This is all rather a lot to be taking in so early in the morning, especially when you are the only non-native speaker of Chinese in a class of nearly fifty students, and possibly the first Westerner ever to have attempted to train as a chef in China. Most of my classmates are young Sichuanese men in their late teens or early twenties; only two of them are women. I am not just the only foreigner in the class, but the only foreigner most of my classmates have ever met. I sit at a wooden desk somewhere in the middle of the room, my notebook and pen at the ready. The desk has been carved with graffiti by previous generations of students, their names gouged into the wood with the sharp vegetable-carving knives they sell in the school shop. Several of my classmates are puffing away at cigarettes, and sit enveloped in clouds of smoke. The young bloke next to me has a lump of dough in his hand, with which he dreamily forms and reforms the same frilly dumpling as he half-listens to the teacher.
这么一大早的，要消化这么多内容可真不容易，特别我的母语还不是中文，而且这个班有将近五十个学生，再加上我可能是第一个在中国接受厨师培训的西方人。大多数同学都是二十出头或将近二十岁的四川男生，只有两个女生。我不仅仅是这个班唯一的外国人，也是大多数同学人生中头一遭见到的外国人。我坐在教室中中间间的一张木桌子边，笔记本和笔随时伺候着。桌面上有师兄师姐们随意刻下的纹路和字迹，他们用学校小卖部买来的锋利菜刀，把自己的名字深深地刻进木头的纹理中。有几个同学在抽烟，吞云吐雾、好不惬意。我旁边的年轻小伙手上拿一小团面，不断地包起、摊开、包起、摊开，梦幻般地反复捏着一个褶边饺子，一边又半认真地听着老师讲课。
It is just before 9 a. m. in a classroom at the cooking school, and Teacher Long is explaining how to make huo bao yao hua, ‘fire-exploded kidney flowers’. She draws a long flow chart on the blackboard in powdery chalk as she takes us through the various procedures of the recipe, scrawling down the technical terms in Chinese characters. It’s all very systematic. The cooking method is huo bao, ‘fire-exploding’, a variation of basic stir-frying that involves cooking finely cut ingredients very fast over a high flame. The flavour profile is han xian wei, salty-savoury flavour. And because pig’s kidneys, the main ingredient, have a distinctive ‘off-taste’ (yi wei), or more specifically a ‘uriney taste’ (sao wei) in their raw state, it is essential to marinate them in Shaoxing wine to refine and elevate their flavour.
烹饪学校的一间教室里，还没到早上九点，龙老师正在传授“火爆腰花”的技艺。她拿粉笔在黑板上画了长长的流程图，一边为我们讲解菜谱上的各个步骤，一边潦草地用汉字写下烹饪术语。一切都特别系统化。烹饪方法叫做“火爆”，是“炒”的一种，要用旺火迅速翻炒细细切过的食材。调味属于“咸鲜味”。而主要的食材猪腰子（猪肾），生的时候有种独特的“异味”，说得更准确点，是有种“臊味”，所以一定要用料酒来腌制，达到去腥提味的作用，这是很关键的一步。
After their initial amazement at being expected to study alongside a foreigner, or lao wai, most of my classmates have become used to me, although many of them still find the idea of actually talking to me impossibly daunting. They skirt around me as if I am some kind of freak, snigger amongst themselves when I address them, and avoid looking me in the eye. It takes weeks of good-humoured lobbying on my part before I can persuade some of them to stop calling me lao wai to my face, and to use instead my Chinese name, fu xia, or at least the more friendly term tong xue: ‘classmate’.
一开始，身边有个老外同学，大家不免显得惊愕慌张。不过，大多数人都逐渐习惯了我的存在，虽然很多人仍然害怕跟我讲话。他们总会像躲怪物一样地避开我；我叫他们名字的时候，总会引起阵阵窃笑；他们还不敢看我的眼睛。我花了好几个星期，半开玩笑地劝说他们，不要再当面叫我老外，而是叫我的中文名字：扶霞，或者至少用个更友好亲切的称呼：同学。
Teacher Long outlines the te dian or ‘special characteristics’ of the dish: ‘You must make sure,’ she says, ‘that the kidneys are cut attractively (yao hua xing mei guan), that they are both tender and crisp in the mouth (zhi nen cui), and that the taste is savoury and delicious (wei xian mei).’ The te dian are one of the most important parts of the lesson. We never use weighing scales or measuring spoons at the cooking school except in pastry class; we have to learn how to judge with our senses when a dish looks, smells, tastes and feels right at every stage of its preparation. And despite the lingering pretence that China is a socialist country, every dish we learn at the school is firmly fixed in a class hierarchy. Some recipes might be suitable for serving among the hot dishes at an ‘ordinary feast’; others to be the grand ‘head dish’ of a top-class banquet. ‘Fire-exploded kidney flowers’, however, is a relatively humble affair: ‘convenient food for the masses,’ says Teacher Long.
龙老师把这道菜的特点列了出来。“这个菜嘛，”她说，“首先腰子花形必须要美观，然后要做到质嫩脆、味鲜美。”讲特点是课程中最重要的部分之一。除了面点课，我们从来不会用到秤和量勺这些东西。我们必须在备菜的每一步去感觉，确保这道菜色香味俱全，让人觉得舒服适宜。虽然那时候全中国都在强调说要坚定地走社会主义道路，但学校里学的每道菜都被分了严格的“阶级”：有的菜可能比较适合做“一般筵席”的热菜，有的可以做“高级筵席”的头菜。不过呢，火爆腰花是相对比较平常的菜，“是大众便餐，”龙老师说。
Most of the boys are from working-class or peasant homes. I make friends with one or two of them, including a rosy-faced and exuberant seventeen-year-old called Zeng Bo who breaks the ice by inviting me to his grandmother’s birthday party. He is a naively devoted communist who believes the party line that the students who demonstrated in Tiananmen Square in 1989 were manipulated by ‘a small handful of political renegades’. But although he is devoted to the Party and dreams of becoming a member like his father and grandfather, he is even more devoted to food. His full, round face lights up as he describes his favourite dishes; his plump, red lips murmur their praises. I find in him a kindred spirit.
大多数男生都来自工人或者农民家庭。我和其中的一两个成了朋友，包括一个十七岁的曾姓男孩，他两颊绯红、精力旺盛。我们俩是他破的冰——邀请我去参加奶奶的寿宴。他是个坚定的共产主义者，期盼着有一天能像父亲和爷爷那样加入中国共产党，而他对食物的热爱则更为炽热。说起自己最爱吃的那些菜，他那满月一样的圆脸就放着光，丰满的红嘴唇不断嘟囔着溢美之词。我发现，这小伙子跟我是志趣相投啊。
Of course there are exceptions, like Wang Fang, one of the two other women in the class, who has become a particular ally. Her husband has won a scholarship to go to America for his PhD, and she wants to learn to cook so that she can pick up part-time work in restaurants when she goes over there to join him. Perhaps because of this prospect of travelling abroad, she is outward-looking and delighted to have the chance to associate with a foreigner. Right from the beginning, she treats me as a person rather than a circus animal or a Martian. But she is the only student from a relatively ‘cultured’ background. Our other female classmate is from a peasant household and is overcome with smiling bashfulness whenever she comes face to face with me.
