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| In the mid 1970s, as the Pritikin diet drifted over the Westside of Los Angeles like a bland and joyless cloud, Sylvia Wu strategized. How could she keep big-ticket dishes like Peking duck on the menu at Madame Wu’s Garden when A-listers wanted more low-fat, low-salt, low-sugar foods? | 20世纪70年代中期，当普里提金饮食像一片平淡无奇的云朵飘过洛杉矶西部，伍郑镜宇开始制定自己的策略。当一线明星希望更多低脂、低盐、低糖的食物时，她该怎样在伍夫人花园的菜单上保留北京烤鸭这样的贵价菜肴呢？ |
| Ms. Wu devised a plan: Air-dry the ducks as usual, but render off as much fat as possible in the roasting process. Leave nothing but meat, wrapped in the finest, thinnest, crispiest shell of burnished skin, with no chewy fat underneath. She called this version, pretty honestly, “lower-fat” Peking duck. | 伍郑镜宇想出了一个办法：像往常一样把鸭子风干，但在烤制过程中尽量去掉脂肪。只留下肉，包裹在极薄极脆的鸭皮中，鸭皮下面没有难嚼的肥肉。她称这款烤鸭为“低脂”北京烤鸭，的确如此。 |
| Ms. Wu, who died last month at the age of 106, had a knack for culinary improvisation. At Madame Wu’s Garden, which she opened in 1959 and ran for nearly 40 years, her menus were constantly evolving, but peppered with regional deep cuts and then-hard-to-find dishes. To diners who’d never had Peking duck, the restaurant represented an imagined ideal of tradition and authenticity, but that image obscured her more complex work: Ms. Wu’s approach as a restaurateur was kinetic, profound and always strategic. | 上个月去世、享年106岁的伍郑镜宇非常擅长在烹饪方面临时发挥。在她于1959年开创并经营了近40年的伍夫人花园，她的菜单不断变化，但总会有小众的地方特色和当年很难找到的菜肴。对于从未吃过北京烤鸭的食客来说，这家餐厅代表着一种想象中的传统和本真理想，但这种形象掩盖了她更为复杂的工作：伍郑镜宇以活跃、深刻的方式经营餐厅，而且总有自己的策略。 |
| Her enthusiasm for the new was as strong as her reverence for the old, and she was always landing on another way to please her audience, grow her business and show off the finesse and beauty of Chinese cooking. She had moves. | 她对新事物充满热情，然而对旧事物也同样敬畏，她总有新花样来取悦受众，发展生意，展示中国烹饪的精巧和美丽。她有各种办法。 |
| At the height of her career, she appeared on television, taught sold-out cooking classes and wrote several books. She was a celebrity herself, more glamorous than many of the Westside power diners who came in. With her hair up in a glossy, braided bun, driving a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud (vanity plates: “MMEWU”), she wore impeccably tailored clothing, with a preference for silk, oversize tinted glasses and several huge, almost incandescent cocktail rings. | 在事业的巅峰时期，她登上电视，她的烹饪课座无虚席，还写过几本书。她本身就是个名人，比前来就餐的许多西洛杉矶显贵食客更有魅力。她把头发盘成光滑的发髻，开劳斯莱斯银云，定制车牌上写着“MMEWU”（伍夫人的缩写。——译注），一身无可挑剔的服饰，偏爱丝绸，戴超大号有色眼镜，手指上总有几枚巨大耀眼的鸡尾酒戒指。 |
| “Chinese friends would criticize the food, saying it wasn’t authentic,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 1998. “But I told them, ‘Look around. Do you see any Chinese dining here?’” | “中国朋友会批评这些食物，说它们不正宗，”她在1998年接受《洛杉矶时报》采访时说。“但我对他们说，‘看看周围。你看有中国人在这里用餐吗？’” |
| Ms. Wu was an immigrant from China who spoke fluent, accented English, and while authenticity was projected onto her, over and over again, she never seemed to chase it or measure herself by it. | 伍郑镜宇是来自中国的移民，说一口流利的、带口音的英语，虽然一再有人将她视为纯正地道的化身，但她似乎从来没有追求过地道，也不曾用它来衡量自己。 |
