李子柒登上《紐約時報》!全球粉絲過億,成為Youtube首個粉絲破千萬的中文創作者

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.

如同眾多的家庭料理師一樣，當用掉蔥的蔥綠之後，我會把帶著根須的蔥白丟進一杯水裡讓它重新生長，同時為自己的節儉務實感到喜悅。

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，當中國的網紅李子柒在油管新發布了一條名為《蒜的一生》的烹飪視頻後，我真希望自己能結束這種窗臺種蔥的狀態。

In the 12-minute video, which already has over millions of 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.
在這段12分鐘、閱讀量已超700萬的視頻中，李子柒把蒜瓣鋪在自家門外的一塊地裡。一段時間流逝，蒜瓣開始破土生長，向天空伸展。

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來炒豬肉。當她把蒜頭收回來後，她就把莖稈編成辮子，將它們掛起來風乾，其餘的醃漬保存起來，並且用其中一些來拌雞爪和沙拉。

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.
李子柒生活在四川的農村，很少與媒體接觸。在她梳著皇冠髮辮，身穿銀色毛皮鬥篷，在雪地裡優雅行走的時候，看上去真像是個迪士尼公主。她今年29歲，因為在微博和油管發布一些反映自給自足的迷人農村生活的視頻而出名。

For a worldwide audience in isolation, her D.I.Y. pastoral fantasies have become a reliable source of escape and comfort.
對於全世界處於隔離當中的觀眾來說，她這種自給自足的田園夢想已經成為逃離和安逸的可靠源泉。

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. 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.
我通常只想看一個視頻，就看一個而已，但之後就會讓算法指引我看完一個又一個，直到被鳥兒的歡歌和樂器撫慰心靈，確信自己吸收了李子柒傳授的以地為生的有用資訊。要是我曾為兩打紅薯而糾結，那麼現在我有些頭緒，知道如何提取澱粉並且用它來做粉條了。我就是這麼說服自己的。就算把我丟在一個荷塘裡，我也知道怎麼採藕和備藕了。

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.

李子柒做事時從不做任何解釋。事實上，她喜歡靜靜地幹活，不使用任何的現代廚房設備。她的篩子是葫蘆做的。她的刨絲器是一塊金屬片，她自己在上面按一定的角度打了一些孔，然後固定在兩塊木頭上。小溪就是她的水池，她在那裡清洗蔬菜上的泥汙。

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家裡的廚房完全不一樣。但是在筆記本電腦上看李子柒時，我一邊吃著一碗黃油爆米花作為晚餐，一邊想著自己或許那樣生活也會很快樂，沉浸在鄉村純粹的自然美景之中，忠誠地踐行極其傳統的烹飪方式。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.
李子柒會釀桃花酒、櫻桃酒，懂得保存枇杷和玫瑰花瓣。她會做新鮮的豆腐和清湯蘭州拉麵，還能從零開始發酵四川豆瓣醬。她還會屠宰鴨子和整隻的動物。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.
她並非因為走捷徑而成名。在一個關於松茸的短片裡，一開始展現的是她在搭烤松茸的烤架，鋪磚的時候一次一塊，然後刮平灰漿，接著再去樹林裡找蘑菇。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.
在一個關於燜魚的短片裡，她先是冒著風雪去釣魚，並且耐心地將釣到的那些太小的魚扔回去，期間，雪花都在她的頭髮上凝結了。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.
就像某些末日後小說中的主角那樣，李子柒幾乎總是一個人，儘管她看上去並不孤單，她會策馬穿過野花草地，或者提著一籃籃紅薯走在柑橘樹下。她似乎不知疲倦，專心致志，自信又獨立。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.
這些視頻讓人深感治癒。但不限於此——它們揭示了每道菜的每個成分所蘊含的複雜的勞動強度，同時也讓做菜時的漫長而孤獨的過程顯得有意義、有價值。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.
這跟大多數的烹飪主題背道而馳。那些內容暗示著每道菜都簡單快捷，因此你也可以做出來，而且，用時不到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.
但是李子柒將農村生活的艱難浪漫化了，而且她就跟任何機智的網紅一樣，也將這種吸引力變現。在她的網店裡，她售賣一種彎刀，跟她在視頻中使用的那種相似，同時還售賣以漢服為靈感設計的寬鬆亞麻服飾，以及四川參蜜和辣椒醬。

Skeptics are suspicious of her access to YouTube in China, where the platform is blocked. And though it seems unlikely, some people have wondered in the comment sections if her videos are propaganda.
懷疑論者會質疑，中國屏蔽了油管，但她為什麼能在中國使用？雖然看起來不太可能，但評論區裡有人懷疑她的視頻是不是政治宣傳。

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.
根據李子柒自己所言，她的故事是這樣的：她十多歲就離家出外打工，後來回到農村照顧奶奶，然後開始記錄自己的生活。雖然她的視頻以前是自己一個人用手機拍的，但現在她有了一個助手和一名攝像師。

「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.)
「我只想讓城裡的人知道，他們的食物是從哪裡來的，」李子柒這麼說。去年秋天，她罕見地接受《南華早報》旗下媒體Goldthread的採訪。（她對我的採訪請求從不回應。）

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.
但無論在中國還是美國，世界上的大部分食物都並非來源於某個人的後院，也不會從零開始製作。麵條是在工廠裡生產和包裝的。雞和豬是在快速而危險的流水線上被宰殺的。

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.
我們工業供應鏈之脆弱，商業工廠和屠宰場的工人所承受的巨大風險，在過去幾周都暴露無遺。

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.
李子柒完全躲過了這個殘缺體系的存在。這是如今她的視頻所擁有的巨大誘惑力——人們種植和烹調食物，不浪費任何東西，也不需要再追求身外之物。

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?
在隔離期間，觀看李子柒採摘玫瑰花瓣和成熟的番茄的視頻時，我陷入深思，這一片段的背景是過去還是未來？這些視頻是我們已遺失的集體化食物知識的記錄，還是關於這些知識的復興的理想化願景？