Crawling out of bed on a damp October morning, in my small shared room in the Foreign Students’ Building of Sichuan University. My Italian roommate, Filomena, is already up and out. Sleepily, I pull on a padded jacket and look out of the window. As usual, the sky is a muffled grey (‘Sichuanese dogs bark’ — in surprise — ‘at the sun’, goes the old saying). Over the wall that is supposed to keep foreign students in and curious Chinese people out, I can see a row of wutong trees and, beyond them, the Brocade River, where a cormorant fisherman is trying his luck in the murky water. His birds, their great black wings flapping, have rings around their necks. When they catch a fish too big to slide down their constricted throats, they offer it to the fisherman, who drops it into his basket, and gives them a smaller fish in exchange. I watch, captivated by yet another of the endlessly fascinating little events that mark my daily life in Chengdu.
湿气弥漫的十月早晨，四川大学留学生楼与别人合住的小房间里，我从被窝里爬出来。我的意大利室友菲洛梅娜已经起床出门了。我睡眼惺忪地套上一件棉外套，看了看窗外。和平常一样，天灰蒙蒙的（老话说得好：“蜀犬吠日”）。留学生楼有围墙，是要让留学生老实待着，也让好奇的中国人别进来。墙外头一溜梧桐树，梧桐树那边就是锦江，一个打鱼的带着一船的鸬鹚，在浑浊的江水中试手气。他的鸟儿们扑闪着大大的黑色翅膀，脖子上都套着环。逮到的鱼要是太大，吞不进喉囊，就吐给打鱼的。打鱼的扔进鱼篓，换条小鱼喂给鸬鹚。我目不转睛地看着眼前的一幕，被深深吸引了。我在成都的日常生活，充满了这些令人着迷的小剧场。
When the cormorant fisherman has drifted past and I can no longer see his birds at work, I shower, dress, and go off in search of breakfast. I say good morning to the elderly watchman at the gate of the Foreign Students’ Building, and wander out past a row of plantain trees. Students and lecturers on bicycles ride past me, ringing their bells. Laundry and birdcages hang on the balconies of the low-rise apartment blocks. Everything is softened slightly by the gentle touch of the Sichuan mist. The campus is a quiet, leafy place, an oasis of tranquillity in a city where the taxis honk their horns incessantly and the street vendors shout and clatter.
渔夫划着船飘远了，我也没法看他的鸟工作了。于是冲了澡，穿好衣服，出去找早饭吃。我跟留学生楼那个看门的太爷（1）说了声“早上好”，然后懒洋洋地走过一排芭蕉树。学生和老师们骑着自行车从我身边经过，车铃叮当响。矮矮的居民楼，阳台上晾着衣服，还挂着鸟笼。四川的雾气很温柔，笼罩之下的一切都变得轻软了些。川大的校园安宁平静、树木葱茏。在这么个出租车不停按喇叭、小贩大声叫卖、喧哗谈笑的城市，这里可真是一片静谧的绿洲。【注：（1）四川话，即“老大爷”。】
Not far away, just behind the university offices, there’s a snack stall, which I can find just by following my nostrils. The heavenly scent of guo kui, twirly flatbreads stuffed with minced pork, spring onion and Sichuan pepper, drifts out across the campus. They are made by an elderly couple who don’t speak much as they go about their business. The woman kneads her dough and rolls it into balls on an oiled wooden board. With the heel of her hand, she smears each ball into a long tongue of pastry which she rubs with lard and a smattering of spicily seasoned pork. Then she rolls it up, flattens it into a round and passes it to her husband. After frying them golden in oil, he tucks the guo kui under the griddle, where they bake crisp at the side of the charcoal brazier. Eaten hot, they are crunchy and chewy and savoury, and the Sichuan pepper makes your lips dance and tingle. Could there be anything more delicious for breakfast on a damp autumn day?
不远的地方，就在大学办公楼后面，有个小摊，我动动鼻子就能找得到。小摊卖的是军屯锅魁，用面团卷起压扁的饼子，中间裹着碎肉和小葱，再撒点花椒，天堂般的香味能飘满整个校园。摊主是两口子，年纪有点儿大了，各司其职，互相不咋个（2）说话。女的揉好面，掰成小团，再在油光光的菜板上搓成圆球，然后拿手掌后部把每个球擀成长舌一样的面饼，遍抹猪油，精确地撒上点香麻味儿的碎肉，最后卷起压成圆形递给她男人。男的把面饼在热油上煎得金黄，然后放进鏊子（3）下面的炉膛里，沿边上摆成一圈，把外皮烤得焦香。趁热吃，一口咬下去油脆脆的，里头的面又有嚼劲，味道也丰富可口，花椒刺得你双唇麻酥酥的，像在跳舞。在这么一个阴湿的秋天，还有比这更美妙的早餐吗？【注：（2）四川话，即“怎么”。（3）制作煎饼、烙饼类的炊具，比较像巨大的煎锅。北方煎饼摊上常见，四川锅魁也用此工具来煎。】
It wasn’t food that originally lured me to go and live in China, or at least that’s what I told myself. I was supposed to be researching Chinese policy on ethnic minorities. A year after my first visit to China in 1992, I had flown to Taipei for a two-month summer course in the Chinese language, and then spent a month travelling around Mainland China and Tibet. On my way home from Lhasa, I called in on the Sichuanese capital, Chengdu, arriving on one of those rare, balmy days when the sun shines brightly, only slightly blurred by the perennial Sichuan haze. With me I had the crumpled namecard of a Sichuanese er hu (Chinese two-stringed violin) player called Zhou Yu, whom I had met on the streets of my hometown, Oxford, spellbinding a crowd with his melodies. ‘Look me up if you ever visit Chengdu,’ he had told me. So I checked into the Traffic Hotel, hired a bicycle, and went off in search of him at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music.
最开始引诱我到中国生活的，不是食物。至少我是这么对自己说的。我应该是来研究中国少数民族历史的。一九九二年我初访中国；过了一年，我飞到台北，参加了两个月的暑期中文课；接着花了一个月的时间在中国大陆四处转转，期间去了西藏。从拉萨回家的路上，我途经四川的省会成都，到的那天天气真好，在四川实在少见：阳光灿烂，只微微有点常年挥之不去的盆地迷雾。我有一张皱巴巴的名片，是个四川二胡演奏家的，叫周钰。我和他偶遇在我家乡牛津的路上。当时他在演奏二胡，悠扬的旋律深深吸引了一群听众。“到成都的话，找我。”他那时对我说。于是我入住了交通饭店，租了辆自行车，去四川音乐学院找他。
Zhou Yu was as warm and engaging as I had remembered. He and his exuberant wife Tao Ping, another musician, welcomed me as an old friend, and took me on a bicycle tour of the sights of the city. We went for a walk in the grounds of the poet Du Fu’s ‘thatched cottage’, and then they invited me for lunch at a modest restaurant near the bus station. It was a single room on the ground floor of a timber-framed cottage, tiled in white like a bathroom, with a few tables and chairs and nothing to adorn the walls. Zhou Yu ordered some food, and we waited for the dishes to emerge from the tiny kitchen at the back, amid the sounds of furious sizzling. The room filled up with the most marvellous aromas.
周钰和记忆中一样，还是那么热情、那么风度翩翩。他老婆陶萍也是个音乐家，很有生气的女子。他们把我当成老朋友一样欢迎，带着我骑自行车去看成都的景点。我们到杜甫草堂去散步，然后在新南门公交站附近一家不起眼的餐馆吃午饭。那是个看得见木梁的小房子，餐馆在一楼，只有小小的一间，周围贴着白瓷砖，像厕所。几张桌子，几把椅子，墙上没有任何装饰。周钰点了几个菜，我们等着上菜，听后面那个小厨房淹没在愤怒火爆的“嗞啦”和“嘶嘶”声当中。餐厅里弥漫着各种最最美妙的香味。
I can still remember every detail of that delicious meal. The cold chicken tossed in a piquant dressing of soy sauce, chilli oil, and Sichuan pepper; a whole carp, braised in chilli-bean paste laced with ginger, garlic, and spring onions; pig’s kidneys cut into frilly, dainty morsels and stir-fried, fast, with celery and pickled chillies. And so-called ‘fish-fragrant’ aubergines, one of the most scrumptious dishes I’d ever tasted: the golden, buttery fried aubergines cooked in a deep-red, spicy sauce, with no actual fish but seductive hints of sweet and sour. This was Chinese food as I had never known it before. It was a revelation.
