纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英在中国蛋炒饭惹到了谁
December 20, 2023 6 min 1272 words
这篇报道揭示了中国言论限制的荒谬之处。一个普通的蛋炒饭视频，因为发布日期和历史事件的巧合，竟然引起了中国政府和社交媒体的愤怒。这反映了中国言论受限的程度，即使是烹饪这样的安全话题也不能幸免。文章指出，中国公共领域的一切都变得政治化，言论自由越来越受到限制，人们需要通过暗语和代码避免触及敏感话题。 报道中提到的厨师王刚，一个以美食为主题的博主，因发布蛋炒饭视频而受到指责，最终不得不道歉并删除视频。这表明即便在相对安全的领域，人们也很难逃脱政治的影响。报道还提到了类似事件，说明这并非个案，而是中国社会中对言论自由的一种模式性打压。 整体而言，这篇报道揭示了中国社会中言论受限的局面，以及对于普通人来说，即便在看似无害的领域，也要小心避免触及政治敏感话题的艰难处境。
The United States is entangled in an emotional debate about antisemitism and free speech on college campuses. The latest speech debate in China is about a chef’s video on how to make egg fried rice.
美国正处于一场关于反犹主义和大学校园言论自由的激烈辩论中。中国最新上演的一场口舌之争则是关于一名厨师教蛋炒饭的视频。
Egg fried rice is a staple of Chinese home cooking and one of the first dishes many Chinese learn to cook. Think of mac and cheese in America. That was probably why Wang Gang, one of China’s most popular food bloggers, has made multiple recipe videos about the dish in the past five years. His “perfect” fried rice recipes attracted reviews, and reviews of those reviews.
Then one of those videos drew the wrath of the official Chinese media and internet.
然后，其中一条视频触怒了中国官媒和互联网。
His offense? He posted an egg fried rice video on Nov. 27, two days after the anniversary of the death of Mao Anying, son of the founder of the People’s Republic of China, Mao Zedong. Mao Anying was killed in the Korean War while, legend has it, cooking egg fried rice.
他犯了什么错？11月27日，也就是中华人民共和国创立者毛泽东之子毛岸英忌日的两天后，王刚发布了一条蛋炒饭视频。据传言，毛岸英在朝鲜战争中阵亡时正在做蛋炒饭。
For over a decade, China’s liberal-leaning crowds have celebrated Nov. 25 as China’s Thanksgiving Day. They believe that if the young Mao had lived, China would have become a hereditary dynasty like North Korea. China’s internet and official media have disputed the account of his death, which was based on memoirs of retired generals, and consider it an insult to both Mao Junior and Mao Senior.
It’s a precarious time for any Chinese person who engages with the public: academics, writers, journalists, entertainers and social media influencers. Cooking is one of the safest topics, and Mr. Wang, who started working at restaurants at 15, sticks strictly to food on his show. Still, he was dragged into a political whirlpool.
从学者、作家、记者、艺人再到社交媒体网红，对任何一位能接触到公共领域的中国人来说，当下都是个危机四伏的时代。烹饪是最安全的话题之一，从15岁起就在餐馆打工的王刚在节目里一直只谈美食。尽管如此，他还是被卷入了政治漩涡。
On social media sites, Mr. Wang was called “a traitor,” “a troublemaker” and “the dregs of society.”
在社交媒体网站上，王刚被称为“汉奸”、“挑事者”和“人渣”。
Everyday life is being politicized in China. Public expression has become impossible when too many things are taboo. It’s difficult to track, and sometimes impossible to know because of censorship, what can and cannot be said in the country.
中国的日常生活正在被政治化。当太多东西成为禁忌，公开表达已经无从说起。因为审查的存在，很难追踪记录——有时甚至无法确定——在这个国家什么可以说，什么不能说。
The “egg fried rice” meme emerged more than a decade ago when the Chinese internet, although censored, was freer. Now there are barely any dissenting voices.
