English translation of the Garden Menu and Jane Fonda Fitness Manual

Image source: Figureworm Creative

One

Samantha, one of the protagonists of the popular American drama "Sex and the City" many years ago, went to a bar after work for a drink and met Trump, who was blonde and had a straight suit. Trump, who made a cameo appearance in the show, left the next table after negotiating business, dropped a sentence of "Think about it, I will wait for you in the Office of Trump Tower" and left. "a Cosmopolitan and Donald Trump, you just don't get more New York than that." A cup of "cosmopolitan" and Trump, is there anything more New York than that?

At that time, Trump was still only the Trump of New York, and the "metropolis" was popular in the world because of "Sex and the City". Crafted with Jundu, this cocktail has been popular since Edouard Cointreau's 1875 vintage, and the recipe has only been passed down in the family. One hundred and twenty years later, another Edward of the Jundu family founded the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, which are contested by tens of thousands of books from more than 200 countries every year, and have become the "Oscars" of the world's food books. In 2019, a Chinese book born in the Qing Dynasty was prominently listed in the 25th award list.

The book, titled Recipes from the Garden of Contentment: Yuan Mei's Manual of Gastronomy, is the first full English translation of The Garden Menu. Presented in both Chinese and English, the 2018 edition has won consecutive awards since its publication and has been inducted into National Post's Best Cookbooks of 2018. In 2019, the publisher eliminated Chinese and renamed it The Way of Eating: Yuan Mei's Manual of Gastronomy.

Sean J. S. Chen is a Singapore-born scientist who grew up in North America. During his PhD, he began to pay attention to Chinese food culture. Because I always saw Yuan Ming's name when reading, I wanted to find an English translation of the "Suiyuan Food List". The search was very small in half a day: Fuchsia Dunlop had sporadic translations of Shark Fins and Peppers, and the writer Nicholas Richards had translated several fragments. He wanted to try it himself. After finding the original book on wikisource, he took notes and translated it while looking up the Kangxi Dictionary. In 2013, he began sharing translations on the blog The Way of Eating. It was well read and of interest to publisher Karen Christensen. Five years later, his translation was available.

Yuan Mei's spread in the English-speaking world actually has a long history. During his lifetime, the name of the poem was extremely famous, "from the secretary of state down to the market, everyone knows its name." Overseas Ryukyu has come to ask for his books. After his death, he "went out of the circle" and "went abroad" in the name of a gourmet.

In 1901, the famous British sinologist Zhai Lisi introduced Yuan Ming to English readers for the first time in his famous "History of Chinese Literature". In the more than 2,000-word introduction to Yuan Ming, Zhai Lisi talked about Yuan Ming's food concept and "Suiyuan Food List" in more than half of the text. He compared Yuan Mei to the eighteenth-century French gourmand Jean Antelme Bria-Savoran, arguing that only China in the world could match French cooking. Since then, Yuan Ming's image in the English-speaking world has been amiable and cute because of his love of food and fine life.

In 1956, the famous British sinologist Arthur Welly wrote a biography of Yuan Mei, Yuan Mei: Eighteenth Century Chinese Poet, published. The book was critically acclaimed and has been reprinted many times. In the seventh chapter of the book, he comments on Zhai Lisi's translation, "People who have heard of Yuan Ming's name in the West often associate his name with recipe books, mainly because Professor Zhai Lisi has selected and translated fragments of the Suiyuan Food List in his History of Chinese Literature and other works. Later, Lin Yutang's wife Liao Cuifeng and daughter Lin Xiangru, american historian Jacqueline M. Newman, etc., have done different forms of translation.

Two

Best-selling author Ruth Reichl is a major critic in the United States, serving as editor of the New York Times and editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine. She said of Sean J. S. Chen's translation: "Like many Chinese fans, I have heard of Yuan's great name and legend, and I have heard of his far-reaching book. Unfortunately, it has never been translated into English. Now, not only is there an English translation, but it's better than expected. ”

"Suiyuan Food List" returns to the vision of the Chinese people, it seems that it is only a matter of nearly two decades. In the first half of the twentieth century, there were many people who talked about food, but at that time, China's internal and external troubles, when they talked, they inevitably began to "feel the times and worry about the country". Kang Youwei praised German beer, but did not forget to emphasize: "German people are like Wodan, and their appearance is magnificent and crowns the world, then the merits of beer are also given." Suitable for our people to heal the disease of yellow thin and withered, beer is the most suitable for our people. Cai Yuanpei believes that although "Chinese food is better than Westerners", "the distribution of protein, sugar, and fat, and the need for vitamins are not considered", and "when eating together, there is a risk of infectious diseases under spoons and mixtures".