当然也有例外，比如王女士，班上另外两名女同学中的一位。她成为我的“特别盟友”。她老公争取到奖学金到国外读博士，她想学点厨艺，这样去美国陪读以后就能在餐馆做做兼职。也许因为心里有着奔国外去的盼头，她面对外国人显得很开朗，而且也很高兴能有这个机会跟我扯上点关系。从一开始，她就不像别人把我看作“天外来客”，而是像个正常人那样对待我。但只有她还算稍微有点“文化”背景。另外一位女同学来自农民家庭，只要和我面对面，就露出尴尬的笑容，羞得满脸通红。
While I said that enrolling at the cooking school marked the start of my apprenticeship, that’s actually an anachronism, because the system of apprenticeship — officially, at least — is long dead. In the old days, all professional culinary wisdom was passed on orally from master to apprentice; written cookery books barely existed. When a master chef, or shi fu, needed some help in his kitchen, he took on as apprentices, or tu di, boys in their early teens, who would serve him for years in return for bed and board and a culinary education. They had to rise early to begin making doughs and chopping vegetables; stay up late into the night washing dishes. If their master was cruel, it could be a form of slavery: many apprentices were beaten and abused. Luckier ones found themselves welcomed into the bosom of their masters’ families, and treated as adopted sons. Whole networks of professional kinship spread out from masters’ kitchens: for the rest of their lives, chefs would speak of those who had trained with the same master as shi xiong (older brother under the same teacher) and shi di (younger brother under the same teacher).
我说被烹饪学校录取开始我的“学徒”生涯，这说法其实不太符合时代，因为学徒制度（至少从官方的说法）早就消亡了。在旧时代，所有专业人士的烹饪智慧都是由大师们口头上传给学徒的，很少有烹饪书或文字菜谱出现。烹饪大师，也就是师父，需要人帮厨的时候，就收个学徒，也叫徒弟。他们都是十几岁的男孩子，为师父服务多年，换来膳宿和烹饪技艺的传授。他们每天要很早起床揉面切菜，晚上熬夜洗盘子。要是不幸遇上天性严酷的师父，那很可能演变成某种形式的奴役：很多学徒都逃不过挨打和受虐的命运。比较幸运的呢，会融入师父的家庭，受到儿子一般的待遇。师父的厨房中，徒弟们会开枝散叶，形成一个职业网络。厨师们在余生，都会把与自己在一个师父门下学习技艺的人称为同门师兄或师弟。
The master-apprentice system declined during the Cultural Revolution, when haute cuisine was blacklisted and even small-time street traders were banned as capitalists. Senior chefs were persecuted, and the new doctrine of equality smashed the bond of subservience between apprentice and master. Some masters, humiliated by their students after a lifetime of respect, gave up hope in their profession, and refused to continue teaching, even when the madness of the political campaigns subsided.
师徒体制在“文化大革命”中逐渐走向消亡，那时根本不允许做什么高级的菜，就连街上那些小贩也不许经商，因为这样就是“搞资本主义”。很多老师父遭受迫害，“平等主义”的新思潮打破了具有从属意味的师徒关系。有的老师父一辈子备受尊重，现在居然被徒弟骑到头上凌辱，于是对这一行心灰意冷，即使在这政治风波减弱、罪名平反之后也不愿意再传授技艺了。
The master cooks often feared that their apprentices, growing in skills and experience, would steal their secrets and become professional rivals. And so arose the tradition of liu yi shou, ‘holding back a trick or two’. Talented chefs would deliberately mislead their apprentices, handing down incomplete recipes, giving erroneous instructions, or adding vital ingredients to their soups in secret. And so, according to legend, many of the greatest recipes in Chinese culinary history died out with the masters who made them. Contemporary chefs and gourmets groan when they imagine what has been lost over the centuries, and accuse the jealous old masters of dereliction in their duty to Chinese cuisine.
师父总会害怕徒弟技艺和经验渐长，学走所有的秘诀秘方，成为自己专业上的对手，所以就有了“留一手”这个传统。才华横溢的大厨会故意误导徒弟，传授不完整的菜谱，给出错误的示范，或者私下里往自己的汤汁中添加至关重要的调料食材。因此，传说中国烹饪史上很多最为伟大美味的菜谱，都在那些发明菜谱的大师们手上就失传了。现代大厨和美食家们一想起这历史的长河中失传的珍宝，总会叹息连连，并且指责这些老师父真是自私又善妒，忘了自己对中华美食的责任。
The creation of professional cooking academies was a valiant attempt to modernise attitudes, but echoes of the old apprentice system linger. Restaurant chefs continue to speak of their shi fus and fellow apprentices, and many people regard the old ways as superior. ‘The difference between the old apprentices and modern students is like the difference between free-range and battery eggs,’ one elderly gourmet told me. ‘In a cooking school you can produce more chefs, more quickly, but they don’t taste as good!’
各个专业烹饪学院的创建，是勇敢的现代化尝试，但旧时代的学徒制度阴影仍在。餐馆的厨师们仍然谈论着他们师从谁谁谁、师兄弟又是谁谁谁，很多人都觉得旧时的制度比较优越。“旧社会的学徒和现在的学生，差别就像放养的土鸡蛋和饲养场的洋鸡蛋。”一位年长的美食家告诉我，“烹饪学校出来的厨师更多、时间更短，但是味道不好啊！”
In the late seventies and early eighties, when the post-Mao government started trying to pick up the pieces after the ‘Decade of Chaos’, there was a movement to codify and modernise Chinese cuisine. The Culinary Association of China was established, with branches all over the country, to research and promote food culture, and regional cookery books rolled off the presses. The Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine was founded in Chengdu in 1985: its mission to teach systematically and professionally, without the feudalistic practices of ‘holding back tricks’ and institutionalised slavery. Students would learn the techniques that enabled them to create their own dishes, rather than a set repertoire of recipes from a single master. My own teachers there, who themselves had been among the first graduates of the school, promised me and my fellow students that they would teach us everything they knew.
七十年代末、八十年代初，“十年浩劫”之后的政府开始拨乱反正，随之发生了一场将中国烹饪编纂成文并推动其现代化的运动。中国烹饪协会成立了，全国都有分会，专门研究和弘扬饮食文化，各大菜系的烹饪书纷纷出版。成都的四川烹饪高等专科学校是一九八五年成立的，宗旨是要进行系统化和专业的川菜烹饪教学，不会像封建时代那样“留一手”，更不会把徒弟当作奴隶对待。学生们学到各种烹饪技术，能够自创新菜，而不是重复某一个老师一连串的保留菜谱。我的老师们自己就是学校最早的毕业生，他们向我和同学保证，一定会毫无保留地把毕生所学全部教授给我们。
Mandarin, or Standard Chinese, was officially the language of the classroom all over China, but in practice Teacher Long, like the other teachers at the cooking school, conducted her classes in broad Sichuan dialect. After all, that’s what everyone spoke in Chengdu, apart from a few people like me, and as they say in far-flung provinces like Sichuan, ‘Heaven is high and the Emperor is far away’. The constant barrage of dialect was a gruelling initiation for me. Although I’d already lived in Chengdu for a year and picked up a few of its words and phrases, most Chinese people switched to Mandarin when they talked to me, so this was my first experience of total immersion. As Teacher Long scribbled in chalk on the blackboard, I struggled to keep up with the flood of unfamiliar words. She didn’t write very clearly either, so the characters on the board were usually what the Chinese call ‘grassy’ (cao): fluid and scrawly. I had to beg my classmates to help me out, rewriting the characters in clear strokes in my notebook so I could look them up later in a dictionary. On occasion Wang Fang lent me her notes, which I would photocopy and use to catch up in my own time.
