英語(yǔ)資源頻道為大家整理的中英雙語(yǔ)新聞：鋼琴家郎朗的美食經(jīng)，供大家閱讀參考。
It’s the same as when you play a recital,” the superstar pianist Lang Lang is telling me as he explains his approach to ordering dinner. “You have a few incredible composers and you put them together and it’s like a menu. You have Bach and Ravel, Beethoven and Prokofiev, and it’s like you are serving a four-course or five-course dinner.”
Few pianists are more passionate about the four-or-five-course dinner than the musical phenomenon who was born in 1982 in Shenyang, the largest city in northeastern China. Lang Lang admits that often the first thing he does upon arriving somewhere new is seek recommendations for the finest Chinese restaurant. “Good food always inspires me,” he says. “I think certain tastes actually make you play piano better, make it more enjoyable.”
His attitude to eating well seems to follow the principle of yin and yang, the Confucian philosophy at the heart of Chinese culture that, when applied to food, aims for balance in colours, tastes and textures. “Like in music, it’s very important to have a balanced style when you eat,” he suggests. “Meat makes people more aggressive; vegetables make you more relaxed. So variety is ideal. When I eat, I like to have a lot of different combinations, a taste of everything. It’s the same as when I play.”
He certainly seems to have digested this philosophy in his music-making. One of the most successful classical artists in history – and one of the World Economic Forum’s 250 Young Global Leaders – Lang Lang is as likely to be found performing with dubstep dancer Marquese “Nonstop” Scott or jazz titan Herbie Hancock as he is with the likes of Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. Watched by billions at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, he brought Prokofiev’s Seventh Symphony to millions more via the soundtrack of the video game Gran Turismo 5. And, with hundreds of international engagements a year, he is constantly touching down in new places to sample the local attempts at Chinese food.
Except that talking to Lang Lang about generic “Chinese food” is likely to get you ejected from his table. China has many great culinary traditions, including Cantonese, Hunanese and Szechuanese, and they are as varied as schnitzel and empanadas, fish-and-chips and jalfrezi. “Sometimes you go to a ‘Chinese restaurant’ and everything is served in the same sauce,” he laments. “Coming from the north, I prefer food from that region, but southern food is also good. I like everything from Cantonese dim sum to spicy Szechuan, but everything needs to have its typical flavour, like a really marinated beef or a steamed meat-and-seafood dumpling.”
The life of the international concert pianist is famously nomadic, even isolated, and I wonder if Lang Lang’s instinct to gather people around a table loaded with plates redolent of home is a way of rooting himself? “Growing up, it was a ritual to have a big family dinner every night, and I try to recreate that on tour,” he says. “All my teams, we always eat together after a performance, my record company, my management, my foundation, my friends. With Chinese food, you must. It’s a gathering, you know, you must have a group to celebrate. This is very important when you’re having a good meal: you must have your right person to be with. If the food is really great but the people next to you, you don’t know them, it would be really difficult to eat that food. And you can’t eat a Chinese meal on your own; it would be so boring.”
It is not surprising, then, to discover that he never journeys alone. “It would be horrible!” he exclaims. “I wouldn’t like to travel by myself – it would be so lonely. I always have a group of at least two or three really good friends there. And my mum comes with me all the time.”
His mother, he tells me, is a “really good cook”, and from the sound of it there may be a few top Chinese chefs around the globe who have found themselves sharing their wok with Zhou Xiulan when the Lang Lang post-concert entourage descends. “We have certain restaurants we go to that are like really good friends, and my mum will know the chef,” he says. “So she will go and talk to him in the kitchen, maybe make a suggestion about what we want to have.”
The exchange seems to work harmoniously: while there are no doubt plenty of culinary abominations masquerading as Chinese cuisine, Lang Lang speaks enthusiastically about some of the eateries he has discovered. “London has many very beautiful Chinese restaurants. Also in Berlin, Paris, Vienna, New York, LA, San Francisco I have found really excellent Chinese food.” He tells me the best Chinese meal he has ever eaten abroad is at China Tang, Sir David Tang’s outpost at the Dorchester Hotel. In Berlin he likes Peking Ente; in New York, Tang Pavilion; and in Vienna, Sternzeichen.
It seems unlikely that the boy with the quicksilver fingers ever suffers from nerves, but I wonder whether there’s a particular comfort food he seeks out when – if – he ever gets anxious? “Noodle soups,” he answers, without missing a beat. “That gives me comfort.” He laughs. “And chocolate gives me energy and happiness. Ice cream gives me the satisfaction.”
So it’s not always Chinese food on the menu? “I can’t go without Chinese food for more than two or three days,” he concedes, “but in between I can eat French, Italian, Japanese, Middle Eastern food … I was in Venezuela recently and we had the most incredible South American barbecue.”
But his gastronomic heart lies in his homeland, and in particular in the steamed meat dumplings with a sauce of suan cai, a salted, cold-fermented green cabbage, similar to sauerkraut, that his mother makes. Forget the fancy international restaurants in Mayfair or Midtown, then: his last supper would indubitably be his mum’s pickled cabbage dumplings.
“It’s always about home food,” he says. “Like from my mum, my uncle, my auntie, when they make food with very close friends during the Chinese New Year, that meal is the best. For me, even a great meal in a restaurant can’t ever compete with being at home with all your friends, your family. You eat, you talk your heart out with the most delicious home cooked food possible, and you just think: wow. You are the most happy person in the world, at that moment.”
