳。毛泽东坚信，政治讨论和交谈是改变不了世界了，革命斗争才是前进之道。一九二七年，他在著名的《湖南农民运动考察报告》中写下了一句响当当的名言：“革命不是请客吃饭。”
That January, the three of us travelled together by bus and boat from Yueyang to the village where Fan Qun’s parents still lived. It was a beautiful place, with gentle lakes and waterfalls, and steep hills clad in pine and bamboo. We spent days sitting around in the living room of the farmhouse, playing cards, chatting, and toasting our feet above the glowing embers in the brazier beneath the table. Fan Qun’s mother and sister-in-law might be in the kitchen, chopping up food for supper; her father would be pottering around. Every so often, a neighbour would walk in through the unboarded, open front of the house, and linger for a few cigarettes and a cup of tea.
那年一月，我们三人坐完大巴又上船，从岳阳来到陶林的家乡小村，她的父母还住在那里。村子很美，有平静的湖水和小小的瀑布，陡峭的山坡上种满了松竹。我们整天坐在农舍的客厅，打扑克、聊闲天，把脚伸到桌子下面火星幽微的火盆上烘烤。陶林的妈妈和嫂子在厨房里忙活，切菜做饭；父亲一般就在周围慢条斯理地闲逛。常常有邻居从没有遮挡的前院进来聊天，抽几支烟，喝一杯茶。
When I lived in Hunan, I often caught glimpses of the misery caused by the Great Leap and the Cultural Revolution. I spent one memorable Spring Festival with a lovely couple I had met through my friends in Changsha. Tian Zhengqian was a teacher of art and calligraphy; his wife, Fan Qun, worked in a kindergarten. Fan Qun had grown up in a remote village, but when she left school, had joined the great tide of migrant labour, and headed southwards to Guangzhou to work. Some years later, having broadened her horizons, she went to live in the northern Hunanese city of Yueyang, where her aunt introduced her to Teacher Tian as a possible husband.
住在湖南的日子，我常在细微之处观察到“大跃进”和“文革”带来的悲惨后果。我通过长沙的朋友认识了一对可爱的夫妻，和他们一起度过了一个难忘的春节。丈夫孙为民是教画画和书法的老师；妻子陶林在一所幼儿园工作。陶林是一个偏远乡村长大的，从学校毕业后就加入了农民工的大军，南下广州工作。几年后，长了见识的她来到湖南北部城市岳阳生活，经过婶婶的介绍，认识了孙老师，并谈婚论嫁。
Yet underlying this happy family atmosphere was the usual tragic history. Fan Qun’s mother was orphaned during the famine, at the age of twelve, when both her parents died of exhaustion and malnutrition. Some of her eleven younger siblings were given away to other families, a couple died of hunger. Fan Qun’s father remembered having had to forage for disgusting ‘food substitutes’: wild leaves and roots that were barely edible. ‘Today’s animals live better than we did then,’ he told me. He himself, a kindly, mild-mannered man who spoke a little English, was the local schoolteacher, which made him a target of persecution during the Cultural Revolution. The illiterate people who tormented him, goaded on by local officials, were his neighbours, and most of them were relatives too. He still lives amongst them, and many are good friends; he has forgiven them all.
然而，这么个快乐团圆的大家庭背后，也有着中国常见的悲剧家史。陶林的母亲在大饥荒期间才十二岁，父母因为营养不良和筋疲力尽而撒手人寰，于是她成了孤儿。她是家里的大姐，还有十一个弟弟妹妹，有的过继给了别家，有两个饿死了。陶林的父亲还记得，那时候只能到处去找恶心的代食品来吃：树叶、草根…都是些几乎无法下口的东西。“今天的牲口都比我们那时候过得好。”他跟我说。这位父亲性格和善，举止温良，会说一点英语，以前在村里的学校当老师，“文革”期间自然成了批判对象。那些受到当地官员煽动而对他进行拷打折磨的文盲，都是他的邻里乡亲，而且大多数都是亲戚。现在他们还是邻里乡亲，很多人还成了他的好朋友。他原谅了所有人。
Fan Qun’s brothers had come back from their casual jobs in Guangzhou, while she and her husband had returned from nearby Yueyang, so the whole family was together, and the mood was festive. Her parents were living in a smart, white-tiled house they had built a few years before, to replace a crumbling old farmhouse with stamped-earth floors. There was plenty to eat: meat at every meal, rice wine, treats the sons had brought back from the south.