按照官方规定，全中国的学校授课都应该使用规范的普通话。但实际上龙老师和烹饪学校别的老师，上课时全都用特别“规范”的四川话。反正，偌大的成都，除了我这样的少数人，大家都是说四川话的啊。而且，像四川这种偏居一隅的地方，“天高皇帝远”，谁管得着啊。快速的四川话像枪林弹雨般射向我，把我搞得高度紧张、精疲力尽。不过我已经在成都生活了一年，倒也掌握了一些字词句段。之前大多数人跟我说话的时候都会用普通话，所以这是我第一次完全融入四川方言。龙老师拿粉笔在黑板上写板书，我努力去理解那些不太熟悉的词语。她的字迹也不算清晰工整，黑板上常常是一阵“狂草”。我只能请求同学们帮忙，把那些字词一个个工整地誊写到我的笔记本上，课下我再翻字典弄懂。有时候王女士会把笔记寄给我，我就拿去复印，空闲时间再跟上进度。
And then there are the pure dialect words, which are charming when you get to know them but initially incomprehensible: ‘me dei’ instead of ‘mei you’, meaning ‘have not’; ‘sa zi’ instead of ‘shen me’ for ‘what?’, ‘bu shao di’ instead of ‘wo bu zhi dao’ for ‘I don’t know’; not to mention a whole gamut of fruity slang and swear words. Luckily, my burning curiosity about Sichuanese cookery spurred me on to retune my ears and tongue, and I learnt, fast. It didn’t take long before my pure Chinese-lesson Mandarin was on the skids, and before people I met from Beijing and Shanghai were asking me why on earth I was talking with a Sichuanese accent.
还有普通话中完全没有的方言词汇，理解了之后还挺生动的，但一开始可完全听不懂。“没有”变成“没得”、“什么”变成“啥子”、“我不知道”变成“不晓得”，更别说五花八门的俚语和粗话了。幸好，对川菜火一般燃烧的热情鞭策着我不断调动自己的耳朵和舌头，迅速地学习着方言。很快，我就刹了车，不再单纯学习普通话。我在北京和上海遇到的人也开始问：“你为什么说四川话？”
Sichuanese dialect is like Mandarin put through a mangle. So the Mandarin ‘sh’ becomes ‘s’, vowels are stretched out like warm toffee, there are pirate-like rolling ‘r’ sounds at the end of sentences, and no one can tell the difference between ‘n’ and ‘l’ or ‘f’ and ‘h’ (the province of Hunan, for example, is known in Sichuan, helpfully, as ‘Fulan’). Furthermore, learning the tones of Mandarin Chinese is difficult enough to begin with: you must distinguish between the flat first tone (mā), the rising second tone (má), the dipping third tone (mǎ), and the fast-falling fourth tone (mà), not to mention the unobstrusive neutral tone (ma). If you have no sense of tones when speaking Mandarin, people won’t understand you, and you may find yourself making mistakes like asking for a kiss (qǐng wěn) when you all you wanted was an answer to a question (qǐng wèn). But in Sichuanese even the standard tones are all over the place.
四川话有点像蹩脚的普通话。普通话里的“sh”变成了“s”，声母就像加热的软糖，拖得长长的。词句的结尾总会带上点儿化音，听着流里流气的。还有很多人“n”“l”不分、“f”“h”不分（比如，四川人说“湖南省”会说成“福兰省”）。另外，普通话的声调就更难学了，阴阳上去、一二三四声之外，竟然还有轻声。说普通话的时候不加声调，人们很难明白你的意思。你对别人说“请问”，别人可能误会你要“亲吻”。但是在四川话里，这些标准的声调都乱了套。
I was also flung headlong into a maelstrom of specialised culinary vocabulary. Professional Chinese cookery is serious, complex and sophisticated. Like the French, with their great canon of sauces, all richly differentiated, and their structured approach to the kitchen and the culinary arts, the Chinese make minute distinctions between different shapes into which ingredients may be cut, different combinations of tastes, and different kinds of braising and stir-frying. The basic word chao, for example, means ‘stir-fry’, but if you want to be really precise, you should specify whether you mean hua chao (‘slippery stir-fry’), bao chao (‘explode stir-fry’), xiao chao (‘small, simple stir-fry’), sheng chao (‘raw stir-fry’), shu chao (‘cooked stir-fry’), chao xiang (‘stir-fry until fragrant’), yan chao (‘salt stir-fry’), or sha chao (‘sand stir-fry’). And those are just the ones that I can remember off the top of my head.
我还带着初生牛犊的勇气，一头冲进了专业烹饪词汇的大漩涡。专业的中餐烹饪是非常严肃、复杂和成熟的。就像法国人，各种酱汁的做法特别正规，而且有很大的差别。厨房里的烹饪艺术也自有一套需要严格遵守的章法。中国人对于切菜的形状有详细的分类、各种味道的结合也都不同、烧和炒也有不同的程度和做法。比如，“炒”好像听上去很简单，但要追求准确，必须说清楚你是滑炒、爆炒、小炒、生炒、熟炒、炒香、盐炒还是沙炒，这些只是我一时能想起来的。
One Sichuanese culinary encyclopaedia lists fifty-six different cooking methods currently used in Sichuan. If you go to Beijing, Guangzhou or Shanghai, you’ll find countless others, some of them very local and specific. Even as far back as the second century BC, when my own Iron Age ancestors were living in thatched huts on a primitive diet of bread, meat and porridge, a burial inventory found in a Chinese aristocrat’s tomb in Hunan listed more than ten different cooking and food-preserving methods, not to mention a whole variety of different cuts of meat, types of stew and seasonings. The Chinese knew how to eat well, even then.
有本《川菜百科全书》列出了目前四川使用的五十六种不同的烹饪手法。如果你再去北京、广州或上海，还能发现另外的无数种技法，有些特别具有地方特色，非常具体。早在公元前二世纪，我那些铁器时代的英国祖先还住着茅草棚，吃着原始的面包、肉和稀饭的时候，根据湖南马王堆贵族墓葬出土的资料来看，中国就已经有十种烹饪和保存食物的方法；更别提各种各样的切肉法、不同的烧菜与调味方式。中国人会吃啊，从古至今都是如此。
After the morning break, we all reassemble in the demonstration room, where curved benches rise steeply in rows above the cooking station. It’s like an amphitheatre where some magnificent sporting feat is about to take place. Which, in a way, it is. There’s always a scramble for seats at the front, because we know by now that if you sit there you’ll get the first chance at the tasting, before your greedy classmates have scraped the platter clean. The air is hot with anticipation. Teacher Long is already preparing the fu liao, the accompanying ingredients: ginger, garlic, spring onions, long scarlet pickled chillies, and wo sun, the crisp, jade-green stem of a local variety of lettuce.
