Unit9ChineseFood課文翻譯綜合教程三共5

1、Unit 9Chinese Food"Few things in life are as positive as food, or are taken as intimately and completely by the individual. One can listen to music, but the sound may enter in one ear and go out through the other; one may listen to a lecture or. conversation, and day-dream about many other thin

2、gs; one may attend to matters of business, and one's heart or interest may be altogether elsewhere. In the matter of food and eating however one can hardly remain completely indifferent to what one is doing for long. How can one remain entirely indifferent to something which is going to enter on

3、e's body and become part of oneself? How can one remain indifferent to something which will determine one's physical strength and ultimately one's spiritual and moral fibre and well-being?"- Kenneth LoThis is an easy question for a Chinese to ask, but a Westerner might find it diffi

4、cult to answer. Many people in the West are gourmets and others are gluttons, but scattered among them also is a large number of people who are apparently pretty indifferent to what goes into their stomachs, and do not regard food as having any ultimate moral effect on them. How, they might ask, cou

5、ld eating a hamburger or drinking Coca Cola contribute anything to making you a saint or a sinner? For them, food is quite simply a fuel.Kenneth Lo, however, expresses a point of view that is profoundly different and typically Chinese, deriving from thousands of years of tradition. The London restau

6、rateur Fu Tong, for example, quotes no less an authority than Confucius (the ancient Sage known in Chinese as K'ung-Fu-Tzu) with regard to the primal importance of food. Food, said the sage, is the first happiness. Fu Tong adds: "Food to my countrymen is one of the ecstasies of life, to be

7、thought about in advance; to be smothered with loving care throughout its preparation; and to have time lavished on it in the final pleasure of eating."Lo observes that when Westerners go to a restaurant they ask for a good table, which means a good position from which to see and be seen. They

8、are usually there to be entertained socially - and also, incidentally, to eat. When the Chinese go to a restaurant, however, they ask for a small room with plain walls where they cannot be seen except by the members of their own party, where jackets can come off and they can proceed with the serious

9、 business which brought them there. The Chinese intentions "are bothhonourable and whole-hearted: to eat with a capital E.Despite such a marked difference in attitudes towards what one consumes, there is no doubt that people in the West have come to regard the cuisine of China as something spec

10、ial. In fact, one can assert with some justice that Chinese food is, nowadays, the only truly international food. It is ubiquitous. Restaurants bedecked with dragons and delicate landscapes - serving Such exotic as Dim Sin Gai (sweet and sour chicken), and Shao Shing soup, Chiao-Tzu and Kuo-Tioh (no

11、rthern style), and Ging Ai Kwar (steamed aubergines) - have sprung up everywhere from Hong Kong to Honolulu to Hoboken to Huddersfield.How did this come about? Certainly, a kind of Chinese food was exported to North America when many thousands of Chinese went there in the 19th century to work on suc

12、h things as the U.S. railways. They settled on or near the west coast, where the famous or infamous "chop suey joints" grew up, with their rather inferior brand of Chinese cooking. The standard of the restaurants improved steadily in the United States, but Lo considers that the crucial fac

13、tor in spreading this kind of food throughout the Western world was population pressure in the British colony of Hong Kong, especially after 1950, which sent families out all over the world to seek their fortunes in the opening of restaurants. He adds, however, that this could not have happened if t

14、he world had not been interested in what the Hong Kong Chinese had to cook and sell. He detects an increased interest in sensuality in the Western world: "Colour, texture, movement, food, drink, and rock music all these have become much more part and parcel of the average person's life than

15、 they have ever been. It is this increased sensuality and the desire for greater freedom from age-bound habits in the West, combined with the inherent sensual concept of Chinese food, always quick to satisfy the taste buds, that is at the root of the sudden and phenomenal spread of Chinese food thro

16、ughout the length and breadth of the Western World."There is no doubt that the traditional high-quality Chinese meal is a serious matter, fastidiously prepared and fastidiously enjoyed. Indeed, the bringing together and initial cutting up and organising of the materials is about 90% of the actu

17、al preparation, the cooking itself being only about 10%. This 10% is not, however a simple matter. There are many possibilities to choose from; Kenneth Lo, for example, lists forty methods available for the heating of food, from chu or the art of boiling to such others as ts 'ang , a kind of sti

18、r-frying and braising, t'a , deep-frying in batter, and wei , burying food in hot solids such as charcoal, heated stones, sand, salt and lime.The preparation is detailed, and the enjoyment must therefore match it. Thus a proper Chinese meal can last for hours and proceed almost like a religious

