麦当劳鸡块和“我爱你”
Junk Food Was Our Love Language
C PAM ZHANG
2020年12月16日
It’s autumn again, the eighth since my father died, and I’m craving chicken nuggets.
又到了秋天——这是父亲去世后的第八个年头，我特别想吃鸡块。
When the pandemic began, I craved foods that happened to feel more virtuous. I was a frequent takeout customer at local San Francisco restaurants in economic peril: beef noodle soup from a mom-and-pop on Irving, refried beans from a taqueria on 24th Street, a pork chop from the beloved neighborhood spot on Divisadero. Every action I took was fraught with the concept of doing good. I purchased stacks of books from independent bookstores, researched gardening gloves, donated, downloaded a workout app, started reading “War and Peace.”
在这次大流行刚开始的时候，我特别想吃那些恰好也更符合道德的食物。在经济危机下，我是旧金山许多当地餐馆的外卖常客：欧文街一家夫妻档的牛肉面、24街一家酒馆卖的豆泥、迪维萨德罗某深受喜爱的街区餐厅里的猪排。我做的每件事，都充满了行善的理念。我从独立书店购买成堆的书籍，研究园艺手套，捐赠，下载了一款健身应用，开始读《战争与和平》。
And then: depression, Zoom fatigue, a major life milestone passing without the ability to celebrate it, the deaths of public figures, the deaths of frontline workers, the death of a friend’s father, the deaths of migrants detained at the border, the death of a friend’s father, the death of another friend’s father.
接下来就是：抑郁、对Zoom的厌恶、一个重要的人生里程碑却无法庆祝、公众人物的死亡、一线工作人员的死亡、一个朋友的父亲的死亡、被扣留在边境的移民的死亡、一个朋友的父亲的死亡、另一个朋友的父亲的死亡。
Six months later, I was moving 800 miles in an attempt to outrun a suffocating sense of doom, driving across state lines, every stop an exercise in anxiously navigating shared airspace and inconsistent mask policies, and all I wanted was the ease of a drive-through chicken nugget.
六个月后，有一次为了摆脱令人窒息的厄运感，我开车跑了800英里，穿越州界，在沿路的每一站，都要在焦虑不安中搞清楚当地的空间共享和口罩政策，而我当时念兹在兹的，只是在一个免下车餐厅买鸡块吃所带来的安逸。
My father would have understood.
爸爸会懂我的。
I don’t remember him saying, “I love you,” which isn’t a common phrase in Mandarin, his preferred language. We always had a bit of a communication issue. But his love language was the simple pleasure of processed food.
我不记得他说过“我爱你”，这在他常说的普通话里，这并非一个人们会经常挂在嘴边的句子。我们在沟通上，总是存在点小问题。但对他来说所谓爱的絮语，就是吃加工食品带来的简单乐趣。
I have a photo of the two of us, taken when I was 2, at the gleaming flagship McDonald’s in Beijing. The franchise had just arrived in China, and its “M” at the time was a signal of luxury, a marker of the cosmopolitan upper-middle class that my young parents hoped to break into. In the photo, I’m feeding my father a fry. We both beam. Everywhere the light falls in that faded print, it is as golden as the arches.
我有一张我们两个人的照片，那是我两岁时，在北京熠熠生辉的麦当劳旗舰店拍的。当时，这个连锁品牌刚进入中国，它的M标在那会儿象征着奢侈品，是我年轻的父母希望跻身的国际化中上阶层的标志。在照片中，我正在喂老爸吃薯条。俩人都乐不可支的样子。在这张已经褪色的照片里，光线照到的每个地方，都像麦当劳的拱门标识一样金灿灿的。
My father was the fun parent, the indulgent one. He introduced me to fries, Cool Whip straight from the tub, fizzy drinks. After we emigrated to America, where McDonald’s franchises were ubiquitous rather than luxurious, he drove for an hour on the weekend to deliver us, triumphant, to some generic, all-you-can-eat buffet with actual crab on silver chafing trays.
爸爸不是那种板着脸的家长，他会纵容孩子。他给我买薯条，直接拿着盒子吃Cool Whip奶油，还准我喝碳酸饮料。在移民到了美国后，麦当劳满大街都是，跟奢华完全不搭界，周末的时候，他会开车一个小时，得意洋洋地把我们带去一些其貌不扬的自助餐厅，那里的银烤盘上有货真价实的螃蟹。
I sucked down soft serve after soft serve until I threw up. My father never reprimanded me for overindulgence as my mother did. He laughed. It didn’t seem to matter, then, that his English wasn’t fluent, or that my Mandarin was already slipping away.
我狂吃蛋筒冰激淋，直到吃吐。爸爸从来不会像妈妈那样责备我，吃东西不知道节制。他只是大笑不已。那时，他的英语不甚流利，我的中文也丢得差不多了，这在他看来，似乎都不是问题。
Our language of junk food evolved into one of secrets. A conspiratorial Happy Meal on our fishing trip alone. Two liters of Coke guzzled together before my mother came home. I felt honored until I began to understand that my father kept secrets from me, too.
