Like so many home cooks in quarantine, after I』ve used up the green tops of my scallions, I drop the white, hairy roots into a glass of water to regenerate, feeling pleased with my own sense of thrift and pragmatism.
和許多自己做飯的居家隔離者一樣，我把蔥的綠葉部分吃完後，會把長著根須的蔥白部分放進一杯水裡，讓蔥苗再生——自己能做到這麼節儉務實，我頗為得意。
But last week, after the Chinese internet star Li Ziqi posted a new cooking video to YouTube called 「The Life of Garlic,」 I wished I could graduate from scallions on the windowsill.
但上周，中國網紅李子柒在油管上發布了一個名為「蒜的一生」的烹飪視頻，看完後，我真希望自己能從窗臺種蔥這個「初級班」早點兒畢業。
In the 12-minute video, which already has over seven million views, Ms. Li pushes garlic cloves into a patch of earth outside her home. A time lapse shows the sprouts growing, reaching up toward the sky.
在這個時長12分鐘、瀏覽量已超700萬次的視頻中，李子柒把蒜瓣種在她家外面的一小塊地裡。隨著時間流逝，蒜苗破土而出，伸向天空。
Ms. Li sautées the young, fresh green garlic shoots with pork. When she harvests the bulbs, she plaits the stems, hanging them up to finish the drying process, pickling and preserving the rest, and using some to season chicken feet and dress salad.
李子柒用鮮嫩的青蒜苗炒豬肉。收穫蒜頭之後，她把莖稈編成繩辮，掛起來完成晾乾的一步，剩下的醃漬保存起來，還用了一些給雞爪和拌菜調味。
Ms. Li, who lives in a village in Sichuan Province and rarely speaks to press, looks not unlike a Disney princess in her crown braids, wearing a silvery fur cape, trudging gracefully in the snow. At 29, she is famous for her mesmerizing videos of rural self-sufficiency, posted on Weibo and YouTube.
李子柒住在四川省的一個小村莊裡，極少接受媒體採訪。她梳著盤起的麻花辮，像頭戴皇冠，身穿銀色毛皮鬥篷，在雪地裡跋涉時步態優雅，看上去簡直就是從迪士尼動畫裡走出的公主。29歲的她因為在微博和油管上發布自給自足鄉村生活的迷人視頻而出名。
For a worldwide audience in isolation, her D.I.Y. pastoral fantasies have become a reliable source of escape and comfort.
對於世界各地居家隔離的觀眾來說，她這種凡事親力親為的田園牧歌式生活令人嚮往，已經成為尋求解脫和安慰的可靠來源。
I usually plan to watch one — just one — but then I let the algorithm guide me to another, and another, until, soothed by bird song and instrumentals, I’m convinced that I’m absorbing useful information from Ms. Li about how to live off the land.
按通常的做法，我只打算看一個視頻——就看一個——但這次看完一個之後，我忍不住在系統引導下又看了一個，然後看了一個又一個，直到在鳥鳴和樂曲的撫慰下，我確信自己從她那裡學到了不少靠土地為生的有用信息。
If I’m ever stuck with two dozen sweet potatoes, I now have some idea how to extract the starch and use it to make noodles. This is what I tell myself. Leave me alone in a lotus pond, and I know how to harvest and prepare the roots.
如果我曾經對兩打紅薯不知所措，那現在我已經知道如何從中提取澱粉並用澱粉做粉條了。我對自己就是這麼說的。就算一個人在荷塘裡，我也知道怎麼採摘和收拾蓮藕了。
Ms. Li doesn’t explain anything as she goes. In fact, she tends to work in silence, without the use of any modern kitchen gadgets. Her sieve is a gourd. Her grater is a piece of metal that she punctures, at an angle, then attaches to two pieces of wood. Her basin is a stream, where she washes the dirt from vegetables.
李子柒在視頻裡只一味做事，不做任何解釋。事實上，她喜歡安靜地工作，不使用任何現代廚房設備。她的篩子是葫蘆做的。她的刨絲器是一塊金屬片，自己斜向穿了一些孔，固定在兩塊木頭上。小溪就是她的洗菜盆，她在那裡洗去蔬菜上的汙垢。
Her kitchen is nothing like mine, in Los Angeles. But watching Ms. Li on my laptop, while eating a bowl of buttered popcorn for dinner, I think maybe I could be happy living like that, too, soaking in the sheer natural beauty of the countryside, devoting myself to extremely traditional ways of cooking.
她的廚房跟我在洛杉磯的廚房完全不一樣。但是，一邊用筆記本電腦看李子柒，一邊捧一碗奶油爆米花吃著當晚餐，我想或許我也可以像她那樣快樂地生活，沉浸於鄉村純粹的自然之美，徹底採用極為傳統的烹飪方式。
Ms. Li makes peach blossom wine and cherry wine, preserves loquats and rose petals. She makes fresh tofu, and Lanzhou-style noodle soup with a perfectly clear broth, and ferments Sichuan broad bean paste from scratch. She butchers ducks and whole animals.