| Her regulars included Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow, Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Redford and Cary Grant. When Mr. Grant asked her for a “Chinese chicken salad” one night, she made a dish of fried won ton skins, rice noodles and shredded chicken, packed with scallions and dressed in mustard, soy sauce and sesame oil, loosely based on a banquet dish she remembered eating as a child. | 她餐厅的常客包括弗兰克·辛纳屈、米娅·法罗、伊丽莎白·泰勒、罗伯特·雷德福和加里·格兰特。一天晚上，格兰特点了一份“中国鸡肉沙拉”，她做了一道菜，用炸馄饨皮、米粉和鸡肉丝做成，撒上葱花，用芥末、酱油和芝麻油调味，大致是根据她记忆中小时候吃过的一道宴会菜做成。 |
| It was so popular, she added it to the menu, published the recipe in local newspapers and included it in her first cookbook. Ms. Wu helped write the blueprint for American Chinese chicken salad as we know it, more than a decade before Wolfgang Puck put his own version on the menu at Chinois, his French-Chinese restaurant still open in Santa Monica. | 这道菜非常受欢迎，以至于被她添加到菜单中，在当地报纸上发表了食谱，并把它收录在她的第一本烹饪书中。伍郑镜宇起草了我们所知的美式中国鸡肉沙拉的蓝图，比沃夫冈·帕克将自己的版本放在他的法式中餐厅Chinois的菜单上早了十多年（他的餐厅如今仍在圣莫尼卡营业）。 |
| When Madame Wu’s first opened, chop suey houses still ruled. Ms. Wu was a part of a wave of restaurateurs, including Joyce Chen, who opened Joyce Chen Restaurant in Boston in 1958, and Cecilia Chiang, who opened the Mandarin in San Francisco in 1962, who worked to expand ideas of their cuisine. And while it was powerful to shift the perception of Chinese food as strictly working-class fare, it could be frustrating. | 伍夫人餐厅刚开业时，主打杂碎的中餐馆依然是主流。伍郑镜宇是新一波餐厅老板中的一员，其中包括1958年在波士顿开了Joyce Chen餐厅的廖家艾和1962年在旧金山开了福禄寿餐厅的江孙芸，她们都在努力拓展自己的烹饪理念。虽然这有力地改变了人们对中餐是一种工薪阶层食物的刻板印象，但也可能令人沮丧。 |
| “I am pleased that journalists from the Western world were impressed by the excellence of Chinese cuisine,” she wrote in her 1973 cookbook, just after President Nixon’s visit to China, and I hear the words between gritted teeth. “But at the same time I am confused and just a little indignant over the ‘discovery’ that the Chinese are excellent chefs.” | “我很高兴中国美味打动了西方世界的记者，”她在1973年的烹饪书中写道，当时尼克松总统刚刚访问中国。而我感觉这些话有几分咬牙切齿的味道。“但与此同时，我对人们终于‘发现’中国人是优秀的厨师感到困惑，还有一点愤慨。” |
| Fifty years later, and that feeling Ms. Wu identified is more prevalent than it should be, still driving conversations around food and media, where cuisines are easily flattened and misrepresented — even through praise. | 五十年后，伍郑镜宇所指出那种感觉仍然过于普遍，而且仍在推动围绕食物与媒体的对话，在媒体上，美食很容易被扁平化、被歪曲——有时甚至是通过赞美。 |
| Sylvia Wu was born in Jiujiang, China, and raised in a wealthy family. As a child, she wasn’t allowed into the kitchen, where a wood-burning stove spat flames and ash under a wok the size of a card table. The kitchen was run by the family’s two cooks, who were managed by her grandfather. Ms. Wu lit a stove for the first time as an adult in New York, where she attended Columbia University and met King Yan Wu, who she would go on to marry. | 伍郑镜宇出生于中国九江，在一个富裕的家庭中长大。小时候，她家的厨房由两名厨师负责，而他们由她的祖父管理，厨房里有一个柴炉，喷吐着火焰与灰烬，上面放着一张牌桌大小的炒锅。伍郑镜宇是不能进入厨房的。她成年后第一次点起火炉是在纽约。当时她在纽约哥伦比亚大学上学，还遇到了她未来的丈夫伍竞仁。 |
