经济学人下载:盘子上的移民--中餐在美国的发展(2)

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”。