上午课间休息之后，我们都聚集在展示厅。最前面的中间是个料理台，台阶一级级升高，上面摆着弧形的长凳。这里像个圆形竞技场，仿佛就要开始精彩的体育比赛。从某种程度上说，的确是这样。大家总会抢前面的位子，因为我们已经知道，坐前面就能第一个去试吃，免得这些贪婪的同学把盘子都舔光。空气中充满了热切的期待。龙老师已经在准备辅料了：葱、姜、蒜、长长的泡椒，还有脆脆的莴笋。
Some of the characters that Teacher Long and her colleagues wrote on the board were so specialised and obscure that they were not listed in mainstream dictionaries. Even my clever, academic Chinese friends at the university couldn’t help me when I was stuck with my cooking school textbook, because they didn’t know the characters for ‘slow-braising with a gently simmering sauce that makes a sound like gu du gu du gu du’, or ‘muttony odour’. I took a voracious pleasure in collecting these arcane terms, learning them like a sutra. (As a result, after my long apprenticeship in Chinese cookery, I have the most bizarre vocabulary of any foreign student of Chinese. I can write out the name of an obscure fungus or an ancient term for pork, and recognise the words for the ‘silver ingot’ shape of certain dumplings or the bouncy texture of a squid ball — to the astonishment of Chinese culinary professionals — but I couldn’t tell you how to write some perfectly ordinary words like ‘bank account’, ‘shy’ or ‘tennis’.)
龙老师和别的老师们写在黑板上的字，有的特别专业和生僻，大众的字典上也找不到。我在大学里那些专注学术的“学霸”朋友都帮不了面对烹饪学校教科书抓耳挠腮的我。他们不认识“火”字旁一个“督”，这个字就念“督”，意思是“将酱汁文火慢炖，发出‘咕嘟咕嘟’的声音”。形容羊肉味的“膻”，当时也算是生僻字了。我带着极大的兴趣，狼吞虎咽地学习着这些生涩难解的术语，当作佛经来研究。（因此，在中国做了很长一段时间烹饪“学徒”之后，我的词汇量可能是中国所有留学生中最奇异的。我写得出某种很奇怪的菌类的名字，或者猪肉的古语；认得出某种元宝饺或者富有弹性的鱿鱼丸子的专用名。这让中国的专业厨师们都很吃惊。但是有些特别常用的词我却不会写，比如“银行账户”、“害羞”、“网球”。）
Teacher Long peels off the thin, silken membranes of the kidneys, lays them on the chopping board and then slices them in half, her razor-sharp cleaver parallel to the board. She shaves off the pale delta of white drainage tubes, leaving clean the dark, metal-pink flesh. And then it all gets very complicated. She holds the blade at a slanting angle, and covers each kidney with surgical incisions, each one a few millimetres apart from the last, cutting about two-thirds of the way into the flesh but not all the way through, until the whole surface is covered with perfectly precise slashes. Then she turns each kidney so the cuts she has already made are at right angles to the knife, and makes more rows of cuts, close together. And here it gets even more fiddly: each perpendicular cut goes all the way through to the board for part of its length, except for every third cut, which goes all the way through for its whole length… so she ends up with trios of jagged frills of kidney, joined together at one end. ‘These are called “phoenix tails” (feng wei),’ she tells us. ‘Of course, you can also cut them into eyebrows,’ she continues, giving further, even more complicated, instructions.
龙老师把腰子薄如蝉翼的外膜割掉，再放在菜板上，锋利的菜刀和菜板平行，把腰子一切两半。腰子上白色尿管的三角部分也切下来，只留下深色部分，细说起来，这颜色大概应该叫“铁锈粉”。接下来的一切就相当复杂了。她斜握菜刀，两片腰子上都留下手术一般的切口，每个相隔几毫米，大概切到三分之二深，但是又不切断，直到整个表面布满了完美准确的刀口。接着把两片腰子转了一转，确保角度正确，然后又密密地切了几排。接着，刀工的精确度就变得更高了：每一刀垂直切下去，都要完全切断……最后得到三角锯齿状的小块腰花，尾部都连在一起。“这些就叫‘凤尾’，”她告诉我们，“哦，对的，你们还可以切成‘眉毛’。”她继续教我们更多的刀工，比刚才还要复杂。
When we have all quietened down, she begins to give us a detailed explanation of how to cut them. The ginger and garlic, peeled, must be cut into zhi jia pian, ‘thumbnail slices’, she says. Teacher Long wields the broad blade of her cleaver as delicately as a scalpel, reducing the tiny garlic cloves and peeled ginger root to a pile of thin, even slices. She cuts the onions and chillies into long diagonal slices called ma er duo, or ‘horse’s ears’, and the lettuce stem into kuai zi tiao, ‘chopstick strips’. The real technical nightmare of this dish, however, lies not in using a large cleaver to chop garlic cloves without also chopping off your fingers, but in cutting the kidneys themselves. ‘Kidney flowers’, the rather poetic phrase in the name of the dish, refers to the delicate way in which the kidneys are cut, so that when they are cooked in the fiery-hot oil, they curl up into delightfully frilly little morsels, and don’t look like kidneys at all.
大家都安静下来以后，她开始详细地解释该怎么切菜。姜削皮、蒜剥好，然后一定要切成“指甲片”。龙老师挥舞着自己那把大菜刀，却像拿着把手术刀那般细致精妙。转瞬间，小小的蒜瓣和削了皮的老姜就变成一堆均匀的薄片。葱和海椒切成菱形长条，称为“马耳朵”；莴笋则变成“筷子条”。不过，这道菜真正的“技术噩梦”不是要用一把大菜刀切小蒜瓣还保证不切到手，而是要切腰子。菜名里的“腰花”听起来多美、多诗意啊，说的恰恰是特别细致和复杂的腰子切法。切好了的腰子放到热油中爆炒，会卷曲成漂亮的小花朵，看着一点都不像它原本的模样。
Cutting is one of the fundamental skills of the Chinese kitchen, as central to it as the application of fire and flavour. In ancient China, cooking itself was known as ge peng, ‘to cut and to cook’; and every lesson for a trainee Chinese chef still involves precise instructions for exactly how everything should be chopped. This is partly because of the prevalence of fast stir-frying as a cooking method. For a stir-fry, all the ingredients must be cut into small pieces that need little more than a lick of heat to be cooked. If the pieces are too big, they will remain raw inside while their outsides become dry and ‘old’ (lao). If they are cut unevenly, they will all be cooked at different times, so the final result will be rough and unsatisfactory. And with really fast stir-frying methods such as bao, which literally means ‘burst’ or ‘explode’, the fine, even chopping of ingredients is even more essential. Careful cutting is not a cosmetic matter: it is integral to the success of the final dish.
刀工是中国厨房里的基本功之一，与火候和味道一样重要。中国古代就把烹饪称为“割烹”，意即割切烹调。所有正式的中国烹饪课仍然会教你各种各样准确的食材切割方法，部分原因是由于快炒这种烹饪方法的流行。要炒菜，所有的食材都应该切得小小的，只需要一点热气就能做熟。要是切得太粗，那下锅一炒，里面还是生的呢，外面就又干又老了；要是切得大小不均，那熟的时间就不一样，最后的成品就比较粗糙，不尽如人意。像爆炒这种需要快速操作的方法，细细切菜就更为关键。细致的刀工并不只是为了好看的门面，而是一道菜最后能成功的重要因素之一。
Chopsticks, used in China for two, maybe even three thousand years, make their own demands. Knives are almost never seen on the Chinese dinner table, so food must be tender enough to be torn gently apart with chopsticks, or otherwise cut into bite-sized pieces. At grand feasts, you may find whole ducks, chickens or pork knuckles, braised so lovingly that they melt away at the touch of a chopstick, but for everyday meals, almost everything is finely sliced or slivered.