19、ceremony. It is a shared experience for the participants, not a lonely chore, with its procession of planned and carefully contrived dishes, some elements designed to blend, others to contrast. Meat and fish, solids and soups, sweet and sour sauces, crisp and smooth textures, fresh and dried vegetab

20、les - all these and more challenge the palate with their appropriate charms.In a Chinese meal that has not been altered to conform to Western ideas of eating, everything is presented as a kind of buffet, the guest eating a little of this. a little of that. Individual portions as such are not provide

21、d. A properly planned dinner will include at least one fowl, one fish and one meat dish, and their presentation with appropriate vegetables is not just a matter of taste but also a question of harmonious colours. The eye must be pleased as well as the palate; if not, then a certain essentially Chine

22、se element is missing, an element that links this cuisine with that most typical and yet elusive concept Tao.Emily Hahn, an American who has lived and worked in China, 'has a great appreciation both of Chinese cooking and the "way" that leads to morality and harmony. She insists that &

23、quot;there is moral excellence in good cooking", and adds that to the Chinese, traditionally, all life. all action and all knowledge are one. They may be chopped up and given parts with labels, such as "Cooking". "Health", "Character" and the like. but none is in r

24、eality separate from the other. The smooth harmonies and piquant contrasts in Chinese food are more than just the products of recipes and personal enterprise. They are an expression of basic assumptions about life itself.中餐生活中很少有什么東西象食物這樣真切實在,或者說那么徹底的為個人接納吸收. 一個人可能在聽音樂,但是音樂可以從一只耳朵進從另一只耳朵出；一個人可以在聽講座

25、時胡思亂想；一個人可以在料理生意上的事務(wù)而他的心思和興趣另有所屬.O而在吃飯就餐時,一個人幾乎不可能長時間的對自己正在做的事完全無動于衷.一個人怎么能對即 將進入身體并成為身體一局部的東西保持絕對的無動于衷呢？ 一個人怎么能對即將決定自 己體力以及最終決定自己的精神和道德品質(zhì)以及幸福安康的東西無動于衷呢？肯尼斯洛這是一個中國人常問的問題,而西方人卻很難作答.在西方,很多人都是美食家,還 有其他一些是暴飲暴食者,而混雜于這兩者中間的還有一種對吃進肚子的食物漠不關(guān)心的. 這些人也許會問,吃一個漢堡,喝點可口可樂就會變成圣人或罪人？對于他們來說,食物 就是一種能量.肯尼斯 洛認卻表達了一種截然不同的

26、,典型的中國化的觀點.這種觀點源于從幾千年 中國文化.例如,一家倫敦餐館的董福就引用了如同孔夫子中國人陳這位古代圣人為孔 夫子的權(quán)威人士的話.圣者言,食乃是人生最大的幸福.董福還說：寰物對中國人來說是生活中的一大樂事,需要預(yù)先準備,需要精心烹飪,還要肯花時間去享受吃得樂趣.洛發(fā)現(xiàn)西方人進餐館時都會要個不錯的桌位,也就是自己可以看到他人,他人也可以 看到你的好位子.他們?nèi)ツ抢锿ǔＶ皇且环N社交娛樂,同進附帶著吃些什么.但中國人卻 不一樣,他會選一個除了聚會成員誰都看不到的地方,這樣他們可以很隨便的脫掉外套, 可以開始這件嚴肅的事情-吃飯,那才是他們來這的目的.中國人的意圖是高尚的,是全心全意的,即

27、吃飯是頭等大事.盡管對于吃什么的態(tài)度很不一樣,但勿庸疑置疑的是,西方人已經(jīng)開始成認中國飲食 的與眾不同.實際上,他們可以很公正地斷言,中餐是當今世界唯一真正意義上的國際飲 食,它無處不在.從香港到火奴魯魯,從呼伯肯到韓茲弗爾德,隨處看見刻有龍騰的圖案 和精致風景畫的中式餐廳,經(jīng)營者各種異國風味的糖醋雞、紹興湯、燒酒、鍋貼北方味 和清蒸茄子等.這是怎么回事呢？十九世紀成千上萬的工人去美國去做諸如修建鐵路之事時,食物也 隨之傳到了北美.他們在美國西海岸或靠近西海岸的地方定居,在那里知名的、不知名的雜炫店開始風行起來,經(jīng)營的都是些低檔次的中國菜.在美國,這些餐館的檔次在穩(wěn)步提升.但洛認為促使中餐在西方世界流行起來的關(guān)鍵因素在于英國殖民地一一香港的巨大人口壓力.特別是 20世紀50年代以后,許多家庭都想到世界各地開餐管賺錢.他還說, 如果世界對香港華人的烹飪和經(jīng)營不感興趣的話,也不可能發(fā)生這樣的