至今我仍然记得那顿美餐的每一个细节。凉拌鸡，加了酱油、白糖、红油和花椒面；豆瓣鱼，加了豆瓣酱、葱姜蒜；切成花刀的猪腰，刚好一口一个，刀工相当考究，和芹菜泡椒一起大油爆炒而成。还有所谓“鱼香”茄子，我吃过的最好吃的菜之一：亮闪闪的茄子拿深红色的辣味酱料一炒，虽然没有用到鱼，但那引人垂涎的酸甜味儿还真是有点鱼香。这可是我闻所未闻、见所未见、吃所未吃的中国菜，大开眼界啊大开眼界。
A few months later, a colleague at the BBC suggested I apply for a British Council scholarship to study in China. She helped me devise a worthy plan to investigate Chinese policy on ethnic minorities, a subject that had interested me for some time. Filling in the scholarship form, I came up with various academically convincing reasons for basing my research in Chengdu. I wanted to avoid the expatriate centres of Beijing and Shanghai, so that I had a chance to immerse myself in Chinese life and the Chinese language — never mind that Sichuan dialect is a notoriously distorted version of Mandarin. Then there was Sichuan’s location on the fringes of Han Chinese China, near the borderlands inhabited by Tibetans, Yi, Qiang, and countless other minorities. It all sounded quite plausible. But as I filled in the boxes on the form and composed my personal declaration, I must confess that I was thinking also about sweet and spicy aubergines, of a fish lazing in chilli-bean sauce, of frilly pig’s kidneys and Sichuan pepper. Fortunately, the British Council and the Chinese government agreed that Chengdu was a suitable place for me to study, and they gave me my grant, a golden ticket to explore China for a year, with no strings attached.
几个月后，一位同事建议我申请英国文化委员会的奖学金去中国学习。她帮着我弄出一个很不错的中国少数民族研究计划，估计我对这个主题还能感一阵子的兴趣。填奖学金申请表的时候，我想了好些常驻成都做研究的理由，都是学术上的，很有说服力。我不想去外国人特别多的北京和上海，这样就能让自己真正融进中国生活、学习中文。哦，四川话是普通话的变种，变得七扭八歪的，没关系没关系。四川算是中国汉族聚集区的边缘，周围有很多很多少数民族聚居区，比如藏族、彝族、羌族，等等。这些理由听起来都是相当充分的。然而，我必须坦白，填着表格上那一栏栏的项目、编着堂而皇之的理由时，我心里想的是鱼香茄子、豆瓣酱红烧鱼、火爆腰花和花椒的香味。运气真好，英国文化委员会和中国政府也认为成都对我来说是个做研究的好地方，给我拨了奖学金。这真是张“金奖券”，能到中国去探索一年，还没什么附加条件。
In the autumn of 1994, the foreign affairs office of Sichuan University held a meeting to welcome the new cohort of foreign students to Chengdu. We gathered in the main hall of the Foreign Students’ Building, where a stern member of the local Public Security Bureau read us the national regulations on ‘aliens’, with a teacher translating into stilted English. We were told that ‘subversive actitivities’ would get us into trouble, and that if our offences were serious enough, we might be expelled from the country. When the policeman had finished, the teacher added that medical staff would soon be coming to the university to draw our blood, which would be tested for HIV. Given that we had all been required to have exhaustive physical examinations before entering China, including HIV tests, we were indignant (my own doctor had laughed heartily at the Chinese state’s medical demands of a healthy young woman, especially the electrocardiogram). It was a reminder that, however nervous we might feel about going to live in China, China — opening up gradually after decades of Maoist introversion — was equally nervous about us.
一九九四年，四川大学外办给刚来成都的一群留学生开了个欢迎会。我们聚在留学生楼的礼堂，当地公安局派来个面相严厉的警官向我们宣读国家关于“外来者”的规定。一个老师操着生硬的英语做翻译。规定里说，不能从事“颠覆破坏活动”，否则会惹麻烦，情节严重者会被驱逐出境。警察读完了，老师补充说，很快会有医务人员来学校抽血，检查我们是否携带HIV病毒。入境中国之前，我们全都经历了冗繁严格的体检，包括HIV检测，所以听到这个我们都很生气（我自己的医生曾发自内心地嘲笑中国对年轻健康的女性入境体检太严格了，包括什么心电图）。这其实在提醒我们，不管我们对即将到来的中国生活感到多么紧张，这个经历数十年封闭后逐渐开放的国家其实也对我们感到紧张。
The protected enclave of the campus we inhabited was known by the Chinese students as the Panda Building, because it seemed to them that we were treated like some rare and endangered species. Our Chinese counterparts lived in concrete dormitories where they were crammed together, eight to a room, with no heating in winter and no air-conditioning in summer, and distant communal showers that were available only at certain hours of the day. We lived in carpeted twin rooms with heaters and air-conditioners, and every floor of our building had its own kitchens, washing machines and bathrooms. Our dining room offered à la carte Sichuanese food much better (and much more expensive) than that served in the Chinese students’ canteen. There was a watchman at the gate of our compound, and an office from which the sinister staff of the foreign affairs office kept an eye on our activities.
我们住的地方在学校可谓备受保护的一块“飞地”（4），中国学生称之为“熊猫楼”，因为在他们看来，我们所受的待遇就好像珍稀濒危物种似的。我们那些中国校友住在混凝土的宿舍里，八个人挤在一个房间，冬天没暖气，夏天没空调，洗澡的话要走很远，每天还是特定时间限时供水。我们住的是摆了两张床的双人间，铺着地毯，暖气空调俱全，楼里每一层都配有厨房、洗衣机和卫生间。我们的餐厅可以点菜，里面做的川菜和中国学生的食堂比起来要好多了（也要贵得多）。我们那栋楼门口有看门的，还有间办公室，外事办的工作人员总是注意着我们的一举一动。【注：（4）本国境内的隶属另一国的一块领土。】
In the mid-nineties, the expatriate community in Chengdu was tiny. We foreign students numbered about 120 in all. Besides us, there were just a few American consulate workers, foreign teachers and aid workers, and a mysterious businessman from Peru. The forty or so Japanese students at the university were cliquey and exclusive. The rest of us, Italian, French, Mongolian, Russian, Ethiopian, Polish, Jordanian, Laotian, Ghanaian, German, Danish, Canadian and American, lived sociably together.
九十年代中期，成都的外国人还挺少，留学生的总人数大概也就一百二左右。除了我们以外，就只剩下些美国领事馆的工作人员、外教和救援人员。还有个很神秘的生意人，来自秘鲁。学校里那四十来个日本学生特别爱抱团，很排外。我们呢，意大利人、法国人、蒙古人、俄罗斯人、埃塞俄比亚人、波兰人、约旦人、老挝人、加纳人、德国人、丹麦人、加拿大人和美国人，就彼此热热闹闹地生活在一起。
Everyone in Chengdu shopped in markets like this on a daily basis. There were no real supermarkets, yet. From time to time I would run into one of my teachers from the university, struggling through the crowd, bicycle basket overflowing with green onions, beansprouts, spinach and ginger, a recently killed fish hanging from the handlebars in a plastic bag, still twitching.
每天，成都的人们都在这样的市场里买菜。那时候还没有真正意义上的超市。我经常在那个市场遇见大学里的某位老师在人群中挨挨挤挤，自行车的篮子装得满满的，什么大葱啊、豆芽啊、菠菜啊、生姜啊，还有现杀的鱼装在塑料袋里，从车把上垂下来，还在扭动。
But if we lived in luxurious isolation, we had only to step outside the dormitory to be overwhelmed by the hubbub of Sichuanese life. Just around the corner from the side gate of the university was a market overflowing with fresh and seasonal produce. Fish leapt and eels wriggled in tanks of water, ducks and chickens squawked in their pens. Vegetables and fruits were piled up in great bamboo trays: water spinach and bamboo shoots, garlic stems and bitter melons, seasonal treats like three-coloured amaranth, loquats, and ‘spring shoots’, the tender leaves of the Chinese toon tree. One stall sold a dozen different types of beancurd. Farmers sat on tiny stools behind woven bamboo baskets heavy with produce, ready to weigh them out by the jin or the liang with their old-fashioned, hand-held balances, and tot up the bill on an abacus.
但是，虽然说我们居住在奢侈的孤立当中，也只需要走出宿舍楼，就能被四川生活的喧哗与骚动所淹没。在大学的侧门边就有个菜市场，满满当当的全是应季生鲜。水盆里，鱼儿跳跃、鳝鱼蠕动；笼子里，鸭子和鸡都在强烈地抗议；大大的竹垫子上堆放着各种各样的蔬菜水果，藤藤菜（5）、竹笋、蒜薹和苦瓜。还有特定季节才能吃到的，比如苋菜、枇杷和椿芽，也就是香椿树柔软的新叶子。有个摊子上卖的是不同种类的豆腐。手工编织的竹筐子沉甸甸地装着农产品，农民坐在筐子后面的小凳子上，等着拿老式的手提秤称好斤两，然后拿算盘算价钱。【注：（5）四川话，即空心菜。】
Very quickly, the stallholders became familiar to me. The squint-eyed old woman in white overalls who sat before her bags and jars of spices: blood-red dried chillies, whole and ground; dusky-pink Sichuan pepper. The handsome flower-seller, smart in a dark business suit, slumped in his tiny bamboo chair, leaning back against the brick wall in a peaceful sleep, surrounded by a sea of brilliant roses and carnations. When a customer appeared and roused him with a gentle word, his eyes would blink open, and he would smile good-naturedly, light a cigarette and take money for one of his rainbow bouquets.