在中国使用了两千年乃至三千年的筷子也有自己的要求。中国人的餐桌上几乎不可能出现餐刀，所以菜品一定要足够软嫩，可以用筷子分开，不然就应该切成可以入口的大小。盛大宴席上，你可能会看到烤全鸭、烤全鸡和大块的猪肘子，都是烤炖得软烂软烂的，筷子一碰就分开了。但日常的饭桌上，一切都是切成小块小片的。
But these are simply the practicalities of cutting. What are even more fascinating are its aesthetic aspects. Skilful cutting adds an extra dimension to the enjoyment of a dish. Think only of a stir-fry of eel and vegetables where all the ingredients, different though they may be in colour, taste and texture, are cut into similar snaking strands; or the delicacy of intention that cuts chicken and spring-onion whites into tiny cubes to echo the small, solid shape of the peanuts in Gong Bao Chicken. Delicate cutting is part of a refined and civilised culinary culture that has existed in China for thousands of years. In the fifth century BC, Confucius himself allegedly refused to eat food that wasn’t properly cut. ‘Knife skills’ (dao gong) are still the starting point for any aspiring chef.
这些只是刀工的实用性，更让人着迷的还是其美学方面的意义。高超的刀工能够把你带入享受美食的另一个维度。你就想想时蔬炒鳝鱼：盘子里面的食材颜色、味道和口感都有所不同，但全部切成长长的细丝；还有宫保鸡丁：为了配合小颗的花生、鸡肉和葱白也被切成方形的小丁。中国灿烂雅致的烹饪文明已经延续数千年，而细致的刀工是重要的一部分。公元前五世纪，孔子本人就拒绝吃切得不好的食物，所谓“割不正不食”。及至今日，对任何立志成为厨师的人来说，“刀工”都是学习的起点。
The meticulous Chinese approach to cutting has spawned a highly elaborate vocabulary. Chefs speak of at least three basic ways of cutting, including vertical slicing (qie), horizontal slicing (pian) and chopping (zhan or kan). When the angle of the knife and the direction of cutting are taken into account, these multiply into at least fifteen variations, each with a different name. Another dozen or so terms refer to further knife techniques, including pounding (chui), scraping (gua) and gouging (wan).
中餐这种精细到极致的刀工，生发出了非常复杂庞大的词汇。大厨们常挂在嘴边的有三种基本刀法，切、片、斩（或称“砍”）。考虑到菜刀的角度和切菜的方向，这三种基本方法至少可以有十五般变化，每种都有独特的称呼。还有另外十几种刀法，包括捶、刮和剜，等等。
Given the complexity of the art of cutting, you might expect the Chinese chef to have a whole armoury of fancy knives at his disposal. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. The instrument of almost all this artistry is the simple cleaver, a hammered blade of carbon steel with a wooden handle and a well-honed edge.
刀法的艺术如此复杂，你可能以为中国的大厨们肯定有一兵器库令人眼花缭乱的刀具任其调遣。这种想法实在是大错特错了。所有这些巧夺天工的刃上功夫，靠的几乎就是一把简简单单的菜刀：不锈钢捶打而成的刀片，木质的刀把，磨得光鲜锋利的刀刃。
There is also an extensive vocabulary, some of it quite poetic, to describe the shapes into which cooking ingredients can be cut. There are simple slices (pian), strips (tiao), chunks (kuai), small cubes (ding) and slivers (si). Each of these has many variations, depending on their precise shapes and dimensions: a slice, for example, might be a small ‘thumbnail slice’, a rectangular ‘domino slice’ or a large, ultra-thin ‘ox-tongue slice’. Spring onions can be cut into ‘flowers’, ‘fish eyes’ or ‘silken threads’. All this contributes greatly to the thrilling diversity of Chinese cuisine. Even an everyday ingredient such as pork can reveal so many different selves, depending on whether it is cut into sinuous slivers, tender cubes, juicy mince or gentle slices.
形容食材经过刀法加工后的形状，也有丰富多彩的词汇，有些很是诗意，比如片、条、块、丁、丝。这几种又各有细分，要看具体的形状和大小。比如片就分指甲片、骨牌片或者牛舌片。小葱可以被切成葱花、鱼眼葱或者葱丝。所有这些都为中餐那令人震惊兴奋的多样性做出了贡献。就算是平日里最常见的猪肉，也能呈现不同的个性，关键就是要看这肉是切条、切丁、剁碎还是切薄片了。
At breaktimes, the corridors of the cooking school were filled with young men bearing lethally sharp cleavers, dangling from their hands in the most nonchalant manner. For me, this took some getting used to. In the beginning, I retained my European view of the cleaver as a bloody, murderous knife, the kind of thing a psychopath or a triad hitman might use on a drunken rampage. It was only later that I began to appreciate it as the subtle, versatile instrument that it really is. Soon I, too, had a cleaver by my side at all times. During breaks, I sharpened it on the giant whetstone in the school yard like my classmates, keeping it keen.
课间休息的时候，烹饪学校的走廊上全是年轻小伙子们，都带着能杀人的锋利菜刀，满不在乎地悬在手上。我花了好长一段时间才适应这样的场景。一开始，我还是欧洲人的思维，觉得菜刀能制造血腥的杀人案，是神经病和黑社会的职业杀手喝醉了会拿着到处发疯的凶器。后来我才开始真正去欣赏它：原来笨重的菜刀也能用出很多花样、做非常细致的活。很快，我也随身带着一把菜刀了。课间休息的时候，我就和同学们一样，在学校院子里巨大的磨刀石上磨我的菜刀，保持其锋利光鲜。
The Chinese kitchen cleaver is not a butcher’s knife. There are, it’s true, heavy cleavers for chopping through pork ribs or the carcasses of fowl. But the everyday cleaver, the cai dao or ‘vegetable knife’, is unexpectedly light and dextrous, as suitable for slicing a small shallot as a great hunk of meat, and used by everyone from the most macho chef to the frailest old lady. A single cleaver can be used to perform almost every task, from chopping a lotus root to peeling a tiny piece of ginger, and it’s often the only knife in a Chinese kitchen.
中国厨房里的菜刀倒也不是屠夫用的那种刀。的确，也有很重的斩骨刀，用来砍猪骨、宰鸡鸭。可是中国人日常用的“菜刀”竟然出乎意料地轻盈机巧，既能切碎小小的葱头，也能处理大块的肉。从肌肉强壮的大厨到羸弱的老太太，人人都用这种菜刀。一把轻巧的菜刀，几乎能完成厨房里的一切任务，从切藕丁到给很小的一块姜削皮，而且常常是中国厨房里唯一的刀具。
The cleaver is not just for cutting. Invert it and its blunt spine can be used to pound meat to a paste for meatballs: a time-consuming method, but the purée it produces is perfectly smooth and voluptuous. The nub of the handle can stand in for a pestle, to crush a few peppercorns in a pot. The flat of the blade, slammed down on the board, can be used to smash unpeeled ginger, so that its juices permeate a soup or marinade. Best of all, the flat blade can be used to scoop up whatever is on your chopping board, and transfer it to the pot or wok.
