中國人心繫中式早餐 豆漿油條大綱

The culinary colonisation of the globe may now have us all eating the same old margherita pizzas and arrabiata pastas. But there is one last bastion of gastronomic independence: breakfast. The things we can bear to put in our stomachs right after rising are often the Most culturally authentic things about us. And nowhere is that truer than in China.
烹飪方式在全球的殖民式推廣，或許讓我們現在全都吃着一樣的傳統瑪格麗特比薩和香辣番茄意大利麪。但還有最後一座堡壘在堅守着烹飪方式獨立：早餐。我們能忍受一起牀就吃下肚的東西，從文化角度而言往往是最真實地反映我們是誰的東西。而中國比其他任何地方都更符合這句論斷。

Nobody loves things western more than the Chinese, but when the sun comes up on any Chinese city the east dominates the breakfast trade. Like their ancestors before them, even the most westernised Shanghainese queue up before bamboo towers of steamed buns, spitting woks of crispy bottomed dumplings and steaming vats of rice gruel, to eat food that proudly declares its Chineseness.
沒有哪個民族比中國人更喜愛西方的東西，但在中國任何一座城市，當太陽升起的時候，早點生意絕對是“東風壓倒西風”。哪怕是最西化的上海人，也會像他們的祖輩一樣，在碼得高高的一籠籠包子，一鍋鍋滋滋作響的鍋貼，和一桶桶熱氣騰騰的米粥前排隊等候，以享用這些自豪地宣告自己中國身份的食物作早餐。

They’ve got nothing against a good cornflake here or there, just for variety, or even an Egg McMuffin on the run, but a soup-filled bun made with dollops of pork fat — the much-loved Shanghai shengjian mantou — goes straight to the heart of mainlanders like no cornflake ever could. And of course, all that fat, salt and carbohydrate goes straight to the heart muscle too. But reason not the nutrients: at its best, breakfast is not just food, it is more like love.
中國人對偶爾吃一頓可口的玉米片早餐也不排斥，但只是爲了換換口味，趕時間的時候他們甚至會匆匆忙忙抓一個吉士蛋麥滿分當早餐，可是隻有飽含湯汁的生煎饅頭（上海人的最愛）才能直抵中國人的心房，那是任何玉米片永遠到不了的地方。當然啦，那裏面飽含的脂肪、鹽和碳水化合物也會直抵心肌。但別拿健康說事了，最好的早餐不僅是食物，它更像是一種“愛”。

One young millennial queueing at the neighbourhood “baozi” or steamed bun stall in Shanghai’s former French concession, said he was there for a bit of a bun “chaser” to the bowl of Cheerios he had consumed at home. East meets west in this young man, who says he’s just as happy to draw from either menu for his first meal of the day. But when it comes to taste? China wins hands down.
一個“千禧”世代的年輕人，正在上海前法租界居民區的包子鋪排隊買包子。這位年輕人說自己在家已經吃了一碗脆穀樂(Cheerios)，來這兒想再吃點包子，補充點“硬貨”。東西兩種文化在這個年輕人身上交匯，他說作爲一天之中的頭一餐，中式和西式早餐都能讓他吃得很開心。但論及味道，中餐毫不費力地贏了。

Wu Genfa, a baozi shopper old enough to be his grandfather, is having none of this fusion approach. “I don’t like foreign breakfast,” he says unapologetically. “We’ve been eating Chinese food for decades and if we suddenly change to foreign food, our stomach can’t get used to it,” he says.
隊伍裏一位年紀足以當那位年輕人祖父的食客，則完全無法接受中西混搭的吃法。他的名字叫吳根發。“我不喜歡外國的早餐。”他理直氣壯地說，“我們已經吃了幾十年中國食物，如果突然改吃外國食物，我們的胃習慣不了。”

China’s stubborn adherence to its bun-and-rice-gruel antecedents means that even western fast food restaurants such as KFC have to learn to wrap a steamed bun to survive in the mainland breakfast market. In fact, KFC’s rice porridge with pork and hundred-year-old egg is so popular at breakfast time — paired with a deep fried pastry or “youtiao” for a set meal as low as $1 — that it’s often sold out by the time I get there.
中國對包子、米粥等傳統食物的頑固堅守，意味着即使是肯德基(KFC)這類西方快餐店都得學着做包子，才能在中國的早餐市場上生存。事實上，肯德基早餐時間供應的皮蛋瘦肉粥（原文稱皮蛋爲“百年老蛋”(hundred-year-old egg)——譯者注）配油條套餐（該套餐售價8元人民幣，約合1美元）極受歡迎，我去的時候經常已經賣光了。