陶林的兄弟们在广州工作比较轻松，过年也都回家了；而她和丈夫是从附近的岳阳回来的；一家人团聚了，大家都喜气洋洋地准备过节。父母住的这栋房子是几年前修的，宽敞明亮，外面镶着白瓷砖，取代了原来那个摇摇欲坠、室内地面也是泥土的老房子。吃的东西管够：每顿饭都有肉和米酒，还有儿子们从南方带回来的好东西。
But that’s not the end of it. Teacher Tian’s father was a Nationalist county chief, so his parents were blacklisted after the end of the civil war. They were sent away to reform camps, and his father eventually committed suicide under the shame of persecution. His mother, weakened by hard labour and malnutrition, died of an untreated illness when he was twelve years old, leaving him and his brothers to labour in the fields and look after themselves. Incredibly, he later taught himself to paint, and managed to enrol at art school. Somehow, he doesn’t feel bitter, but accepts the past as his inescapable fate. In fact, he is one of the most cheerful people I know. When I stayed with him and Fan Qun in Yueyang, he rose early every morning to practise his calligraphy, and to sing.
还不止这些。孙老师的父亲曾经是国民党治下的一位县长，所以解放战争后他的父母就上了黑名单，被送去劳改营。父亲不堪迫害羞辱，最终自杀身亡。母亲因为常年的辛苦劳动和营养不良而身体虚弱，在孙老师十二岁的时候得了不治之症也去世了，留下他和兄弟们干着辛苦的农活，照顾养活自己。令人不敢相信的是，他后来自学了画画，还上了学。也不知为什么，他没觉得有什么辛酸苦闷，而是觉得这样的过去就是他无法逃避的命运。其实，他是我认识的人中非常开朗乐观的一个了。我在岳阳跟他和陶林住在一起时，发现他每天早上都早早起床练书法，还唱歌。
To a person like me, whose parents grew up in England in the Swinging Sixties, and who has never been hungry, these wretched life stories are hard to comprehend. But in China, they are normal: scratch beneath the surface, and almost everyone you meet over the age of fifty has similar tales to tell. Yet still, in Fan Qun’s parents’ house, a Mao Zedong poster hangs in pride of place, over the Mah Jong table. ‘We want him to protect us, to bring us peace and safety,’ her sister-in-law told me, as she came to join in the New Year’s fun.
我这样的人，父母成长在英格兰多姿多彩的“摇摆六十年代”，自己也从来没挨过饿，所以很难理解这些充满不幸与苦难的人生故事。但在中国，这仿佛是稀松平常的事：只要从表面上往下稍微深挖，你见到的有一定年纪的人几乎都会给你讲述类似的故事。然而，在陶林父母家里麻将桌上方的显眼位置，仍然贴着一张毛泽东像。“我们希望他保佑我们平安。”她的嫂子忙完厨房里的活，加入欢聚过年的一家人时，对我如是说。
I’ve read the eye-opening account of Mao Zedong’s private life by his personal physician, and Jasper Becker’s devastating book on the famine; I’ve read Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s recent, damning biography. I am well aware of the unpleasant truth about Mao. I’ve spent a lot of time in China trying to argue gently with my Chinese friends, to expose them to historical facts and opinions about Mao that they haven’t yet heard. But, in Hunan, people didn’t really want to know. They answered me with their heartbreaking platitudes about bad weather and poor harvests, and about how everybody ‘makes mistakes’. So I shut up.
我读过毛泽东私人医生关于毛泽东私生活的令人大开眼界的记述，也读过贾斯珀·贝克尔关于饥荒的毁灭性著作；我读过荣昌和乔恩·哈利迪最近的一本该死的传记。我很清楚毛的不愉快的事实。我在中国花了很多时间试图和我的中国朋友温和地争论，让他们接触到他们还没有听说过的关于毛泽东的历史事实和观点。但是，在湖南，人们并不想知道。他们用他们令人心碎的陈词滥调回答我，说天气不好，收成不好，说每个人都“犯错误”。所以我闭嘴。
Lunching with Mao’s nephew that day in Shaoshan, I’d had a creepy feeling. It was partly that, from behind and in profile, he bore a striking resemblance to his megalomaniac uncle, with his height, his hairstyle, and certain of his facial features. But it was also because of my own misgivings about cosying up to the nephew of a brutal dictator in an attempt to find out about his favourite recipes. Of course, Mao Anping was in no way implicated in Mao’s crimes: he only met him once, after all, at that dinner in Shaoshan in 1959, when he was a young man. But was I contributing in some way to the Mao cult, and making myself complicit in the collective brainwashing of the Chinese people, by my fascination with the Chairman’s diet?
