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| One of the first Chinese McDonald’s opened on April 23, 1992, in Beijing, the largest in the world, at the time. I never got to eat there: My mother was busy packing our things. Two weeks after it opened, she and I were on a plane bound for Montreal to join my father, who was then completing a postdoc that would leave him broke for years. What I remember most from that period was how little we did. My mother worked weekend shifts at a sock factory, while my father took over at home. He studied in our one-bedroom apartment, and I watched TV. On special occasions, we went to McDonald’s. |
| 1992年4月23日，麦当劳的首家中国店在北京开业，是当时世界上最大的门店。我从未去那里吃过，因为我妈正忙着收拾我们的东西。那家店开业两周后，她带着我坐上了飞往蒙特利尔的飞机，去找我爸，我爸当时正在做博士后研究，好几年都挣着很少的钱。那段时间给我留下的最深印象是，我们很少出门。周末的时候，我妈去一家袜子厂打工，我爸在家照看我。他在我们住的一居室公寓里读书，我看电视。有几次，我们例外地去了麦当劳。 |
| In Canada, just like in China, eating at McDonald’s was a novelty for us. In the wake of post-Mao economic reforms, the belated introduction of the Golden Arches to China represented a whole ethos about what constituted the good life. Fast food might connote easy accessibility or overindulgence in the West, but McDonald’s presented a different kind of comfort for my family and me. The cost of a burger was hardly a trivial thing for us at the time, and my parents didn’t actually treat me to meals there all that often. When they did, we always got takeout so we could eat our burgers and fries around our Formica dining table, on our own plates. The hope was to have our fast food as slowly as we could. |
| 在加拿大吃麦当劳，就像在中国一样，对我们来说是件新鲜事。毛泽东时代后的经济改革终于将“金拱门”引进了中国，那在当时曾代表了美好生活构成的全部意识。虽然快餐在西方也许意味着容易获得的或被过度享用的食物，但麦当劳对我和我家人来说代表着一种不同的享受。那时候，一个汉堡的价格对我们来说并非可以略而不计，而且我父母也不经常花钱让我在那里吃饭。他们花那个钱时，总是把东西买了带走，这样我们就可以坐在家里贴着抗热塑料的餐桌边，用自己的盘子吃我们的汉堡和薯条，希望能尽可能慢地享用我们的快餐。 |
| The Filet-O-Fish became my menu item of choice. Its virtues are too many to count; doing so would be futile. As McDonald’s only seafood-based option, the Filet-O-Fish’s semblance of relative health appealed to my parents. Luckily it was also McDonald’s most delicious item. It played to my Chinese palate: While other McDonald’s buns were toasted, the Filet-O-Fish’s was steamed, much like the baozi. From its honeyed starch to its tangy tartar and savory fillet, the taste of the Filet-O-Fish carries an ineffable umami-ness. At once sweet and sour, it reminds me of orange-chicken sauce: a plausibly Chinese flavor mass-produced in America. Eating one always felt transportive — the equivalent of Proust’s madeleine for my Chinese diasporic upbringing. |
| 麦香鱼成了我总在菜单上点的东西。它的优点太多了，不可能一一道出。麦香鱼是麦当劳唯一的海味选择，其相对健康的假象对我父母颇有吸引力。幸运的是，它也是麦当劳最美味的食物，迎合了我的中国人口味。麦当劳其他汉堡的包是烤的，麦香鱼的是蒸的，很像包子。从甜甜的面包、滋味沙拉酱到美味的鱼柳，麦香鱼的味道有一种难以形容的鲜。其酸甜参半的味道，让我想起在美国常见的所谓中国菜陈皮鸡。每次吃麦香鱼汉堡都有一种穿越感，对我这种在海外长大的中国人来说，它相当于普鲁斯特的马德琳小蛋糕。 |
| The Filet-O-Fish is the gold standard of fast food for many Asian-Americans, as well as other minority American communities. Invented by an Ohio franchise owner in 1962, the first Filet-O-Fish was the answer to the problem of McDonald’s falling sales on Fridays, when observant Catholics abstained from eating meat. Born from an attempt to market fast food to as many people as possible, the tasty little unit has since been further claimed by everyone from fish-loving Chinese-Americans to practicing Muslims to — well, anyone with taste. By 1965 the sandwich had gone national. |
| 麦香鱼对许多亚裔北美人和其他北美少数族裔社区来说是快餐的典范。它是俄亥俄州的一位特许经营者在1962年发明的，麦香鱼最初是为了解决麦当劳销售额每逢周五就下降的问题，因为遵守教义的天主教徒周五不吃肉。这个诞生于试图向尽可能多的人推销快餐的美味小东西，已进一步被爱吃鱼的华裔北美人、信奉伊斯兰教的人，以及可以说是任何爱吃的人宣称为其所好。这种三明治到1965年时已出现在美国各地的麦当劳店里。 |