In a city such as Shanghai, which celebrates its futuristic skyscrapers and hides historic neighbourhoods out of embarrassment, eating street food for breakfast may be the closest that most westerners get to traditional Chinese culture. And the best way to get up to speed on where to go — and how to tell a bun from a dumpling — is to take the “Street Eats Breakfast” tour, run by the offbeat guides UnTour.
在上海這樣一座爲那些現代化摩天大樓而歡慶，而尷尬地把歷史悠久的老街區藏起來的城市裏，去街頭小吃攤點吃早餐可能是大多數西方人與傳統中國文化最近距離的接觸。而想了解當下吃早餐的好去處，以及分清包子和鍋貼，最佳方案就是參加另類旅遊社UnTour組織的“街頭小吃早餐”之旅。

When the FT recently tagged along, Pennsylvanian Mitch Conquer, our guide, taught us everything from how to slurp the soup out of scalding dumplings, to the creation myth of the baozi (which holds that the buns were filled with meat and shaped like human heads to offer as sacrifices when plague hit a Chinese army nearly two millennia ago). Rival that, you cornflake connoisseurs.
英國《金融時報》近日也參加了一次。我們的導遊米奇•康克爾(Mitch Conquer)來自美國賓夕法尼亞州，他教給了我們很多知識，從如何從滾燙的鍋貼裏吸出湯汁，到包子誕生的故事（傳說將近兩千年前，一隻中國軍隊遭遇瘟疫，人們用麪皮包上肉餡，捏成人頭的形狀，當做祭品供奉，這就是包子）。玉米片行家們，你們拿什麼跟這個比？

But for all that Shanghai loves its buns, street eats of all varieties are under threat in China, says Anna Greenspan, author of Shanghai Future: Modernity Remade. Soon after I moved to China in 2008, for example, the city tore down one of the most famous and best-loved food streets, Wujiang Road, leaving Starbucks, McDonald’s and Subway in its place. “In the developed world, there is a renaissance of street food culture, with the food trucks,” she says. Not so in China, where street food markets are seen as unhygienic, noisy and just plain un-futuristic. In December, yet another famous Shanghai food street was demolished.
儘管上海人如此喜愛他們的包子，但《上海未來：重建現代性》(Shanghai Future: Modernity Remade)一書的作者安娜•格林斯潘(Anna Greenspan)說，在中國，各種街頭小吃都正面臨威脅。舉個例子，2008年我剛到中國不久，上海拆掉了最著名、最受歡迎的美食街之一，吳江路小吃街，現在那裏只有星巴克(Starbucks)、麥當勞(McDonald's)和賽百味(Subway)了。安娜•格林斯潘說：“在發達國家，一輛輛流動食品車所代表的街頭食品文化正在復興。”在中國則不是這樣，街頭小吃市場在這裏被認爲是不衛生的、嘈雜的，而且毫不現代化。去年12月，又一條上海著名的美食街被拆除。

To add insult to injury Shanghai’s largest state-owned food group, Bright Food, recently bought the British breakfast icon Weetabix, and is working hard to introduce western shredded wheat and milk culture to China. Good luck with that. Weetabix seems to be tackling the snack market first, recently introducing green tea and dark chocolate Alpen cereal bars, just for the China market. But outside the Jiadeli supermarket, opposite the bun stall where UnTour took us, Yue Yumei, 53, says she’s never even heard of Weetabix. Vive la dumpling, I say: let them eat street food.
無異於往傳統街頭小吃傷口上撒鹽的是，上海最大的國營食品集團光明食品(Bright Food)最近收購了英國代表性早餐食品品牌維他麥(Weetabix)，而且該集團正努力將西方的牛奶麥片文化引入中國。祝他們好運吧。維他麥似乎想先打入零食市場，近來推出了專門面向中國市場的綠茶和黑巧克力歐倍(Alpen)穀物棒。但在一家“家得利”(Jiadeli)超市外面，就在UnTour帶我們去的一家包子鋪對面，53歲的嶽玉梅說她從沒聽說過維他麥。鍋貼萬歲，我要說，他們想吃街頭食品就讓他們吃吧。