很快我就把那些小摊贩都认熟了。那个眯眯眼的太婆，总爱穿一身白色的工装裤，坐在一袋袋、一罐罐调味料之间：血红的干辣椒，有的是整个的，有的磨成了辣椒粉；还有暗粉色的花椒。那个卖花人长得挺帅，穿着精干的深色西装，舒服地瘫在小小的竹椅中，靠着砖墙，安稳地沉睡着，周围是玫瑰与康乃馨的美丽花海。要是有人来买花，轻轻地把他唤醒，他就眨呀眨地睁开眼，露出天性善良的微笑，点燃一支烟，拿了钱，递给客人一束五彩缤纷的花。
Although the market was busy in the mornings and the late afternoons, there was a period after lunch when the xiu xi, or siesta, took over, especially when the weather was warm. Then, not only the flower-seller, but everyone else too, seemed to be asleep. Rural women snoozed over their squashes and aubergines, cradling their heads in circled arms. Tomato and bean sellers drooped over crouched-up knees. The fishmonger lay back against the wall, snoring gently. And beyond the market, the entire city appeared also to be suffused with drowsiness. Rickshaw drivers lounged in their empty passenger seats, feet up on the saddles of their tricycles. Office workers lay down on fake leather sofas, sprawled like cats.
早晨和半下午菜市场都是忙碌喧嚷的。但午饭后有段时间，大家都在休息，特别是天热的时候。那个时候，不仅是那个卖花的，菜市场的所有人，似乎都在睡觉。农妇们双臂盘绕，趴在她们的南瓜和茄子上，头埋在胳膊里，打个瞌睡。卖西红柿和豆子的坐在地上，双膝耸起，睡成一摊。卖鱼的靠着墙，轻轻扯仆鼾（6）。菜市场之外，整个城市似乎也深陷困意之中。三轮车师傅懒洋洋地躺在没有载客的车里，双脚搭在车把上。办公室的人们躺在仿皮沙发上，四仰八叉的，像猫。【注：（6）四川话，即打呼噜。】
Now that the world is besotted with China, it is hard to remember how marginal it seemed in the early nineties. No one, then, would have considered going to Shanghai for a glamorous holiday or shopping. Few British universities offered Chinese courses; the idea of Mandarin being taught in schools would have seemed laughable. In London, my friends saw my Chinese studies as eccentric, if not hilarious. Even to me, Mandarin seemed a fairly irrelevant language.
现在全世界都为中国着迷，真是很难回忆起九十年代初这个国家在西方世界显得有多么边缘。那个时候，没哪个西方人会考虑去上海度过美妙的假期或者购物。英国很少有大学开中文课。在中学开设普通话课程的想法会显得很可笑。在伦敦，朋友们觉得我学中文简直古怪，甚至笑死人。就连我都觉得，学中文好像没什么用。
Despite the immediate charms of Chengdu, I spent my first weeks there in a state of misery and confusion. I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing in China. My life until then had been like a conveyor belt that had carried me, almost unthinking, from my academic hothouse of a high school to Cambridge University, and then to the BBC. For a long time I had nurtured the idea of becoming a professional cook, but I left university with debts, and the short-term BBC contract I took to pay them off led to the offer of a permanent post, which I lacked the courage to refuse. By my early twenties, I was stuck in a dry, academic job that didn’t suit me at all, and exhausted by a daily commute from London to Reading. So when my colleague brought up the idea of a British Council China scholarship, I seized the chance to escape.
成都有这种立刻就让人着迷的魔力。然而初到的那几周，我一直低落又困惑。我其实有点搞不清楚，我来中国到底是干嘛呢？到那时候为止，我的生活好像一条传送带，带上的我几乎从没认真想过，只是单纯地待在学习的温室中，从高中到剑桥大学，然后走向新闻事业。很长时间以来，我都怀揣着成为专业厨师的想法，但大学是贷款读的，为了还贷款我干了短期兼职，结果就得到一个长期的工作，我也没有勇气拒绝。迈入二十的头几年，我干着一份学术性的工作，枯燥乏味，完全不适合我。每天要在伦敦与雷丁之间通勤，也让我筋疲力尽。所以，同事一说英国文化委员会的中国奖学金，我就赶紧抓住机会逃走了。
From the moment I arrived in China, I was almost completely cut off from the rest of the world. Email and the Internet were, for the majority of people, no more than unlikely rumours; an exchange of letters with a friend in England could take several weeks. There were only three places in Chengdu where cross-continental telephone calls were possible, and, if you found one, the cost of a call was astronomical (you could host a dinner party in a restaurant for the price of three minutes’ conversation with Europe). Outside the glitzy sophistication of the city’s two international hotels, Western food hardly existed, and the only foreign cultural activity available was watching pirated videos in a row of illegal cinema shacks near the university. Even news was hard to access, and censored when it came from official sources. My classmates and I were stranded in China, like it or not, and outside the cocoon of the Foreign Students’ Building we had little choice but to throw ourselves into Sichuanese life.
一到中国，我几乎就和整个世界断了联系。对当时中国的大多数人来说，电子邮件和互联网只是不太可信的谣言；跟英国的某个朋友一次书信往来可能需要好几个星期。成都只有三个地方能打越洋电话，而且找到地方以后，打一次电话的花费简直是天文数字（和欧洲通话三分钟的钱，都能找家餐厅办个晚宴了）。城里有两家国际酒店，倒也高雅炫目，但出了酒店就几乎找不到西餐馆了。唯一能进行的和外国文化有关系的活动，就是在大学附近那一排脏兮兮的非法放映厅看盗版碟。国外的新闻也很难看到，官方媒体的新闻又都是审查过的。我和我的同学们算是“搁浅”在中国了，喜不喜欢都得忍着。走出留学生楼这个小小的蚕茧之后，我们别无选择，只能一头扎进四川生活之中。
My own supposed studies offered me little sense of direction. My Chinese was too poor for any serious academic research, and, besides, I had chosen a research subject fraught with political sensitivities. The books and journals in the university library were filled with propaganda — fairy stories about ethnic harmony and the gratitude of the Tibetans for the benevolent overlordship of the Chinese state. University lecturers became twitchy when the conversation veered towards uncomfortable subjects, and tried to steer it back to the safety of platitudes. I didn’t know how to begin my work. China was not the totalitarian state of my London friends’ imagination, but neither was it open, and for a newcomer it was impossible to gauge the boundaries. Even the locals found it confusing. The juddering old framework of the state economy was falling apart, along with the political controls of the Maoist era. No one really knew the rules. The whole country, waking up after the nightmare of Maoism, was making it up as it went along.
我本来该做的研究也没给我任何方向。中文太差，我进行不了任何严肃的学术研究，另外我选的这个课题实在充满了政治敏感性。我硬着头皮在大学的图书馆里读那些书啊、期刊啊。和老师们聊天，要是话锋稍微不对，有点触及令人不舒服的话题，他们就开始焦躁不安，并且努力把话题引向安全的陈词滥调。我都不知道该怎么开始研究。中国不是我那些伦敦朋友想象中的“集权国家”，但也并非完全开放。对于初来乍到的外国人，要拿捏分寸、把握界限，实在不可能，就连本地人都没什么头绪。旧的国有经济的框架正经历剧烈变化，随时可能分崩离析。毛时代的政治控制也很不稳定，没人真正清楚规则。全国上下正从“文革”的梦魇中慢慢恢复，却还没完全醒来。
Socially and culturally, China was challenging, too. As outsiders, my fellow students and I were still unusual enough to be treated as freaks or celebrities. We were interviewed by journalists, and invited to give speeches about nothing in particular at prestigious events. Crowds gathered to scrutinise our most trivial actions, even buying a bus ticket. A simple bicycle ride across town would provoke a Mexican wave of attention, as passers-by dropped what they were doing to watch us, and shout out ‘Hello!’ or ‘Lao wai!’ (foreigner). People were almost unfailingly nice to us, but it was difficult living under a microscope, and it took months to begin to understand what was really going on. You couldn’t just parachute into China and start achieving — after half a year, perhaps, you might be able to start fumbling your way through the political and social system.