我们对垃圾食物的喜欢，变成了我们之间的秘密。在我俩出去钓鱼的时候，就会偷偷来上那么一顿。在母亲到家之前，我们可以干掉两升可乐。我感到很有面子，直到我开始了解到，爸爸也有一些瞒着我的秘密。
In third grade, I came home newly evangelized to the dangers of cigarettes and threw away my father’s packs. He raged, then promised to quit, but I kept smelling smoke in his clothes and car.
三年级时，刚认识到香烟危害的我，回到家就扔掉了父亲的一堆烟。他大发雷霆，然后承诺戒烟，但我总能在他的衣服和车里闻到烟味。
My father was not virtuous. He was a man of vices and quick pleasures. Processed foods, nicotine, trashy Chinese science fiction, gambling, adultery. The hit of dopamine, the rush of blood sugar. I didn’t ask why he turned to these — that wasn’t how our family operated, and anyhow, language remained a barrier.
我父亲并非道德楷模。他是个贪图享乐的人。加工食品、尼古丁、垃圾中文科幻小说、赌博、偷情。多巴胺的冲击，血糖的升高。我没问过他为什么会去做这些事——那不是我们家的风格，而且语言终归仍是个障碍。
Instead, I began to distance myself. By the time I graduated from my Ivy League university, newly educated in class and its trappings, I knew the person I aimed to be. That person was not reflected in my broken-English, gambling-addict, divorced, blue-collar father. He had become a shameful artifact to me, one I wanted to leave behind. I grew increasingly distant as I focused on my new life with the impersonal callousness of youth.
相反，我开始疏远他。当我从常青藤大学毕业，刚懂得阶级及其标志时，我就知道自己想要成为什么样的人了。在我那英语蹩脚、嗜赌成瘾、离异的蓝领父亲身上，看不到那个人的影子。对我来说，他变成了一件令人羞耻的物品，我只想将它抛到身后。当我带着属于年轻人的冷漠专注于我的新生活时，和他的距离就越来越远。
My father died two years after I graduated. He was 49. I was 22. His death came like a shaft falling from the heavens, marking the central tragedy of my life. I grieved his passing, and then I grieved the fact that I never fully knew him. There were questions I had never thought to ask and nuances I hadn’t been able to articulate in my language or in his.
我毕业两年后，父亲去世了，享年49岁。那年我22岁。他的死就像晴天霹雳，是我生命中的主要悲剧。我为他的去世而悲伤，也为我从未完全了解他而悲伤。有些问题我从未想过要问，有些微妙情感我无法用自己的语言或他的语言表达。
I can see now that my father’s death was a tragedy but not a surprise. If he hadn’t died in 2012 of probable heart failure, he would have died in another year from diabetes or high cholesterol or Covid-19. I used to blame him for the weakened body that killed him — a product, I thought, of his weakened virtue. There was a kind of solace in the stark language of “good” and “bad.”
我现在明白了，父亲的死是一场悲剧，但并非意外。就算他没在2012年死于可能的心脏衰竭，也可能在另一个年死于糖尿病、高血脂或者新冠。我曾因导致他去世的身体虚弱责怪他——认为这是他堕落的下场。这种关于“好”与“坏”的直白话语里有某种安慰。
But the older I get, the more I see myself compromising, too. I live less perfectly at 30 than I imagined I would when I was 10. The world is hard and unforgiving, to some much more than others.
但年纪越大，我发现自己妥协也越多。我30岁的人生并没有10岁时想象得那么完美。这个世界在某些人看来要格外冷酷无情一些。
And so, each autumn, I think: Now I’m the age at which my father had to care for a newborn daughter; now I’m at the age at which he followed his spouse to a country where he didn’t speak the language; now I’m at the age at which he was fired from his job and took a minimum-wage gig; now I’m at the age at which he, low and dreary, found his first online gambling website, as irresistible to him as the dumb games on my phone are to me.
于是每到秋天，我都会想：现在我到了父亲必须要照顾刚出生的女儿的年纪；现在我到了他跟随妻子来到一个语言不通的国家的年纪；现在我到了他被解雇后去打最低工资的零工的年纪；现在我到了闷闷不乐的他第一次发现在线赌博网站的年纪，那对他来说，就像愚蠢的手机游戏对我而言一样不可抗拒。
Friends of mine have, as adults, gotten to know their parents as people with whom they swap intimacies and truths. I can’t have that. The only intimacies I have are the years of my life that overlap with the years of my father’s life, and at each intersection, I think: The age I am is far too young for the responsibilities he bore. How can I resent my father for being the product of such a staggeringly unfair world, one that systemically suffocates some people more than others?
