Unit9ChineseFood课文翻译综合教程三.docVIP

Unit 9 Chinese Food Few things in life are as positive as food, or are taken as intimately and completely by the individual. One can listen to music, but the sound may enter in one ear and go out through the other; one may listen to a lecture or. conversation, and day-dream about many other things; one may attend to matters of business, and ones heart or interest may be altogether elsewhere... In the matter of food and eating however one can hardly remain completely indifferent to what one is doing for long. How can one remain entirely indifferent to something which is going to enter ones body and become part of oneself How can one remain indifferent to something which will determine ones physical strength and ultimately ones spiritual and moral fibre and well-being -- Kenneth Lo This is an easy question for a Chinese to ask, but a Westerner might find it difficult to answer. Many people in the West are gourmets and others are gluttons, but scattered among them also is a large number of people who are apparently pretty indifferent to what goes into their stomachs, and do not regard food as having any ultimate moral effect on them. How, they might ask, could eating a hamburger or drinking Coca Cola contribute anything to making you a saint or a sinner For them, food is quite simply a fuel. Kenneth Lo, however, expresses a point of view that is profoundly different and typically Chinese, deriving from thousands of years of tradition. The London restaurateur Fu Tong, for example, quotes no less an authority than Confucius (the ancient Sage known in Chinese as Kung-Fu-Tzu) with regard to the primal importance of food. Food, said the sage, is the first happiness. Fu Tong adds: Food to my countrymen is one of the ecstasies of life, to be thought about in advance; to be smothered with loving care throughout its preparation; and to have time lavished on it in the final pleasure of eating. Lo observes that when Westerners go to a restaurant they ask for a good tab