李子柒釀造桃花酒和櫻桃酒，保存枇杷和玫瑰花瓣。她製作新鮮豆腐和湯汁清澈的蘭州拉麵，還從零開始發酵製作四川豆瓣醬。她宰殺鴨子和整隻的動物。
She is not known for taking shortcuts. A video about matsutake mushrooms begins with her building the grill to cook them, laying the bricks down one at a time, scraping the mortar smooth, then hunting for mushrooms in the woods.
急功近利不是她的風格。在關於松茸的視頻裡，她先搭起烤松茸的烤架，把磚頭一塊塊壘起，刮平灰漿，然後到樹林裡搜尋蘑菇。
In a video about cooking fish, she first goes fishing, in the snow, patiently throwing back any catches that are too small, as snowflakes freeze into her hair.
在關於燜魚的視頻裡，一個雪天，她先去釣魚，耐心地把太小的魚扔回水裡，雪花落在她的頭髮上凝結起來。
Like the main character in some kind of post-apocalyptic novel, Ms. Li is almost always alone, though she doesn’t seem lonely, riding her horse through fields of wildflowers, or carrying baskets of sweet potatoes under citrus trees. She seems tireless, focused, confident, independent.
就像某類末世後小說中的主人公一樣，李子柒幾乎總是一個人，不過她似乎並不孤獨，有時騎馬穿行野花遍地的田野，有時在橘樹下運送一籃藍紅薯。她似乎不知疲倦，專注、自信且獨立。
The videos are deeply soothing. But it’s not just that — they reveal the intricacy and intensity of labor that goes into every single component of every single dish, while also making the long, solitary processes of producing food seem meaningful and worthwhile.
這些視頻讓人深感慰藉。但是不僅如此——它們還揭示了每道菜的每一個組分中傾注的複雜繁重的勞動，同時也讓漫長而孤獨的烹飪過程顯得頗有意義和價值。
It’s the complete opposite of most cooking content, the kind that suggests that everything is so quick and easy that you can do it, too, and probably in less than 30 minutes.
這與大多數烹飪內容完全相反，那暗示著一切都是那麼簡單快速，你也可以做到，而且可能用不了30分鐘。
But Ms. Li also romanticizes the struggles of farm life, and, as any savvy influencer would, monetizes that appeal. In her online shop, she sells a curved cleaver, similar to the ones she uses in her videos, as well as loose Hanfu-inspired linen clothing, Sichuan ginseng honey and chile sauces.
但是李子柒也浪漫化了農村生活的艱苦掙扎，而且，像任何精明的網紅一樣，她也充分利用這種吸引力，將其變現。她的網店裡出售一種彎刀，類似她在視頻中使用的那種，還有以漢服為靈感設計的寬鬆亞麻服裝、四川參蜜和辣椒醬。
Ms. Li’s story, as she tells it, is that she left home as a teenager to find work, but returned to the countryside to take care of her grandmother, then began documenting her life. Though she used to shoot her videos alone, on her phone, she now works with an assistant and a videographer.
按照李子柒自己的說法，她的故事是這樣的：十幾歲時離家外出務工，但後來回到鄉村照顧祖母，然後開始記錄自己的生活。雖然以前都是一個人用手機拍視頻，但現在她有了一個助手和一名攝影師。
「I simply want people in the city to know where their food comes from,」 Ms. Li said, in a rare interview with Goldthread last fall. (She never responded to my requests.)
「我只想讓在城市裡生活的人知道，他們吃的食物是從哪裡來的。」去年秋天，李子柒罕見地接受了Goldthread的採訪，她當時這麼表示。（對於我的採訪請求，她一直沒有回應。）
But most of the world’s food, whether in China or the United States, doesn’t come from anyone’s backyard, and isn’t made from scratch. Noodles are produced and packaged in factories. Chickens and pigs are gutted on fast, dangerous lines.
但是，不管在中國還是美國，世界上的大部分食物都不是來自任何人的後院，也不是從零開始製作的。麵條是在工廠裡生產和包裝的。雞和豬在快速、危險的流水線上被宰殺。
The fragility of our industrial supply chains, and the immense risks for the people who work in commercial plants and slaughterhouses, have been laid bare in the last few weeks.
產業供應鏈的脆弱性以及在商業工廠和屠宰場工作的人們所面臨的巨大風險，在過去幾周暴露無遺。
Ms. Li sidesteps the existence of that broken system entirely. This is the powerful fantasy of her videos right now — people growing and cooking all of their own food, not wasting anything, and not needing anything more than what they already have around them.
李子柒完全迴避了這個殘缺體系的存在。這是她的視頻當下提供的極具影響力的幻想生活——人們自己種植和烹飪所有所需的食物，除了大自然提供的一切，什麼都不需要。
In isolation, watching Ms. Li gather rose petals and ripe tomatoes, I catch myself thinking, is this sequence set in the past, or the future? Are these videos a record of the collective food knowledge we』ve already lost, or an idealized vision of its recovery?
在居家隔離中，看著李子柒採摘玫瑰花瓣和成熟番茄的視頻，我不禁思忖，這一切是發生在過去還是未來？這些視頻是對我們已經喪失的食物常識的記錄，還是對其復興的理想化願景？