《外刊精读》半个世纪前她将地道中餐带到美国

Cecilia Chiang, Who Brought Authentic Chinese Food to America, Dies at 100 半个世纪前，她将地道中餐带到美国 By William Grimes Cecilia Chiang, whose San Francisco restaurant, the Mandarin, introduced American diners in the 1960s to the richness and variety of authentic Chinese cuisine, died on Wednesday at her home in San Francisco. She was 100. 周三，江孙芸于旧金山家中去世，享年100岁。上世纪60年代，她在旧金山创办的福禄寿餐厅让美国食客第一次享用到丰富多样的地道中餐。 Ms. Chiang came to the United States from China as a daughter of wealth. Once in San Francisco, she proceeded, largely by happenstance and almost single-handedly, to bring Chinese cuisine from the chop suey and chow mein era into the more refined one of today, enticing diners with the dishes she ate growing up in her family’s converted Ming-era palace in Beijing. 江孙芸是一位从中国来到美国的富家女。她一到旧金山，就非常偶然地几乎凭借一己之力，把中餐从炒杂碎和炒面时代，逐步发展到如今更加精致的样子。她在北京一处改建过的明朝王府中长大，她用从小在家中吃到的菜肴来吸引食客。 The Mandarin offered patrons unheard-of specialties at the time, like potstickers, Chongqing-style spicy dry-shredded beef, peppery Sichuan eggplant, moo shu pork, sizzling rice soup and glacéed bananas. 福禄寿餐厅供应了当时人们闻所未闻的特色菜，比如锅贴、重庆风味的香辣牛肉干、四川辣茄子、木须肉、锅巴汤和拔丝香蕉。 This was traditional Mandarin cooking, a catchall term for the dining style of the well-to-do in Beijing, where family chefs prepared local dishes as well as regional specialties from Sichuan, Shanghai and Canton. 这就是典型的福禄寿式烹饪，是对北京富庶阶层用餐风格的总称，他们的家庭厨师会制作本地菜肴，以及来自四川、上海和广东的地方特色菜。 Ms. Chiang was not a chef, nor was she a likely candidate to run a restaurant. Her father was a French-educated railway engineer. Her mother came from a wealthy family that owned textile and flour mills. After her parents died, Sun Yun managed the businesses’ finances while still in her teens. 江孙芸并不是厨师，看上去也不像会经营餐厅的人。她的父亲是一名曾在法国接受教育的铁路工程师，母亲则来自一个开纺织厂和面粉厂的富裕家庭。父母去世后，十几岁的孙芸就开始管理企业财务。 “I think I changed what average people know about Chinese food,” Mrs. Chiang told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2007. “They didn’t know China was such a big country.” ”我想我改变了普通人对中餐的认知，”江孙芸在2007年对《旧金山纪事报》说。“当时他们都不知道中国是个那么大的国家。”