菜刀不仅是用来切菜的。翻个面，比较钝的刀背就可以用来捶肉，捶得松松的，好做成肉圆子。这是很花时间的，但做出来的肉酱相当爽口又诱人。木把手的头可以作为槌杵，把花椒放在小盅里研磨成粉。刀的两面和菜板配合，可以用来拍没削皮的姜，让姜汁渗出，为汤或卤汁增添风味。最棒的是，刀面可以当铲子，菜板上有什么东西都可以铲起来，丢到锅里。
My parents gave me a set of fully-forged Sabatier kitchen knives for my twenty-first birthday, but these days, back home in London, I rarely use them. My hand-made Sichuanese knife has become my indispensable cooking tool; it’s like a talisman. I bought it in a street market in Chengdu, for the equivalent of a couple of pounds, and I’ve been using it for years. I know its breadth and its heaviness, the exact shape of its handle, the pewter tones of its carbon-steel blade. I like to hold it in my hand, to feel its lightness and its weight, to place my palm on the flat of its blade, to hold it close to my chest. It makes me feel capable, it’s a craftman’s tool, dazzling in its multiplicity of uses. And it needs looking after, this knife of mine, honing on the whetstone, oiling to keep it from rust.
二十一岁生日的时候，父母送了我一整套赛巴迪精致锻造刀具。但那段日子，回到伦敦的家，我很少用到这生日礼物。而那把四川手工菜刀变成我在厨房里必不可少的工具，像个护身法宝。我是在成都一个街市上买到它的，价格也就相当于两三英镑，而我已经用了很多年。我了解这把菜刀的宽度和重量，知晓把手的形状，熟悉碳钢刀片青灰的色调。我喜欢握刀在手，感觉那种踏实的轻盈；把手掌放在刀面上，贴近胸口。这把刀让我感觉自己无所不能。这是手艺人的工具，用途广泛、无比迷人。这把刀是专属于我的啊，需要我悉心的照料，要时时拿去磨刀石上打磨，要细细地涂油，免得生锈。
Cleavers, of course, are not only dangerous to those who try to cross a well-trained chef, but to the chef herself. Sharpened, they demand your full attention. If you don’t cut mindfully, you may mutilate your hands. I once met a young chef who had lost the top joint of his index finger: he was working with a recently bandaged stump. In my first months in Chengdu I came close to this myself, as I was cutting a pile of candied fruits for a Christmas pudding. The knife was sticking, and dragging in the syrupy fruits. Tired, I became careless. I lost my concentration, and shaved a thick slice off the top of my finger, nail and all. It was a shocking accident, and I still bear the scar. But it reminded me to treat my cleaver with respect. Now, I understand that cutting can be a meditation, and why the great Taoist sage Zhuangzi used the tale of a chef and his knife as a metaphor for the art of living:
当然啦，去招惹菜刀加身的大厨很危险，大厨自己用菜刀的时候也要小心。这么锋利的刀，使用时需要全神贯注。要是不集中精神地切，你的手可能要残。我见过一个没有食指上段的厨师，是才受的伤，上面还缠着新的绷带。在成都的头几个月，我自己也差点遭到这样的命运。当时我正在切一堆蜜饯，准备做圣诞布丁。蜜饯很黏，刀只能在其中拖行。切累了，我就有点无精打采，精神开始涣散，结果把指尖切了好大一块下来，反正指甲是全切掉了。那真是个重大事故，到现在都还留着疤。但这个疤每每提醒我要尊重手里的刀。现在我已经明白，切菜可以算是一种冥想，也明白为何中国道家圣人庄子会用一个厨子和一把刀的故事来比喻生活的艺术：
When I’m doing cooking demonstrations or making dinner at other people’s homes I like to take it with me, wrapped in a cloth and stashed in my handbag. Many times I’ve travelled on the London Underground with my cleaver, or walked through a dangerous part of the city, late at night. As I wait on deserted station platforms, or make my way through a maze of tunnels, it gives me a sweet, secret pleasure to imagine what might happen if someone were fool enough to try to mug me. ‘Shall we start with ox-tongue slices, or dominoes?’ I might ask my assailant, blade gleaming in the half-light.
进行烹饪展示或者在别人家做饭时，我也喜欢带上这把菜刀：用布包裹起来，塞在我的手提袋里。我带着这把菜刀，在伦敦地铁中来往多次，还经常走过这座城市治安比较差的地段，而且是深夜。站在空旷无人的地铁站台等车，或者在迷宫般的隧道里摸索前进时，这刀都给我一种私密而甜美的愉悦。我心想着，要是有人真的蠢到要打劫，会发生什么呢？“我们是先切牛舌片还是先切骨牌片？”我可能会这样问面前的强盗，刀片在夜色中闪着寒光。
Cook Ting put down his knife and said, ‘What your servant loves best is the Tao, which is better than any art. When I started to cut up oxen, what I saw was just a complete ox. After three years, I had learnt not to see the ox as a whole. Now I practise with my mind, not with my eyes. I ignore my sense and follow my spirit. I see the natural lines and my knife slides through the great hollows, follows the great cavities, using that which is already there to my advantage. Thus, I miss the great sinews and even more so, the great bones. A good cook changes his knife annually because he slices. An ordinary cook has to change his knife every month because he hacks. Now this knife of mine I have been using for nineteen years, and it has cut thousands of oxen. However, its blade is as sharp as if it had just been sharpened. Between the joints there are spaces, and the blade of a knife has no real thickness. If you put what has no thickness into spaces such as these, there is plenty of room, certainly enough for the knife to work through. However, when I come to a difficult part and can see that it will be difficult, I take care and pay due regard. I look carefully and I move with caution. Then, very gently, I move the knife until there is a parting and the flesh falls apart like a lump of earth falling to the ground. I stand with the knife in my hand looking around and then, with an air of satisfaction, I wipe the knife and put it away.’
庖丁释刀对曰：“臣之所好者，道也，进乎技矣。始臣之解牛之时，所见无非牛者。三年之后，未尝见全牛也。方今之时，臣以神遇而不以目视，官知止而神欲行。依乎天理，批大郤，导大窾，因其固然，技经肯綮之未尝，而况大軱乎！良庖岁更刀，割也；族庖月更刀，折也。今臣之刀十九年矣，所解数千牛矣，而刀刃若新发于硎。彼节者有间，而刀刃者无厚；以无厚入有间，恢恢乎其于游刃必有余地矣，是以十九年而刀刃若新发于硎。虽然，每至于族，吾见其难为，怵然为戒，视为止，行为迟。动刀甚微，謋然已解，如土委地。提刀而立，为之四顾，为之踌躇满志，善刀而藏之。”文惠君曰：“善哉！吾闻庖丁之言，得养生焉。”【注：（白话译文：庖丁放下刀子回答说：“臣最喜好的，便是道，是胜于任何艺术的自然规律。我刚开始宰牛的时候，看到的只是整头的牛。三年之后，我看到的再也不是整头的牛了。现在我宰牛，用的是精神，而不用眼睛。我不再依靠感官，而是跟随灵性。我看到的是牛自然的肌理结构，劈开大的空隙，利用其本来的结构。所以，我的刀从未碰到过经络和肌肉，更别说大骨头了。好的厨工每年都会换一把刀，因为他们用刀子割肉。普通的厨工每月换一把刀，因为他们用刀子砍骨头。而我这把刀已经用了十九年，宰牛数千头，但刀刃还是像刚磨过一样锋利。牛身上的关节之间是有空隙的，而刀刃是非常薄的。把薄薄的刀刃刺入那些空隙中，就有很多空间，肯定足够自如运刀了。不过，遇到比较棘手的地方，我一看那里难以下刀，就会很谨慎小心，仔细观察、专心运刀。接着，我轻轻动着刀子，直到骨肉如一堆泥土散落在地。我提刀而立，环顾四周，然后悠然自得、心满意足地擦了牛刀放好。”）】
‘Ah, how excellent!’ said Lord Wen Hui. ‘How has your skill become so superb?’