社交和文化上，中国也是挑战重重。我和同学们这些外国面孔还是很少见的，于是有些人把我们当作怪物，有时候我们又受到名流的待遇。有记者来采访我们，有人邀请我们去各种高级的活动、发表没什么主题的演讲。走到哪里都有一群人尾随围观，观察我们最最细小的动作，哪怕是买一张公车票。随便在城里骑个自行车，一路上都有一波波的人马上注意到，于是放下正在做的事情看着我们，大声喊着“哈罗”或者“老外”。当然几乎人人都对我们友好热情，但这显微镜下的日子还是太难过了，花了好几个月才明白到底是什么情况。你不可能蓦然空降中国就马上如鱼得水地生活，也许过个半年，你才能稍微摸索出政治和社会体系中的门道。
And then there was the slow, insinuating lethargy of the place itself. Chengdu was a city where it was virtually impossible to have any plans, let alone fulfil them. Since the Tang Dynasty it had been renowned for its easy life, the fruit of a gentle climate and soil of legendary fecundity. The inhabitants of Chengdu didn’t have to work particularly hard to eat well and enjoy themselves. Their city had a southern, almost Mediterranean feel about it. People there moved more slowly than they did in Beijing or Shanghai. They sat in teahouses all afternoon and evening, playing Mah Jong or cards, exchanging banter in the honeyed cadences of Sichuan dialect, with its long, drawn-out vowels and burred ‘r’s. ‘Bai long men zhen’ they called it, this leisurely Sichuanese habit of conversation. And the most expressive word in Sichuanese must be ‘hao suanr’ (good fun), said lazily, with a broad grin, the creak of a bamboo chair in the background. ‘Those coastal people,’ one taxi driver told me, speaking of the Cantonese and Fujianese, ‘they are ambitious and hardworking; that’s why they’ve been the first to get rich. We Sichuanese just want to earn enough to fill our bellies with good food.’
对了，还有这个地方本身那种慢悠悠的倦怠感也令人不知不觉地被影响。在成都这个城市，别说实现计划了，制定计划都根本不可能。从唐朝开始，这里就以生活安逸闲适著称。因为气候适宜，土壤更是传奇般地肥沃。成都人不用特别努力地工作也能吃得好、玩儿得开心。这座城市有点南方的感觉，甚至都有点像地中海沿岸了。成都人的脚步都比北京人或上海人要慢。他们在茶馆里一坐就是一下午加一晚上，打麻将、打牌、用节奏舒缓、语气甜腻的四川话开玩笑斗嘴，韵母都拖得长长的，还要加上娇俏的儿化音。他们把这叫做“摆龙门阵”，四川特有的谈天说地。而四川话里最生动的一句方言莫过于“好耍（特别有趣）”。他们说的时候总是懒洋洋的声气，咧嘴而笑，竹椅子发着嘎吱嘎吱的背景音。“沿海的那些人，”一位出租车司机跟我聊起广东人和福建人，“他们野心大得很，也肯干，所以他们就先富起来了噻（7）。我们四川人喃，挣的钱可以吃香喝辣就够了。”【注：（7）“噻”是四川地区的人说话常带的尾音。】
I wasn’t the only foreign student finding it hard to concentrate. My classmates and I heard from friends in Beijing and Shanghai about tough attendance regulations at other universities; miss a few lessons in those places and you might lose your scholarship. But in Sichuan, nobody cared. A few of us, mostly those with prior experience of China, settled down to some serious study. Otherwise, one by one, gradually and inexorably, we all dropped out of our official classes. My roommate Filomena spent most of her time playing Mah Jong. A young Danish student, Sören, hung around in the park, learning martial arts from a frail, elderly master. Volker, a German who was taking a break from his successful career as a film production manager in Los Angeles, idled away his days and weeks in conversation. The rest played rugby, fell in love, got drunk, and went travelling, here and there.
不止我一个留学生觉得很难静下心做点事。同学们和我都从北京、上海的朋友们那里听说，别的大学要求多么多么严格。在那些地方，缺了几节课可能奖学金就泡汤了。但是在四川，根本没人管。我们中的一些人，大多都是之前来过中国的，静下心来开始认真地研究学习。而剩下的呢，无可避免地都渐渐放弃了正式课程。我的意大利室友好像花了大把时间打麻将；一个年轻的丹麦学生就在公园闲逛，跟着一个看上去体质孱弱的老师傅学武术；德国人福尔克尔，本来是洛杉矶成功的电影制作经理，来这儿就是想休息一下。他整日都在和当地人聊闲天儿；还有些人，玩英式橄榄球、谈恋爱、夜夜豪饮或者到处旅行。
As for me, I spent the first month trying to be a conscientious student, and beating myself up about my lack of academic progress. But I found myself caring less and less about my scholarship, and my career. And so, after a few dark weeks of depression, I decided, like most of my classmates, to abandon my preconceptions, simply to be in Sichuan, and to let the place take me as it would. Loosed of my disabling mental moorings and opening my eyes, finally, to the enchanting city around me, I allowed Sichuan to work its slow, sweet magic on me. And that was the beginning of the most wonderful period of my life.
至于我，第一个月还努力想做个本分刻苦的学生，总是自我鞭策，提醒自己学术上还没有取得多少进步。但我发现自己越来越不在乎奖学金和所谓的“事业”了。所以，经历了几个星期黑暗的阴郁情绪之后，我决定和大多数的同学一样，丢掉那些先入为主的偏见，单纯地待在四川，让这个地方自然而然地指引我。终于，我心里那根绷紧的弦松了下来，双眼也真正打开看向我身处的这个迷人的城市。放开自我，让四川在我身上施展那舒缓甜蜜的魔法。于是，我开始了一生中最最美妙的时光。
Convention carves China into four great regional cuisines. In the north there is the grand, stately culinary school of Beijing and Shandong Province (lu cai). This is the food of emperors and courtiers, famed for its roast meats, unbelievably rich soups, and expensive delicacies like shark’s fin and sea cucumber. In the east, you have the refined and subtle cooking of the literati, who mused about the pleasures of eating in cultural centres like Yangzhou and Hangzhou (it is known as huai yang cai). Think, here, of sweet, soy-dark braises; ‘drunken’ shrimps steeped in old Shaoxing wine; fresh aquatic vegetables like water chestnuts and lotus; and steamed freshwater crabs dipped in fragrant Zhenjiang vinegar.
传统上，中国有四大地方菜系（也称“帮菜”）。北方，有大气宏伟的北京与山东菜（统称“鲁菜”）。这是皇族贵胄的饮食，著名的有烤肉、食材丰富的浓汤以及昂贵的山珍海味，比如鱼翅和海参。东边的饮食娴雅精妙，属于文人，他们留下很多笔墨描写扬州和杭州这些文化中心的饮食趣味（称之为“淮扬菜”）。这些菜或是芬芳的甜品，或是浓油赤酱的炖菜，也有拿陈年绍兴酒浸的醉虾、荸荠和藕这种新鲜的水产蔬菜，还有清蒸鲜活大闸蟹蘸香味扑鼻的浙醋。
Mention Chengdu to any Chinese person and the first thing they will say in response is almost certainly that the food is very spicy: ‘Are you afraid of chilli heat?’ (Ni pa bu pa la?) is the customary warning for travellers on their way to Sichuan. But give them a moment more and they are likely to smile with remembered pleasure, and murmur something about the magnificence of the local cuisine. ‘I never raise my chopsticks without remembering my dear Sichuan,’ sighed the Song Dynasty poet Lu You. ‘Go to China for food, but for flavour, you must go to Sichuan,’ is the mantra of modern gourmets.
跟随便哪个中国人提起成都，他们的第一反应几乎肯定是“川菜很辣”。去四川的路上，很多旅行的人都会收到一句警告：“你怕不怕辣？”但是再过一会儿，他们多半会露出快乐的笑容陷入回忆中，絮絮叨叨着那里的菜有多好吃。“举箸思吾蜀，”宋代诗人陆游如此感叹道。“食在中国，味在四川。”这句话可谓当代美食家们的口头禅。
In the south, there is the notoriously fresh food of the Cantonese (yue cai), so fresh it is almost alive. In this region, chefs apply seasonings with a gentle touch — just a little salt, sugar, wine and ginger to enhance the natural flavours of their raw ingredients. Cooking is precise, intervention minimal: a steamed fish, treated lightly with ginger, green onion and soy; translucent shrimp dumplings; a stir-fry of slivered ingredients in which everything is perfectly crunchy or tender, according to its own particular nature. And they adore to eat wild things here, too: snakes and frogs, civet cats and yellow-breasted buntings.
