The comfort of strangers
陌生人的慰藉
Chinese restaurants began to open in America in the mid-19th century, clustering on the west coast where the first immigrants landed. They mostly served an Americanised version of Cantonese cuisine— chop suey, egg fu yung and the like. In that century and much of the 20th, the immigrants largely came from China’s south-east, mainly Guangdong province.
中餐馆于19世纪中叶开始在美国出现，并集中在第一批移民登陆的西海岸。他们提供的大多是美式粤菜——炒杂碎、芙蓉蛋等等。在那个世纪和20世纪的大部分时间里，移民主要来自中国的东南部，主要是广东省。
After the immigration reforms of 1965 removed ethnic quotas that limited non- European inflows, Chinese migrants from other regions started to arrive. Restaurants began calling their food “Hunan” and “Sichuan”, and though it rarely bore much resemblance to what was actually eaten in those regions, it was more diverse and boldly spiced than the sweet, fried stuff that defined the earliest Chinese menus. By the 1990s adventurous diners in cities with sizeable Chinese populations could choose from an array of regional cuisines. A particular favourite was Sichuan food, with its addictively numbing fire (the Sichuan peppercorn has a slightly anaesthetising, tongue- buzzing effect).
1965年的移民改革取消了限制非欧洲移民流入的种族配额后，来自其他地区的中国移民开始涌入。餐馆开始称他们的食物为“湖南”和“四川”，尽管它很少与这些地区的实际饮食有太多相似之处，但它比中国最早的菜单上的甜炸菜更多样化，口味也更丰富。到上世纪90年代，在中国人口众多的城市里，敢于冒险的食客们可以从一系列地方菜系中做出选择。其中最受欢迎的是川菜，它让人上瘾的是让人麻木的辣(花椒有轻微的麻醉和舌头嗡嗡的效果)。
Yet over the decades, as Chinese food became ubiquitous, it also—beyond the niche world of connoisseurs—came to be standardised. There are almost three times as many Chinese restaurants in America (41,000) as McDonald’s. Virtually every small town has one and, generally, the menus are consistent: pork dumplings (steamed or fried); the same two soups (hot and sour, wonton); stir-fries listed by main ingredient, with a pepper icon or star indicating a meagre trace of chilli-flakes. Dishes over $10 are grouped under “chef’s specials”. There are modest variations: in Boston, takeaways often come with bread and feature a dark, molasses-sweetened sauce; a Chinese-Latino creole cuisine developed in upper Manhattan. But mostly you can, as at McDonald’s, order the same thing in Minneapolis as in Fort Lauderdale.
然而，在过去的几十年里，随着中国食品变得无处不在，它也开始标准化——超越了鉴赏家的小众世界。美国的中餐馆(41000家)几乎是麦当劳的三倍。几乎每个小镇都有中餐馆，而且菜单通常都是一样的：猪肉饺子(蒸饺或煎饺)；同样的两种汤（酸辣汤和馄饨）； 按主要成分列出的炒菜，用辣椒图标或星星辣椒碎的含量。超过10美元的菜肴被归为“厨师特色菜”。在波士顿，外卖通常会搭配面包，配上深色的糖蜜酱；一种中国-拉美克里奥尔菜系，在曼哈顿上城发展起来。但大多数情况下，你可以像在麦当劳那样，在明尼阿波利斯点和劳德代尔堡一样的东西。
Until recently, the prices varied as little as the menus—and they were low. Eddie Huang, a Taiwanese-American restaurateur turned author and presenter, recounts how his newly arrived father kept his prices down because “immigrants can’t sell anything full-price in America.”
直到最近，价格的变化几乎和菜单一样小，而且价格很低。黄艾迪是一名台湾裔美国餐馆老板，后来转行当了作家和主持人，他讲述了他新到美国的父亲是如何压低价格的，因为“移民在美国卖不出全价”。