“哦，太棒啦！”文惠君说，“你的技艺怎么能高明到这种程度呢？”
Cook Ting was butchering an ox for Lord Wen Hui. Every movement of his hand, every shrug of his shoulder, every step of his feet, every thrust of his knee, every sound of the sundering flesh and the swoosh of the descending knife, were all in perfect accord…
庖丁为文惠君解牛，手之所触，肩之所倚，足之所履，膝之所踦，砉然向然，奏刀騞然，莫不中音。合于《桑林》之舞，乃中《经首》之会。文惠君曰：“嘻，善哉！技盖至此乎？”【注：（白话译文：有一个名叫丁的厨师替文惠君宰牛，手的每一个动作、肩膀的每一次抖动、双脚每踏出的一步、膝盖每一次顶出去、皮与骨每次分离发出的声音与刀子刺进去的“咻咻”之声，全都如音律般完美配合……）】
I was often reminded of Cook Ting when I watched our teachers give their demonstrations in that small amphitheatre. Teacher Long, showing us how to remove the bones and innards from a duck, which she would later fill with an ‘eight-treasure stuffing’, tying the duck around the waist with a cord so that its flesh swelled out on either side like a calabash gourd. She would make a small incision through the neck and spine with her cleaver and then proceed to undress the raw bird, casually removing its entire skin and flesh in one piece from the carcass as she chatted, coaxing out the leg- and wing-bones, caressing its ribcage with the huge shining blade. Or, on another day, Teacher Long’s husband, Teacher Lu, cutting pork slivers with an expression of discreet pleasure on his face, his arms and shoulders soft and supple, his composure complete amid the chaos of the classroom.
看着老师们在小小的展示厅做示范，总会让我想起庖丁。龙老师向我们展示如何给鸭子拆骨去内脏，之后要填入八宝饭馅。她拿绳子把鸭子腰部绑紧，把肉挤向两边，像个葫芦。接着拿菜刀在颈部和脊椎上拉个小口，然后给这还算生鲜的鸟类剥皮。她整个人云淡风轻，一边保持着皮肉的完整，一边口头传授着要诀：腿骨和翅骨被巧妙地剥离，巨大的菜刀闪着光，“爱抚”着鸭胸。还有一次，龙老师的老公吕老师切着肉丝，脸上露出谨慎的愉悦，手臂和肩膀都柔软灵活；面对乱哄哄的教室、一片狼藉的操作台，他完全沉浸其中，镇定自若。
‘Splendid!’ said Lord Wen Hui. ‘I have heard what Cook Ting has to say and from his words I have learned how to live life fully.’
“太好了！”文惠君说，“听了丁厨师的话，我学到了养生之道啊。”）（1）【注：（1）白话译文由作者引用的英文翻译而来。】
Over time, Chinese cutting became part of my make-up, too. It began to influence the way in which I viewed the ingredients in my fridge, or assembled a European salad or a stew. Now, it is instinctive to me. I find I get confused when I’m helping a Western friend to prepare a meal. ‘Can you just chop up some carrots?’ they might say. ‘But how do you want them cut?’ I ask. ‘Oh, just chop them,’ they say. But in my mind there are now a thousand possibilities, there is no such thing as ‘just chopping’. If I was cooking with a Chinese chef, it would be easy: he’d just say, ‘Elephant-tusk strips, please’, or, ‘No. 2 thickness slivers,’ and I’d know exactly what he meant.
随着时间的推移，中式刀工也成为我自认的“招牌”，开始影响我对冰箱里食材的看法，也影响我做欧式沙拉或炖菜的方式。现在，这已经成为我的本能。我帮某位西方朋友备菜的时候，总会有点摸不着头脑。“你切点胡萝卜吧。”他们会说。“切成什么样呢？”我问。“哦，切就是了啊。”他们说。但我脑子里却会出现一千种可能。没有“切就是了”这回事。要是和中国厨师共事，那就很容易了，他会说“切成象牙条”或者“二粗丝”，我能接收很明确的指令。
Many of my classmates lived in dormitories upstairs at the cooking school, and sometimes the bolder among them would invite me up at lunchtime for a cup of tea and a game of cards or Mah Jong. Their rooms were crammed with bunk-beds, and hung with laundry. Sometimes they were used for nefarious activities, as I gathered one morning during a stern lecture by the school’s principal. He admonished the students for gambling away their living allowances, and for smuggling their girlfriends in for the night. ‘If you fritter away all your money at Mah Jong, you won’t have anything left to eat,’ he told us. And he gave his homily a Confucian slant: ‘A good cook must lead a good life. Take Master Liu, a chef I know who is now eighty years old. He has never drunk or smoked, and he has always led a virtuous life. His cooking is incomparable.’
我的很多同学都住在烹饪学校楼上的宿舍里。有时候比较大胆的几个在午饭时间会邀请我上去喝喝茶、打个扑克、搓搓麻将。宿舍里挨挨挤挤地放着上下铺，晾满了衣服。一天上午，我发现他们有时候好像还蛮放纵的。因为校长发表了很严厉的讲话，告诫学生们不要因为赌博输掉了生活费，晚上不要偷偷带女朋友进宿舍。“搓麻将搓得钱都没得了，饭都吃不起了。”他对我们说，说教中还表达了非常具有儒家意味的观点：“好厨师就要好好生活。比如说我的熟人刘师父，八十岁的厨师了，不抽烟、不喝酒，一辈子老实得很。他做的菜，不摆了（2）！”【注：（2）四川话，即“很棒”、“无人可比”。】
Living at the opposite end of town, near the university, I never witnessed any of these alcohol-fuelled orgies or reckless gambling sessions. After lunch, in the sleepy siesta hour, the atmosphere was rather more subdued. One afternoon, I sipped jasmine-blossom tea with a classmate as he gave me a tour of his miniature garden of carved vegetables. As his roommates snoozed or read cookery books, he showed me a painted landscape decorated with ornate pagodas made from pumpkin flesh; graceful swans fashioned out of pieces of white radish held together by toothpicks; carrot-flowers and purple-radish roses.