南边自然是讲究极致新鲜的广东菜（粤菜），食材几乎还活蹦乱跳。在这里，主厨们调味都相当温柔，只要一点点盐、糖、酒和姜来烘托那些生鲜的本味。粤菜的烹调要准确拿捏分寸，把人为的介入降低到最小限度：蒸鱼只微微点缀些姜葱、淋上少许豉油便可上桌；通透的虾饺；还有把各种食材切丝、下锅爆炒，每一样材料都恰到好处的爽脆或软糯，完全呈现出本身的特点。这里的人们也很爱野味：蛇和牛蛙、果子狸与禾花雀。
Sichuanese food (chuan cai) is the spice girl among Chinese cuisines, bold and lipsticked, with a witty tongue and a thousand lively moods. ‘Each dish has its own style,’ they say, ‘and a hundred dishes have a hundred different flavours.’ Sichuanese cooking doesn’t require extravagant raw ingredients like Cantonese or Shandong. Yes, you can fashion a Sichuanese banquet out of such things if you must; but you can, equally, work wonders with the most humble ingredients, dazzle the tastebuds with a simple repast of pork and aubergines. This is the greatness of Sichuanese cuisine, to make the ordinary extraordinary.
四川的饮食（川菜）就是这四大菜系中的“辣妹子”，胆大貌美，如同涂着烈焰红唇，伶牙俐齿还有万千精巧心肠。四川人总是说：“一菜一格，百菜百味。”烹制川菜不需要粤菜或鲁菜那些奢侈的食材。嗯，要是准备川派宴会，愿意的话也可以用那些东西来摆个排场。但不用这些，你也能用最最普通的食材创造奇迹：简单的猪肉和茄子，就能惊艳味蕾。这就是川菜的伟大之处：点石成金，化平凡为神奇。
They were eating spicy food in the Sichuan region at least as far back as sixteen hundred years ago, when the historian Chang Qu remarked on local people’s liking for bold and interesting flavours. Go to Sichuan and you realise that this isn’t so much a matter of choice as of environmental determinism. The Sichuan basin has a humid climate: in winter, a creeping dampness penetrates every layer of clothing; summers are insufferably hot and sultry, with the sun hidden behind a haze of mist. In terms of Chinese medicine, the body is an energetic system, in which damp and dry, cold and hot, yin and yang, must be balanced; if they are not, illness is sure to follow. And although the moist Sichuan air keeps the skin of the women soft and youthful, it can destabilise the body as a whole. Therefore the people of this region have, for as long as anyone can remember, felt obliged to doctor their diets with dry, warming foods to counter the unhealthy humours of the climate. Until the first chillies arrived from the Americas, however, the only warming ingredients they had at their disposal were a few ancient imports from Central Asia, and native spices like Sichuan pepper.
四川地区吃辛辣的传统至少可以追溯到一千六百年前。东晋四川史学家常璩评论家乡人“尚滋味”、“好辛香”。来到四川你才会发现，这不算是他们自己的选择，而是跟“环境决定论”有关。四川盆地气候潮湿：冬天，暗暗的湿气会穿透每一层衣服；夏天则是不可忍受的闷热，阳光永远躲在一层蒙蒙的雾气后面。中医的传统理论认为，人的身体是一个能量系统，干湿、冷热和阴阳都必须平衡调和；要是不调和，就必然生病。盆地潮湿的空气将川妹子的皮肤养得吹弹可破、青春永驻，但也动摇了整个身体的平衡。所以，这里的人们从有记忆开始，就像尽义务般地进行自我食疗，吃干辣的热性食物，中和有些“调皮”的气候。不过，辣椒从美洲传入中国之前，他们手上少数可用的热性食材是中亚进口来的一些古老调料以及四川本土的调料，例如姜和花椒。
The first chillies were seen in China in the sixteenth century, when Portuguese traders, newly returned from South America, sailed their galleons into the eastern ports. The Chinese of the coastal regions admired the chilli plant first as an ornament, with its delicate white flowers and vibrant scarlet fruits. It was only later that they began to use the piquant fruits as a seasoning. Merchants took the chilli up the waterways of the Yangtze Delta to the central province of Hunan, and from there to Sichuan, a little further westwards along the river. It was in these two warm, humid provinces that the chilli found its spiritual home. They were all but waiting for it; there was a place ready in their medical and culinary cosmologies. Its blazing colour lit up the grey mistiness of their skies, and its fiery heat drove out the dampness in people’s bodies, bringing a delicious equilibrium to their lives.
辣椒最早出现在中国是十六世纪，刚从南美归来的葡萄牙贸易商扬帆前往东方的港口。沿海地区的中国人一开始把辣椒当作好看的观赏植物：洁白的小花，生机勃勃的红果。到后来他们才开始把这辛辣开胃的果实用作调味。商人们通过长江三角洲的水路运辣椒北上，来到华中的湖南，再从那里沿河稍微往西，到了四川。在这两个湿热的省份，辣椒终于找到了自己灵魂的归属。这里的人们等的就是辣椒，他们的医学和饮食观里，早就给辣椒留好了一块用武之地。那鲜红耀眼的颜色照亮了永远雾蒙蒙的天空，那炽烈如火的热气逼出了人们体内的湿气，给他们的生活带来美味的平衡。
Sichuan pepper is the original Chinese pepper, used long before the more familiar black or white pepper stole in over the tortuous land routes of the old Silk Road. It is not hot to taste, like the chilli, but makes your lips cool and tingly. In Chinese they call it ma, this sensation; the same word is used for pins-and-needles and anaesthesia. The strange, fizzing effect of Sichuan pepper, paired with the heat of chillies, is one of the hallmarks of modern Sichuanese cookery.
花椒原产中国。现在很多人更熟悉的黑白胡椒，是从丝绸之路上偷偷混进来，跋涉过崎岖的道路才进入中国的。而花椒入菜，比胡椒要早得多了。花椒不像辣椒，味道不辣，但是让你嘴唇一阵阵发冷，还有刺痛感。中国人称这种感觉是“麻”。手脚也能“发麻”，做手术也要“麻醉”。花椒这种奇特的效果，加上辣椒的辣，成为四川现代烹饪的最大特色之一。
The canteen in the Foreign Students’ Building at Sichuan University was a dull place, serving food that was fresh but soulless. With our meagre allowances and the teeming market just outside, we scholarship students might therefore have taken advantage of the cooking facilities in the Foreign Students’ Building and made our own food. Some did, like Areej, the young Jordanian woman who kept house for her husband Taizer and baby Motaz in a single room in the dormitory, but most of us were too lazy. Besides, we quickly discovered that the food available outside the campus was so thrilling and plentiful that it would have been senseless to waste our time fighting for space in the communal kitchens. So every day, at lunchtime, we trooped out to a favourite noodle shop and guzzled bowlfuls of noodles with a variety of toppings. In the evenings, we pitched up at one of half a dozen little restaurants in wooden cottages near the university. Our Chinese student friends found our constant dining-out extravagant, but to foreigners it seemed ridiculously cheap. A noodle lunch set us back a few kuai (30p), while one person’s share of an abundant group dinner with plenty of beer rarely amounted to more than 12 kuai (about £1).
川大留学生楼的餐厅很无聊的。菜倒是新鲜，就是没啥灵魂。津贴少得可怜，校门外又有那么热闹的一个菜市场，我们这些靠奖学金读书的学生利用留学生楼的厨房自己做菜吃倒更好。有些真的这么做了，比如那个年轻的约旦女人。她是来陪丈夫读书的，一家三口（还有小孩）蜗居在宿舍楼的一个单间里，她的职责就是做家务。但其他人大都懒得很。另外，我们很快发现，校外的吃的太多了，而且好吃得不得了，浪费时间去抢公共厨房也太没有意义了。所以每天的午饭时间，我们都成群结队地跑去最喜欢的一家面馆，狼吞虎咽地吃下一大碗佐料丰富的面。晚上，我们会在学校附近那一溜小木屋中的几家小餐馆找一家吃。中国的同学觉得我们每天出去吃实在是太奢侈了。但用西方的标准来看简直“相因惨了（8）”。中午一碗面也就几块钱；晚饭大家聚餐大吃一顿，再加一瓶啤酒，每个人平摊下来通常也很少超过十二块。【注：（8）四川话，即“便宜得很”。】
After a few weeks in Chengdu we knew the names of all the essential dishes. La zi ji, dry, crisp, sizzling pieces of chicken buried in an improbable mound of seared chillies; yu xiang qie bing, a pile of succulent aubergine fritters stuffed with minced pork and bathed in a luxuriant sweet-sour-spicy sauce; hui guo rou, fat pork stir-fried with Chinese leeks in an indescribably delicious chilli bean sauce… actually there were chillies everywhere: as a dip for aromatic duck hearts and livers, in the chilli oil drizzled over our chicken slivers; in the sauces for our pork and our aubergines. Whole, chopped, red, green, fresh, dried, ground, pickled, steeped in oil, the variety was infinite. Yet the spicy cooking of Chengdu never lived up to the fiendish reputation that so terrified visitors from other parts of China. For a taste of that, you had to travel a few hours by bus to Sichuan’s second city, the great Yangtze metropolis of Chongqing.
