The Reclusive Food Celebrity Li Ziqi Is My Quarantine Queen
- 壓頭韻
quarantine queen 隔離女神 /ˈkwɒrəntiːn/
Peter Parker 蜘蛛人
Bucky Barnes 酷寒戰士(巴奇)
Wade Winston Wilson 死恃
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.
- use up用完 up=completely
- own sense of thrift and pragmatism 對自我的勤儉持家感到滿意
①thrift store 二手店 the quailty of using money and other resources carefully and not wastefully
②pragmatism 實用主義 pragmatic (adj)
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.(窗台)
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.
- garlic cloves 蒜瓣
- a patch of earth (泥土,un) 一小塊泥土
- pushes garlic cloves into a patch of earth 描述小說或電影，可用一般現在式
- time laspe 延時攝影
- sprout 新芽嫩枝 a shoot of plant
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.
- sautées 煸炒 to cook food in oil over heat, usually until it is brown (金黃色)
- young, fresh green garlic shoots 蒜苗 garlic shoots 亦可指蒜苔，但據前文young, fresh 推斷為蒜苗
- harvest the bulb 收割球莖(蒜頭)
- plait the steam 將莖桿編成辮
eg, plait one’s hair ; wear one’s hair in plaits - salad dressing 沙拉醬
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.
- not unlike = similar to
- in her crown braids 皇冠狀辮子(美式英語)
- silvery fur cape 銀白色毛披肩
- trudge 緩慢地走 /trʌdʒ/ to walk slowly or with heavy steps, because you are tired or carrying sth heavy
For a worldwide audience in isolation, her D.I.Y. pastoral fantasies have become a reliable source of escape and comfort.
- DIY=DO IT YOURSELF
- pastoral 田園風光的 /ˈpɑːstərəl/ cf, pastor 牧師、牧羊人
- 她自給自足的田園生活已然幫助了隔離群眾暫時擺脫眼下的疫情。
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.
李的影片揭示了每道菜的每一部分，其背後所涵蓋複雜繁重的勞務成本，與此同時也讓枯燥乏味的料理過程變得值得有意義。
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?
- catch myself thinking = find / discover sb. doing sth.
- opening sequence 開場鏡頭
