Financial Times Magazine - 29.08.2026.pdf

AUGUST 29 2026

FT Weekend Magazine

旋转木马、 拖拉机 与特朗普 在 州博览会上

作者：拉娜·福鲁哈尔

追求至尊

YACHT-MASTER II

ADAM'S 爱尔兰顶级珠宝拍卖行 成立于1887

高级珠宝拍卖会

TUESDAY 15 $^{TH}$ SEPTEMBER 2026

在线目录：www.adams.ie

一条由 Elsa Peretti 为蒂法尼公司（Tiffany & Co.）设计的 18K 金与钻石网格围巾项链。估价 €7,000-8,000

FT Weekend Magazine

AUGUST 29 2026

PAGE 14. 一名工作人员在印第安纳州博览会上监管“天空之吼”（Sky Scream）游乐设施

专栏

智识

9 蒂姆·哈福德 随机即随机

10 专栏：来自《金融时报》驻外分社的报道

12 画廊 玛丽-皮埃尔·克拉韦迪 在卡萨布兰卡

饮食

31 詹西斯·罗宾逊 英国起泡酒行业的大变革

33 杰伊·雷纳 Saawaros, Elephant and Castle

另含 44 游戏 46 米兰达·格林 你有 10 分钟时间吗？

特写

14 封面故事 中西部价值观 在中期选举临近之际，美国保守派核心地带的政治情绪如何？作者：拉娜·福鲁哈尔

24 蓄势待发 被誉为“德国最危险男人”的极右翼政治家正在东部地区号召选民 作者：劳拉·皮特尔 和 安妮-西尔万·沙萨尼

34 餐桌

一份风味浓郁且低压力的预制中式梅泽（mezze）风格盛宴 作者：邓晓楠 (Fuchsia Dunlop)

40 不在罗马时 如何重现这座城市的四大经典意面菜肴 作者：蒂姆·海沃德

拯救英格兰河流之战 作者：吉尔·普利默

看到沃夫河上游的照片真是令人愉悦。不可否认，许多人在伊尔克利的河中游泳，有些人全年每天都游。但令人沮丧的是，他们这样做时忽略了告知水质污染严重、不宜洗浴的标志。 乔尔·格里菲斯，西约克郡

这篇深入的调查报道读起来非常引人入胜，并提出了许多相关的观点。然而，尚未达成真正的解决方案。这是因为只要我们使用水来处理污水，问题就在于所有水最终都会流入海洋。即使经过处理和去除固体，水中仍含有大量有害物质。尿液、合法或非法的药物、来自清洁剂和化肥的营养物质、细菌。我们当地的河流曾经有干净的黄色砾石和鱼类。现在只剩下绿色的黏液。 鲍勃·赫德尔，肯特郡

刚去了中欧，参观了柏林附近、捷克和波兰的湖泊。许多快乐的人在洗浴，几乎没有担忧。水质测试结果公示给人们查看，且这些结果既新鲜又可信。

我们的媒体曾嘲笑安妮·伊达尔戈在奥运会前在塞纳河游泳，但她的清理工作得到了丰厚的回报。在英国，我们甚至没有意识到由于这种腐败，我们所有人损失了多少。感谢《金融时报》的这篇优秀报道。 REJTAN 通过 .COM

感谢对这个持续了几十年的问题的精彩报道。请继续努力。正是因为有这样的文章，订阅高质量的新闻才具有极高的价值。 AMLAUR 通过 .COM

关于编织神话与流水 作者：Tanvi Mishra 引人入胜的文章和极佳的照片。令人启发。 RF99 通过 .

很棒的周末读物，照片极美。 MALA TEMPORA 通过 .

为什么河流是最好的伴侣 作者：亨利·范·戴克

今年我有幸在地中海和阿尔卑斯山都度过了假期，但我必须承认，我见过的最美之物是斯洛文尼亚的萨瓦-博欣卡河，我在果园附近晶莹剔透的水中游泳。 G. LUCA DI LORENZO 通过 .

ROSEBERYS LONDON

现代英国及20世纪艺术

9月8日，星期二

吉莉安·艾尔斯 (Gillian Ayres) OBE，英国 1930-2018，《Celinale》，2012

贝尔格莱维亚 / 骑士山

modernbritish@roseberys.co.uk

roseberys.co.uk

智识

卧底经济学家

随机究竟有多随机？

作者：蒂姆·哈福德 (TIM HARFORD)

插图：卢克·沃尔格穆斯 (LUKE WOHLGEMUTH)

在 20 世纪 50 年代那个被誉为天才游乐场的贝尔实验室里，信息论之父克劳德·香农 (Claude Shannon) 制造了一台“预判机”。这台机器的任务很简单：人类在左右两个杠杆中选择一个，而机器则猜测人类会选择哪一个。香农受到一位同事的启发，后者的预判机拥有虽然微小但确实存在的 53 per cent 的成功率。香农自己的版本更简单且效果更好，正确率达到了 65 per cent 的时间。

在威廉·庞德斯通 (William Poundstone) 的著作《如何预测不可预测之事》(How to Predict the Unpredictable, 2014) 中讲述的传奇故事是：在长期运行中，没有人能击败这台机器，只有一个例外：香农本人。由于机器的算法简单且优雅，他能够在脑中模拟该算法，并做出与机器预测相反的选择。

这些机器是如何工作的？逻辑很简单：两者都会记录对手的行为。例如，如果你连续赢了几次，你通常是会乘胜追击坚持同样的选择，还是倾向于切换？其前提假设是，没有人类能真正随机地进行博弈。

我们都有某些习惯或本能。这不需要超级计算能力：香农的机器仅有 16 bits 的内存。我们人类并不难被看穿。

一个更简单的漏洞是双面均为反面的硬币。任何持有这种硬币的骗子都可以通过提议抛硬币并喊“反面”来决定任何分歧。但即使他给受害者机会来喊抛掷结果，他大概率还是会赢，因为人们喊“正面”的次数通常更多。

最早发现这一点的学者之一是路易斯·古德费洛 (Louis Goodfellow)，他在 20 世纪 30 年代末招募志愿者，让他们写下一组反映想象中抛硬币结果的序列。78% 的参与者以“正面”开始他们的序列。

在另一组更大的数据集（最初是为了研究心灵感应而收集的，此处不再赘述）中，古德费洛发现超过 20 per cent 的参与者选择了 HHTHT 或 HHTTH 序列。其他以正面开始且看似随机的序列也很受欢迎，例如 HTTHH 和 HTHHT。很少有人偏好以反面开始的序列，而最不受欢迎的序列是 TTTTT，大约每 600. 人中才有一人选择。然而，任何数学家都能告诉你，抛五次硬币有 32 种可能的结果，而这 32, 种结果每一种出现的概率都是相等的。

十五年后，人机工程学先驱阿尔方斯·查帕尼斯 (Alphonse Chapanis) 要求志愿者花大约一小时时间，在一个巨大的网格中填入数千个随机数字。对结果的分析产生了一些惊人的观察。最不受欢迎的 10 组相邻数字组合（按顺序排列）是：66 99 00 11 33 44 88 22 77 55. 而最受欢迎的 10 组呢？32 43 21 76 65 10 31 87 86 54 —— 看来人类大脑似乎偏好递减的对组。在真正的随机序列中，66 出现的概率与 32 相同，但当我们随手写下时，看似随机的内容其实绝非随机。这种规律可以被预判机、骗子，甚至密码破解者所利用。

它们也可以被懒惰的学生利用。作者威廉·庞德斯通提供了一些通过“暴力破解”通过多项选择题测试的技巧。如果你完全不知道判断题的答案，就猜“正确”。如果你知道前一题的答案，就猜这次答案会改变。如果提供四个选项，就选“B”。如果可选，始终选择“以上全部”或“以上皆非” —— 它们成为正确答案的概率不成比例地高。这些方法都不能保证成功，但它们确实能提高你的胜算，因为大多数多项选择题的出题者比他们自己意识到的要更容易被预测。

如果你真的需要一个随机序列，那么不要去问人类。另一种选择是让机器生成随机数——但要小心。1980年，宾夕法尼亚州的“Pick 3”彩票被抽奖电视演播室的工作人员操纵了。除了数字4和6的球之外，所有球都被巧妙地涂上了乳胶漆以增加重量，这意味着当风扇开启将这些轻质球吹散时，所有的4号和6号球都会漂浮到顶部。不幸的是，由于人们在4-6组合上投入了巨额赌注，再加上中奖号码出现了预兆般的666，这足以引起怀疑。

最近在数字领域上演了几乎相同的故事。当时，多州彩票协会（Multi-State Lottery Association）的一名IT专家承认在生成彩票号码的软件中植入了后门：虽然该软件通常是随机的，但在某些特定日期，它会产生看似随机但实际上可以被他预测的数字。

计算机加密依赖于一个无法被猜到的巨大数字，而获得不可预测数字的最佳方式就是使其随机化。不幸的是，这比人们想象的要困难得多，许多计算机系统——其中最臭名昭著的是索尼的PlayStation 3——被黑客攻击，就是因为攻击者发现了这些“随机”数字的生成方式。

如果彩票机（无论是物理的还是数字的）都可以被操纵，而人类又无法创造出真正的随机数字序列，那么人们很容易倾向于求助于古老的抛硬币法。但先别急。被誉为数学家兼魔术师的珀西·迪亚科尼斯（Persi Diaconis）发现，抛硬币在通常情况下是一个51 / 49的概率问题，即硬币最终落面与起始面相同的概率更高。为了进一步阐明这个观点，迪亚科尼斯制造了一台抛硬币机。将硬币正面朝上放入，机器会将它在空中漂亮地翻转——结果每次落地都是正面朝上。

这并非单纯的理论问题。在今年夏天的国际数学家大会上，数学作家兼YouTuber马特·帕克（Matt Parker）及其朋友设立了一个摊位，让对数学感兴趣的公众尝试抛硬币。帕克承诺，任何能连续抛出10次正面的人将获得$1,000——这是一个有趣的挑战，旨在引导人们探索一个极低概率的结果在现实中究竟是什么感觉。

遗憾的是，这种情况并不像他想象的那么罕见：在第一天就被迫两次发放$1,000奖金后，帕克查看了累积的数据，发现整个抛硬币的分布出乎意料地偏向于连续的反面或连续的正面。这种效应比迪亚科尼斯预测的还要强烈，可能是因为帕克的许多抛币者年纪较小，无法可靠地将硬币抛到足够高的高度以使其充分旋转。帕克的解决方案是：在会议的第二天，他改用了骰子。结果的模式回到了某种更接近纯随机的状态……无论纯随机究竟是什么。FT

各专栏

冷门报道

FT BURFAUX

建筑

宏伟规模的粗野主义

由匈牙利建筑师埃尔诺·戈德芬格（Ernő Goldfinger）设计的特雷利克塔（Trellick Tower）在 1972 年开放后，迅速成为伦敦最具争议的建筑之一。《金融时报》将其评为“世界上最丑陋的建筑之一”。批评者、观察家和媒体还将其称为：

- “天空中的科尔迪茨”（Colditz in the sky），以此比喻德国的战俘营

- “恐怖之塔”，因电梯故障、维护问题和犯罪率而得名

- “变异冰箱”，因为从侧面看它像一个超大号的厨房电器 来源：综合

医学里程碑

伊姆斯夫妇的辅助角色

查尔斯和雷·伊姆斯（Charles and Ray Eames）发明了一种开创性的腿部夹板，用于运输第二次世界大战中受伤的士兵。该项目教会了这两位设计师如何高效地制造模压胶合板，据估计为美国军队生产了 150,000 个夹板。这些夹板为他们著名的模压椅子奠定了技术基础。

来源：综合

益智游戏

埃尔诺·鲁比克带来的启示

埃尔诺·鲁比克（Ernő Rubik）在布达佩斯应用艺术与设计学院担任教授期间，于 1974 年发明了鲁比克方块，将其作为一种教学工具，向学生展示三维物体如何运动。当他第一次打乱原型时，花了一个月的时间才想出如何还原。现在他大约一分钟就能完成。今年的世界纪录由九岁的波兰速拧选手特奥多尔·扎伊德（Teodor Zajder）创造，他仅用 2.76 秒就解开了这个谜题。

来源：CBC

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《机器》，AMATO 系列，2019–2020

画廊

玛丽-皮埃尔·克拉韦迪（MARIE-PIERRE CRAVEDI） 作者：路易斯·德尔巴雷（LOUIS DELBARRE）

阿马托·克拉韦迪（Amato Cravedi）于1914年出生在意大利皮亚琴察。为了寻找工作，他前往瑞士担任餐厅领班。然而，他的计划被第二次世界大战打乱。阿马托被派往突尼斯加入墨索里尼的军队参战。大约在1942, 他被美国人俘虏，并在卡萨布兰卡被囚禁直到冲突结束。“在那儿，他直到战争结束前一直在一个机械车间工作，”他的孙女玛丽-皮埃尔·克拉韦迪（Marie-Pierre Cravedi）告诉我，“当他回到家时，他意识到意大利处于一种困难的状态。一切都必须从零开始重建。”

由于国家满目疮痍，阿马托在卡萨布兰卡开始了新生活。他遇到了玛丽-皮埃尔的祖母卡梅拉（Carmela），并担任机械师。他最终开设了克拉韦迪车间（Cravedi Workshop），专门从事卡车和农用机械零件业务。阿马托在这座摩洛哥城市生活了60年，玛丽-皮埃尔的父亲让-皮埃尔（Jean Pierre）也出生于此。

玛丽-皮埃尔原籍图卢兹，现在是一位定居在洛桑的视觉艺术家。她对七岁时第一次访问卡萨布兰卡的记忆已十分模糊，只剩下一些关于“卡萨”（Casa）的陈词滥调——一座沙漠边拥有白色屋顶房屋的梦幻之城。她于2019. 再次返回。这次旅程变成了一次对家族记忆的搜寻。“我一直在问自己，我父亲在青少年时期是什么样子，”她说。

'PLONGEURS', SÉRIE AMATO, 2019–2020

她开始记录那个车间，拍摄机器和工人。随着玛丽-皮埃尔开始记录卡萨布兰卡年轻人的生活，以反映她父亲的青春岁月可能是怎样的，工厂的阴暗逐渐让位于城市的亮光。“他们的活力与车间缓慢的消亡形成对比，”她写道，“在这两个空间之间——一个处于消逝的边缘，另一个处于充分的肯定之中——一座转型中的城市随之浮现。”

玛丽-皮埃尔的作品探讨了家庭与记忆。我们传承了什么，又留下了什么？在阿马托身上，她拼凑起了一个关键事实对她而言仍然未知的故事。“我感兴趣的是讲述复杂的故事，将车间的图像与青少年的肖像融合在一起，”她说，“我追求的不是完美的单张图像，而是通过照片的协同作用来构建一个叙事。”

最终，玛丽-皮埃尔开始放弃纪实手法，让创造力主导。她说：“在最后一次卡萨布兰卡之行中，记录过程的重复引导我走向抽象。我不再那么想去记录，而是倾向于创造诗意、梦幻的图像。” FT

《阿马托》（Amato）由 Rue du Bouquet 出版，由玛丽-皮埃尔·克拉韦迪拍摄，瓦伦丁·特博（Valentine Thébaut）负责书籍设计，马伊·尤塞夫（Maaï Youssef）作序。《阿马托》将于9月5日至9月27日在瑞士韦韦的 Images Vevey 展出。