我的朋友们长大成人后就开始了解他们的父母，与他们交换亲密情感和真相。我却不能。我所拥有的唯一的亲密关系，就是我的人生与父亲的人生重叠的岁月，而在每一个交汇点上，我都会想：我所在的年纪，对他负担的责任而言，实在是太年轻了。我怎能因为父亲是如此不公的世界的产物而怨恨他呢？这个世界给一些人的系统性窒息就是要多于其他人。
And I can imagine, too, the giddy power my father must have felt upon moving to America in the ’90s to discover that McDonald’s was now the stuff of everyday. Cheaper than fish, more accessible than fresh fruit, simpler than a long-distance phone call to Beijing in which he felt compelled to hide his difficulties, his loneliness and alienation.
我也能想象，父亲在90年代搬到美国后，发现麦当劳不过是家常便饭时的那种眩晕感。比鱼更便宜，比新鲜水果更容易买到，比给北京打长途电话简单得多，在那些电话中他觉得自己必须把难处、孤独和疏离都藏起来。
I can imagine the balm of preternaturally smooth processed meat to a tongue made clumsy by translation; how sugar might soothe an ego bruised by rejection, racism and the need to ask if a store accepts food stamps. I can imagine how, when language for the above is difficult, it might be easier to hand your child a golden nugget — how the gesture is a promise of abundance and pleasure, however short-lived.
我可以想象，对于因翻译而变笨拙的舌头来说，经过异常美味加工的肉是一种安慰；食糖又是如何抚慰了因拒绝、种族歧视、以及询问商店是否接受食品券而受伤的自尊。我现在明白了，当上述心情难以用语言表达出来的时候，给你的孩子一个金黄的鸡块可能更容易一些——这个动作代表了对富足和快乐的承诺，不管多么短暂。
Autumn is a time when the skin of the world feels thin, perhaps permeable; it is the season in which my father was born and died. This autumn, we’re eight months into a pandemic that too many public officials, including the current president, have called the “Chinese virus,” a dangerous characterization that shimmers with xenophobia and implied blame. I know a taste of the uncertainty that my father, with his thick accent and expired visa, knew. No number of years lived in this country, no degrees or good deeds, can protect me from the anxiety of having a Chinese face in a year that has seen a surge in hate crimes against Asian-Americans.
秋天是一个感觉世界的皮肤都在变薄，或许可能被穿透的季节；也是我父亲出生和去世的季节。这个秋天，疫情已经持续八个月之久，包括现任总统在内的太多公职官员都把它称为“中国病毒”，这种危险的描述充斥着仇外情绪，暗含指责之意。我尝到了带着浓重口音和过期签证的父亲尝过的那种不安滋味。在这针对亚裔美国人的仇恨犯罪激增的一年里，不管在这个国家生活了多少年、拿了多少学位或做了多少好事，都无法让我免受拥有一张华人面孔的焦虑。
Under such conditions, the demand for perfect virtue feels impossible, even cruel. And so I binge bad television when I can’t handle good books. I smoke one cigarette a week. And on occasion, I get the damn chicken nuggets. There are vices we must allow ourselves, even if they theoretically shorten our lives by a day or a week or a year — because first we have to get through this day, this week, this year.
在这样的氛围下，做道德楷模的要求是不可能，甚至是残忍的。于是当我读不进好书的时候，就狂看糟糕的电视节目。我一周吸一支烟。有时候，我也吃那该死的鸡块。我们必须允许自己有一些坏习惯，即使它们在理论上会缩短我们一天、一周或一年的寿命——因为我们必须先熬过这一天、这一周、这一年。
Is it wrong to compare my father to a processed piece of deep-fried food, that unholy creation that is like a chicken translated again and again until it achieves a new form of existence? Because I think of him whenever I bite into one. If that sounds weird — OK. It’s a more faithful representation than the usual metaphors of fathers as safe harbors, rocks or teachers. None of those ring true when it comes to my father. A chicken nugget, then. Some religions, after all, think of Christ in a piece of bread.
把我的父亲比作一块油炸加工食品，一种就像一只鸡被翻译了一次又一次，直到获得一种新存在形式的罪恶创造物，有什么问题吗？因为我每次下口咬的时候都想到他。如果这么说很奇怪——那就这样吧。这比将父亲形容为避风港、岩石或老师的惯常比喻更真实。就我父亲而言，那些比喻一点都不靠谱。那么，就把他比作一个鸡块吧。毕竟，有些宗教认为基督是一片面包。
The next time the urge strikes, and the air feels particularly thin, I’ll have another nugget or two or four. There will be the rush of additives, the hit of engineered pleasure, and — though I know I can’t comprehend a dead man in all his contradictions, and I admit that to imagine my father’s motivations is not to know them — in that moment, in a communion across a golden crust, I will understand my father completely.
下次当这种冲动来袭时，当感觉空气变得特别稀薄时，我就会再吃个鸡块，或者是两个或四个。会有添加剂的刺激，会有工程食品带来的快感——虽然我知道自己不能理解属于一位逝者的所有矛盾，而且我承认想象父亲的动机并不是理解它们——但在那一刻，在那金黄脆皮上的交流里，我将彻底懂得我的父亲。