| She learned to cook a deeper repertoire of Chinese dishes after her mother-in-law sent her back from a trip to Hong Kong with one of the family’s cooks, who taught her how to plan menus, shop and prep. Most of Ms. Wu’s wealthy Chinese friends in Southern California already employed Chinese cooks in their homes — they didn’t go out to restaurants for Chinese food. | 去香港拜访夫家后，婆婆让她带回家中的一位厨师，这位厨师教她如何规划菜单、购物和备菜，之后她学会了更多的中国菜。伍郑镜宇在南加州大多数富有的中国朋友都在家里雇了中国厨师——他们从来不去餐馆吃中国菜。 |
| Ms. Wu didn’t either. She was appalled by the food at American Chinese restaurants, and had the idea to build something closer to the places she went to dinner in Hong Kong — extravagant, fun, a little bit flashy. In 1959, her husband reluctantly gave her $10,000 to give it a go. | 伍郑镜宇也是这样。她对美国中餐馆的食物感到震惊，于是想开一个餐厅，更接近她在香港吃饭的地方——奢侈、有趣、有点浮华。1959年，她的丈夫不情愿地给了她一万美元，让她试一试。 |
| It was modest at first, with very little décor and no liquor license. But after a few years, she expanded Madame Wu’s Garden into a 11,000-square-foot space on Wilshire Boulevard that could seat 300 people. She made it dazzle with pagoda-style architectural details, stone waterfalls, imported art and a sculpture on the ceiling that rippled with gold. The aesthetic was quickly imitated, and co-opted by white restaurateurs. | 她的餐厅起初非常简陋，只有少量装饰，也没有贩酒执照。但几年后，她将伍夫人花园扩大到威尔希尔大道上一个1000平米的空间，可容纳300人。她用宝塔式的建筑细节、石头瀑布、进口艺术品，以及天花板上金色波纹的雕塑，让这座建筑光彩夺目。这种审美很快被白人餐馆老板们模仿和吸纳。 |
| The cooking classes she hosted at the restaurant doubled as testing sessions for her first cookbook. Some recipes were complex and demanding. Others had a decidedly semi-homemade feel to them. Many were a bit of both. | 她在餐厅里开设了烹饪课程，同时也是在为她的第一本烹饪书做测试。有些菜式很复杂，要求很高。也有一些明显是半家常菜的感觉。许多菜式是二者兼有。 |
| To make Ms. Wu’s Peking duck, for example, you needed to find a whole, freshly killed bird and clean it inside and out, then sew it shut with wire, creating a handle around the neck so it could be strung up and air-dried. A project! But there was no need to make bao from scratch. Ms. Wu suggested a tube of oven-ready biscuits, such as Pillsbury’s Butterfly Dinner Rolls. Split in two, cooked in a steamer, they were her shortcut to soft, pillowy buns. | 例如，要做伍郑镜宇的北京烤鸭，需要用刚刚宰杀的整鸭，里里外外清洗干净，然后缝合，在脖子上做一个把手，这样就可以挂起来风干。一项大工程！但是，没有必要从头开始做包子。伍郑镜宇建议买一罐可以放进烤炉的饼，比如皮尔斯伯里的蝴蝶晚餐卷(Butterfly Dinner Rolls)。切成两半，放进蒸笼里，这是她制作柔软的小包子的捷径。 |
| “Chinese people do not show affection by kissing and hugging,” she wrote, “but rather by preparing special dishes for those they want to please.” | “中国人不会通过亲吻和拥抱来表达感情，”她写道，“而是为他们想要取悦的人准备特别的菜肴。” |
| She might have been explaining her own work, pointing to the more tender, imperceptible mechanics behind her generous sense of hospitality. She might have been remembering how in Jiujiang, as a little girl, the moment her grandfather got word that freshwater crabs were in season, he headed to the market to pick some out, and prepared them himself. | 她可能是在解释她自己的工作，指出她慷慨好客的背后更温柔、更难以察觉的东西。她可能还记得在九江，当她还是个小女孩的时候，她的祖父一听到淡水蟹上市的消息，就会去市场挑选一些自己烹制。 |
| At the family dinner, he set the platter of crab directly in front of Ms. Wu. Fresh water crabs were her favorite, so she recognized this for what it was: a universal gesture of love. | 在家庭晚宴上，他把那盘螃蟹直接放在伍郑镜宇面前。淡水蟹是她的最爱，所以在她的观念里，这是一种通用的表达爱意的方式。 |
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