Fu Xia, a British writer who has lived in Chengdu for several years, also found that Chinese often talk about eating with "unspoken meaning". In Shark Fin and Pepper, she cites famous chefs in Chinese history as evidence, such as Yi Yin, who walked from the kitchen to the Prime Minister's Mansion, and Yi Ya, who cooked rice and offered rice— these two are good at cooking, but "cooking small fresh" is to "rule the country"; and there are few people like Yuan Ming who seriously talk about food itself.

The contemporary "unearthing" of the "Suiyuan Food List" probably began with the "Series of Ancient Books of Chinese Cooking". There are nearly 40 books in this set, published from the early 1980s to the 1990s. Most of them are traditional ancient books such as "Yi Ya's Will", "Wu's ZhongfengLu", "Suiyuan Food List", and also include Western food recipes such as "Book of Making Foreign Rice", which were published in the early 20th century. Among the various old books of "eating and drinking", "Suiyuan Food List" is obviously the most popular among readers, with illustrated editions, vernacular editions, annotated editions... Dozens of versions are flying all over the place. With the continuous improvement of new editions, contemporary Chinese with the improvement of material conditions have begun to have the leisure to pursue a good life on the tip of their tongues.

Three

The gentleman was far away from the kitchen, and no one seemed to believe that Yuan Ming would really go to the stove. Even foreigners like Fu Xia understand that "Yuan Ming is likely to be ten fingers in his life without touching the spring water of the Yang." (Fuxia Dunlop, Shark Fin and Pepper, translated by He Yujia, Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2018, p. 40) In the early 1980s, the famous American film star Jane Fonda published the Jane Fonda'Workout Book, which became a phenomenon-level bestseller for a while. Yuan Ming is good at eating, and Jane Fonda is in good shape. Yuan Is not good at cooking, and Jane Fonda is not a professional fitness instructor. But why are modern people willing to listen to Yuan Ming talk about eating, and follow Jane Fonda to practice standing up and squatting?

British sociologist Bowman believes that contemporary society is a fluid, liquid society. Once upon a time people needed leaders, mentors, or authorities who were responsible for telling you how to do better. In the light and fluid present, the leaders are still there, but the number has increased. Naturally, they cannot "hold power" for a long time, and they want to be the sole authority. They are more intimate and even more trivial, and they can no longer "persuade and seduce" the people by giving orders. (Sigismund Baumann, Fluid Modernity, p. 119)

Early Television cooking programs in China were often a combination of a professional chef and a host. The chef is responsible for cooking, the taciturn but skillful authority; the host is responsible for explaining and sending out the authoritative "orders". Now, no one is learning to cook on TV. In a variety of cooking short videos, the person in charge may be a humorous northeast sister-in-law, a funny Sichuan big brother, or a beautiful young woman of The Eastern Yingfeng. With knives in hand and fried and fried, they not only shared tips and tricks, but also synchronized daily happiness, bitterness and depression. Just like the food bestsellers in the book market, the authors are often not professional chefs, they talk about diet and "men and women", and they write about eating and drinking.

Bowman argues that in the example-authority relationship, the role of role model is the most important and the most needed. Julia Child, a famous American television chef in the last century, also studied at the French Le Cordon Bleu cooking school, but her style seems to be the root cause of her popularity. Childe is one meter nine tall, always wears a pearl necklace and a thin watch when cooking, egg liquid spilled on the stove top, it doesn't matter, just wipe it; when he tosses potatoes, he loses his hand, only catches a large half, no big deal, picks it up and throws it back into the pot. Her free-spirited personality, a momentary mess does not matter the cheerfulness, to the American audience "look, we can also do a French feast" confidence, this is the new type of "authority" and "role model". No wonder Cooking Essentials isn't as appealing as The Garden Menu, and the Jane Fonda Fitness Handbook is more popular than a professional fitness guide.

While Kang Youwei and Cai Yuanpei and other modern intellectuals talk about food, they do not forget to maintain national dignity and worry about the fortunes of the country and the people's livelihood. At present, when it comes to food, it is more "fake public welfare and private interests". The public's tongue-in-cheek concern is often wrapped in "public" "private topics", from the mystery of shiitake mushroom hearts and back-to-pot meat many years ago, to the rumored white truffle dinner of "not shouting to stop and always planing", as Baumann said: Private topics that were inconvenient to disclose before are invading public opinion. (Sigismund Baumann, "Fluid Modernity," p. 127) As long as it is attached to a name, various individual, private things are instantly "shared." Stars teach fitness, writers teach cooking, a New Yorker who doesn't like to drink "metropolis" is not a good columnist, a scientist who can't look up the Kangxi Dictionary, and a good translator.

(The author is an associate professor at Zhejiang University of Media and Communication, and the author of "New Taste: Western Food and Eastern Gradualness and Translation")