印第安纳心境（INDIANA STATE OF MIND）

保守派中西部最倔强的州之一，也是将特朗普推向权力之巅的地方之一，是否最终会拒绝他的政治主张？州博览会将给出答案。作者：拉娜·福鲁哈尔。摄影：克里斯汀·波特

右侧，从上至下：参加比赛的拉法叶高中行进乐队；一名骑手与她的马及获奖缎带合影

前页：州博览会的游客们走在游乐场中

阶级的地理分布从空中清晰可见。在八月一个酷热的夏日，我飞往我的家乡——位于美国中西部心脏地带的印第安纳州，在数千英尺的高空，我能俯瞰该地区的政治历史。那里有巨大的、四英里见方的黑色土壤，生长着茂盛的玉米和大豆，每一块都被均匀地划分为“乡村英里”，构成了世界上最富饶的农田。在印第安纳波利斯（这座繁荣的州首府，是礼来等制药巨头的所在地）以北，出现了被泳池和繁茂景观环绕的豪宅。当我们接近城市时，出现了工厂和预制房屋开发区，在不那么讲究政治正确的时候，它们被称为“拖车公园”。我的几个高中朋友就住在那里，尤其是在农业经营整合、工厂开始关闭的时期。

到2016年时，我早已离开。在我青少年时期，那种以节俭、勤勉和地方社群主义（农民清理积雪的道路，教会经营食品银行）为特征的小写“c”保守主义（small-c conservatism），让位于美国右翼激进派的崛起，即成为了唐纳德·特朗普的“使美国再次伟大”（Make America Great Again）政治。得益于一位有抱负的母亲，我离开了法兰克福（Frankfort）——在这里定居的德国移民一定是为了向新世界妥协才把那个字母写成“o”的——进入了常春藤联盟。但最近，我的家乡再次成为了一个试金石，用以观察 MAGA 群体以及整个国家可能走向何方。

在11月美国中期选举前夕，专家和政治分析人士提出的问题是，中西部是否开始转向反对特朗普主义。今年已经出现了一些迹象，包括特朗普之外的右翼替代方案的崛起，例如密苏里州的参议员乔什·霍利（Josh Hawley），他正计划在2028年竞选总统，并且愿意在从滥用行政权力到堕胎权以及支持 Big Tech 的所有问题上挑战总统。

印第安纳州也在抵制 MAGA。去年12月，21名共和党州参议员与全部10名印第安纳州民主党人一起，共同抵制特朗普在中期选举前重新划分选区的企图。这种杰利蝾螈（gerrymandering）式的选区划分本将给共和党在印第安纳州带来进一步优势，但它与传统的保守主义情绪背道而驰，因为后者认为州权高于联邦干预。由于温和派共和党人拒绝向特朗普的压力低头，该提案在州参议院被否决。

报复迅速而猛烈。总统在痛斥那些投票反对选区划分的共和党人时宣布：“这些人每一个都应该在初选中被挑战，而我会在那儿提供帮助。”随后，MAGA 超级政治行动委员会（Super Pacs）向州参议院选举投入了数百万美元。初选季的资金达到了 $13.5mn，而两年前则不足 $300,000。在挺身对抗总统的八名保守派现任议员中，有六人在初选中落败。其中一人，州参议员特拉维斯·霍尔德曼（Travis Holdman）对此评价道：“欢迎来到印第安纳州的华盛顿政治，因为这意味着这就是未来的趋势。”

有民调显示，其中一些选区无论如何都可能转向“使美国再次伟大”（Maga）。但显而易见的是，国家层面的巨额资金和选区重划操纵，加上共和党领导层对特朗普近乎狂热的追随，已成为政治中一个巨大的扭曲力量。“我是一个乐观的人，”前印第安纳波利斯市市长斯蒂芬·戈尔德史密斯（Stephen Goldsmith）说道，他是一位温和派共和党人，目前在哈佛大学任教。“但我认为，州外巨额金融资本与选区重划操纵的结合，使得普通人的声音很难被听到。”

印第安纳州的人们——我们这些天生对权力持怀疑态度且思想独立的“胡西尔人”（Hoosiers）——对此怎么看？他们愤怒吗？生活成本危机、一场不得人心的伊朗战争，以及一种认为共和党超级政治行动委员会（Super Pacs）买通了当地参议院选举的感觉，是否会在中期选举中帮助那些打着反腐败旗号的民主党候选人？人们是否还在关注？今年夏天，有一个非常明显的地方可以用来探测这一政治时刻的温度：印第安纳州博览会。

州博览会在中西部具有标志性意义。它们是规模宏大、持续一个月之久的商业与文化盛会。当我进入印第安纳波利斯市中心的博览会场地时，立刻就感受到了这种氛围。我抵达之日正是8月7日的开幕日，而当天的大事件是深受观众喜爱的啦啦队比赛。我经过了嘉年华游乐设施，经过了展示名贵羊、山羊和猪的畜舍，看到一群中年木鞋舞者（表演的是过去200年传到美国的现代化约克郡木鞋舞）在出人意料的嘻哈混音音乐中气喘吁吁地起舞，还看到了一个叫作“狗狗跳水”的项目——狗狗们要跳入一个巨大的游泳池，跳高可达20英尺或更多，此外还有一项先驱文化的展示。

最终，我来到了博览会场地中心的看台。一群系着丝带、穿着统一色调制服的少女已经开始了练习，在弗利特伍德·麦克（Fleetwood Mac）、齐柏林飞船（Led Zeppelin）和奥蒂斯·雷丁（Otis Redding）的音乐声中做侧手翻和后空翻。家长们在周围徘徊寻找座位，有些人拿着玉米热狗和柠檬冰沙，容器大得像沙桶一样。体型较壮的女孩将纤细的女孩举起，使其处于不稳定的支撑状态，然后将她们抛向空中。脚尖被触碰。

女孩们被接住落下。“天哪，她们比去年吃力多了，”一名旁观者评论道。

我截住了一位“舞蹈妈妈”安德里亚（Andrea），她看起来在年轻时可能也能做一两个侧手翻。她14岁的女儿阿什兰（Ashland）是杰伊县初高中爱国者队（Jay County Junior-Senior High Patriots）的啦啦队员，此时正与她的褶裙战友布伦娜（Brenna）在一起。两人都留着极浅的金色头发，穿着红白蓝三色的制服，涂着鲜红色的口红。

“她们做了一个圆翻接后手翻，然后是一个后空翻，”安德里亚自豪地说。

“是在斜坡上做的，”阿什兰补充道，“那是最难的部分。”

安德里亚穿着牛仔短裤和一件印有“我们是爱国者”的T恤——事实证明，这不仅代表了她的队伍，也代表了她的政治立场。她告诉我她是一个“彻头彻尾的特朗普女孩”，但她的女儿禁止她今天穿Maga的装备，因为她们在印第安纳波利斯，“这里的人不喜欢那种东西”。

安德里亚今年 56 岁，有一个庞大的重组家庭，共有 12 个孩子，年龄从 38 岁到 2 岁不等。最小的一对金发双胞胎也穿着“我们是爱国者”的 T 恤。他们住在该州东部的农村地区，距离最近的商店有 13 英里。她的家族在该地区已经生活了数代。安德里亚直到最近还在经营一家日托中心，而她的丈夫现在从事建筑业。得益于相对强劲的州经济，他的生意不错（在 GDP 和低失业率方面，印第安纳州的表现优于其他 11 个中西部州，失业率为 3.3%）。强有力的州预算、较低的生活成本以及制造业、服务业和农业的良好结合，帮助该州度过了艰难时期和物价上涨的压力。钢铁、生物技术和国防工业则受益于国家层面的再工业化努力。

这是安德里亚及其家人仍然支持特朗普的一个原因。但除此之外还有其他原因。“他很强硬，”当我问她为什么喜欢这位总统时，她说道，“而且他是一位非常优秀的领导者。他不是政治家——他是个商人。而且，他正在做出对未来有利、会让我们的孩子受益的决定。我们的军队再次变得强大。我们正在找回爱国主义和自豪感。我们没有拆除雕像。我希望我们的历史能够保留下来……好吧，其中有些部分确实很丑陋，但我们可以从中学习。我希望孩子们知道真相，学会尊重。”

她认为，警察和军人应该受到更高的尊重。这反映了我从美国农村许多地区其他人口中听到的一个更广泛的文化观念：即那些生活在大城市或沿海地区的人不理解他们的价值观。正如印第安纳州众议院议长托德·休斯顿（Todd Huston）对我所说的那样：“信仰、公共安全、更简单的生活方式——人们感觉到这些东西缺乏被尊重。”

安德里亚是我们经常听到的那种选民，但像她这样的人并不代表整个州。印第安纳州实际上是由三个州组成的，而每一个

“特朗普很强势，”她说，“他正在做出有利于我们孩子的决定”

这种局面反映了近期美国政治经验的一个关键要素。在我成长以及我父亲经营工厂的北部半州，曾是一个制造业强区，但被“中国冲击”摧毁了——即过去几十年里，铁锈地带的大量工业岗位被外包到亚洲。虽然从州 GDP 占比来看，印第安纳州仍是全美最大的制造业州，但大多数高薪的工会岗位已经消失，这里的劳工左翼民主党人在 2016 年大幅转向支持特朗普。

然后是该州的南部，那里就是典型的“南方”——与其说是铁锈地带，不如说更像阿巴拉契亚地区。印第安纳州至今仍有活跃的三 K 党（Ku Klux Klan）成员，以及强烈的反移民民粹主义倾向。在我的家乡，你可以将 19 世纪的本土主义“不知情党”（Know-Nothings）、三 K 党、麦卡锡主义者、茶党以及特朗普主义之间画出一条直接的连线。

最后是印第安纳波利斯，这是一个多元化、生活成本较低的知识经济体，拥有丰富的文化和娱乐活动。但这个被称为“Indy”的城市与许多美国大城市一样，拥有大量黑人人口，它处于一个与该州大部分其他地区脱节（且被其怨恨）的轨道上。从这个意义上说，州首府及其周边的县治是国家城乡分歧的缩影，这种分歧对美国政治的定义程度，可以说与“红蓝之分”不相上下。哪个政党能够弥合这一差距？答案将决定中期选举，或许还将决定 2028 年的总统大选。

在听了几个小时的助威声后，我前往韦弗爆米花青年展馆（Weaver Popcorn Youth Pavilion），观看青少年骑乘与展示比赛。穿着皮套裤、牛仔裤、西部风格衬衫和靴子的青少年们紧张地展示他们的马匹。穿着泥泞工作靴和 T 恤的父母和祖父母在为他们加油。一名中年妇女对着其中一个女孩喊道：“看起来你玩得很开心，派珀（Piper）！”一名戴着牛仔帽、穿着粉色格子夹克和靴子的播报员兼裁判告诉参赛者：“身体前倾，疾驰！”他们照做了。

我在后排注意到一对格外专注的夫妇。男人皮肤黝黑，头发呈沙色，眼睛湛蓝。他穿着牛仔裤和牛仔靴。女人的长相很有特点——目光敏锐且充满感情。原来希拉·布莱克（Sheila Blake）是一位 60. 岁的祖母。她 14 岁的孙子特雷（Tray）刚刚赢得了一枚奖带。“他很努力，这是他第一年完全独立完成所有工作，”她自豪地说。这意味着特雷要在凌晨起床喂养和照顾马匹，给马鞍马、训练马等等。“面对一只 1,200 磅的动物，让它按照你的意愿行动，这对孩子来说真的能增强掌控感，”布莱克说，“生活不在四面墙之内——在这里参赛教会了他们关于工作、关于金钱的道理。”这种对自力更生的追求，与我在自己居住的布鲁克林社区看到的“直升机父母”形成了鲜明对比。

特雷看起来很自豪，也有点紧张。他个子小，但在颁发奖带时，他穿着一件带有白色滚边的亮水蓝色牛仔衬衫，挺直地坐在马背上。“我之前担心会掉下来，”他后来对我说，尽管我怀疑那并非真的有可能。他从小就在博览会上参加比赛。“大多数孩子只是花大量时间在手机上，”当我问起他在学校的朋友时，他这样说道。随后，他的祖母告诉他去“划掉”（scratch out），意思是退出比赛，并去给马洗澡，他顺从地跑去执行。

布莱克来自该州南部的布朗县，出身于农民世家。她和丈夫至今仍在养殖动物和种植作物，在食物方面能够自给自足。但他们两人都需要从事其他工作才能维持生计——农业在印第安纳州是一个规模达 350亿美元 的产业，该州是全美第九大农业区，但务农的利润空间极低，只有少数工业化农民能负担得起全职务农。布莱克是一名学校教师，教授地球科学。和我采访的许多人一样，她希望更多的人能去农场待一天。“如果他们这么做了，就会明白为什么食品价格是现在这个样子。人们需要重新去理解食物来自哪里，以及将其送到餐盘里需要付出什么。水是要花钱的，燃料也是要花钱的。”

布莱克的女儿在农业部担任项目专家，这两个女人都觉得没有任何一个政党真正关心农民——政客们完全脱离了这里人们的日常生活。布莱克担心伊朗战争以及化石燃料使用在整体上的不可持续性。在投票倾向方面，她称自己为独立人士。当我开始询问她，特朗普的战争是否会改变她在中期选举和总统选举中的投票选择时，在我还没说完这句话之前，她就已经在点头了。“可能会。是的，确实有可能。我得看看候选人是谁，但这确实是我在考虑的事情。”

布莱克愿意考虑跨党派投票，这不仅反映了共和党自身目标（如对伊朗战争）带来的影响，也反映出民主党正努力在农村选民所处的位置与他们接轨，更多地讨论价值观和宗教。在整个中西部，近几周的初选胜出者与其说取决于党派隶属关系，不如说取决于信任——候选人是否看到了我？他或她是否知道我是谁，以及我住在哪里？

保守派民调专家弗兰克·伦茨（Frank Luntz）将这一趋势称为“尊重政治”，并表示这在中期选举中可能有利于民主党，尤其是民主社会主义者，特别是在密歇根州和俄亥俄州等州，那里的工会选民正转向反对特朗普。他说：“无论政纲如何，只要谁能出现并让人们感到被倾听，谁就会获胜。”在国家层面，共和党在这方面的表现并不理想。特朗普声称生活成本危机是一场“骗局”，且数据中心不会抢走工作，这些说法在对人工智能（AI）持有生存焦虑的选民中并不奏效。

数据中心的话题出人意料地在猪舍里被提及，我在抵达之前就能闻到那里的气味。扬声器里大声播放着埃迪·马尼（Eddie Money）的《Take Me Home Tonight》和印第安纳州本土歌手约翰·库格·梅伦坎普（John Cougar Mellencamp）的《Jack and Diane》。音乐仿佛停留在 20 世纪 80 年代，但我很喜欢，这让我想起高中的舞会。一个系着巨大红色发结、看起来不超过 10 岁的小女孩，正引导着一只体重至少是她 10 倍以上的猪。博览会女王也在那里，穿着牛仔裤，戴着一个贴有廉价宝石的塑料皇冠，正在发放奖带。一群等待向评委展示动物的孩子们，在铺满锯末的空展示坑里踢足球。

在附近的另一个坑里，一名 30 多岁的男子正在向聚集在周围的约 150 名儿童和青少年提问，他们正在学习如何成为牲畜评判员。他们金发且长满雀斑，女孩们编着紧凑且完美的法式辫子，甚至有些是阿米什高中女孩会编的那种更复杂的鱼骨辫。男孩们留着平头，戴着帽子。每个人都穿着牛仔裤和 T 恤，上面写着“普渡农业”（Purdue Ag）或“黑鹰牲畜评判”（Blackhawk Livestock Judging）之类的话。播报员向他们提问：“问题 15. 当你走到它们身后时，哪种动物的皮肤有褶皱？”学生们安静地在纸上涂写。播报员说：“你们那边在那儿说话的人，作弊对你们自己没有好处。”几个青少年男孩显得有些尴尬。“问题 16. 哪种动物的体重最重？”更多的涂写声响起。

我走到那些隔间里，那里由猪和它们的主人共同占用（许多猪侧卧着，四脚朝天，像老头一样打呼噜），而主人则在草地椅上悠闲地休息。我与几位农民聊天，在一次典型的“印第安纳式巧合”中，我发现其中一人在基石合作社（Keystone Cooperative）工作——那是一家农民集体组织，现在由我五年级时暗恋的一个男孩经营。这位农民杰森·海恩（Jason Hine）和其他人一样，打着多份工。他与另一位农民梅兰妮·布什（Melanie Bush）表示，这里的所有人都在讨论燃料价格——以及数据中心。“这些日子我们更密切地关注新闻，尤其是国家层面的新闻。”