That, in truth, was a consoling simplification. Americans have traditionally been willing to pay through the nose at French or Italian joints (where, in fact, Latinos often do most of the cooking). And every city has its pricey sushi bars and exorbitant tapas restaurants (tapas, as one joke goes, is Spanish for “$96 and still hungry”).
事实上，这是一种令人宽慰的简化。传统上，美国人总是愿意花大价钱去法国或意大利餐馆(实际那里的大部分菜都是拉美人做的)。每个城市都有昂贵的寿司店和昂贵的西班牙小食馆(西班牙小食馆，就像一个笑话说的那样，西班牙语的意思是“花了96美元但还是很饿”)。
But Mr Huang is right that Americans have long expected Chinese food to be cheap and filling. One step up from the urban takeaway, with its fluorescent lighting and chipped formica counter, is the stripmall bistro with its imposing red doors and fake lions standing guard—sufficiently exotic to be special, but still affordable enough for a family to visit once a week when nobody feels like cooking.
但是黄先生是对的，美国人长期以来一直期望中国的食物便宜又可口。在配备荧光灯和有缺口的富美家柜台的城市外卖餐馆的楼上，是一家小型酒馆，它有气派的红色大门和守卫的假狮子——有足够的异国情调，很特别，但仍然足够经济实惠，没有人想做饭的时候，一个家庭每周去一次。
American dreams
美国梦
Even the superior outlets were cheap for what they served (and often still are). Consider the hand-ripped noodles with lamb at Xi‘an Famous Foods in lower Manhattan. A tangle of long noodles, each about the width of Elvis Costello’s ties in the late 1970s, is tossed with curls of braised lamb and a complex, incendiary sauce laced with cumin and chillies—all for just over $10, a fraction of the price of comparably accomplished dishes at smart restaurants nearby. True, Xi‘an Famous Foods has no waiters (diners carry their plates on plastic trays to bench seating). But its noodles are handmade, and the lamb dish may be the single best thing to eat in New York at any price.
即使是高档餐厅的服务也很便宜(现在仍然如此)。以曼哈顿下城西安名吃店的羊肉扯面为例。一堆长长的面条，每条都有埃尔维斯·科斯特洛在上世纪70年代末的领带那么宽，上面撒着一卷卷的炖羊肉和一种混合了孜然和辣椒的辣酱，所有这些菜的价格仅略高于10美元，与附近的高级餐厅里同样精致的菜肴的价格相比，只是九牛一毛。的确，西安名吃没有服务员(用餐者自己把盘子放在塑料托盘上拿到长凳座位上)。但它的面条是手工制作的，而羊肉可能是纽约不论价格高低最好吃的食物。
But now things are changing. Mr Huang sells deliciously pillowy stuffed buns in New York and Los Angeles for $5.50 each—or, as he puts it, “full fucking price”—and encourages other immigrants not to undervalue their work. Restaurants in Q’s bracket are cropping up not just in America’s Chinatowns but in the suburbs, where Chinese immigrants and their families have settled, following the classic strivers’ path. The median income of Chinese- Americans’ households is nearly 30% higher than the average. They are more than twice as likely as other Americans to have an advanced degree.
但现在情况正在改变。黄先生在纽约和洛杉矶卖美味松软的包子，每个5.5美元，或者，用他的话说，“全价”，黄先生还鼓励其他移民不要低估他们的工作价值。像Q这样的餐馆不仅出现在美国的唐人街，也出现在郊区，这里是中国移民和他们的家人定居的地方，他们遵循着经典的奋斗之路。美籍华人家庭的收入中位数比平均水平高出近30%。他们拥有高学历的可能性是其他美国人的两倍多。

Meanwhile, although racism persists, the pervasive discrimination of earlier ages has waned. Witness the presidential campaign of Andrew Yang, in which his ethnicity has scarcely been mentioned. Since the Chinese-American population is six times as big as 40 years ago, Americans overall are much more familiar with Chinese people and their cooking. All of which means that, in your correspondent’s fairly extensive experience, the new fancy breed of Chinese restaurants draws a heartening mix of Chinese and non-Chinese diners.
与此同时，尽管种族主义依然存在，但早期普遍存在的歧视已经减弱。看看杨安泽的总统竞选吧，他的种族背景几乎无人提及。由于美籍华人的人口是40年前的6倍，所以美国人对华人和中国式烹饪更加熟悉。所有这些都意味着，在本记者相当丰富的经验中，新型高档中餐馆令人振奋地吸引了一批中外食客。
Not everyone is enticed. The same cult of authenticity which decrees that good tacos only come from trucks posits that the best Chinese food is found in humble settings. That is as inaccurate as the snobbery that Mr Huang decries. Chinese chefs are as ambitious as any others; a bowl of noodle soup no more stands for all of Chinese cuisine than a slice of pizza does for Italian.
不是每个人都会被诱惑。同样的对正宗的崇拜，认为好的墨西哥玉米卷只能从卡车上运来，认为最好的中国食物是在简陋的环境中找到的。这和黄先生所谴责的势利一样不准确。中国厨师和其他人一样雄心勃勃；一碗面汤不能代表所有的中国菜，就像一片披萨不能代表意大利菜一样。
In any case, authenticity is a slippery commodity. Recipes constantly evolve as people move and mingle. The chillies now considered essential to Sichuan dishes were actually brought to China by Iberian traders in the late 16th century. Hot dogs were originally German, pizza Neapolitan, bagels Polish—but now they are all American, and like America, infinitely varied.
无论如何，真实性是一种难以捉摸的商品。食谱随着人们的移动和交流而不断演变。现在被认为是川菜必备的辣椒实际上是在16世纪晚期由伊比利亚商人带到中国的。热狗最初是德国的，比萨饼是那不勒斯的，百吉饼是波兰的——但现在它们在美国都有，而且像美国一样，变化无穷。
The goat ribs at Duck, Duck Goat, in Chicago’s trendy meatpacking district, are more Chinese-ish than Chinese. So is the place itself—headed by a non-Chinese chef and kitschily decorated with paper lanterns and bright redwalls. The ribs come as a mesh of burnished meat stilettos with a wonderful chew, the sweetness of the glaze giving way to the goat’s irresistible gaminess. They spark fights over who gets the last one. They are as inauthentic, and as imaginative and lovingly created, as Mr Chang’s scallion dough sphere—and as delicious, which in the end, is what counts.
Duck, Duck goat店里的山羊肋骨，在芝加哥时髦的肉类加工区，比中国菜更加具有中国特色。这家餐馆本身也是如此——它的老板不是中国人，店面却用纸灯笼和明亮的红墙装饰。肋骨就像一层层磨得锃亮的肉质细高跟，嚼起来很好吃，肉汁的甜味让位于羊肉那不可抗拒的野性。肋骨们争夺上桌的最后一个席位。它们和张先生的葱油泡饼一样不完全真实，一样富有想象力，一样充满爱意，一样美味，这才是最重要的。

来源：经济学人