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Three scant years ago, Shanghai celebrated the 100th birthday of one of history’s most famous junk foods — the Oreo biscuit — with fireworks on the Bund and multi-storey neon adverts projected on to skyscrapers. But now China has put Oreo on a diet.
3年多以前，上海庆祝了史上最著名的垃圾食品之一——奥利奥(Oreo)问世100周年纪念日——外滩上燃放了焰火，摩天大楼上投射了几层楼高的奥利奥霓虹灯广告。但现在，中国让奥利奥“节食减肥”。
This is a country where, within living memory, millions starved to death. People will, to this day, tell you how they ate roots or shoots or even dirt to stay alive. Little wonder the Chinese market was a pushover for the ubiquitous black-and-white sandwich cookie.
在这个国家，人们仍然记得曾经有数百万人饿死的经历。直至今天，还有人会告诉你，他们是如何靠吃草根树芽，甚至泥土活下来。也难怪这种随处可见的黑白夹心饼干轻而易举地征服了中国市场。
Foreign treats were seen as healthier than local snacks, because they were imported from places that did not have such a vigorous tradition of poisoning residents with tainted ingredients, as was the fad in China. When I moved here in 2008, it took a while to get used to the notion that McDonald’s was a healthy option, purely because it was less likely to be toxic. Here, when mainlanders tell you something is “healthy”, they often mean that it won’t be immediately fatal.
过去，人们认为外国美食比本土小吃更健康，因为它们是从别处进口而来的，那些地方并没有这种风气——用受到污染的原料毒害居民。2008年搬到这里的时候，我花了一段时间才适应那种认为麦当劳(McDonald’s)是一种健康饮食选择的观念，纯粹是因为麦当劳不那么可能有毒。在这里，当有内地人告诉你什么东西是“健康”的，他们的意思通常是指这种东西不会立即致命。
But in the past few years, China has begun to discover that heavy metals are not the only things to avoid in snack foods. There is that small matter of fat and sugar, too. Last week, Chinese media carried stories saying that Mondelez, the maker of Oreo, was shutting down some Shanghai production because people were going right off biscuits. The US company waffled a bit about “optimising our supply chain” and shifting production elsewhere, but the company had made clear in the past that Oreo was in trouble in China. Figures from Euromonitor show that, since the sound and light of its centenary celebration, the biscuit has lost one-third of its market share in China, from nearly 9 per cent of the market in 2012 to 6 per cent now.
但过去几年，中国人开始发现，重金属并不是唯一需要在零食里避免的东西。还有一些小问题：糖和脂肪。最近中国媒体报道，因为人们正在丧失对饼干的兴趣，奥利奥的制造商亿滋(Mondelez)关了上海一些生产线。这家美国公司扯了一通诸如“优化我们的供应链”和转移到别处生产的言论，但这家公司过去就曾明确表示，奥利奥在中国遇到了困难。欧睿(Euromonitor)的数据表明，在庆祝100周年的声光魅影以后，奥利奥饼干的中国市场份额缩小了三分之一，从2012年的近9%下降至现在的6%。
So that is how Oreo ended up watching its waistline: Mondelez introduced a new “Oreo Thin”, just to woo Chinese consumers, and it did so well that they last month announced that Americans will be able to opt for the skinnier cousin too. All because of a revolution in eating habits that took decades in the west — and only a handful of years in China.
因此，这就是奥利奥如何最终注意到自己的“腰围”的：亿滋推出了一款“奥利奥巧轻脆”(Oreo Thin)，专为迎合中国的消费者，而且这款饼干卖的相当不错，因此亿滋上个月宣布，美国人也将可以选择更为纤细的同款饼干。这一切都是因为一场已经在西方进行了数十年的饮食习惯革命——在中国这场革命才经历了寥寥数年。
That’s not Oreo’s only problem: many of the world’s most successful brands made it to China early and had a long run almost unrivalled, but are losing their first-mover advantage. (KFC has that problem too, compounded by a spot of bad publicity on the food quality front.)
奥利奥面临的不仅仅是上述问题。许多世界最成功的品牌早早来到中国，在很长的一段时间里几乎无可匹敌，但这些品牌正在失去它们的先发优势。（肯德基(KFC)也有这个问题，食品质量方面的若干负面新闻使其境况更加糟糕。）
Meanwhile, mainlanders have developed one of the most fickle palates on earth: Americans may want the same cookie Mum gave them with their milk after school; but Chinese want something new every day. Local companies are often nimbler than multinationals at introducing green tea or purple sweet potato alternatives to traditional flavours.
同时，中国内地人还有地球上最多变的口味。美国人可能想吃妈妈以前在他们放学后给他们配着牛奶吃的饼干；而中国人每天都想吃点新鲜的。在推出绿茶、紫薯等非传统口味的新品方面，本土企业往往比跨国企业更灵敏。
And cookie companies are facing competition from an even more unlikely source: home bakers. When I moved here, ovens were rare in normal homes: I figured that was why mine didn’t work too well. But now many a Chinese bride insists on having one. Sales of the countertop ovens preferred on the mainland have more than quadrupled since I started wielding a flour sifter on Chinese shores, and a 318-piece everything-you-could-ever-need baking set can be had on Alibaba’s Taobao for only 137 devalued renminbi.
而且，饼干公司还遇到了一个看起来更不可能的竞争对手：家庭烘焙机器。当我刚搬到这里时，烤箱在一般家庭很少见：我觉得这就是为什么我那台烤箱不太好用的原因。但现在，很多中国新娘都坚持配一台烤箱。自我开始在中国海滨摇晃面粉筛以来，在中国内地很有人气的台面烤箱的销量已经增长三倍多，现在，全套318件的烘焙工具套装在阿里巴巴(Alibaba)旗下的淘宝(Taobao)上只要（已经贬值的）137元人民币就可以买到。
For, given that the vast majority of Chinese under 30 have never known an hour of hunger in their lives, let alone survived on roots and shoots, just filling the tummy is no longer the point. They cook for fun — and for health reasons, says Qian Zhaoli, a 27-year-old marketing manager in Shanghai. She’s started baking her own rusks because her first child is teething. “I wanted her to have the healthiest ones, without any additives,” she says, adding that shop-bought rusks have such a long shelf life, and “who knows how many artificial colours and preservatives they contain?” Plus, western-style baking is far easier than cooking any of China’s complicated cuisines, she says, noting that in Shanghai most cooking is done by men.
因为，考虑到中国30岁以下的人多数没有尝过挨饿一个小时的滋味，更不必说靠草根树芽活下来了，只填饱肚子不再是重点。他们下厨是为了乐趣，也是因为更加健康——上海27岁的营销经理钱朝丽（音译）如此表示。因为她的第一个孩子开始长牙，她开始自己烘焙磨牙饼干。“我希望她吃到最健康的，没有任何添加剂的，”她补充说，市场上卖的磨牙饼干保质期那么长，“谁知道它们含有多少人工色素和防腐剂？”此外，她表示，西式烘焙比烹制复杂的中式菜肴要简单得多，并指出在上海下厨的大多是男人。
This is not just a tale of Oreos and ovens. It is a parable for a new type of Chinese consumption: more finicky, more fickle — potentially less profitable. Anyone selling almost anything here should watch it closely. May the best rolling pin win.
这不仅仅是奥利奥和烤箱的故事。这是一则中国新式消费的寓言：更挑剔、更多变——获利空间可能也更小。在中国，卖几乎任何东西的任何人都应该密切留意这一点。希望最好的擀面杖能够胜出吧。