布什说，在她所在的印第安纳州北部地区，数据中心正进入该区域，推高了地价，使得购买或租赁土地变得更加困难。“然后还有交通问题、用水量，所有这些，”她说。她和海恩都希望华盛顿的人能更好地理解维持生计有多么艰难。“实际上从20世纪70年代起就很艰难了，”海恩说。布什的丈夫是个沉默寡言的人，他心领神会地向我点头。他们都承认，伊朗战争和大型科技公司（Big Tech）加剧了通货膨胀。这会让他们投票给民主党吗？

数据中心的话题出人意料地出现在猪舍中

从顶部起顺时针方向：特雷（Tray）在赢得奖带后与他的马在一起；一名年轻的参展者在展示技巧比赛中引导他的猪；骑行者在“天空之吼”（Sky Scream）项目上飞驰

右侧，从顶部起：一名驯养员带着她的羊驼参加“跳跃羊驼”比赛；博览会游客在猪肉帐篷中用餐

前页：一支啦啦队在比赛中表演

“比起中期选举，我更关心我的学区”

他们脸上露出了不确定的表情。正如海恩（Hine）所说：“比起中期选举或总统大选，我更关心我的学区。联邦政府应该关注国家安全，而我们可以关注这里的教育等事务。政府应该减少，而不是增加。”

这种认为“政府是问题所在，而非解决方案”的观念在这里依然根深蒂固，且有利于保守派。民调预测保守派将赢得该州，但领先幅度将远低于 2024 年。虽然在 2006 年至 2010 年间，由于人们对伊拉克战争（许多印第安纳州国民警卫队士兵参与了这场战争——该州历史上派遣参战士兵人数众多）以及金融危机的反感，民主党在该州表现良好，但巴拉克·奥巴马在 2008 年在此地的胜利幅度很小。即便在特朗普任内共和党犯下了所有错误，感觉民主党想要赢回美国这一地区依然是一场艰苦的战斗。

当我走出谷仓时，我询问了布兰登·斯迈利（Brandon Smiley）关于该州种族政治的问题。35 岁的斯迈利在一家为博览会提供餐饮布置的派对公司工作。他的家人和该地区的许多人一样，在三代前的大迁徙（Great Migration）期间来到印第安纳州，当时许多黑人移民离开南方，向北寻求经济机会并逃避种族主义。但对于他的家庭来说，这个州并没有成为避风港——斯迈利说他“整天”都在经历种族主义。他告诉我，印第安纳州“非黑即白”，但就业机会很好，对他来说，这才是最重要的。

在这次访问中，我从其他黑人印第安纳州居民（Hoosiers）那里听到了类似的说法。我们聊了一会儿，我问他如何看待“特朗普 2.0”。“嗯，我的孩子们在天主教学校上学，教育资金的削减让人吃力。为了让我的七岁和四岁孩子留在学校，每月要花 470 加元，”这比前几年大幅增加。“杂货账单已经从每月 700 加元涨到了 1,200 加元。”他的社区会像 2008 年支持奥巴马那样支持民主党吗？“也许吧。人们在事情（比如物价）影响到自身之前并不在乎，”而现在影响到了。尽管如此，斯迈利说他绝不会搬到像芝加哥那样的地方——那是一个更加多元、包容且拥有强大黑人社区的城市——因为那里的生活成本要高得多。

快到傍晚了，我回到大看台，这次是为了观看至关重要的行进乐队比赛。（坦白说：我曾在 1988 年的乐队比赛中担任旗手。谢天谢地，那时还没有社交媒体。）

我不知道自己是否陷入了某种《日落大道》式的怀旧时刻，但这些乐队在我记忆中似乎小了很多。现在的表演还带有一种太阳马戏团（Cirque du Soleil）的质感，感觉很奇怪——大量的服装、戏剧效果和道具。而我们当年只是行进，挥舞旗帜，充满激情地演奏乐器。但这些孩子看起来确实和我当年一样紧张和兴奋。我能看到他们在心中默默数着步数，眼神中带着那种像被车灯照到的鹿一样惊惶的神情。

负责音响系统的技术人员在孩子们演奏时聊天。“怎么样？”一个问另一个。“现在说还太早——但已经晚到不在乎了！”另一个回答，两人随即大笑。乐队指挥在场边大喊，敦促孩子们精准到位：“向右走，不，不要转那么急！”数十名青少年在同时吹响号角的同时，完成了一个精准的步法阵型。

西拉法叶高中（West Lafayette High School）即将表演。西拉法叶是这个“红州”中的一抹蓝色，它是工程强校普渡大学（Purdue University）的所在地。乐队女孩们戴着水手帽，表演带有某种现代舞的特质，几乎像太极一样，在德彪西的曲调中演绎着某种海洋主题。挥旗队的女孩们状态不佳，当她们旋转并将道具抛向空中时，好几个掉在了碎石地上。我将其归咎于 iPhone。她们肯定不像我们在 20 世纪 80 年代那样刻苦练习，那时候整个夏天真的没什么可做的，除了摘玉米须、照顾小孩、在当地冰淇淋店打工以及挥舞旗帜。在我身后，围观者们像在“花生画廊”一样提供着实时点评。“天哪，她们在演《绿野仙踪》吗？”“不，是《魔法坏女巫》。”“噢，那更好。”当一名编着法式辫子的萨乐美随着某种模糊的中东风情音乐起舞时，有人说：“她很美——我也喜欢她的发型。”“是啊。那舞跳得太飒了……要来点 Kettle Korn 吗？”对于不熟悉的人来说，那就是重口味的焦糖爆米花。

人们可以对州博览会的食物做一个微型研究。脂肪、糖和盐是主要成分，玉米和猪肉紧随其后。玉米热狗似乎分为大号、特大号和“离谱号”。任何东西都可以油炸——酸黄瓜、番茄、士力架、冰淇淋、奥利奥。我看到两个女人在吃某种东西，看起来像是在雨林中从受感染昆虫体内爆裂而出的真菌的土豆版。我被告知这是“甜咸螺旋土豆片”，是通过将一整块切片土豆浸入深炸锅中制成的，她们确认这确实“美味”。小时候，我会对这些东西心驰神往，恳求父母给我买一个像轮毂盖那么大的、蘸了糖粉的油炸面团“大象耳”。而现在，在 90 华氏度的高温下，这个念头让我感到恶心。我倾向于走向猪肉帐篷外的队伍，那是最长的一队，而且理由充分——在半英里外就能闻到手撕猪肉那咸香的味道。排队时，草原上的烈日开始灼烧我的后颈。

在猪肉帐篷里，我与一对来自蒙哥马利县（Montgomery County）的老夫妇聊天，那里在印第安纳波利斯以西一小时车程，靠近伊利诺伊州边界。丈夫 66 岁，是一名退休的 AT&T 技术员；而妻子拒绝与我交谈（“我们以前跟记者打过交道，出过问题”），即便我告诉她我在克林顿县（Clinton County）长大——这通常能让对好奇外来者持怀疑态度的印第安纳人态度缓和一些。尽管如此，我还是了解到他们有两个成年儿子在 State Farm 保险公司工作。他们对自己的生活现状感到满意，尤其是与 20 世纪 70 年代他们组建家庭时相比。“当我们买第一套房子时，利率是 18%，”丈夫说，“而我们很快就要把它还清了。”这位丈夫曾三次投票给特朗普。“我喜欢他的政策——我们需要放宽监管——但我不喜欢他的措辞。那是没必要的。”我问起关于重新划分选区（redistricting）的喧嚣，他关注吗？他在意吗？他摇了摇头，这与我整天听到的反应如出一辙。“这是政治开始以来一直在玩的游戏。”不过，他说，“我不喜欢这场战争。”他坚信“大公司在价格上玩把戏”，利用战争作为提高价格的机会。

这种关于企业权力与腐败的观点，是民主党多年来一直试图利用的切入点，但大多没有成功。不过，特朗普公然利用行政权力谋私利，提供了新的素材。研究表明，拒绝接受政治行动委员会（PAC）捐款的候选人被认为更值得信赖。但这通常在初选阶段更为有效，因为那时选民不太可能简单地只为单一政党投票。选民表示腐败对他们很重要，他们希望看到解决方案。但在大选中，他们会在多大程度上考虑这一点，则尚不确定。可以确定的是，民主党立法竞选委员会已将印第安纳州列为目标州；民主党仅需赢得印第安纳州众议院的四个席位，即可打破共和党的超级多数地位。当然，他们会在竞选活动中抨击腐败，但也会聚焦于医疗补助（Medicaid）福利的削减、特朗普关于制造业就业机会的失败承诺，以及医疗和住房等成本的上涨。

晚餐时间到了，由于在阳光下待了数小时，我的眼睛感到灼热。是时候回酒店了。当我走过西瓜喷射比赛（标记线设在22英尺——真的有人能喷那么远吗？）前往游乐区时，我心想，在这样一个日子里，究竟是谁会排队买“威斯康星热奶酪”。（答案是：很多人。）

我不玩游乐场设施——有一次在康尼岛乘坐“气旋”过山车时，我的脖子受了伤，需要进行一个月的手法治疗。但我对这里的景象很感兴趣。正如已故作家大卫·福斯特·华莱士在关于伊利诺伊州博览会的一篇文章中所说，乘坐这些设施就像是“花钱去经历一场车祸”。我经过一个叫“天空之吼”的项目，一个三层楼高的钢制杠杆顶端带着吊篮，将渴望体验的游客高速吊向天空，在快节奏的舞曲声中，吊篮在旋转，巨大的杠杆本身也在旋转。工作人员推下启动杆，一名胆怯的红发男子在设施启动时 grimaces（面露难色）并紧紧抓着吊篮的边缘。我不禁将其视为对未来的隐喻——在中期选举、2028年总统大选以及更远的未来。FT

在德国东部一个风景如画的地区集结极右翼势力，德国选择党（AfD）距离组建其历史上首个州政府仅一步之遥

作者：劳拉·皮特尔 (LAURA PITEL) 与 安妮-西尔万·沙萨尼 (ANNE-SYLVAINE CHASSANY) 摄影：塞巴斯蒂安·洛克 (SEBASTIAN LOCK)

与那位被冠以“德国最危险男人”之名的政治家见面，是一种令人不安的体验。乌尔里希·西格蒙德（Ulrich Siegmund）很有魅力。他会向你提问，会称呼你的名字，如果你在几周后再次见到他，他甚至可能还记得你的样子。他拥有棱角分明的下颌线、干练的发型和像牙膏广告般灿烂的笑容，这位身材高挑、苗条的35岁男子，看起来很像AI在被要求构思一名“设计师打造的极右翼政治家”时会生成的结果。

这套方案似乎奏效了。西格蒙德可能很快将领导自第三帝国以来，在德国某个州执政的最右翼政府。他所属的德国选择党（AfD）一直在撼动这个欧盟人口最多国家的既有政党体系。该党成立于2013, 尚未在较大规模上掌握权力。但如果西格蒙德能在下周末举行的萨克森-安哈尔特州选举中赢得州长之争，这种情况可能即将改变。

在德国的分权体制下，这场胜利将赋予一个对移民、LGBTQ运动和气候变化政策表现出强烈敌意的政党真正的权力。德国选择党向俄罗斯示好，并将德国正视纳粹过去所做的努力描述为在延续一种“神经症”，而这种神经症已经“掏空了我们的文化遗产”。尽管西格蒙德将自己塑造得友好、随和且无害，但他的竞选纲领却是激进的。他的核心圈子中的许多人也是如此，其中至少包括两名新纳粹青年组织的前成员。德国选择党的该地区分支已被德国国内情报部门正式认定为右翼极端主义组织，该部门将自己视为民主制度的“预警系统”。它发现，该党高级官员的信念——包括伊斯兰恐惧症和反犹太主义言论，以及针对移民的妖魔化语言——与德国宪法相抵触。

这一切似乎并未吓跑萨克森-安哈尔特州的许多选民。甚至可能激励了其中一部分人。德国选择党的部分支持者来自于那些渴望向“告诫他们远离该党政治”的人们竖起中指的人。这些人包括新闻杂志《镜报》（Der Spiegel），该杂志本月在封面故事中将西格蒙德描述为该国最危险的男人。而他的回应则是兴高采烈地在一叠杂志上签名。

萨克森-安哈尔特州是一个距离柏林不远的州，这里给人的感觉与英国那些衰落的海滨小镇截然不同，而在那些小镇，奈杰尔·法拉奇（Nigel Farage）式的右翼民粹主义取得了最大突破。这里也与法国北部那些贫困的前煤矿堡垒大相径庭，国民联盟党领导人玛丽娜·勒庞（Marine Le Pen）自2017. 起一直持有那里的议会席位。该地区大部分是农村，有着延绵数公里的向日葵、小麦和玉米地。许多小镇如此美丽且维护良好，简直可以出现在巧克力盒的封面上。这里也是历史上一些最重要德国人的出生地：马丁·路德（Martin Luther）、格奥尔格·弗里德里希·亨德尔（George Frideric Handel）、奥托·冯·俾斯麦（Otto von Bismarck）和弗里德里希·尼采（Friedrich Nietzsche）。

但该州显赫的历史掩盖了1989. 以来一系列痛苦的动荡。在柏林墙倒塌之前，萨克森-安哈尔特州是共产主义东德（GDR）的一部分。自那时起，这里经历了工业流失和人口外迁。在德国的16个联邦州中，这里的人口最老龄化，且下降幅度最剧烈。德国选择党选民的抱怨多种多样。

这些抱怨从高昂的生活成本到该地区众多的风力涡轮机不等。一个反复出现的主题是对安全感和保障感丧失的感知——尤其是在该地区的大城市马格德堡（Magdeburg）和哈勒（Halle），以及在过去十年中明显受到寻求庇护者和经济移民到来影响的任何其他地方。

[...OMITTED...]