在成都待上几个星期，我们就熟知了所有经典菜的名字。辣子鸡：外焦里嫩的爆炒鸡块，埋在一堆爆得焦香的辣椒之中，翻找也是种乐趣；鱼香茄饼：肥厚多汁的茄子切片，夹着碎肉入油锅炸熟，配上丰富醇厚的酸甜酱汁；回锅肉：二刀肉（后腿近臀部处）整块煮好，切片后再配蒜苗爆炒，调味用的是豆瓣酱，那美味难以形容……其实辣椒无处不在：卤鸭心肝的蘸料（干辣椒面）、鸡丝上鲜艳欲滴的红油、猪肉和茄子的酱料，整个的、切碎的、红色的、绿色的、新鲜的、晒干的、捶成粉的、泡过的、浸了油的，种类花样数也数不清。但是，成都菜绝对不像中国其他地区的人们面带恐惧地说起的那么辣。真要尝尝那魔鬼一样的“变态辣”，你得坐好几个小时的大巴，来到当时四川的第二大城市、长江边的大都会重庆。
I went there once, soon after my arrival in Chengdu, to pay a visit to my musician friend Zhou Yu’s parents. It had a filthy magnificence, that city, in the early nineties. Its buildings, tainted by the pollution from factory chimneys, were scattered on steep slopes that fell away to the broad sweep of the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers where they met in a fork far below. It was a fierce, hard-working river port, where people spent their days trudging up and down hills and battling with a humidity so stifling that, in summer, it was known as one of China’s ‘furnace’ cities. Even in Sichuan, Chongqing was infamous for the ma la (numbing-and-hot) punchiness of its food.
我去过一次，是在到成都不久，去看我那位音乐家朋友周钰的父母。九十年代初期的重庆有种肮脏的宏伟。楼房外墙都被工厂烟囱的废气熏得黑黑的，散落在陡峭的山坡上，消融在长江和嘉陵江交汇的壮阔背景中。重庆的港口和城市都很繁忙，到处是辛苦劳作的人们。他们整日爬坡上坎儿，还要应对能闷死人的湿热天气。夏天的重庆是中国的“三大火炉”之一。就连在四川，重庆也是最出名的麻辣美食之都。
No one would decide to go and live in Chongqing after such a baptism of fire. But Chengdu is a gentle city. Life there is not a battle against the elements and the gradient of hills, it is a sweet, idle dream. Chillies are used not in violence, but to awaken and stimulate the palate, to make it alive to the possibilities of other tastes. They are melded with an undercurrent of sweetness, a robust beany savouriness, or a splash of mellow vinegar-sour, to seduce and delight. In Chengdu, Sichuanese cuisine is not the assault course of international stereotype, it is a teasing, meandering and entirely pleasurable journey.
在这么一场火热的洗礼之后，没人会想去重庆定居。但成都就是个特别温柔的城市了。这里的生活不是整天同天气与陡峭的山坡做斗争，而是一场甜蜜懒散的美梦。菜里的辣椒也放得没那么“暴力”，只是要唤醒和刺激味觉，让它活跃起来，去感知别的丰富滋味。调味还有点暗暗的甜，加上豆制品发酵后的腥香，或者一点点芳醇的陈醋酸味，勾引诱惑着你，让你满心欢喜。成都的川菜，完全没有外国人成见中的那些原始和粗野，而是一点一点地挑逗着你，曲径通幽，去往极乐之旅。
Zhou Yu’s parents invited me out, on a sweltering evening, for a hotpot supper by the river. We took our seats around a wok in which an inconceivably large mass of dried red chillies, Sichuan peppercorns and other spices were stuck in a thick, pasty layer of fat. A waiter bent down and ignited a gas flame underneath the table. As the wok warmed up, the fat began to melt, and soon the chillies were bobbing around in it. The waiter brought plates of raw ingredients: beef offal and mushrooms, beancurd and greens. We used our chopsticks to cook them in the fiery broth. Every morsel emerged from the pot in a slick of fiery oil, studded with spices; even a single beansprout came out embroiled with a mouthful of chilli. By the end of the meal, I was almost delirious with heat. My mouth burned and tingled, my body ran with sweat. I felt ragged and molten; pain and pleasure were indistinguishable.
周钰的父母请我出去吃饭。那是个闷热难耐的晚上，他们说去江边吃火锅儿。我们围着一口大锅坐下，锅里堆满了干辣椒，这种规模简直让人难以置信。花椒和别的调料都冻在一大块厚重的牛油里。服务员走过来，弯腰点燃了饭桌下面的气炉。锅渐渐烧热，牛油开始融化，很快辣椒就随着沸腾的油水跳动起来。服务员端来一盘盘生食：牛杂、菌菇、豆腐和绿叶菜。我们拿筷子下到滚烫的红汤里。捞出来的每一块食物上都裹着亮闪闪的红油，还有各种各样的调味料，就连吃根豆芽也得吞一嘴的辣椒。一顿饭吃完，我辣得都要精神错乱了：嘴巴火烧火燎、酥麻刺痛，浑身大汗淋漓。我感觉汗毛直竖，却又要被热气熔化，真分不清是痛苦还是愉悦。
A few cottages down, on the opposite side of the street, was ‘The Italian’, which was actually nothing of the kind. Named after a long-forgotten group of Italian students who used to frequent it, the restaurant served the usual Sichuanese food and became our favourite venue for special dinners and birthday parties. On such occasions we would take over one of its two rooms and feast at a table laden with dishes. We would drink copious quantities of spirits that seared our throats and gave us rotten hangovers and listen to Jay — a Canadian English teacher — make one of his speeches, which were always deliberately pompous, peppered with random phrases of Chinese, and side-splittingly funny, especially after a few rounds of the local firewater.
往下走几家店，街对面是家所谓的“意大利”餐厅，其实根本不卖意大利菜。这家店以前有群意大利学生常来，所以用“意大利”命名，但那群学生早不知天涯何方了。这家店还是做四川家常菜的，并且成为我们吃大餐和庆祝生日最爱的去处。比较重大的场合，我们会订下两间包厢之一，点上满满一桌子的菜敞开吃一顿；还会喝很多很多的烈酒，喝得喉咙冒火、宿醉不醒。我们边吃喝边听同学杰伊，一位加拿大英语老师，发表他的演讲：他总是会故意语气浮夸，随意夹杂几个中文词汇，逗得我们哈哈大笑，特别是喝了几轮当地的白酒之后。
I quickly became a regular at the Bamboo Bar, one of the restaurants near the university that was known for its hearty flavours and friendly atmosphere. It was a simple place, housed in a ramshackle wooden cottage, but the food was sensational and I never tired of it. By six o’clock every evening, it was already noisy and jam-packed with people. Customers sat on low bamboo stools around square wooden tables, tucking into fragrant stir-fries and steaming soups. The waitresses, young peasant girls from the countryside who slept like sardines in the low-ceilinged attic upstairs, bustled around with bottles of beer. Po po (‘Granny’), the owner’s mother, presided over the abacus at a counter by the door.
我很快成为“竹园”的常客，就是学校附近一家馆子。那里菜的滋味丰富，店里气氛也很亲切。简简单单的一个地方，一个有点儿摇摇晃晃的小木屋。但菜实在太好吃了，我怎么也吃不厌。每天晚上六点，这里已经喧嚣吵嚷、食客满堂了。客人们围着方木桌，坐在矮矮的竹凳子上，埋头在香喷喷的炒菜和热气腾腾的汤之间大快朵颐。服务员都是农村来的年轻女孩儿，晚上就像沙丁鱼罐头一样挤在上面小阁楼矮矮的天花板下面睡觉。饭店里的她们都特别忙，拿着一瓶瓶啤酒在桌凳之间穿梭。店主的妈，大家都叫她“婆婆”，站在门口的柜台后面，手里摸着把算盘，掌控全局。
In those days the restaurants we visited didn’t even have fridges, and the beer was kept cool by being stored in a bucket of water. Meat and vegetables were bought daily from the markets; if you wanted an ingredient the restaurant didn’t have, one of the girls might be despatched to buy it outside. Fish and eels lived in tanks in the kitchens. And everything, apart from the slow-braised soups and stews, was freshly cooked. Hygiene inspectors would no doubt have blanched at the cooked offal sitting around in unchilled cabinets, the reusable wooden chopsticks, and the poor facilities for washing up, but we almost never fell ill.