| Its appeal is inscrutable, perhaps out of proportion to its paltry constituent parts. Consider the recognizably flaky fish patty, made from the ubiquitous Alaskan pollock. “Pollock is everywhere,” writes the marine fisheries biologist Kevin M. Bailey in the book “Billion-Dollar Fish.” “It is the pure white meat in fish sticks bought at Walmart and Filet-O-Fish burgers ordered in McDonald’s.” But you wouldn’t want the fish to be more interesting. The generic quality of pollock’s fishiness — common enough for various cuisines to lay claim to it — is part of its allure. So maybe what makes the sandwich beloved isn’t its taste at all, but the juxtaposition of its elements: A single fillet of fried fish, topped with a thin slice of American cheese and tartar sauce, all of it cradled in a bun whose impossible roundness suggests the triumph of industrial food production. |
| 它的吸引力令人难以理解，也许与其微不足道的成分不相称。以其用十分普遍的阿拉斯加狭鳕鱼做的鱼柳为例。“狭鳕鱼无处不在，”海洋渔业生物学家凯文·M·贝利(Kevin M. Bailey)在《亿万元之鱼》(Billion-Dollar Fish)一书中写道。“从沃尔玛买回来的鱼条、在麦当劳点的麦香鱼汉堡中的纯白鱼肉都是狭鳕鱼。”人们并不想把这种鱼变得更有滋味。狭鳕鱼的普通鱼味是其吸引力的一部分，其味道普通到足以让不同风味的烹饪都能将其入菜。也许麦香鱼让人喜欢之处不是其味道，而是其配料组合：一块炸鱼柳，上面加一片美国奶酪，再加上滋味沙拉酱，然后将所有这些夹在意味着食品工业生产硕果的圆得不能再圆的面包里。 |
| As a child, I was under the fantasy that my obsession with such a strange sandwich was eccentric. When I went to McDonald’s with friends who got Chicken McNuggets Happy Meals or cheeseburgers, ordering the Filet-O-Fish made me feel as if I was in on some sort of secret. After a few years in Montreal, my dad landed a good government job in Victoria, British Columbia. On our drive across Canada, we indulged in the prospect of my dad’s earning a real salary by eating at McDonald’s almost daily, a whirlwind of Filet-O-Fish meals (for me) and hamburgers (for my parents). But my experience was shattered when I, fancying myself different, pointed out that my parents both loved hamburgers while I, a renegade, preferred the Filet-O-Fish. “Well, I like the Filet-O-Fish most too,” my mother put it candidly. “But it is expensive, so we only buy it for you.” |
| 在小时候的想象中，我对这种奇怪的三明治的痴迷颇为异乎寻常。当我和朋友们去麦当劳时，他们点的都是麦乐鸡快乐套餐或芝士汉堡等，我点的却是麦香鱼，这让我觉得我似乎知道一个他们不知道的秘密。在蒙特利尔住了几年后，我爸在不列颠哥伦比亚省的维多利亚市找到了一份很好的政府工作。在开车穿越加拿大的路上，我们尽情享受了我爸将挣到真正薪水的前景：几乎每天都要在麦当劳吃饭，我吃麦香鱼套餐，我妈我爸吃汉堡。但当我自以为与众不同，指出我的父母喜欢汉堡，而我却不像他们，更喜欢麦香鱼时，我的经验受到了一次极大的打击。“嗯，我最喜欢的也是麦香鱼，”我妈直言道。“但麦香鱼太贵了，所以我们只给你买。” |
| These days, the sandwich is more expensive than ever; it’s also less beautiful than I remember. At some point, the Filet-O-Fish underwent rebranding: An ostentatious paper box replaced the modest blue wrapper, while what I remember being a full slice of cheese seems to have shrank by half. McDonald’s insists that the cheese has always been half a slice — so as not to overwhelm the fishiness of the fillet. Today’s unboxing experience most often reveals limp cheese sagging off the patty, frequently stuck to the ill-advised box. Where is the madeleine of my youth? Nowadays, a good Filet-O-Fish is hard to find. |
| 这些日子里，麦香鱼比以往任何时候都贵，也不像我记忆中的那么好。麦香鱼已在某个时候被重新包装：铺张的纸盒子取代了曾经朴素的蓝色包装纸。在我的记忆里曾是一整片的奶酪似乎缩小了一半。麦当劳坚称，奶酪一直是半片的，为的是不压过鱼柳的鱼味。如今打开盒子后最常看到的是，从鱼柳上掉下来的软塌塌的奶酪，还经常粘在不该用的盒子上。我小时候的玛德琳小蛋糕哪去了？现在很难找到好的麦香鱼。 |
| And yet, I eat the thing. I look for the Filet-O-Fish on every drunken late-night McDonald’s run, rushing to order two of them 10 minutes before closing. Yes, my adulthood has been marked by disappointments, but ultimately I take what I can get. The Filet-O-Fish remains my platonic ideal of fast food, however imperfect it has become. And perhaps its imperfections, the way it never quite lives up to the ideal, are what make the sandwich feel like home. |
| 但我还是把它吃完。每次深更半夜醉醺醺地跑到麦当劳时，我都期待着麦香鱼，赶在关门的十分钟前点两份。是的，我成年后吃的麦香鱼总让我失望，但我最终总是接受了我能得到的东西。麦香鱼仍然是我理想中的快餐，不管它已经变得多么不完美。也许正是它的不完美，它从未达到过某种程度的理想，才让这个三明治有种回家的感觉。 |
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