西格蒙德曾是一名香水销售员，拥有商业心理学学位。他精准地把握了家乡州的情绪，并将其转化为一套解决方案。这套方案的成分包括怀旧主义、本土主义，以及对批评他及其政党之人的诋毁，而这一切都被包裹在积极乐观的外壳之中。他的强硬政策被描绘成通往光明未来的路径。他的营销平台是 TikTok 和 Instagram，并在这些平台上积累了庞大的追随者。他的竞选口号是“一切皆有可能”。

上个月，在距离柏林西南 200 公里的魏森费尔斯（Weißenfels），一个阴天，西格蒙德的这套方案得到了充分展示。被粉丝称为“乌利”的他在这个小镇组织了一场摩托车集会，一台复古的东德轻便摩托车成了核心道具。他表示，这次集会将以此为起点，巡游周边乡村，旨在庆祝“自由——为了我们的国家，也为了我们的未来”。

在共产主义时期的德意志民主共和国（GDR）时代，魏森费尔斯曾是主要的制鞋中心。如今，这里给人一种衰落感。除了那个设有热门冰淇淋店、风景如画的集市广场外，侧街上的店铺大多用胶合板封死了。集会开始时，西格蒙德兴致高昂。在开场演讲中，他笑着欢迎聚集在广场上的数百人加入“常识阵营”。他谴责了前一天晚上发生在柏林骄傲节上的一起导致一名女性死亡的伊斯兰主义袭击事件，并痛斥其他政治家在面对此事时只会“说些陈词滥调”。他中途停下来，将一名在人群中发生争执的记者驱逐出去。随后他继续说道：“现在我想请大家恢复好心情。我们是一个充满乐观精神的政党。”

在又花了一个小时与粉丝见面并拍摄自拍后，出发的时间到了。数百辆摩托车开始轰鸣引擎并鸣笛，骑行者是一群混杂的人群：年长的骑手、中年夫妇，以及几十名青少年男孩及其女友。摩托车队中还包括几十辆“特拉比”（Trabis）——东德时代的标志性车型——其中一辆被涂成了东德警察（Volkspolizei）的颜色，乘客们则装扮成警员。

西格蒙德骑着他那辆 1975 年的轻便摩托车，车身涂成了天蓝色，这是德国选择党（AfD）的代表色。他喜欢将这种 Simson 摩托车（或称“Simmi”）描述为东德身份和自由的象征。至于该公司是由一个犹太家庭在 1856 年创立，而该家庭后来在纳粹征收企业后被迫逃离国家，他并不在意。该家庭在美国的后裔谴责德国选择党对该品牌的挪用是“令人厌恶的”。“我一点也不在乎任何在美国的人——那些几十年来与我们德国生活的现实毫无关系的人——对我们在东德所经历的事情发表什么看法，”西格蒙德向人群宣布。在汽油烟雾的弥漫和引擎轰鸣的喧嚣中，他疾驰而去。

德国选择党的迅速崛起震惊了许多德国人。在第二次世界大战结束后的数十年里，政治一直由大型的“全民党”（Volksparteien）主导：中右翼的基督教民主联盟（CDU）、其巴伐利亚姐妹党（CSU）以及中左翼的社会民主党（SPD）。在一个战后身份构建在“吸取暴力历史教训”基础上的国家，右翼民粹主义政党需要更长的时间才能扎根。即便在具有影响力的绿党出现之后，全民党依然主导着德国政治，直到 2013 年，他们在联邦选举中共同获得了超过三分之二的选票。

那一年，德国选择党（AfD）作为一个怀疑欧盟的运动而成立。它在2017年首次进入德国议会。在2025年2月的上一次联邦议院选举中，该党获得了21%的选票，成为第二大政党。对于大多数德国政党来说，这样的结果将是进入联合政府的入场券。但由于“防火墙”（Brandmauer）——即既有政党之间为了排挤极右翼而达成的一项不成文协议，禁止与德国选择党进行政治交易或组建联合政府——德国选择党从未在国家或地区政府中掌握权力。

然而，在萨克森-安哈尔特州，情况有所不同。民调显示，在9月6日举行的州选举中，德国选择党可能会赢得超过40%的选票——这一结果将使齐格蒙德（Siegmund）有望组建单一政党政府。这一结果将产生远超该州本身的深远影响。

如果一个与俄罗斯有公开联系的政党能够接触到敏感档案，除了影响当地的教育、警务和移民政策外，还将对全国的安全和情报产生连锁反应。德国选择党的胜利还有可能撕裂由弗里德里希·梅尔茨（Friedrich Merz）领导的传统中右翼阵营。这位极不受欢迎的基民盟总理上任还不到18个月，就因经济停滞及其备受争议的领导风格而面临来自党内的压力。

2018年竞选党主席时，在人们对前总理安格拉·默克尔（Angela Merkel）移民政策的不满日益增长之际，梅尔茨曾誓言要将德国选择党在全国的支持率降低一半。然而，自从他于2025年5月就任总理以来，这个极右翼政党在全德民调中已飙升至第一位，支持率达到28%。与此同时，基民盟（CDU）的支持率已萎缩至约20%。这加深了党内关于“防火墙”能否维持下去的分歧。

齐格蒙德于1990年10月出生在萨克森-安哈尔特州，就在德国统一三周之后。作为两名工程师的儿子，他在唐格明德（Tangermünde）这个小镇长大，他将其描述为“一个典型的东德家庭”。父母经历过的共产主义宣传和无处不在的史塔西（Stasi）监视，让他从小就学会质疑权威。“这在某种程度上是这里文化根深蒂固的一部分，”他说，“人们根本不会让自己被愚弄。”

他的职业生涯早期从事商业活动，创办了一家企业香氛公司。该公司曾尝试说服柏林交通部门，认为在地铁站中使用香草味进行“气味布置”可以减少犯罪，但这次尝试虽然勇敢却未能成功。他最初作为基民盟成员进入政坛，但

显然，西格蒙德具备那种“惊艳效应”

他发现这个中右翼政党固步自封。2014年，他加入了新成立的德国选择党（AfD），并在两年后当选进入州议会。

德国选择党比许多政治对手更早地意识到社交媒体的力量。但他的同事们逐渐发现，西格蒙德具备某种“惊艳效应”。他在2021年，即新冠疫情爆发一年后，开设了TikTok账号。当时，德国选择党是德国对封锁措施最激烈的反对者，而西格蒙德则是该党在萨克森-安哈尔特州的卫生发言人。他选择了“Mutzurwahrheit”（敢于说出真相）作为账号名，他的第一条帖子就呼吁结束对公众“毫无意义”的限制。

德国选择党长期信任的候选人、该党在萨克森-安哈尔特州的副主席汉斯-托马斯·蒂尔施奈德（Hans-Thomas Tillschneider）表示，虽然政党的官方视频经常获得数千次观看，但西格蒙德自己的帖子开始“爆火”。“我们突然意识到，他身上有某种特质。一种非凡的沟通天赋。”

西格蒙德为在线视频磨练出一种对话式、近乎忏悔式的风格。“起初我以为是个玩笑，”他会对镜头这样说。或者：“这里向大家揭秘这个国家的政治究竟是如何运作的。”如今，他在TikTok上拥有近800,000名追随者。相比之下，他的主要竞争对手——现任萨克森-安哈尔特州州长、来自基民盟（CDU）的政治人物斯文·舒尔策（Sven Schulze）仅有3,500名追随者。

随后，在2024年初，西格蒙德登上了全国新闻头条。调查媒体Correctiv指称他参加了一场秘密会议，参会者包括德国选择党的高层人物和臭名昭著的奥地利白人至上主义者马丁·塞尔纳（Martin Sellner）。报道称，塞尔纳阐述了一项关于“重新移民”的“总体计划”，其中不仅包括驱逐外国人，还包括被认为“未同化”的具有移民背景的德国公民。据报道，西格蒙德在会上表示，他希望让萨克森-安哈尔特州对于“这类人群”的生活变得“尽可能没有吸引力”。

这些指控引发了德国各城市的规模化抗议，愤怒的德国选择党反对者走上街头。该党的民调支持率受到打击。西格蒙德表示，起初他担心报道带来的后果，以及其妻子和幼女的安全风险。他声称部分报道——例如关于驱逐计划的部分——是“童话故事”。但事后看来，他将这次事件视为“一次极好的免费广告宣传”。

2025年5月，西格蒙德被选为德国选择党在萨克森-安哈尔特州的候选人。几周后，该党在地区民调中超过了基民盟。此后，差距进一步扩大。

德国选择党的竞选纲领确实采纳了“重新移民”的想法。它承诺针对所谓的“非法移民”发起一场“驱逐与重新移民攻势”，并抨击那些“文化不兼容”的外国人。它将乌克兰人列为其减少州内外国人口计划的目标之一，认为极少有人符合难民身份。它还点名了叙利亚人、伊拉克人和阿富汗人，其中许多人在默克尔2015年决定允许约100万中东人寻求庇护后来到德国。在这个拥有200万人口的州，共有约170,000名外国国民——这一数字自2014年以来翻了三倍。他们的到来让部分当地人感到不安。但专业协会表示，鉴于严重的技能短缺，外国劳工至关重要。该州近20%的医生来自国外。

德国选择党（AfD）的宣言经常提出一些远超州政府权力范围的建议，例如废除避难权、退出《巴黎气候协定》，以及恢复在2022.入侵乌克兰后停止的从莫斯科采购天然气。但该党也会尝试迅速实施一些政策，例如修改学校课程以减少对纳粹era.的关注。它希望扩大俄语课程，以帮助重建与莫斯科的经济和文化关系——这是对该地区在作为苏联卫星国期间所建立的持久纽带的一种致意。

批评者对一项创建“公民观察员”以巡逻街道并协助维持“安全、清洁和秩序”的提议感到震惊。警察工会警告称，该计划让人想起魏玛共和国和20世纪30年代德国动荡的历史，当时存在过私刑团体和准军事组织。据刑事警察官员工会当地负责人彼得·迈斯纳（Peter Meißner）称，此类团体的目标“通常是那些持有相反政治观点的人”。

与美国总统唐纳德·特朗普、意大利的乔治亚·梅洛尼（Giorgia Meloni）和法国的勒庞一样，德国选择党也采取了强烈的鼓励生育路线，试图扭转萨克森-安哈尔特州严重的统计人口下降。该党承诺取消日托费，并承诺为每对夫妇的前两个孩子提供€2,000的“婴儿奖金”，随后的每个孩子提供€4,000。齐格蒙德表示，“人口灾难”是德国在移民问题之后面临的最大单一问题。“这个国家的孩子实在太少了——我们自己的孩子太少了。”

德绍-罗斯劳（Dessau-Roßlau）镇位于魏森费尔斯以北一小时车程，这里留有东德在铁幕落下后经历的残酷转型的伤痕。

除了受1925,迁至该镇的包豪斯运动启发而建的现代主义建筑外，这里还留有曾经繁荣的工业过去的记忆。飞机制造商容克斯（Junkers）曾总部设在德绍。其最著名的型号 Ju 52, 在20世纪30年代曾是汉莎航空的旗舰飞机。如今，其工厂已成为一座博物馆和会议场所。

在附近的易北河对岸，罗斯劳曾是另一个工业强镇。在20世纪之交，萨克森伯格兄弟帮助将其转变为欧洲最大的内河造船厂。在东德（GDR）时期，德绍和罗斯劳都是重要的制造中心，为整个苏联集团的客户供货。但这一工业遗产在统一后崩溃了。将东德马克兑换为西德马克这一在政治上受欢迎的决定，对国有工厂造成了毁灭性打击，使其生产成本瞬间失去竞争力。德绍的铁路车辆制造商德国车辆制造公司（Deutsche Waggonbau）曾将苏联视为其最大客户，在1994.被一家美国公司收购。一年之内，投资者就放弃了这些工厂。

德国选择党候选人乌尔里希·齐格蒙德（Ulrich Siegmund）在魏森费尔斯市场广场上骑着他的天蓝色“Simmi”轻便摩托车

现任州总理、基民盟（CDU）政治家斯文·舒尔策（Sven Schulze）在柏林墙倒塌时年仅10岁。 “我们看到了失去工作有多快，一家公司消失得有多快，”他说。“这就是东德人的经历，而且这种感受比西德人想象的要深刻得多。”

三十多年后，德绍-罗斯劳（两镇于2007合并）失去了三分之一的人口。在政府决定停止从俄罗斯进口石油和天然气后，当地化学工业因能源价格飙升而承压。该镇的失业率约为10 per cent，比全国平均水平高出近四个百分点。

2024年6月，德国选择党（AfD）在市议会选举中获得了最多席位，这一胜利与席卷前东德地区的极右翼浪潮同步。三个月后，在萨克森州的邻邦图林根州，AfD 成为战后德国首个在地区选举中获胜的极右翼政党，尽管它未能组建政府。

历史学家兼作家卡蒂亚·霍耶（Katja Hoyer）表示，德国过去七年全国性的经济停滞加剧了地区性的不安。尽管自统一以来估计投入了 €2tn 的公共投资，但德国东部从未完全赶上西部。在各项指标上，该地区仅处于西部水平的 75 和 80 per cent 之间。家庭净资产中位数仅为西部的四分之一。

霍耶出生于柏林墙倒塌前几年的东德，她回忆起当时“东部完全缺乏未来”的感觉。她说：“我们东德人有四分之一离开了。”从那时起，人口危机进一步恶化，加深了阴郁的情绪。现居英国的霍耶说：“如果最后一个经营俱乐部或协会的人发现没有人可以接手，那么知道那里有 100 个叙利亚人对他们来说没有任何安慰。当西格蒙德说：‘我们不搞移民，我们要提高出生率’时，这正是人们想听到的。”

但出生于 1967 年东柏林的历史学家伊尔科-萨沙·科瓦尔丘克（Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk）认为，单靠经济不能解释极右翼在德国东部的崛起。科瓦尔丘克主张，四十年的共产主义统治留下了一项遗产，即人们更容易接受威权主义政党。他在 2024 年出版的《自由冲击》（Freedom Shock）一书中写道：“这里没有关于民主和自由的训练。”对于科瓦尔丘克来说，2005 年后左翼党（Die Linke）——东德共产党继承者——的复兴，凸显了共产主义“平庸化”的过程。

科瓦尔丘克表示，随着对独裁统治的记忆淡去，许多东德人开始将东德生活的某些方面浪漫化，例如社会团结和经济保障，而忽视了其中一些纽带其实是对政权的一种反应。科瓦尔丘克说，数十年来在政治和文化上与莫斯科的密切接触，培养了对西方机构的不信任，使得现在即便在俄罗斯入侵乌克兰之后，人们也很难将俄罗斯视为敌人。作为一名乌克兰人的孙子，他在校园里被称作“俄罗斯人”，这是一种亲昵的称呼。

霍耶警告说，不要将 AfD 的崛起仅仅视为一种东部现象。在过去的 18 个月里，该党在鲁尔河谷和巴登-符腾堡州这两个同样遭受去工业化之痛的西部地区选举中，获得了约五分之一的选票。她不同意“东德情结”（Ostalgie，一个德语合成词，意为对旧东德的向往）与威权倾向相伴而行的观点。相反，她说：“是西德人在怀旧。”她认为，西德人在经历去工业化、民粹主义和主流政党衰落的时间比东部人晚，因此他们死守着自己的政党和经济模式；而东部人的态度则更具交易性，她说：“如果你们有用，我们就投你们票；如果没用，我们就投给别人。”

在 2016 年首次当选州议会议员后，西格蒙德表示，他及其政党希望打击“根深蒂固的政治裙带关系、密室交易以及对纳税人资金的浪费”。然而今年早些时候，有消息披露，来自萨克森-安哈尔特州的 AfD 官员建立了一套复杂的系统，利用公共资金雇佣彼此的亲属。

“乐观之党”：支持者与周边商品

这些人中包括齐格蒙德的父亲，他曾先后在三名德国联邦议院议员的办公室工作。一名官员则为自己的三名兄弟姐妹在另一名国会议员的办公室中安排了工作。这些披露引起了该党全国共同领导人蒂诺·克鲁帕拉的谴责，他表示这些行为令人“反感”。然而，这场丑闻几乎没有影响萨克森-安哈尔特州的民调结果，因为那里的许多选民要么深切不信任传统媒体，要么根本不接触这些媒体。

齐格蒙德还对一系列关于其阵营中存在极端分子的披露不屑一顾。他的新闻发言人和律师都曾是一个效仿希特勒青年团的新纳粹青年组织的成员。该发言人表示他与自己的过去“达成了和解”。该律师未回应置评请求。齐格蒙德称他们的成员身份是“很多很多年前”的事。他认为，中左翼的社会民主党给德国带来的负面影响，比那个在2009年被禁的组织带来的影响要“糟糕得多得多”。

齐格蒙德核心圈子的其他人物，预示了如果德国选择党（AfD）掌权，萨克森-安哈尔特州将面临怎样的政治局面。其中包括齐格蒙德的盟友、该党在萨克森-安哈尔特州的副主席蒂尔施奈德（Tillschneider）。这位出生于罗马尼亚的48岁男子。

德国选择党支持者高喊“齐格-蒙德！齐格-蒙德！”

他童年时移居德国西南部，后来又搬到东部，现在将自己描述为一名“真正的东德人”。他撰写了该党 258 页竞选宣言的大部分内容，是德国对待纳粹过去方式的批评者，并主张学校应该教授“更多俾斯麦，少些希特勒”。去年，蒂尔施奈德参加了在柏林俄罗斯大使馆举行的弗拉基米尔·普京生日庆祝活动。他至今仍不明白为什么这会引起如此大的骚动。“我们喝了些起泡酒，聊了几句，就这样，”他说。