‘Prokofiev 3 Bartok 2’ by Lang Lang, Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic is released by Sony Classical on October 7
Few pianists are more passionate about the four-or-five-course dinner than the musical phenomenon who was born in 1982 in Shenyang, the largest city in northeastern China. Lang Lang admits that often the first thing he does upon arriving somewhere new is seek recommendations for the finest Chinese restaurant. “Good food always inspires me,” he says. “I think certain tastes actually make you play piano better, make it more enjoyable.”
His attitude to eating well seems to follow the principle of yin and yang, the Confucian philosophy at the heart of Chinese culture that, when applied to food, aims for balance in colours, tastes and textures. “Like in music, it’s very important to have a balanced style when you eat,” he suggests. “Meat makes people more aggressive; vegetables make you more relaxed. So variety is ideal. When I eat, I like to have a lot of different combinations, a taste of everything. It’s the same as when I play.”
He certainly seems to have digested this philosophy in his music-making. One of the most successful classical artists in history – and one of the World Economic Forum’s 250 Young Global Leaders – Lang Lang is as likely to be found performing with dubstep dancer Marquese “Nonstop” Scott or jazz titan Herbie Hancock as he is with the likes of Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. Watched by billions at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, he brought Prokofiev’s Seventh Symphony to millions more via the soundtrack of the video game Gran Turismo 5. And, with hundreds of international engagements a year, he is constantly touching down in new places to sample the local attempts at Chinese food.
Except that talking to Lang Lang about generic “Chinese food” is likely to get you ejected from his table. China has many great culinary traditions, including Cantonese, Hunanese and Szechuanese, and they are as varied as schnitzel and empanadas, fish-and-chips and jalfrezi. “Sometimes you go to a ‘Chinese restaurant’ and everything is served in the same sauce,” he laments. “Coming from the north, I prefer food from that region, but southern food is also good. I like everything from Cantonese dim sum to spicy Szechuan, but everything needs to have its typical flavour, like a really marinated beef or a steamed meat-and-seafood dumpling.”
The life of the international concert pianist is famously nomadic, even isolated, and I wonder if Lang Lang’s instinct to gather people around a table loaded with plates redolent of home is a way of rooting himself? “Growing up, it was a ritual to have a big family dinner every night, and I try to recreate that on tour,” he says. “All my teams, we always eat together after a performance, my record company, my management, my foundation, my friends. With Chinese food, you must. It’s a gathering, you know, you must have a group to celebrate. This is very important when you’re having a good meal: you must have your right person to be with. If the food is really great but the people next to you, you don’t know them, it would be really difficult to eat that food. And you can’t eat a Chinese meal on your own; it would be so boring.”
It is not surprising, then, to discover that he never journeys alone. “It would be horrible!” he exclaims. “I wouldn’t like to travel by myself – it would be so lonely. I always have a group of at least two or three really good friends there. And my mum comes with me all the time.”
His mother, he tells me, is a “really good cook”, and from the sound of it there may be a few top Chinese chefs around the globe who have found themselves sharing their wok with Zhou Xiulan when the Lang Lang post-concert entourage descends. “We have certain restaurants we go to that are like really good friends, and my mum will know the chef,” he says. “So she will go and talk to him in the kitchen, maybe make a suggestion about what we want to have.”
The exchange seems to work harmoniously: while there are no doubt plenty of culinary abominations masquerading as Chinese cuisine, Lang Lang speaks enthusiastically about some of the eateries he has discovered. “London has many very beautiful Chinese restaurants. Also in Berlin, Paris, Vienna, New York, LA, San Francisco I have found really excellent Chinese food.” He tells me the best Chinese meal he has ever eaten abroad is at China Tang, Sir David Tang’s outpost at the Dorchester Hotel. In Berlin he likes Peking Ente; in New York, Tang Pavilion; and in Vienna, Sternzeichen.
It seems unlikely that the boy with the quicksilver fingers ever suffers from nerves, but I wonder whether there’s a particular comfort food he seeks out when – if – he ever gets anxious? “Noodle soups,” he answers, without missing a beat. “That gives me comfort.” He laughs. “And chocolate gives me energy and happiness. Ice cream gives me the satisfaction.”
So it’s not always Chinese food on the menu? “I can’t go without Chinese food for more than two or three days,” he concedes, “but in between I can eat French, Italian, Japanese, Middle Eastern food … I was in Venezuela recently and we had the most incredible South American barbecue.”
But his gastronomic heart lies in his homeland, and in particular in the steamed meat dumplings with a sauce of suan cai, a salted, cold-fermented green cabbage, similar to sauerkraut, that his mother makes. Forget the fancy international restaurants in Mayfair or Midtown, then: his last supper would indubitably be his mum’s pickled cabbage dumplings.
“It’s always about home food,” he says. “Like from my mum, my uncle, my auntie, when they make food with very close friends during the Chinese New Year, that meal is the best. For me, even a great meal in a restaurant can’t ever compete with being at home with all your friends, your family. You eat, you talk your heart out with the most delicious home cooked food possible, and you just think: wow. You are the most happy person in the world, at that moment.”
‘Prokofiev 3 Bartok 2’ by Lang Lang, Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic is released by Sony Classical on October 7