我住在城区的另一边，川大附近，所以从未见过这些朋友喝醉酒与女朋友纵欲狂欢或者不顾一切地赌博。午饭之后昏昏欲睡的辰光，气氛是很柔和平淡的。一天下午，我跟一个同学一起喝着茉莉花茶。他带我看了他用蔬菜雕刻布置出来的一个“迷你花园”。他的室友有的鼾声大作，有的看着烹饪书。他带我来到一个画得漂漂亮亮的地方，上面装饰着南瓜雕刻的宝塔，十分华丽；白萝卜雕刻出来的优雅天鹅用牙签固定着；还有“心里美”萝卜做出来的美丽玫瑰。
Chinese vegetable carving takes the art of cutting into another league. Here, the results are meant not to be eaten, but to be admired. The truly proficient Chinese chef is not merely a cook, but also a sculptor, like the French pâtissier, with his spun-silk caramel and sugar flowers. Food sculpture is the light-hearted, light-headed froth that floats at the top of the grandest culinary cultures. It is as ostentatious and utterly frivolous as the sugar-paste cathedrals designed by the nineteenth-century French master chef, Antonin Carême, who maintained that confectionary was the principal branch of architecture, itself one of the five fine arts. Vegetable carving can only exist in a society with a surplus of underpaid and underworked youths, who can be persuaded to spend hours engraving the outside of a watermelon with minutely realised scenes from a classic novel, or transforming an orange gourd into a vase carved with frilly-tailed goldfish playing at the base of a fragile water lily. Sometimes I find it fussy and ridiculous. But there is something enchanting about it, all the same.
中国的瓜果雕刻把刀工艺术带入另一个境界。雕刻的成果不是供人食用，而是欣赏。真正的中餐大厨，不仅是个厨师，还是个雕刻家，就像法国的甜品师，能用焦糖造型、用糖做花。瓜果雕刻像漂浮在中国烹饪文化长河之上的轻盈泡沫，其招摇卖弄、无聊和轻佻，不输给十九世纪法国厨神安托南·卡雷姆设计的糖霜城堡：他觉得这是建筑业的重要分支，而技艺本身也应当跻身五种人文艺术之列。瓜果雕刻这种东西只可能存在于一个年轻人工资不够、闲暇又太多的社会，他们能心甘情愿地花上几个小时，在西瓜上雕出古典小说中的场景；或者把一个橙色的葫芦变成一尊花瓶：美丽而脆弱的睡莲之下，金鱼摆着漂亮的尾巴在嬉戏。有时候我觉得这也太没必要了，而且很荒唐，但同时又有种迷人的魅力。
These food tableaux have a venerable history in China. Their originator is said to have been a tenth-century Buddhist nun, Fan Zheng, who recreated a series of twenty-one paintings and poems by the eighth-century artist Wang Wei in the form of twenty-one cold dishes. Using finely cut pieces of vegetables, gourds, meats and fermented fish, she offered an edible homage to the works that had inspired her, to the wonderment of her dinner guests.
这些偏向于造型艺术的食物在中国有着庄严悠久的历史，据说创始人是公元十世纪的一名尼姑，梵正。她用二十一道冷盘重现了公元八世纪诗人王维《辋川图》中的画和诗。她用细切的蔬菜瓜果、肉类鱼干向带给她灵感的伟大作品致敬，所谓“菜上有山水，盘中溢诗歌”，令食客惊艳不已。
At cooking competitions in modern China, young chefs may be expected to enter a ‘craft dish’ alongside the dishes that display their wok techniques and pastry-making skills. ‘Craft dishes’ include complicated, edible tableaux that have little to do with the practical requirements of either cooking or eating. At one contest I attended, each competitor had produced an ornamental cold platter, or pin pan, in which tiny slices of multicoloured ingredients were assembled into grandiloquent collages. One of the entries depicted a pair of swallows, their wings made of sliced thousand-year-old eggs, their bodies and long forked tails composed of hundreds of slices of cucumber skin. They were flying over a variegated landscape of sliced cold meats, including purplish liver, rosy ham and pale-pink prawns.
当代中国的烹饪比赛中，年轻的厨师们除了展现炒菜技艺和面点基本功之外，还需要上一道“工艺菜”。工艺菜要能吃，还要能看，造型复杂，跟烹饪或进食的实际要求没有任何关系。我参加的一场比赛中，每个参赛者都要做个“冷拼盘”，用五颜六色的小块食材做成很夸张的拼贴画。有一道菜是一对燕子，翅膀用的是皮蛋，身体和长长的尾羽用数百片黄瓜皮拼成；它们正飞过一片景色斑驳的土地，地面都是用细切的肉食品组成的，有紫不拉几的肝、玫瑰红的火腿和粉白色的大虾。
When my classmates weren’t carving their names into their desks, they were often toying with a carrot or an odd piece of radish, practising their sculpting techniques. They knew that, in their future careers, they might, on occasion, be required to produce a pumpkin dragon or an edible collage of the Great Wall of China. In the course of our regular culinary training, we had to learn about forty basic shapes into which raw ingredients could be cut, including nine different ways of cutting a spring onion alone. But this was child’s play compared to the more esoteric art of vegetable carving.
不在课桌上刻名字的时候，我的同学们总是把玩着大大小小的萝卜，练习着自己的雕刻技艺。他们知道，未来做了厨师，可能在某些场合会被要求用南瓜雕刻一条龙，或者做一座能吃的万里长城。在常规的烹饪课上，我们必须学会四十种基本的刀工形状，光小葱的切法就有九种。但比起瓜果雕刻这种秘传之术，常规的刀工还是显得太小儿科了。
So in the grand scale of things, cutting pig’s kidneys into ‘phoenix tails’ or ‘eyebrows’ is fairly pedestrian. In the lecture theatre at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisine, our demonstration is drawing to a close. Later, after lunch and a siesta, we will be let loose on our own sets of kidneys, which we will tear and mangle and cut into uneven pieces, before we acquire the knack of making phoenix tails. But now, after all her careful preparations, Teacher Long whips up the fire-exploded kidney flowers in a matter of seconds. The aromas of ginger, garlic and chilli rise steeply around the room. The kidney pieces curl up in the wok, and, then, for a few short seconds, I am able to admire them on the serving dish, marvelling at the way in which this clumsy offal has been transformed into the most tempting of delicacies. But then Teacher Long hands the plate over to the ravening masses. Students spill over the benches, jostle for position, thrust forward their chopsticks. There are a few whoops and slurps. And the kidneys are gone.
所以，从大方面上说，把猪腰子雕成“凤尾”或者“眉毛”，都还是毫末技艺。在四川烹饪高等专科学校的展示厅，老师的示范接近尾声。之后，吃完午饭的休息时间，我们可以自由地向一系列猪腰子“开刀”。我们会乱切一气，弄得七零八落、参差不齐，之后才掌握到凤尾的诀窍。但现在，极其精细的准备之后，龙老师的火爆腰花仿佛在几秒之内就做好了。姜蒜与辣椒的香味弥漫在教室里，腰子在锅里迅速卷曲。转瞬之间，我就欣赏到盛盘的样子，惊叹本来肮脏难看的猪下水，就这样变成了令人垂涎三尺的佳肴。接着龙老师就把盘子递给了乌泱泱的学生们。他们从座位上冲上来，争先恐后地伸出自己的筷子，挤掉别人的手。几声“哎呀！”与吧唧嘴之后，腰花就没了。
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