另一位核心人物是德国选择党在萨克森-安哈尔特州的主席马丁·赖夏特（Martin Reichardt），他曾是一名德国军队军官，后来当选为该州的联邦议员。他是一名激进分子，演讲时总是大声咆哮，他将德国选择党形容为“人民的破城槌”。他曾将那些鼓励女孩和男孩玩各种玩具的教师描述为推广“性多样性”的“令人厌恶的人”，并猛烈抨击同性伴侣抚养孩子。齐格蒙德的措辞则更为谨慎。他坚持使用一套精心挑选的词汇，旨在安抚那些对他仍持犹豫态度的人——而就在去年，他的支持者在一次户外活动中高喊“齐格-蒙德！齐格-蒙德！”（Sieg-Mund! Sieg-Mund!），一些人认为这段合唱令人不安地让人想起纳粹时代臭名昭著的口号“胜利万岁！”（Sieg Heil!）。

9 月 6 日之后发生的大部分情况取决于其他政党的表现。民调显示，包括绿党和社会民主党在内的四个政党可能无法达到进入州议会所需的最低 5% 的得票率。在这种情况下，他们的选票将被剔除，而德国选择党最终可能会获得足够的席位单独执政。

但如果德国选择党未能获得绝对多数席位，这将造成许多梅尔茨领导的基民盟成员认为的该党“噩梦场景”。这可能会迫使他们考虑与一些令人反感的伙伴联手以尝试执政。目前民调支持率在 23% 左右的基民盟已正式排除与极左翼左翼党组建联合政府的可能性。但作为可能的第三大政党，后者是唯一能提供足够选票在州议会通过立法的团体。因此，基民盟将不得不考虑尝试组建一个有时依赖极左翼支持的少数派政府。基民盟内部的一些地方官员可能会拒绝这个想法，转而推动与德国选择党组建联合政府，甚至脱党加入该党。

尽管梅尔茨和舒尔策誓言维护“防火墙”（Brandmauer），但一些基民盟内部人士已开始对此产生质疑。批评者认为，排斥极右翼迫使梅尔茨与中左翼组建联邦联合政府，反而增强了德国选择党的势力。

今年 6 月，基民盟党代会的一次事件显示出这场辩论是多么紧张。在德绍举行的一场旨在启动舒尔策竞选活动的活动中，占据主导地位的反而是一张两天前拍摄的照片，照片显示基民盟高级官员

吉多·霍尔（Guido Heuer）与笑容灿烂的齐格蒙德并肩而立。霍尔坚称他当时是在小组讨论中试图抢夺麦克风。但这张照片引发了人们对两党之间防火墙正在崩塌的担忧。

霍尔不相信“防火墙”这个概念。“自 2016 年以来，萨克森-安哈尔特州的议会党团就有一项决议：划定界限但不排斥，”他说。在地方层面，这个想法很难维持。一些报道称，一批该州议会的基民盟议员可能会退出该党，以帮助德国选择党上台。

一个由德国选择党（AfD）领导的萨克森-安哈尔特州州政府将把该州和国家推入未知的领域，其影响将波及柏林。国防部长鲍里斯·皮斯托里乌斯（Boris Pistorius）表示，他正在研究如何向一个“与普京关系密切且不可否认”的政党隐瞒机密军事信息。其他德国州的内政部长则警告称，如果极右翼势力控制了州情报机构，将使其能够接触到高度敏感的信息，例如线人名单或外国政府的间谍活动。

如果齐格蒙德（Siegmund）成为州总理，他将控制联邦参议院（Bundesrat，位于柏林的德国议会第二院）69个席位中的4个。虽然他无法否决立法，但这将使那些票数接近的法案通过过程变得复杂。

他承诺，担任州总理后的首项举措将是取消对公共广播机构的州政府资助，他的政党称这些机构为“左翼宣传走狗”。他将启动驱逐“非法”移民的行动，为寻求庇护者引入强制劳动，并终止其子女在主流学校就读。在他上任前100天的计划中，还包括削减旨在打击右翼极端主义项目的资金。学校将被禁止悬挂彩虹旗，取而代之的是德国国旗。此外，还将启动一项关于新冠疫情的调查委员会。该州从包豪斯运动中汲取灵感的“思考现代”（think modern）品牌宣传活动将被一个新的口号所取代：“思考德国”（think German）。

这些计划中的许多项将面临抵制、法律挑战和抗议。包豪斯德绍基金会（Bauhaus Dessau Foundation）负责人芭芭拉·施泰纳（Barbara Steiner）是已经在准备防御措施的人员之一。她已经购买了针对诉讼的保险，并与其他文化组织讨论如何应对资金削减或政治干预。她说，艺术可能会成为第一个目标，因为这个政党已经意识到“文化是最重要的政治领域：它能帮助你在不诉诸暴力的情况下夺取权力”。

德国选择党的反对者希望，如果该党真的掌权，这将成为德国其他地区选民的警戒之谈。但该党在该州的负责人赖夏特（Reichardt）将这种想法斥为“傲慢”。他将此与2017年德国选择党首次进入柏林联邦议院的情况进行了类比。“当时联邦议院的所有人都认为，有一群白痴即将到来，他们在发言三次之后就会原形毕露——然后就再也没有人会投票给他们了，”他说。自那时起，德国选择党的得票率几乎翻了一番。FT

劳拉·皮特尔（Laura Pitel）是《金融时报》的柏林记者。安妮-西尔万·沙萨尼（Anne-Sylvaine Chassany）是《金融时报》的柏林分社社长。

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B BEACHCOMBER 度假村及酒店

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食欲

WINF

英国起泡酒之战

作者：詹西斯·罗宾逊 (JANCIS ROBINSON)

插画：德博拉·斯皮尔曼 (DEBORA SZPILMAN)

“英格兰起泡酒”（English sparkling wine）与“英国产起泡酒”（sparkling wine of England）之间有什么区别？

事实证明，区别相当大。通常在货架上的售价至少相差 £15。而且可能至少相差四年——前者是在瓶中陈酿，而后者仅在巨大的储酒罐中存放几个月。

关于第一类产品——即采用所谓的“传统法”像香槟一样酿造的“英格兰起泡酒”——我听到的最普遍的抱怨是它太贵了。

企业家马克·迪克森 (Mark Dixon) 正致力于利用这一点。他原籍埃塞克斯，现居摩纳哥，其财富源于曾被称为 Regus（现为 IWG）的服务式办公室集团。他在英国成立的葡萄酒公司 MDCV UK 专门生产命名谨慎但容易引起混淆的“英国产起泡酒”，这种酒采用名为 Charmat 或 cuve close 的加速且成本较低的方法，在储酒罐中几个月内即可酿成。MDCV UK 去年销售了 50 万瓶此类英国产起泡酒。迪克森在英国的得力助手加里·史密斯 (Gary Smith) 预测，今年的销量将翻倍，且公司将在未来 18 个月内的某个时间点实现盈亏平衡。其目标是最终每年生产 500 万瓶，并成为

詹西斯推荐

英国起泡酒

除非另有说明，所有酒款均为天然干型（Brut），酒精含量为 12 或 12.5%。几乎所有酒款均可通过生产商的官方网站购买。

- Black Chalk, Wild Rose 2022 £44 THE WINE SOCIETY, £44.95 VIN COGNITO 和 LEA & SANDEMAN，以及其他多家渠道

- Sugrue South Downs, The Trouble with Dreams 2020 £48 VIN COGNITO, £49 WINE REPUBLIC UK

- Sugrue, Ex Machina Rosé 2018 £55 THE SOURCING TABLE 和 WINE REPUBLIC UK, £55.95 BRUNSWICK WINES & SPIRITS，以及其他多家渠道

• Hundred Hills Blanc de Noirs 2019 £63 THE GRAPE WIZARD 和 THE SOMMELIER, £64.50 LOTTS OF WINE

- Exton Park Blanc de Blancs 2013 (11.5%) £65 EXTONPARKVINEYARD.COM

• Nyetimber, 1086 2020 £85 SQUELCH WINE MARKETPLACE, £99.60 BORDEAUX INDEX, £150 MAJESTIC

- Nyetimber, Tillington Vineyard 2014 £89 FRAZIER JONES, £89.99 DRINK FINDER, £109.99 TESCO

• Langham, Perpetual Chardonnay Second Edition Brut Nature NV £109.95 LANGHAMWINE.CO.UK

品鉴笔记、评分及建议饮用日期请见 JANCISROBINSON.COM。国际零售商请见 WINE-SEARCHER.COM。

到 2030 年成为英国最大的葡萄酒生产商。（2024, 采用传统法的英国起泡酒总销量为 6.2mn 瓶，但据史密斯称，“目前的库存销售比相当惊人”——产量远超销量。目前最大的生产商是肯特郡的 Chapel Down。）

MDCV UK 的基地是 Silverhand Estate，这是一个位于泰晤士河口格雷夫森德（Gravesend）以南、占地 1,400 英亩的广阔肯特郡丘陵地带。首批葡萄藤直到 2019 年才种下，但它已经拥有英国最大的单一葡萄园，且那里正在扩建的酒庄还处理来自该公司在东萨塞克斯郡以及埃塞克斯郡时尚的克劳奇谷（Crouch Valley）所收购葡萄园的果实。最引人注目的是一对 600 百升的储酒罐——据告知，这些储酒罐如此巨大，以至于在将其运往英国时，必须关闭勃朗峰隧道以禁止其他车辆通行。虽然英国还有少数其他葡萄酒生产商采用罐法（tank-method）酿酒，但规模远不及 MDCV UK（该公司还生产少量的传统法起泡酒，以及更少量的静止葡萄酒）。

“我们是颠覆者，”史密斯愉快地告诉我，“我们的目标是通过提供价格亲民、能够与普罗塞克（prosecco）和卡瓦（cava）竞争且产地更本土的英国葡萄酒，来扩大这一品类的市场。”他的观点有其道理。如果人们无法找到一瓶价格低于 £30 的传统法英国起泡酒，那么这将排除掉很大一部分潜在愿意尝试该产品的葡萄酒饮用者。另一方面，那些在英国超市购买 MDCV UK 售价约 £15 的多种夏尔马法（Charmat-method）葡萄酒（例如 M&S 的 Bramble Hill 和 Tesco 的 Kingscote）的人，可能不会觉得它们像许多更昂贵的传统法英国起泡酒那样具有吸引力——并且可能会因此对英国起泡酒彻底失去兴趣。

MDCV UK 旨在提供价格亲民的英国葡萄酒，以与普罗塞克和卡瓦竞争

你可以想象，英国葡萄酒界的少数成员会对马克·迪克森（Mark Dixon）及其野心感到兴奋，尽管至少在理论上，消费者可以通过两种英国起泡酒之间显著的价格差异在货架上分辨出区别。

然而，在餐厅里，情况可能会更复杂。MDCV 还供应大量的 The Ivy Cuvée，而在该餐厅集团的酒单上，这款酒被相当具有误导性地标注为“英国起泡酒”（English Sparkling Wine），售价每瓶 £75。无论是对于在商店还是在餐厅消费的葡萄酒饮用者来说，记住“英国起泡酒”（English sparkling wine）与“产自英国的起泡酒”（sparkling wine of England）之间的区别，可能都太难了。

有人主张坚持在标签上详细注明生产方法，但我再次怀疑，究竟有多少消费者能理解“传统法”与“罐法”（或其众多其他名称之一）之间的区别。可能只有葡萄酒发烧友才知道，几乎所有大众市场的普罗塞克（prosecco）都是用罐法酿造的，而卡瓦（cava）尽管价格极低，但表现远不如前者，因为它采用的是成本高得多的传统法。

史密斯聪明地加入了生产者组织 WineGB（这个名字能被威尔士葡萄酒生产者接受，而且如果全球气候继续变暖，甚至可能涵盖苏格兰生产者），目前担任该组织的董事会成员。

回归基础

全球最重要的起泡酒

香槟（Champagne）是最著名的起泡酒，几乎无一例外地由生长在法国东北部同名产区的霞多丽（Chardonnay）、黑皮诺（Pinot Noir）和 / 或莫尼耶皮诺（Pinot Meunier）酿造而成。它采用传统法（traditional method）酿造：这是一种在独立酒瓶中诱发二次发酵的陈酿方式。（这种方法曾被称为“香槟法”，但香槟产区的律师们一直孜孜不倦地禁止任何与他们珍贵的葡萄酒无关的“香槟”称呼。）每年产量约为 3 亿 瓶。法国其他葡萄酒产区也采用传统法酿造各种克雷芒（Crémants）起泡酒，且正受到越来越多的关注。

普罗塞克（Prosecco）目前的销量已大幅超过香槟：全球年销量近 7 亿 瓶。它由一种最初被称为 Prosecco 的葡萄酿造，但意大利人在 2009 年将其巧妙地更名为格莱拉（Glera），以便将意大利东北部的大片区域注册为名为 Prosecco 的受保护地理标志，从而独占该名称。意大利还使用与香槟非常相似的葡萄，酿造优质的传统法起泡酒，尤其是加尔达湖以北的特伦托 DOC（Trentodoc）和湖西的弗朗恰柯塔（Franciacorta）。

卡瓦（Cava）主要在西班牙加泰罗尼亚地区采用传统法酿造，使用当地的马卡贝奥（Macabeo）、帕雷利亚达（Parellada）和夏雷洛（Xarello）葡萄，这些葡萄的味道通常比格莱拉更浓郁。干旱和市场压力使年总产量降至 2.5 亿 瓶以下。许多顶尖生产商组成了一个名为 Corpinnat 的独立团体，其生产规则更为严格。

英国起泡酒的年产量随天气波动较大：近年来在 11 和 2200 万 瓶之间。

Silverhand 庄园还专注于可持续发展，拥有一套无与伦比的生态实践方案。它是英国首家在不使用碳抵消的情况下实现碳负排放的葡萄园。其所有葡萄藤均采用覆盖作物有机耕作，不使用合成化学品。下一步计划是再生农业及其对土壤健康的关注，目前正通过再生葡萄栽培基金会（Regenerative Viticulture Foundation）的“单区块挑战”（One Block Challenge）进行探索。该庄园表示，在过去三年中种植了 20,000 株本土树篱植物，刚刚获得 B Corp 认证，并非常强调即使是起泡酒也使用更轻的酒瓶（尽管其罐法酿造的葡萄酒压力高达 6 个大气压，比大多数酒更起泡，因此需要比新《可持续圆桌起泡酒瓶重量协议》建议的 600g 更重的酒瓶）。

庄园内散布着六座回收利用的野生动物塔，由其与公路局（Highways Agency）共同设计，为谷仓鸮等动物提供栖息地。在我最近访问期间，对方热情地提到了云雀、绵羊、长角牛、鹿、燕子、兰花带、薰衣草田、羊驼和獾。（该庄园在酒庄购买时是一个经营中的有机农场。）

Silverhand 声称是英国唯一在现场设有专门保护团队（共五人）的葡萄园，该地是北肯特森林与丘陵国家自然保护区（North Kent Woods and Downs National Nature Reserve）的一部分。其 160 名全职员工中，值得注意的是包括每天乘车通勤的前廓尔喀士兵。据史密斯（Smith）称，“他们改变了我们的世界。依赖那些不按时到岗的当地人是没希望的。”此外，他们还配备了一台每天可工作 16 小时的葡萄栽培机器人。

工作绝不仅限于葡萄园和酒窖。Silverhand 团队接管了当地的酒吧，拥有一个繁忙的游客中心，并计划提供住宿。他们预计今年将迎来 15,000 名游客，并计划将这一数字增加到 50,000 甚至 60,000 人。史密斯将穿过庄园的步道，以及庄园与当地城镇和 HS1 铁路线上的埃布斯弗利特（Ebbsfleet）的邻近位置，视为旅游业务计划扩张的驱动因素。

迪克森的普罗旺斯葡萄酒帝国 MDCV（代表 Maisons, Domaines, Châteaux et Vignobles）包含数个葡萄酒庄园，重点经营奢华的 Ch de Berne 酒店和餐厅，同时还以低廉的价格向法国超市销售大量普罗旺斯桃红葡萄酒，且未提及有机或可持续发展。

英国分公司一直像许多商业上较为成功的英国葡萄酒生产商一样，从目前的库存过剩中获益。史密斯告诉我，去年他能够以每吨 £700 的价格购入葡萄，大约仅为此前报价的五分之一。对于“英式起泡酒”（English sparkling wine）来说是个问题的情况，对于“英国产起泡酒”（sparkling wine of England）而言似乎成了福音。FT