那个年月，我们去的馆子连冰箱也没有，啤酒放在一桶水里保持冰爽。肉和菜都是每天去菜市场买的。要是你想吃馆子里没有的食材，店主可能就派个服务员跑一趟现买回来。鱼和黄鳝都养在厨房的水缸里。除了文火慢熬的汤和炖菜，别的全都是现点现做的。卤的内脏就放在没有制冷功能的柜子里。木筷子是反复使用的，洗碗筷的设备也相当简陋。卫生检查员看到这一切肯定会脸色发白吧，但我们几乎从没“病从口入”过。
On warm evenings we would drift down to the riverbank outside the university, where a rash of al fresco restaurants had sprung up under the wutong trees. We would sit for hours under their branches, sipping beer in the uneven light of hanging lightbulbs and candles stuck into the necks of beer bottles, nibbling pig’s ear, lotus-root slices, and fresh green soybeans squeezed out of their pods. All around us, people lounged around in bamboo chairs, laughing and chatting in Sichuan dialect, shouting in excitement as they played hua quan, a noisy finger-guessing game that was all the rage. Cicadas hummed in the trees overhead.
天气比较热的夜晚，我们沿着校外的河岸闲逛。河边的梧桐树下，一个个“坝坝馆子”（9）争先恐后地冒出来。灯泡挂在树上，灯光忽明忽暗；蜡烛插在啤酒瓶里，烛影摇曳闪烁。我们会在梧桐树下一坐就是好几个小时，大口喝啤酒，小口啃猪耳朵，咬一口脆生生的藕片，把新鲜的煮毛豆从豆荚里“噗”地挤出来。我们周围全是人，懒洋洋地躺在竹椅中，大声笑闹，用四川话摆龙门阵；有的还划拳（风靡一时的类似“剪刀石头布”的游戏），兴奋地叫喊着。头顶的树梢上蝉子不停聒噪着。【注：（9）即露天餐厅。四川话把平坦的空地统称为“坝子”，任何在坝子上举行的活动都可以叫“坝坝××”，例如“坝坝电影”、“坝坝舞”（广场舞）。】
Sitting in the Bamboo Bar, watching grand platters of fish and mysterious claypot soups being brought to neighbouring tables, wafting their aromas under my nose, I became frustrated. Two years of Chinese evening classes in London and two months of study in Taipei had failed to give me the most rudimentary tools for deciphering restaurant menus. The Sichuan university textbooks I’d encountered in my few weeks of class were deathly dull and totally impractical. Instead of introducing us to useful words like ‘stir-fry’ and ‘braise’, ‘bamboo shoot’ and ‘quail’, they had required us to learn by rote long lists of largely irrelevant Chinese characters: the names, for example, of the heroes and villains in the ancient epic The Three Kingdoms; the words for an ancient kind of chariot, weapon or musical instrument.
坐在竹园里，看着大盘大盘的鱼和神秘的砂锅被端到邻桌，阵阵香味钻进我的鼻孔，心情真是郁闷。在伦敦上了两年的夜校学中文，跑去台北又学了两个月，我居然连点菜这种最基本的事情都做不好。这几个星期在川大看的课本真是无聊到极点，而且特别不实用。没有教我们“炒”、“烧”、“竹笋”、“鹌鹑”这些有用的东西，而是要我们死记硬背一长串根本用不上的汉字：比如三国时期群雄与奸人的名字，古代战车、兵器或者乐器的名称。
Learning Chinese characters is a painful process anyway; it nearly breaks you. They say that, to read a newspaper, you need to know two or three thousand, and that’s only a fraction of the number of characters in existence. So you cram them into your head, writing them out, again and again, in rows of squares marked out on special paper, or on little cards that you paste to the wall or read over breakfast. Yet, however hard you try to keep them in your head, most of them fall out again, like flour through a sieve. It’s a Sisyphean labour, thankless and frustrating, which is why so many foreigners who learn Chinese end up speaking it quite well, but largely unable to read or write. I resented wasting hours memorising the vocabulary of the classic romances, and so I stopped going to my language classes as well as my lessons on ‘minorities history’. Instead I took a few private Chinese lessons, and spent the rest of my time hanging around markets and restaurants, or sitting in teahouses, poring over dictionaries and photocopies of local restaurant menus.
学汉字怎么着都是个很痛苦的过程，特别是对于成年人，差不多要搞得你崩溃。他们说，要想读中文报纸，至少得认识两千到三千个汉字，而这不过是所有汉字中很少的一点点。你把这些字死记硬背塞进脑子里，一遍一遍地写，有时候在画了一排排田字格的本子上，有时候写在小卡片上、粘在墙上，吃早餐时反复诵读。然而，不管你多么努力去记，它们还是会偷偷溜走，跟筛面粉似的，仿佛一切都是徒劳，吃力不讨好，而且特别令人沮丧。所以有很多学中文的外国人，最后说得倒挺流利，但基本上一到读写就成了文盲。我一点也不喜欢花大量的时间去记背那些古典作品里的字词，所以我再也没去上过语言课和民族历史课。我上了几节中文私教课，剩下的时间就跑去菜市场和餐馆，要么就泡茶馆，一边翻字典，一边研究复印来的当地菜单。
Ever since I was a child, I have loved to cook. After every family holiday in Europe, I tried to recreate foreign recipes that I had found particularly exciting. At university I spent one long summer vacation immersed in Turkish cookery. I had been invited to spend two months with a family friend, a Turkish porcelain mogul who lived in central Anatolia. As a young, unmarried woman staying in a Muslim family, I had little freedom to explore his old-fashioned hometown or the surrounding region, and spent most of my time at home with his extended family. Naturally, I gravitated towards the kitchen, and my diary filled up with recipes for stuffed vegetables, köfte and purslane salad. From my mother I had picked up the habit of guessing the ingredients and cooking methods of dishes in restaurants, picking up traces of herbs and spices, forensically analysing the food on my plate. By the age of eleven I already wanted to be a chef. But the conveyor belt of my education took me further and further away from food.
从小我就喜欢做饭。每年一家人去欧洲某个地方旅行之后，我都会努力去重现特别让我兴奋的异国菜。大学时代一个漫长的暑假，我整日都沉浸在土耳其烹调之中。当时是家里一个朋友叫我去跟他玩两个月。他是土耳其瓷器界的显赫人物，住在安纳托利亚中部。我这么个年轻未婚女子借住在穆斯林家庭里，几乎无法自由地去探索他老派的家乡或者周围的地区，所以大部分时间都和他那一大家子人待在家里。我自然而然地被吸引到厨房里，每天的日记里写满了各种菜谱，什么酿菜啊、烤肉饼啊、马齿苋沙拉啊。我妈在餐馆吃饭的时候，爱猜测各种菜里的食材调料以及烹饪方法，去寻找草药和香料的蛛丝马迹，像法医分析一样去拆解盘中餐。我也继承了她这个习惯。十一岁的时候，我已经有了做个大厨的理想。但后来我按部就班地接受教育，在这条标准传送带上离美食这一行越来越远。
Students who get good grades at school are not encouraged to run away and work in restaurants. I remember one middle-school teacher laughing at me, incredulous, when I told him of my ambition. So I carried on passing exams, working hard and doing what was expected of me. It was in China, thousands of miles away from home and almost completely cut off from my past, that I was able to do what I really wanted. Finally, I was able to admit to myself that I was no socio-economic analyst, not even really a journalist, but a cook. It was in the kitchen, chopping vegetables, mixing a dough in my hands or seasoning a soup, that I felt most completely myself. Growing up in Oxford, studying in Cambridge, working in London, I had been propped up by a string of academic and professional credentials that had seemed to define me in the eyes of other people. But in China none of that mattered. I was just one of a bunch of homesick and culturally disorientated foreigners, trying to find our feet in a country about which, despite all our studies, we actually knew very little. It took me some time to accept this, but in the end it was the best thing that could have happened to me.