关于“蛋炒饭”的米姆在十几年前就出现了，当时的中国互联网虽然受到审查，但更加自由。如今，几乎听不见任何反对的声音了。
To evade censorship on the internet, Chinese resort to code words — so much so that academics and writers lament the deterioration of the Chinese language. Young people often use abbreviations of Pinyin, the Romanized spelling of Chinese characters, for anything that can be construed as sensitive or taboo. I’ve seen Chinese criticizing my columns about the Chinese government by saying they loved their “zf,” abbreviation for Zhengfu, or government. Even when defending the state, they knew they were venturing into treacherous terrains.
为了躲避互联网审查，中国人开始使用暗语，以至于学者和作家都在哀叹中文的退化。年轻人常常用拼音缩写来指代任何可能被视为敏感或禁忌的内容。我见过有中国人批评我写中国政府的专栏文章，称他们热爱“zf”——这是“政府”的拼音缩写。即便是在捍卫国家，他们也清楚自己正在危险领域中试探。
China’s sophisticated and effective censorship system paradoxically leaves people in the dark about what they are not supposed to say.
自相矛盾之处在于，中国复杂而高效的审查制度又让人压根不知道什么是不能说的。
After Hu Jintao, the former Chinese leader, was abruptly escorted out of a highly choreographed meeting of the Communist Party elite last year, the social media accounts of many people who posted about it were suspended. They tended to be people who didn’t usually talk about politics and didn’t know the boundaries of state censorship. Several people with experience commenting on politics told me they knew they should either use code words or abstain altogether.
去年，当中国前任领导人胡锦涛在一场精心安排的党内高层会议上被突然带离，许多发布相关内容的社交媒体账号被封。这些人通常并不谈论政治，也不了解国家审查的红线。几位有政治评论经验的人告诉我，他们知道自己要么使用暗语，要么就干脆闭嘴。
I’ve written about how new recruits at a censorship factory had to be taught about history, such as the Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in June 1989 in which hundreds of innocent people were killed, so they would know what to look out for.
我曾写过审查机构的新员工如何学习历史知识，这样他们才知道该注意什么内容，比如1989年6月对天安门民主抗议者的镇压事件，成百上千无辜民众在该事件中丧生。
Around the anniversary in 2022, Li Jiaqi, China’s top livestreaming salesperson, pitched his viewers on a tank-shaped ice cream cake. He was cut off midstream and went silent for three months.
在2022年“六四”纪念日前后，中国直播带货“一哥”李佳琦向观众推销了一块坦克形状的冰淇淋蛋糕。他的直播被切断，随后停播了三个月。
The symbolism of the egg fried rice meme is much less well known than that of tanks in Chinese online discourse. It doesn’t exist in the consciousness of the vast majority of Chinese who were taught by their government and their parents to keep their heads down and not mind politics.
在中文网络环境中，蛋炒饭米姆的象征意义远不如坦克那么出名。绝大多数中国人一直都被政府和父母教导不要惹麻烦，不要掺合政治，他们根本不知道那是什么意思。
Mr. Wang, a.k.a. Chef Wang, was born on June 11, 1989, a week after the Tiananmen Square massacre. He grew up in a village in Sichuan and dropped out of school at 15. Mr. Wang, who declined to comment, probably didn’t have much access to information outside of what the government wanted him to know.
王刚出生于1989年6月11日，当时距离天安门广场的屠杀刚过去一周。他在四川农村长大，15岁就辍学了。除了政府希望他知道的信息之外，他可能没有多少获取信息的途径。他拒绝为本文置评。
Mr. Wang starts each video with a greeting, “Hello, I’m Wang Gang,” speaking Mandarin Chinese with a Sichuan accent. He combines his farm boy persona with professionalism while working behind his wok stations, cooking dishes like a farm-style breakfast and Mapo tofu. His following has grown to tens of millions on Chinese social media sites, plus two million subscribers on his YouTube channel.
He calls himself a “grass-roots head chef,” according to his intros. “I’m grateful for every experience, thankful for this era and sincerely hope that my videos can assist everyone, enabling them to step into the kitchen and fall in love with cooking.”