评论

Saawaros，大象与城堡

作者：杰伊·雷纳 (JAY RAYNER)

插画：丹尼尔·埃格纽斯 (DANIEL EGNEUS)

旧酒吧的后屋经常发生有趣的事情。1903年，布尔什维克与孟什维克在伊斯灵顿一家名为“三个约翰” (The Three Johns) 的酒吧后屋会面，商讨俄罗斯革命的战术。1962年春天，滚石乐队在苏豪区一家早已消失的名为“泥瓦匠之臂” (The Bricklayer's Arms) 的酒吧后方空间进行了首次排练。这些地方是读书会争论糟糕小说的场所，是庆祝重要生日的地点，也是社区协会召开会议的地方，充满了希望与低调的野心。在这里，人们可以毫无压力地尝试各种有趣的构思。

这正是目前在伦敦大象与城堡 (Elephant and Castle) 地区 The Albert Arms 酒吧上方那个楔形房间里发生的事情。The Albert Arms 是一家老牌酒馆，每月举办一次知识问答之夜，偶尔举办宾果之夜，并供应桶装的布里克斯顿 Reliance 淡色艾尔啤酒。在那个通过狭窄螺旋楼梯才能到达的房间里，展出的最出色创意之一是一道煎蛋沙拉。鸡蛋被煎至边缘呈棕色且酥脆，看起来像一件古老的蕾丝衬裙。三颗蛋黄流心的鸡蛋上堆叠着由泰国香草、饱满的番茄和新鲜红辣椒组成的芳香沙拉，然后淋上某种酸甜且辛辣的酱汁。这是一组简单的食材，通过才情与良好品味组合在一起。

这道菜供应于 Saawaros，这是泰语中“百香果”的意思，或者至少是其中一种译法。它

查找地址

SAAWAROS

位于 The Albert Arms 二楼 1 Gladstone Street, London SE1 6EY 020 3337 0313（两天内预订请电） thealbertarms.se1@gmail.com（两天后预订请电）

小盘菜 £4-£16 大盘菜 £14-£28 甜点 £8

年轻的主厨 Ice Pongnat Ramanat 后来告诉我，这个名字最初的拼写没有双写“a”，但后来“出于风水和好运”而进行了修改。他在家乡曼谷的顶级餐厅接受培训，但仅限于欧洲传统风格，随后来到伦敦在圣詹姆斯区的 Fallow 餐厅工作。在 Fallow，员工被鼓励在周一闭店期间，利用其姐妹餐厅 Fowl 经营快闪店，探索自己的创意。Ramanat 开始设计一套他称之为“进化版曼谷街头美食”的菜单，随后决定在今年辞去 Fallow 的工作，全身心投入到这次长期驻店中。这一切感觉非常私人化，仿佛是一个人用一道道菜在提醒自己关于家乡的记忆。

菜单虽然简短，但充满了极佳的菜品，且价格非常亲民。先从调味生蚝开始，配上咸酸甜的 nam jim 醋汁，点缀一抹焦香的辣椒酱，最后撒上金黄酥脆的干葱头。接着是一道深炸鸡翅。这是一个三关节的部位，其外层与其说是裹粉，不如说是一层深色的、起伏的甲壳，在齿间碎裂。它用泰国北部的 prik laab 胡椒调味，这是一种包含轻微麻感的花椒在内的烤香料混合物。最后，表面刷了一层薄薄的鱼露焦糖，这并没有削弱其酥脆感，反而极大地提升了风味。这是一道足以作为招牌的鸡翅，值得被红毯礼遇。

我们点了一块慢烤茄子，可舀起的白色果肉在起泡的皮中瘫软，垫在浓郁的丛林咖喱之上，顶端覆盖着酥脆的蘑菇和深炸泰国罗勒叶的翠绿。当日咖喱的主料是烤鸡，但实际上精髓在于那褐色的泥土风味汤底，具有抚慰人心的、辛辣的冬阴功深度。它的味道仿佛能让任何糟糕的一天变得好很多，而让美好的一天变得更好。随餐附带的一块酥油煎饼（roti），正是为了蘸汤而生。还有带有酥脆皮的五花肉块配甜酱油蘸料，以及一道改良版的虾吐司——只不过上面堆满了鸡肉末，撒上黑芝麻，配以粗犷的沙爹酱。稍微退后一步观察，你很快会意识到这道菜其实就是英式全餐中最令人兴奋的禁忌——深炸白面包——只不过通过加入禽肉、大量芝麻和亚洲风情，使其在社交场合变得更可接受。但它本质上依然是炸面包。这并非在抱怨。

在 Saawaros，至少根据 Ramanat 的说法，招牌菜是慢烤 12 小时的牛小排，端上来时色泽深沉，显得低调而顺从。它被覆盖在一种香辣的“pad krapao”釉汁中（这种口味通常与泰国炒菜相关），并堆满了更多酥脆的泰国罗勒叶。它具备长时烹饪小排的所有优点，富含那种在持续高温下会变得黏稠且呈胶质状的结缔组织。这确实是一盘强而有力且极具存在感的佳肴。

但对我来说，最出色的依然是那道煎蛋沙拉。如果从像小排这样的顶级食材开始，你已经赢在了起跑线上；但如果仅从几个鸡蛋和一些番茄开始，却能创造出如此有趣的东西，这需要真正的才华。甜点只有一种，但极其美味：一份温热的 roti，配一球烤香蕉冰淇淋、碎花生和淋上的炼乳。

服务很可能是由 Ramanat 本人提供，他会很乐意停下来为你讲述每道菜背后的故事。不要指望能快速地完成晚餐，尤其是在饮品方面。饮品来自楼下的沙龙酒吧，而那里的优先级有所不同。不过，毕竟你是在一家酒吧上方的房间里用餐。这里有垂吊的灯饰、白色的墙壁、剥去漆面的木地板，推拉窗户敞开着，让另一个闷热的伦敦之夜的一缕微风吹进来。

伦敦酒吧的后屋被专门用作泰国餐厅，这并非新鲜事。人们普遍认为，第一家这样的餐厅位于肯辛顿的 The Churchill Arms，它于 1988 年开业并经营至今。此后多年，英国各地都出现了类似的例子。这使得它与其说是一种趋势，不如说是一个固定景观，而且是一个非常令人愉悦的景观。因此，Saawaros 给人一种它属于某种高尚传统的感觉，但它正将其推向一个非常个人化且极具吸引力的方向。FT

THE TABLE

一场大部分可提前准备的中式盛宴

主持人：FUCHSIA DUNLOP

摄影：OLA O SMIT

当大多数人想到中餐时，脑海中浮现的画面通常是烟雾缭绕的炒锅或层层叠叠的蒸笼。但在中国许多地区，正餐通常以提前准备好的凉菜开始。在我学习烹饪的四川，开胃菜往往极其美味，甚至成为整张菜单上的亮点。它们能为随后的热菜开胃，而且对于家庭厨师来说，能减轻招待客人的压力。

每当我在家为朋友烹饪时，我都会尽力减少菜单上最后一刻才炒制的菜肴数量，这样我才有时间与客人交谈并享受其中。我通常会准备一道或多道川式凉菜，它们拥有令人兴奋的层次感，以及标志性的辛辣与麻味。我会将这些菜肴与我在上海及中国其他地区学到的食谱相结合，以及一些我通过融合中西烹饪理念而自行创造的菜谱。

一段时间前，我注意到客人们非常喜爱第一道菜，于是我意识到热菜可以是可选的，或者仅占餐食的一小部分。（有时人们吃得太饱，无法应对我计划的所有后续菜肴。）最近，我开始尝试创建全套中式菜肴，以 Mezze（地中海式小吃拼盘）的形式供应，并配以面包用来蘸美味的酱汁（任何面包都可以，但我特别喜欢从 Dalston 的 ridley Road 市场 Ararat 面包店买那些绝佳的巴基斯坦面饼）。

在夏天，这样的餐食非常适合在花园的餐桌上享用，不过它在一年四季都同样适用。在节礼日（Boxing Day），中式凉菜与圣诞节剩余的肉类搭配得相得益彰，你也可以在任何时候将它们与烧烤或烤肉一同供应。

与炒菜不同，以下所有凉菜都可以轻松增加分量以满足大型聚会，且许多菜肴可以全部或部分提前准备。你可以准备少量菜肴的大分量，或者反之亦然：只要尽量包含令人愉悦的色彩和口味多样性即可。根据你的喜好，在餐桌上摆放筷子或勺子和叉子。只要别忘了提供配餐的面包。

中国人通常不需要甜点，但经常在餐后提供水果。在伦敦的家中，我喜欢提供时令水果，并为西方人的甜食口味准备一些购买的甜点（土耳其软糖、巴克拉瓦、哈尔瓦和 / 或巧克力是我的常备选择），以及一壶好喝的中国茶。

菜单

六人份

隔夜鱼香茄子

四川花椒油白斩鸡

怪味四季豆

酸辣牛油果嫩豆腐

发酵豆腐油醋汁生菜沙拉

葱油肏头菜

“意式”木耳沙拉

过夜鱼香茄子 (LIANG BAN YUXIANG QIEZI 凉拌鱼香茄子)

我设计了这个我最喜爱的川菜版本，使其以冷食而非传统的热食方式供应。最好提前一天制作，以便茄子能与酱汁的味道充分融合。

• 2 根茄子（约 700 克）

- 1 茶匙盐

- 6 汤匙食用油

- 1½ 汤匙红油豆瓣酱或 sambal oelek（印尼辣椒酱）

- $1 \frac{1}{2}$ 份细碎的大蒜

• 1 份细碎的生姜

- 100 毫升热水

• 4 茶匙细砂糖

• 1 份镇江香醋

- 6 根细切的葱绿

1 将茄子切成约 2 厘米厚的圆片，然后切成可以用筷子夹起的条状。撒上盐，搅拌均匀，静置至少 30 分钟以沥干多余的水分。与此同时，将烤箱预热至 200℃（风扇烤箱 180℃），并在烤盘上铺上烘焙纸。

2 将茄子冲洗干净，沥干水分，并用干净的茶巾或厨房纸巾拍干。加入 4 份食用油并搅拌均匀，使每块茄子都均匀裹上油，然后将它们铺在烤盘上。在高温烤箱中烘烤约 30 分钟，直到茄子变软且呈金黄色。然后将其转移到容器中，放入冰箱或储藏室过夜。

3 在 seasoned wok（ seasoned 熟化炒锅）中用中火加热剩余的 2 份油。加入豆瓣酱或 sambal oelek，轻轻煸炒至香味四溢且油色变红。倒入大蒜和生姜，将火调至大火，快速翻炒至同样散发出香味。然后倒入热水并加入糖。煮至沸腾。拌入香醋和 4 份葱绿，快速加热一下。随后将热酱汁淋在茄子上。轻轻地将茄子在酱汁中翻转，然后放置过夜以使风味渗透。(如果烹饪后立即食用，风味将没有时间渗入茄子中。)

4 在食用前将茄子恢复至室温。撒上剩余的葱绿装饰。

藤椒凉拌鸡 (TENGJIAO LIANGBAN JI 藤椒凉拌鸡)

这是我对川菜伟大创意之一——辣味凉拌鸡的最新演绎。在这种做法中，藤椒油的麻味赋予了这道菜活力。你可以使用剩余的烤鸡（或烤火鸡）来制作此食谱，但如果采用中式 poaching（慢炖 / 白灼）法，肉质会最嫩且丝滑。烧开足够的水，水量应刚好能填满一个能放下整只鸡且没有过多余空间的锅。将鸡放入沸水中，再次煮沸并撇去浮沫。为了获得最佳效果，随后加入一根葱和一小块拍碎的生姜以释放风味。将火调至微沸状态，慢炖至鸡肉刚好熟透；使用温度计确保最厚部分达到 75℃，或者将鸡从水中取出，在腿部最厚处插入一根签子，确保流出的汁液呈透明色。鸡肉熟透后，将其从汤中取出并冷却后再剔骨。

- 600 克冷白灼鸡肉，带皮或不带皮（约一只小鸡的肉量）

• 3 茶匙烤芝麻

• 4 根细切的葱绿

酱汁部分

- $4 \frac{1}{2} \mathrm{}$ 份生抽

- $2 \frac{1}{2}$ 份鸡汤或水

- 2 茶匙糖

• 2 茶匙镇江香醋

- $2 \frac{1}{2}$ 份辣椒油及油渣

• 1 份绿色藤椒油

1 鸡肉白灼并剔骨后，将肉切成可以用筷子夹起的条状，堆在盛菜盘中。

2 随后制作酱汁。将除芝麻和葱绿以外的所有原料放入一个小碗中搅拌均匀。在食用前，将此酱汁淋在鸡肉上。撒上芝麻和葱绿装饰。食用前充分搅拌。

怪味豇豆 GREEN BEANS WITH STRANGE-FLAVOUR SAUCE GUAIWEI JIANGDOU

经典的川味“怪味”酱汁因其平衡了全方位的调味料而得名，其魅力之大，几乎能让任何食材都变得美味。在四川，人们通常将其用于凉拌鸡或面条，但我喜欢将其与蔬菜搭配，如下方食谱所示。

• 400g 细豇豆

• 2茶匙 芝麻（可选，用于装饰）

酱汁原料

• 2汤匙 芝麻酱

• 2汤匙 生抽

• 1½茶匙 镇江香醋

- $1 \frac{1}{2}$ 茶匙 细砂糖

表格注释

提前一天 制作鱼香茄子 制作苤蓝沙拉 白灼鸡肉，冷却后将肉从骨头上剔除，切片或撕成丝 调制怪味酱汁 调制腐乳沙拉酱

提前一天或派对当天早晨 修剪并煮熟豇豆 泡发木耳，然后焯水并沥干 （在需要使用前一直浸在冷水中）

最后时刻 清洗并甩干生菜 制作鸡肉酱汁 制作豆腐菜肴酱汁 摆盘所有菜肴

- $\frac{1}{4} - \frac{1}{2}$ 茶匙 烘焙四川花椒粉 或 1-2茶匙 花椒油

• 2-3汤匙 辣椒油，

- 2茶匙 芝麻油

1 将芝麻酱放入一个小碗中，用勺子搅拌并压实，直到质地均匀。然后逐渐拌入生抽和醋，注意充分融合，直到形成光滑的乳化酱汁。加入糖并搅拌均匀。拌入花椒（或花椒油）、辣椒油和芝麻油。

2 修剪豇豆并切成适口的大小。倒入一锅沸水中煮几分钟，直到达到您喜欢的熟度（我个人喜欢在刚过“咯吱”阶段的状态，即口感柔软但仍略带韧性）。然后立即沥干，放入冰水碗中或在冷水龙头下冷却，以保持其鲜绿色。用滤网充分抖干并晾干。

3 将豇豆倒入盛菜盘中。再次搅拌酱汁，然后将其淋在豇豆上。撒上芝麻。

酸辣牛油果豆腐 SOUR-AND-HOT SILKEN TOFU WITH AVOCADO SUANLA NIUYOUGUO DOUFU

这道菜展示了豆腐与牛油果丝滑质感之间令人惊喜的和谐统一，并搭配了经典的川味调料。加入皮蛋（preserved duck egg）可以增加一层奶油般的顺滑感和鲜味。皮蛋（pidan 皮蛋）在大多数中国超市都能买到，无需烹饪，使用前只需剥壳冲洗即可。