没人会鼓励在学校考高分的好学生另辟蹊径，去餐馆当伙夫。我记得中学时把这个理想告诉一位老师，他难以置信，还笑我。所以我继续认真考试、好好学习，按照别人的期望来过我的人生。只有到了中国，离故土千里万里，而且几乎完全和过去了断，我才能够做自己真正想做的事情。终于，我能够对自己承认，我是做不了什么社会经济分析师的，甚至也当不了一名真正的记者。我就是一个厨子。只有在厨房里切菜、揉面或者给汤调味的时候，我才能感受到完整的自我。我在牛津长大、在剑桥上学、在伦敦工作，一直以来都像牵线木偶一样，被各种学术和职业上的标准控制着，用别人的眼光来定义自己。但是在中国，那一切都不重要了。我只是一群老外中的一员，犯了乡愁，又与当地文化格格不入，想要在这个我们研究甚多但事实上却知之甚少的国家找到立足之地。我花了一点时间来接受这个现实，最终，这成为我一生中最棒的际遇。
For someone with a natural curiosity about food, Chengdu in the mid-nineties was a kind of paradise. It was all there, under your nose. In the backstreets, people cooked dinner for their families on charcoal braziers outside their cottages. The aromas of chilli-bean paste, Sichuan pepper and jasmine tea hung in the air on warm autumn nights. The most humble shack of a restaurant would often be serving Chinese food better than any you could find in London. Almost everyone in Sichuan seemed to love talking about cooking and eating. Surly taxi drivers waxed lyrical as they recounted to me, in great detail, their favourite recipes. Middle-aged couples slurping their lunchtime noodles would reminisce about the great beancurd chefs of the past. And I remember once listening to a radio broadcast in which a young female presenter recited the pleasures available at various city restaurants in tones that dripped with sensuality and greed. She murmured her way through an endless litany of dishes, lovingly describing their flavour and textures (‘Oh, the ox tripe, so crisp and snappy!’), her words interspersed with breathy sounds of appreciation and excitement. She could barely contain herself. And she was typical of the people I met. As a chef friend once said to me, Chengdu people have ‘hao chi zui’ — ‘mouths that love eating’.
在天生对美食无比好奇的人眼中，九十年代中期的成都称得上是天堂了。一切都在那里，你动动鼻子就能找到。小街小巷的人们在屋门口架起煤炭炉子，为一家人做晚饭。温暖的秋夜，空气中绵延不绝地流动着豆瓣酱、花椒和茉莉花茶的香味。那些最最简陋的“苍蝇馆子”端出来的中餐，也比在伦敦能找到的任何一家要好吃。好像几乎所有四川人都喜欢聊聊做饭和吃饭。那些最最沉闷或粗暴的出租车司机跟我说起他们最喜欢的菜谱，也是饱含深情、饶有兴致、极尽详细。“哧溜哧溜”吸着面条当午饭的中年夫妻，会怀旧地说起过去那些做豆腐菜做得特别地道的大厨。我还记得有一次听广播，一位年轻的女主持如数家珍地说着成都很多餐馆里的特色菜，听那语气就像在流口水，充满了愉悦与贪婪。她絮絮叨叨地报了一大串菜名，带着喜爱之情描述着味道和口感（“嚯哟，那个毛肚哦，爽脆得很！”）她不时地发出感叹的气声，充满欣赏与激动。她很显然是控制不住自己了。这种人我在四川见得太多了。就像一个厨师朋友跟我说的，成都人个个都有一张“好吃嘴”。
Within weeks of arriving in Chengdu, I was writing down my impressions of the food. Even on the first few pages of my first Sichuan notebook, dated September 1994, there are lists of fruits and vegetables on sale in the markets, and accounts of conversations about food. And once I had divested myself of my academic responsibilities, my casual food investigations took over my life. It was just irresistible. Every day brought new gastronomic discoveries: perhaps a street vendor specialising in a type of snack I’d never seen before, or a peasant scurrying along with baskets slung from a bamboo shoulderpole, bearing some unusual fruit or herbal tea. I leapt at every chance to spend time with Sichuanese friends and acquaintances in their kitchens. My friendship with Zhou Yu and Tao Ping, the couple whose hospitality had lured me to Chengdu in the first place, deepened. Now I went regularly to their small flat near the music conservatory for supper. Tao Ping’s grandmother, a ninety-year-old woman who was still walking up and down twelve flights of stairs every day with bags full of ingredients from the nearest market, invited us over for a feast of dry-fried beans and braised duck with wild yam jelly. My private Chinese teacher, Yu Weiqing, welcomed me into her home from time to time for a slap-up dinner: she taught me just as much about cookery as about the Chinese language.
到成都几个星期后，我就开始记录对食物的印象。我在四川使用的第一本笔记本，最早的日期是一九九四年九月。就连那本子上的最开始几页，也都列满了市场里卖的蔬菜瓜果，还记录着关于食物的对话。卸下学术任务的重担之后，休闲随意的食物调查就成了生活的主题。我就是忍不住啊。每天都有美食上新的发现：也许是街上某个小贩，专门卖一种我从来没见过的零食；或者农民扛着竹扁担急急地赶路，扁担两头晃荡的筐子里有什么不一般的水果或花草茶。每次有机会进四川的朋友或熟人家的餐厅，我都跳着脚就去了。周钰和陶萍，一开始本来就是这对夫妇的热情好客吸引我来到成都，而现在，我们的友谊又加深了。我经常去他们位于音乐学院附近的小公寓吃饭。陶萍九十岁高龄的奶奶每天还要从十二楼爬上爬下，提着附近市场买来的菜给我们做饭吃。什么干煸四季豆啊、魔芋烧鸭啊，简直不在话下。我的一对一中文老师，余老师，时不时地邀请我去她家吃顿讲究的晚饭。她不止耐心地教我中文，也教会了我很多厨艺。
The Sichuanese are famously warm and relaxed, as different from their buttoned-up northern compatriots as the Neapolitans are from the British. I lost count of the number of chance encounters that led to invitations to dinner from strangers. I spent a memorable afternoon chatting to a roast-duck vendor in a backstreet near the Minshan Hotel, as he primed his birds with malt-sugar syrup and vinegar, and then roasted them in a domed oven made from bricks and clay. We talked as the ducks roasted, and soon he was inviting me to dine in a restaurant where he had an interest. For years afterwards (until his duck shop was demolished by city developers), whenever I cycled past, he would rush out for a chat, and press into my hands a jar of some spicy pickle or fermented beancurd that he had been keeping for me.
四川人的热情和随性是出了名的。他们和自己沉默内敛的北方同胞相比，就像意大利人和英国人的区别。我偶遇陌生人就被邀请去吃晚饭的次数真是数也数不清。一个难忘的下午，在岷山饭店的后街，我跟一个卖烤鸭的人闲聊着。他用饴糖和醋给鸭子擦了身，然后放进一个拱形的砖土炉子里烘烤。鸭子一边烤着，咱俩一边聊天，不一会儿他就邀请我去他投了资的一家餐馆吃饭。之后的多年（直到开发商把他的烤鸭店给拆了），只要我骑着车经过，他就要跑出来跟我聊一会儿，往我手里塞一罐专门给我留的咸菜或者豆腐乳。
One public holiday, Zhou Yu and Tao Ping invited me to go with them on a trip out of town, to share a home-made hotpot with some friends. When we arrived, we went to the local market to buy ingredients, and then returned to the friends’ apartment to set up a potful of spicy broth over a gas burner on the kitchen floor. Sitting around it on little stools, we cooked our own lunch, dipping into the pot strands of enoki mushrooms, ribbons of beancurd, sweet-potato noodles and crunchy pieces of tripe. There was a tangible shift in mood as the meal progressed. In the beginning we were lively and animated, but gradually a deep stupor overcame us all, and we drifted off and fell asleep on armchairs, sofas, anywhere. It was only later, after a long, blissful siesta had restored me to my senses, that I noticed the enormous poppyheads bobbing around in the broth.
一个公众假期，周钰和陶萍邀请我跟他们出城去，和几个朋友吃顿家常的火锅。到了地方，我们先去当地的市场买食材，然后回到那些朋友的公寓，在厨房的煤气灶上架起一锅油辣辣的汤底。我们在小凳子上围坐一圈，自己煮菜当午饭。下的菜有一捆捆的金针菇、一张张的豆腐皮、一团团的红薯粉和一片片的脆毛肚。吃得越久，就越能明显感觉到大家情绪的变化。一开始我们热情高涨、兴奋活泼。但渐渐地，所有人都陷入了深深的慵懒中，变得迷迷糊糊的，随便找个扶手椅啊、沙发啊，躺下来就睡着了。到了后面，睡了一个香甜长觉的我醒过来，恢复清醒，才注意到锅里“咕噜咕噜”冒着好些罂粟壳。
Actually, though, you didn’t need poppyheads to unwind and lose your inhibitions in Sichuan. There was something in the air, in the dialect, in the people, and above all in the food: a warmth and a languor that melted away any English stiffness, like butter in the sun. My heart was clenched like a fist when I moved to Chengdu. I could barely communicate, except through food. But as the weeks drifted past, I felt myself softening. For the first time in my life I was freed of all duties and expectations; life was a blank slate.
其实在四川，要释放天性和放松情绪，完全不需要罂粟壳。这里的空气、方言都能让你有那种感觉，当然作用最大的还是食物：那种温暖和慵懒能融化任何英国式的刻板僵硬，如同阳光下的黄油。初到成都的时候，我的心还如同一个紧攥的拳头。除了通过食物，我几乎无法和当地人交流。然而，随着日子一天天悠闲而过，我感到自己慢慢放松了。小半辈子了，我还是第一次卸下所有的责任与期待，生活变成了一块白板。
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