王刚在个人介绍中自称是“草根厨师长”。“我感恩每一段经历，感恩这个时代，也真心希望通过我的视频可以帮到大家，让大家走进厨房，爱上厨房。”
“Thankful for this era” is the politically correct way to say that rather than attribute his success exclusively to his personal talent and efforts, he sees it as part of China’s success as a nation. That shows Mr. Wang’s awareness of the rules for staying out of trouble.
“感恩这个时代”是一种政治正确的说辞，即不将他的成功完全归功于自身的才华和努力，而是将其视为中国作为一个国家取得成功的一部分。这说明了王刚是懂得如何避免麻烦上身的。
Some nationalist bloggers pointed out that Mr. Wang had posted egg fried rice videos around the same time in the past. They said he also posted the recipes around Oct. 24, Mao Anying’s birthday.
一些民族主义博客指出，王刚在过去差不多同一时间也发布过蛋炒饭视频。他们说，他还在10月24日毛岸英生日前后发布这些食谱。
The fact is that Mr. Wang has posted various fried rice recipes over the years, and he isn’t the only one to come under attack for it.
事实是，王刚多年来发布了各种炒饭食谱，而他并不是唯一一个因此受到攻击的人。
The Weibo account of The People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, was criticized for reposting Mr. Wang’s video of egg fried rice on Oct. 24, 2018. Around the same time in 2021, the Weibo account of a state-owned telecommunications company posted the dish; its account was suspended. Last month, two elementary schools in southeastern Zhejiang Province held an egg fried rice contest with 1,000 participants on the same day that Mr. Wang posted his recipe. The schools were attacked by nationalists on social media and deleted their posts.
2018年10月24日，中国共产党官方报纸《人民日报》的微博账号因转发王刚的蛋炒饭视频而受到批评。大约在2021年的同一时间，一家国有电信公司的微博账号发布了这道菜；该公司的账户已被暂停。上个月，浙江省东南部的两所小学在王刚发布菜谱的同一天举行了蛋炒饭比赛，有1000人参加。这两所学校在社交媒体上遭到民族主义者的攻击，并删除了帖子。
The consequences can be much worse. In 2021 police in southern Jiangxi Province detained a man for 10 days after he posted a comment on Weibo saying, “Thank you, egg fried rice.”
可能还有更严重的后果。2021年，江西省警方将一名男子拘留了10天，原因是他在微博上发表了一条评论：“感谢蛋炒饭。”
Mr. Wang’s experience shows the lengths China will go to in restricting free speech.
王刚的经历让人看到了言论自由在中国受到了怎样的限制。
The Chinese Academy of History, a state institution, called anything linking Mao Anying’s death with the dish “particularly malicious.”
官方机构中国历史研究院表示，将毛岸英之死与这道菜联系在一起的说法“最为恶毒”。
Hu Xijing, the former editor of The Global Times, the Communist Party tabloid, advised everyone to avoid the topic of egg fried rice entirely. “In the future, especially around the anniversaries of the martyr Mao Anying, public discourse should avoid touching on the topic of egg fried rice,” he wrote on his social media Weibo account.
共产党小报《环球时报》前主编胡锡进建议大家完全避开蛋炒饭的话题。他在自己的社交媒体微博上写道：“在未来一段时间里，在毛岸英烈士忌日前后，舆论场应当避免触及‘蛋炒饭’这个话题。”
Some people pushed back at the suggestion. Banning any mention of egg fried rice in October and November, they noted, is both ridiculous and outrageous.
有些人反对这个建议。他们指出，在10月和11月禁止提及蛋炒饭显得既荒谬又离谱。
Mr. Wang deleted the video recipe and apologized.
王刚删除了视频食谱并道歉。
“As a chef, I will never make egg fried rice again. Nor will I shoot videos about it,” a sour-faced Mr. Wang said in his apology video, ending it with a deep bow. But he had to delete that video, too. Commentators said his tone was reluctant and sarcastic.
“作为厨师，以后再也不做蛋炒饭，也不拍蛋炒饭，”王刚在道歉视频中苦着脸说道，最后深深鞠躬。但后来他不得不把这段视频也删了。评论者说，他的语气中充满了不情愿和讽刺。