• 一个 皮蛋（可选）

• 一盒 内脂豆腐（约300g）

• 一个 完全成熟的牛油果

• 2汤匙 切细的葱绿

• 1茶匙 熟芝麻

调料汁

• 1 汤匙 镇江香醋

• 2 汤匙 生抽

• $1 \frac{1}{2}$ 汤匙 辣椒油，外加 $1 \frac{1}{2}$ 汤匙 辣椒沉淀物

1 如使用皮蛋，轻轻剥壳并冲洗掉碎壳。将其切成小方块。在一个小碗中，将醋、生抽和辣椒油混合在一起制成调料汁。

2 为了更轻松地将豆腐完整地从包装中取出，请将包装袋倒置，用剪刀剪掉角，然后轻轻挤压以让少量空气进入。接着取下盖子，沥干多余的水分，将豆腐倒入盛菜盘中。沿豆腐块纵向切一刀，然后横向切成 0.5cm 薄片。轻轻按压豆腐，使薄片向一侧倾斜，然后在盘中像扇形一样铺开。

3 在上桌前，将牛油果从壳中挖出并切成小丁。将牛油果铺在豆腐顶部。如使用皮蛋，将其加入。淋上酱汁，撒上葱花和芝麻即可食用。

腐乳色拉酱拌生菜 FURU SELAJIANG BAN SHENGCAI

这款由腐乳增味而成的绝佳油醋汁，最初是我为蒸韭葱设计的调料，但它与生菜、番茄片以及许多其他沙拉食材搭配起来也同样出色。

• 2 颗小宝石生菜（275-300 克）

• 2 茶匙 烤芝麻

调料汁

• 3 块 白腐乳（约 40 克）

• $\frac{1}{2}$ 茶匙 流动性好的蜂蜜

• 1 茶匙 狄芥末酱

• 3 汤匙 特级初榨橄榄油

• 1 汤匙 白葡萄酒醋

• 盐和胡椒（适量）

1 将腐乳放入搅拌碗中，用勺子压至细腻。拌入蜂蜜和芥末酱。逐渐搅拌入橄榄油，使其形成光滑的乳化液。加入醋、盐和胡椒。如有必要，可用少量冷水稀释，使其达到可倾倒的浓稠度。

2 洗净生菜叶并甩干，然后撕成小块。在食用前不久，加入调料汁拌匀。最后撒上芝麻。

葱油茎蓝 CONGYOU PIELAN

一种经典的上海风味调味技巧，常用于鸡肉或萝卜丝，此处应用于苤蓝（kohlrabi）。

• 两根 苤蓝茎（约 700 克）

• $1 \frac{1}{2}$ 茶匙 盐

• 1 茶匙 细砂糖

• 2 汤匙 食用油

• 5 汤匙 葱花（切细）

1 削去苤蓝皮。切成薄片，再切成细丝。加入盐，揉入蔬菜中，静置至少 30 分钟以沥干多余的水分。

2 将切好的蔬菜丝尽可能用力挤出水分。拌入糖。

3 将食用油在锅中加热，直到锅边冒烟，且将一根苤蓝丝或一小块葱花放入油中能产生剧烈的滋滋声。在将葱花倒入热油的同时关火，迅速搅拌直至散发出香味。加入苤蓝，在香油中翻炒。你可能不需要再加盐，但请品尝确认。备用至需要时使用。

“意式”凉拌木耳 YIDALI LIANGBAN MU'ER

有一天为了好玩，我决定用意式沙拉酱的配料来搭配爽脆的木耳，而不是使用中式的米醋和麻油。从那时起，我就一直做这道菜。

• 20克干木耳

- $\frac{1}{4}$ 茶匙盐，另加少许盐调味

• 2 茶匙蒜末

- $1 \frac{1}{2}$ 汤匙中式剁椒（可选）

• 1 汤匙白葡萄酒醋

- $1 \frac{1}{2}$ 汤匙特级初榨橄榄油

• 2 汤匙切碎的平叶欧芹

1 将木耳放入冷水中完全浸没，浸泡约一小时直至完全复水。准备好后，将较大的块状木耳撕成适合用筷子夹取的尺寸，剔除任何硬结部分。将一锅水烧开，放入木耳焯水约一分钟，然后放在滤网中用冷水冲凉，抖干水分。

2 加入 $\frac{1}{4}$ 茶匙盐（根据口味可增加），然后加入其他配料。充分搅拌后即可上桌。

其他提示

饮品推荐

由于桌上同时摆放的菜肴很多，选择一款特定的葡萄酒可能会很困难。最好的办法是提供几瓶不同的酒，让客人们可以轮换品尝。起泡酒或轻盈清新的白葡萄酒（避免橡木桶味过重的）如雷司令（Riesling）或琼瑶浆（Gewürztraminer）效果很好，黑皮诺（Pinot Noir）或其他轻盈的红葡萄酒也同样合适。

...

厨房必备品与烹饪工具 中餐可能具有很强的技术性——有许多复杂的烹饪方法——但家庭烹饪通常非常简单。你不需要太多设备；一把好刀是必不可少的，而一个炒锅和一个切片机（mandoline）也会很有用。

你需要大约半打核心调味料，如中国醋和酱油，但只要橱柜里备好这些，大多数食谱你都能信手拈来。

花卉与蜡烛

中餐通常采用家庭式供应，所有人共享桌子中央的食物，因此花卉和蜡烛通常会碍事——而且风险很高！

PROJECT KITCHEN

罗马四大名作

这座城市最负盛名的意面料理，不过是几种简单食材的变体。那么，就效仿这里的厨师吧。作者：蒂姆·海沃德 (Tim Hayward)

摄影：肯尼思·拉姆 (KENNETH LAM)

这是一个温暖春夜的早些时候，我正坐在罗马泰斯塔乔（Testaccio）区边缘的一家小型家庭餐厅外。桌上的每个人都点了意面。这可能是因为安东尼·波登（Anthony Bourdain）在他那些如今被所有人当作旅行指南的节目中提出了这个想法。他并非这个想法的创造者，但他凭一己之力确保了此后任何人在访问罗马时，都必须尝试“四大意面”：卡乔-埃-佩佩（cacio e pepe）、格里恰风味（alla gricia）、培根蛋面（carbonara）和阿马特里切风味（all'Amatriciana）。你必须集齐它们。这是铁律。

关于这些菜肴的起源，存在着一些可疑的神话。据说 Carbonari 是古代的烧炭工；amatrice 指的是业余爱好者或狂热者；而 grici 则被认为是“教皇时期的罗马街头小贩”——尽管关于最后一项的事实，阿马特里切村、格里夏诺村以及瑞士的格劳宾登州（Grigioni）之间争论得如此激烈，简直到了要大打出手地步。

人们通常认为这些菜肴可以追溯到古罗马的迷雾之中，尽管无需提醒人们，在哥伦布大交换之前，意大利并没有番茄，而培根蛋面直到 20 世纪 50 年代才出现在菜单上。那么，将它们联系在一起的是什么？我渴望找出答案。

我们七个人在点“第一道菜”（primi）时，其中一人冒险点了一份蘑菇意面，这让那位可爱的服务员陷入了一种礼貌的恐慌之中。我们不会意大利语，而他的英语水平也很有限。

“这不可能，”他说道，语气异常坚决。“四个锅，”他指了指开放式厨房。

就在这时，我意识到这“四大意面”的演变，实际上是小型餐厅或咖啡馆厨房布局的一种独特产物。

其运作方式是这样的：炉灶中心有一个巨大的水锅，意面被分别放入篮中开始烹煮。沸水偶尔会补充，但在出餐期间通常不会更换。

这里有四个弧边的收尾锅。其中一个锅倒入少许橄榄油，另外三个锅则放入小块的风干猪面颊肉（guanciale），将其煎至出油。

最后，半熟的意面被倒入这四个锅中。当充满淀粉的水接触到滚烫的金属并产生蒸汽时，它会与油或脂肪结合，形成一种奶油状的乳化液。厨师在每个锅中再加入少许煮面水以维持这一过程。所有锅中都要加入大量研磨的黑胡椒，然后第一、二、三个锅被撒入一把罗马羊奶酪（pecorino Romano），而第四个锅则加入一勺捣碎的番茄泥。最后，在厨师将第三个锅移离火源时，打入一个鸡蛋。所有锅中的食材都在不断的搅拌中保持流动，大约两分钟后，意面被盛入盘中并迅速送到桌上。

这是一个令人惊叹的流程。它完全是商业食品准备、一套特定的设备组合以及几代厨师建立的准备工作（mise-en-place）共同作用的结果。传说雷·克洛克（Ray Kroc）为了追求效率和经济，终其一生都在不断调整麦当劳的“生产线”。但他从未梦想过能有如此完美的东西。

这一发现瞬间解决了长期以来的争议。培根蛋面里加奶油？阿马特里切风味里加大蒜？这毫无意义。我们可以预煮、沥干并保留意面吗？酱汁应该是淋在上面还是搅拌进去？意面难道不油腻吗？意面是主菜吗？这些都变成了愚蠢的问题。

以这种方式制作的意面解释了意大利餐饮的结构。一份 100 克的调味意面是前菜（antipasti）和“第二道菜”（secondi）之间完美的过渡——甚至解释了为什么随后的主菜中不再提供碳水化合物。

芝士胡椒面 (CACIO E PEPE)

这是起点。顾名思义，它只需要芝士和黑胡椒。芝士胡椒面是练习乳化技巧的最佳切入点——一旦你掌握了窍门，其他的就水到渠成了。

你需要100克意面。如果可以，请自制鸡蛋面，然后将其切成面条状的宽面 (tagliatelle)、不规则形状的碎面 (maltagliati)，或者如果你有吉他面切刀 (chitarra)，可以做成方形截面的细面 (tonnarelli)。如果你愿意，也可以从超市购买真空包装的新鲜意面，但在放入水中之前，先用两汤匙粗粒小麦粉 (semolina flour) 拌匀。这道菜完全取决于面汤中积累的淀粉。如果这不是当晚煮的第50份面，请给它加点助力。

使用一个带有弧形边的宽底锅。这种锅有利于快速沸腾、蒸发和剧烈翻炒。将其放在煮面锅旁边的炉灶上，倒入少许橄榄油。不要使用过于巨大的锅，没有必要；也不必在意那些关于“盐要加到像海水一样咸”的陈词滥调。适量的盐就足够了。

确保你在能看到时钟的地方，或者将手机支在能看到计时器的地方。用最细的擦丝器预先擦好60克罗马羊奶酪 (pecorino romano)，并在锅底撒入大量粗磨黑胡椒，同时加入少许橄榄油。

如果你使用的是市售意面，请记录好烹饪时间。你需要在时间提前一分钟时将其捞出。将水煮至沸腾，放入裹了面粉的意面。如果是新鲜面条，则煮至其漂浮在表面即可。

收汁锅不需要烫到极点，只要能让水沸腾即可，因此在开始煮面时就开启下方的火力。它会缓慢升温，并释放出胡椒中的芳香油。

好了，开始吧。舀出一小勺浑浊的面汤倒入收汁锅中，此时面汤应立即开始冒蒸汽和气泡。换成厨房夹子，将意面从水中捞出并直接投入冒汽的锅中。不要尝试沥干水分，哪怕是轻微地抖一下也不行。

Cocio e Pere Guanciele

Gricia Egg Carbonara Tomato A'matriana

FTWeekend 节日盛典

体验《金融时报》周末版报纸的生动呈现，活动环节包括：

加入玛丽·比尔德（Mary Beard）和夏洛特·希金斯（Charlotte Higgins）的讨论，她们将与《金融时报》评论与分析编辑爱丽丝·菲什本（Alice Fishburn）一同探讨古人的持久影响力。

传奇投资者兼回忆录作家迈克尔·莫里茨（Michael Moritz）将与《金融时报》创新编辑约翰·索恩希尔（John Thornhill）讨论其家族在纳粹德国的悲剧历史、特朗普时代的美国以及技术的影响。

为什么成为一名跑者永远不算太晚？超长距离跑者索菲·罗沃思（Sophie Raworth）、苏西·陈（Susie Chan）和阿达拉南德·芬恩（Adharanand Finn）将与《金融时报》的亨利·曼斯（Henry Mance）一起讨论是什么驱动我们奔跑，是什么让我们坚持，以及为什么现在开始永远不晚。

演员菲奥娜·肖（Fiona Shaw）将与《金融时报》电影评论家丹尼·利（Danny Leigh）一起回顾她的舞台与荧屏生涯、她辉煌的职业生涯，以及她在新版电影《理智与情感》中饰演的角色。

2026年9月5日 伦敦肯伍德庄园（Kenwood House）及线上同步

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蒂姆·海沃德（TIM HAYWARD）

Cacio e pepe（黑胡椒芝士面）。最简单的酱汁能真正展现手工新鲜面条的魅力。蛋香味更浓一点永远没坏处。

Gricia（格里恰面）。首次出现 Guanciale（猪面颊肉），这是罗马最伟大的宝藏之一。用 Pancetta（意式培根）或普通培根真的不行，它们缺乏那种野性的风味。

Carbonara（卡博纳拉面）。这是一个值得为之死守的观点。

Amatriciana（阿马特里恰纳面）。可能是四种面中最不容易出错的。不会出现“油水分离”，也没有鸡蛋会被不小心炒成蛋花。甚至在醉酒状态下也能准备。

现在，加入芝士并像恶魔一样搅拌。这里正在发生很多化学反应：蒸汽在完成面条的最后熟化；水分在减少，而面粉则帮助酱汁增稠。热量、你的搅拌以及沸水的剧烈波动，正帮助融化的芝士乳化进入液体中，而不会变得像丝一样拉长或出现颗粒感。你实际上是在制作一种由面粉增稠的芝士酱，只不过是在锅中高速完成，且直接与即将端上桌的面条融合在一起。

当你搅拌（我使用夹子）并翻炒面条时，偶尔将其拨到一边，观察液体酱汁的质感。它应该是光滑且丝滑的，像浓稠的油漆一样。如果太稀，就继续搅拌。如果开始显得太稠，就加入更多煮面水。奇怪的是，这个环节感觉并不那么匆忙。面条完全熟透还需要大约一分钟左右——有足够的时间来调整酱汁。

我知道这可能会让我被愤怒的英国意大利文化爱好者在城镇广场上火刑，但我真的不再相信“意大利人吃 al dente（弹牙 / 半熟）面条”这个神话了。我认为他们将面条煮到 al dente 状态，是为了让它在端上桌的那一刻达到完美。在你装盘并将面条端给渴望等待的客人们时，请记住这一点。

培根蛋奶意面（PASTA ALLA GRICIA）

一旦你掌握了黑胡椒芝士面（cacio e pepe），那么制作 alla gricia 面就是顺理成章的进阶。这一次，你同样要制作一种充满风味的脂类乳化液，但这次我们不用橄榄油，而要用猪油。具体来说，要用 Guanciale（猪面颊肉），这是一种在特斯塔乔（Testaccio）肉类市场工业化屠宰过程中产生的副产品。猪在清醒时的全部时间要么在用鼻子拱地，要么在咀嚼。面部肌肉复杂且工作强度大，风味浓郁，但如果直接烹饪，口感会极其坚韧。为了将其转化为 Guanciale，需要将其埋在盐中，加入大量的黑胡椒调味，然后悬挂起来——不仅是为了干燥，还要经历一种乳酸发酵，从而分解最坚韧的纤维。这种味道很强烈——少量即可产生显著效果——但最重要的是，它代表了罗马最正宗的味道。

同样地，每人准备 100 克意面，但这次请使用干面。特别是带有棱纹的管状面。如果能买到，青铜模具压制的意面（bronze die pasta）在微观层面上表面更粗糙，这能进一步增加酱汁附着的最大表面积。像之前一样布置你的煮面锅和收汁锅。

将 60 克 Guanciale 切成小条，放入锅中，用中火加热，偶尔搅拌。脂肪应该开始澄清并融出。一旦出现这种情况，就调大火并不停地搅拌。当脂肪最大限度地融出且 Guanciale 变得金黄酥脆时，用漏勺将其捞出备用。

现在，完全按照你练习过的方式制作一份黑胡椒芝士面。因为使用的是干面，你需要比建议的烹饪时间提前三分钟捞出（你仍然可以通过在水中加入一勺粗粒小麦粉来让操作更轻松）。