那天在韶山和毛的侄子共进午餐，我有一种毛骨悚然的感觉。部分原因是，从背后和侧面看，他和他那狂妄自大的叔叔有着惊人的相似之处，他的身高、发型和某些面部特征。但这也正是因为我自己对抚慰一个残暴独裁者的侄子，试图找出他最喜欢的食谱的疑虑。当然，毛安平与毛的罪行没有任何牵连：他毕竟只在1959年年轻时在韶山的那次晚宴上见过他一次。但是，我对主席的饮食着迷，是不是在某种程度上助长了毛教，使自己成为中国人民集体洗脑的同谋？
A couple of critics lambasted me for it: Bee Wilson in the Sunday Telegraph said the references to Mao and the historical context of the book made her lose her appetite; Rose Prince wondered how many people a man had to murder for a dish to be named after him; and Anne Mendelson in the New York Times was critical of the pervasive use of Mao’s image. Strange though it may sound, their comments took me completely by surprise.
这个设计遭到几位批评家的痛斥。其中一篇发表在《星期日电讯报》上，说这本书提到毛泽东，再加上其历史背景，让她胃口全无；还有一篇在质问，一个人究竟要迫害多少人才能有菜品以他命名；《纽约时报》一名记者对书中频繁使用毛泽东的形象进行了批判。听来也许奇怪，我是完全没想到他们会这么评论的。
When I finally published my Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, my publishers and I decided that the jacket should be a communist red, emblazoned in gold with the five stars of the Chinese flag. A recurring motif on the pages inside is the cover of Mao Zedong’s ‘Little Red Book’, and his smiling face, as depicted on badges from the Cultural Revolution.
我的那本《革命中餐食谱：湘菜》终于出版时，出版社和我商定封面要用“共产主义红”，用中国国旗上的金色五星来装饰；内页反复出现毛泽东“红宝书”的封面，还有他微笑的脸，就和“文革”那些徽章上的一样。
There is no way I would have a statue of Hitler on my mantelpiece. But Mao is there in my flat in London, smiling and waving amid the candlesticks and invitations. I know he was responsible for the deaths of millions. I’ve seen at first hand some of the consequences of his crazed political campaigns. But at the same time Mao has, in a weird way, become part of my cultural and emotional landscape. His image swings from the windscreen mirrors of buses and taxis in which I ride; it hangs on the sitting-room walls of many of my friends. He is not just a man anymore, he is a symbol of the whole gut-wrenching tragedy of China’s twentieth century, from the naïve hopes and reckless optimism of the early communist state to the convulsions of the Cultural Revolution. His presence looms large over the China I know, for better or for worse. I’m used to him now, desensitised.
在我伦敦的公寓里，有一尊毛泽东的塑像，在五花八门的烛台和请柬之间微笑挥手。我知道，有很多人因为他死去；我也亲眼目睹了他的政治运动带来的一些后果。但与此同时，毛泽东也通过一种奇怪的方式，成为我整体文化与感情经历的一部分。我乘坐过的大巴和出租车上，他的徽章在挡风玻璃前摇晃；我很多朋友的客厅墙上，也都挂着他的形象。他不再是个单纯的历史人物，而是中国二十世纪所有撕心裂肺的悲剧的象征，从共产党掌权初期幼稚的希望与鲁莽的乐观，到“文化大革命”的动荡混乱。无论好与坏，他的存在都笼罩着我所知的中国。我已经对他的存在司空见惯了。
These thoughts are, for me, a sobering reminder of the fact that immersion in another culture doesn’t come for free. It is a risky business that can undermine your own, fundamental sense of self. It was in Hunan that I really lost myself in China. I made the decision to live there like a Chinese person, and so I did. For months, Chinese became my daily language, and I spent all my time with Chinese people. Everyone knew me by my Chinese name, Fu Xia, not as Fuchsia. The outside world receded from view. I found myself not only talking like Liu Wei and Sansan and their friends, but in some senses thinking like them too. At one point I felt so utterly disconnected from my own home and background that I thought I might never leave. And it was then that I thought: I am too much of the chameleon, I can’t even remember my own colours anymore.
这些想法让我清醒地意识到一个事实：沉浸到新的文化中，是要付出代价的。这其中风险很大，可能会破坏你内心深处的自我，甚至对你的身份认同产生深远的影响。到了湖南，我才算是真正将自我迷失在了中国。我决心要像个真正的中国人那样在那里生活，也正是这样做的。数月以来，我每天说着中文，见的都是中国人。每个人都叫我的中文名字“扶霞”，而不是“Fuchsia”。外面的世界从我的视野中暂时淡出。我发现自己不仅是在跟刘伟之、三三以及他们的朋友对话，从某种程度上来说，思维方式也变得和他们相似。有那么一阵子，我觉得自己已经完完全全脱离了自己的家和过去的背景，也许就一辈子住在这儿不走了。就是在那个时候，我心想：我可真是个变色龙，再也记不起自己原本的颜色了。
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