在完成意面时，密切观察酱汁的质地。显然这次你拥有更长的时间，当你感觉到快要完成时，将 Guanciale 碎片重新加入锅中加热。

经典培根蛋奶面（PASTA CARBONARA）

这可能是唯一一道引发比其他任何意面都要激烈争论的菜肴。在一场永无止境的战争中，发生了无数次激烈的冲突。能不能加洋葱？加奶油是否能被原谅？用 Pancetta（意式培根）？用烟熏培根还是条状培根？所有这些问题绝对值得为此大打出手，但我敢建议，一旦你将 carbonara 置于乳化酱汁的框架内，所有疑问都会烟消云散。它其实非常简单。

你可以使用干面或鲜面来制作 carbonara：spaghetti（细长面）、bucatini（空心面）、tonnarelli（托纳雷利面）或任何长而细的面条都可以。同样，如果可能的话，选择青铜模具压制的面——但在 carbonara 中，酱汁更浓稠且更具黏性，因此不需要棱纹管状面。

现在，你要像练习过的那样制作一份 gricia 面。但在开始之前，在细磨的芝士中加入鸡蛋。每人一个全蛋和一个蛋黄。同样地，融化 Guanciale，用煮面水将脂肪乳化。

在收尾时，将 Guanciale 放回锅中，然后将锅移离火源，搅拌入鸡蛋和芝士混合物。

和之前一样，密切观察酱汁的质地。如果太浓稠，就加入更多煮面水；如果你担心太稀，可以将其放回微弱的火上。只要不要让鸡蛋变成炒蛋即可（我曾看到一位厨师将收汁锅放在冒蒸汽的煮面锅上方，制造了一个简易的双层锅。我简直欣喜若狂）。

意式番茄培根面 (PASTA ALL'AMATRICIANA)

从理论上讲，Amatriciana 在这四款经典面食中的地位，就像是用番茄代替鸡蛋的卡博纳拉面（carbonara）。但在实际操作中，这个过程几乎是相反的。

这一次，你应该选择干面。我觉得这种酱汁味道浓郁，会掩盖新鲜面条的细腻之处。事实上——我知道这么说可能会让我被捅一刀然后被扔进台伯河——我对这款面使用什么形状或类型的面条并不特别在意。此外，愿上帝原谅我，我认为这里可以使用帕玛森干酪。一旦你开始在食材中加入番茄，所有的禁忌都失效了。

在将风干猪面颊肉（guanciale）煸出油脂并把肉盛出后，向热油中加入半罐圣马扎诺番茄，轻轻炖煮。在餐厅环境下，你可能会提前准备大量这种酱汁（但对我来说，这不完全符合这道菜的精神）。

在面条煮熟前两分钟将其捞出，拌入酱汁中。加入干酪并搅拌均匀，经常检查质地，必要时加入煮面水进行调整。

当你在佛罗伦萨用餐时，食物赞美的是周围乡村的田园富饶。它关乎丰饶与自然。在威尼斯，食物反映的是大海——财富的来源，以及征服与贸易带来的奢侈。你可能会认为这个伟大帝国的权力中心会追溯到皇帝的宏伟，但罗马美食却自豪地关注其穷人、工人阶级，以及字面意义上的平民（plebs）。面条是一种廉价的工业化碳水化合物。少量风味浓郁的边角肉和少许芳香的干酪被用来提升口感。他们不使用奢侈的奶油或黄油来增加浓郁度，而是将现有的油脂在水中乳化。

几乎不可能想到还有什么菜肴能如此以少胜多，或者有什么烹饪方法能如此巧妙地演进，从而快速且廉价地创造出这些美味。

在研究这篇文章时，我觉得有必要搭建全套设备，将这四道菜同时端上桌。我摆好锅具、炖锅和食材，计划并演练，最后开始尝试——这个过程我曾见过一名穿着破旧洞洞鞋的 60 岁意大利人在厨房里操作，那个厨房看起来最后一次现代化改造还是在墨索里尼（Il Duce）试图禁止吃面条的年代。

我失败了。失败得狼狈且壮观。谢天谢地，没有人看着我并记录下这些该死的细节。要掌握这些必须经过一辈子的练习，而我们谁都没有那个时间。所以，不要在家里尝试这样做。

请按顺序尝试每道菜，练习直到做对，然后再继续。你可能永远无法像罗马人那样迅速地完成它们，但在尝试的过程中，你会吃到一些极棒的面条。FT

迷你纵横字谜 第 124 号，由 SLEUTH 出题 8 个线索： 2 个简单题 2 个常识题 2 个隐喻题 2 个易位构词题

横向 1 与竞争对手同行 (7) 5 被认为具有同情心 (7) 6 年长者 (7) 7 Liz_，2024 年被任命为工作和养老金大臣的政治人物 (7)

纵向 1 德比郡的郡城 (7) 2 踩在……之上 (7) 3 一个高度 (4,3) 4 美国极端分子 (7)

在 ft.com / crosswordapp 访问过去 30 天的 FT 纵横字谜——包括隐喻题、博学者题、周末题和周日谜题。

本周 QUID 答案 球场上的一轮赛 2. 梅杰 (福楼叶酒店) 3. 奥斯汀·希利 (Austin Healey) 4. 朱莉娅·沃德·豪 (Julia Ward Howe) 5. 汉蒙德 (Hammond) 6. 维克·里夫斯 (Vic Reeves) 6. 《红色十月》 7. 《五月的亲爱之蕾》 8. 《红色十月》 9. 马克·劳森 (Mark Lawson) 10. 奥斯本庄园 (怀特岛) 图片题 克里斯托弗·沃肯 + 伯妮·诺兰 = 克里斯托弗·诺兰

8 月 22 日刊答案

迷你纵横字谜 第 123 号

单词圆圈 第 124 号

你能组成多少个单词，且必须包含中心字母以及两个或更多其他字母？每个字母在单词中出现次数不得超过其在圆圈中出现的次数。有一个单词使用了全部九个字母。

二进制谜题

第 124 号

在每个空格中填入 0 或 1，使每行和每列中两种数字的数量相等。在任何行或列中，相同数字连续出现不得超过两次。

1		0	1	0
1		0	1				1
						0
		1	0	1	1	0
	1	0	1	0	0
	0
0				1	0		0
			1	0	1		0

0	0	1	0	1	1	0	1
0	1	0	1	0	1	1	0
1	0	0	1	1	0	1	0
0	1	1	0	1	0	0	1
1	0	0	1	0	1	0	1
0	1	1	0	1	0	1	0
1	1	0	1	0	0	1	0
1	0	1	0	0	1	0	1

单词圆圈 第 123 号

dish, dos, dross, firs, fish, fords, his, hiss, hods, hows, ids, ifs, ohs, rids, rods, rows, shod, show, shows, sir, sirs, sis, sow, sows, swish, sword, swordfish, swords, whirs, wish, words

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28

横向线索较为直接，而纵向线索为隐晦线索。

横向

1 阴谋，计划 (6) 4 雨具 (8) 9 未成熟的 (6) 10 足够的 (8) 12 冒险，任务 (7) 13 风吹的方向 (7) 14 古罗马《变形记》诗人 (4) 15 坚持的，强有力的 (8) 18 钢琴家，小提琴家，例如 (8) 20 弧形入口 (4) 23 饮食计划 (7) 25 自私 (7) 26 眼科医生的视觉检查项目 (3, 5) 27 著名的，出名的 (6) 28 横向地 (8) 29 沉睡中的 (6)

填字游戏 第 807 号

ALAMY, GETTY IMAGES

纵向线索

1 艺术家的奖金在没有捕捉到顶峰的情况下被提高 (8) 2 乐器的低音包含 A 小调的变化 (9) 3 在欧洲海域使用软件绘制图表 (6) 5 处于困惑中，他变得疯狂，被误导，发疯 (6-6) 6 请求安静，休息被组织起来但没有它 (7) 7 动物主人带着所有人向上 (5) 8 错误命名 - 开始寻求赔偿 (6) 11 注意我的愤怒之可怕的能量来源 (6, 6) 16 药企紧随右侧治疗的初始阶段并伴有一人 (9) 17 批准就这样结束而没有医生 (6, 2) 19 以任何可能的方式，没有边缘的法院被建立 (7) 21 通常强制要求的青少年政治团体摄入量 (6) 22 沼泽中没有尾巴的鳗鱼最初是沼泽地的 (6) 24 盖柯认为抢夺蝗虫的头部在长草丛中是好事 (5)

所有这里的答案都以某种方式相关联。一旦你发现了其中的联系，那些你起初不知道的答案应该会变得更容易。

1 Ursus arctos 是哪种动物的拉丁名？该动物原产于北美和欧亚大陆（包括日本和土耳其）。

2 在 2000 年被英国电影协会（BFI）评为世纪最佳英国电视节目的剧中，Gowen 是哪个角色的姓氏？

3 哪位前英格兰橄榄球联盟球员（现为评论员）被昵称为“莱斯特之唇”（the Leicester lip）？

4 谁创作了《共和国战歌》 / 《我的眼睛已见荣耀》（"The Battle Hymn of the Republic" / "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory」）？

5 哪种电子管风琴于 1935 年首次制造？ 6 哪位喜剧演员的真名是 Jim Moir？ 7 H E Bates 创作的哪部 1958 年小说其标题取自莎士比亚第 18 号十四行诗中的一个短语？ 8 在哪部 1990 年的电影中，肖恩·康纳利饰演一名俄罗斯潜艇舰长（带着苏格兰口音）？ 9 1998 年至 2014 年期间，Radio 4 艺术节目《前排》（Front Row）的主持人是谁？ 10 维多利亚女王在哪个皇家住所去世？

由 JAMES WALTON 提供的图片环节

这些图片共同指向谁或什么？

答案在对面

什么新地狱

你有10分钟时间吗？米兰达·格林为你解决工作、生活与家庭困境

好吧，我很庆幸你问了这个问题，因为这太简单了。不，我没有“仅仅”10分钟的时间，你也没有。这意味着，恐怕我们必须统一战线，共同面对那些试图说服我们拥有这段时间的狂热之徒。

在社交媒体推送的海量内容中，传递的是什么样的信息？那就是：只要投入如此可怜且微小的时间和精力，就能迎来一个新的黎明、一个新的日子和一个全新的你。所以，老实说，你这个失败者到底怎么回事？为什么你还没有掌握这些简单的生活妙招？

那么，反击从这里开始。我们根本没有时间去理会你们那些“简单的”三步核心训练、你们那些“轻松的”周中冥想、法语口语微课，也没有时间理会那些“热身”早晨蹦床训练、用过期开菲尔快速烘焙芝士蛋糕的甜点方子，以及那些“在刷牙前给多年生植物分株，但你试过用椰子油快速揉搓来美白牙齿吗？”的建议。不，这些我统统不理。甚至连那些承诺能让我从房间里堆积如山的杂物帘幕后看清世界的“快速每日断舍离”，我也没时间理会。

你看出问题所在了吧。这些东西被包装成自助指南或自我提升，但累积起来，所有这些生活妙招只会让你感觉更糟，让你因为没有“正确”地做事而感到被指责。就像在问：谁没有10分钟时间？好吧，就是我。我就是那个没有时间、不能抽出时间，而且绝对不会抽出时间的人。我生命中剩下的“10分钟”已经不足以让我愿意浪费在每日面部瑜伽上了。即便我回到了21岁，这依然是一种糟糕的生活方式。难道你想让自己如此分心，以至于忘记你真正想要什么，以及你能够取得的任何具有实际意义的成就吗？

对我而言，这种网络威胁起初显得相当温和，比如一些提供个体可实现目标的短视频（用日式的简约与优雅修补那件心爱的毛衣），或者一些实用技巧（一种为英国皇家海军陆战队设计的呼吸练习，旨在应对被敌人俘虏等压力情境，或者应对我繁忙的周五班次）。

然而，这就是我今天被推送的内容：几个彻头彻尾的疯子一边演示一边告诉我，赤脚在堆积的泻盐（Epsom salts）上踩10分钟，几乎可以治愈所有身体和精神上的疾病。

插画：卢卡斯·瓦雷拉（LUCAS VARELA）

哎呀，太感谢你们了，伙计们，快让开，给我在那段劣质视频里破烂的地板上留点空间。

显然，我的算法（我曾试图将其训练为推送旧物改造和户外写生）认为我想被这些关于“完美化”的废话所唠叨。大概是基于年龄画像——有这么多关于润滑髋关节的劝诫！但被一群制造愧疚感的人及其“快速修复方案”锁定，正在缩小互联网本应为我们所有人开启的世界。

在询问朋友们被推送了什么之后，我迅速产生了“算法焦虑”（Algo Fomo）。其中一位朋友也得忍受一定数量的类似内容，但其中穿插了一些全球女巫分享咒语技巧的视频，这听起来和那些泻盐人士一样玄学，但有趣得多，而且没那么乱。不过我听说这涉及大量焚烧鼠尾草叶子的行为，这对软装家具可能也不太好。

如果你同样被告知这些通往开悟、完美健康、极乐平静、精通多国语言以及其他所有目标的糟糕的“10分钟小径”，那么请记住这一点：每一项听起来可能都可行，但总和起来就是一场灾难。把所有这些10分钟妙招加在一起，你的日子 / 周 / 生命去哪儿了？祝你在吃芝士蛋糕、冥想和给植物换盆的同时，能顺利地旋转那个被润滑好的髋关节，并滔滔不绝地用法语习语描述现在脚踩盐的感觉有多棒。而且你将没有时间坐下来享受其中任何一项，因为你得继续进行“自我提升”。快快快！

不必理会 J·阿尔弗雷德·普鲁弗洛克，他哀叹自己用咖啡匙衡量生命。而我们则面临着一种危险：试图通过对一切事物进行“极致化”（everything-maxxing）的绝望尝试来衡量生命。坦白说，相比于我们这种由注意力经济驱动、对（健康与）幸福的致命追求，二十世纪的那种漫无目的和倦怠感反而显得更可取。

这是一个不断扩张的、由陷阱和幻想构成的泥潭，但我们可以寻求自由。跟我重复一遍：没有人是完美的。每天重复几次这个小咒语，你就再也不会回头。你还在等什么？只需要 10 分钟。FT

米兰达·格林（Miranda Green）是《金融时报》的副评论编辑。罗伯特·什里姆斯利（Robert Shrimsley）休假中。

奇斯威克 拍卖行

日本与韩国艺术

Thursday 10 September, 14:00

百达翡丽 (PATEK PHILIPPE GENEVE)

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AUGUST 29 2026

FT Weekend Magazine

TWIRLING, TRACTORS AND TRUMP AT THE STATE FAIR

BY RANA FOROOHAR

REACH FOR THE CROWN

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FT Weekend Magazine

AUGUST 29 2026

PAGE 14. AN OPERATOR OVERSEES THE SKY SCREAM RIDE AT THE INDIANA STATE FAIR

Departments

Intellect

9 Tim Harford Random is as random does

10 Departments Reports from FT bureaux

12 Gallery Marie-Pierre Cravedi in Casablanca

Appetites

31 Jancis Robinson A shake-up for the UK's sparkling wines

33 Jay Rayner Saawaros, Elephant and Castle

Plus 44 Games 46 Miranda Green Have you got 10 minutes?

Features

14 COVER STORY Midwestern values What's the political mood in America's conservative heartland as the midterms loom? By Rana Foroohar

24 Poised for power The far-right politician dubbed 'the most dangerous man in Germany' is rallying voters in the east By Laura Pitel and Anne-Sylvaine Chassany

34 The Table

A prepare-ahead mezze-style Chinese feast that's high on flavour, low on stress By Fuchsia Dunlop

40 When not in Rome How to recreate the city's Big Four pasta dishes By Tim Hayward

THE FIGHT TO SAVE ENGLAND'S RIVERS by Gill Plimmer

It was delightful to see pictures of the upper River Wharfe. It is undeniably true that many people swim in the river at Ilkley, some every day throughout the year. It is dispiriting to know that in doing so they ignore signs telling them that the water is too polluted for bathing. JOEL GRIFFITHS, WEST YORKSHIRE

This piece of thorough investigative journalism was a fascinating read and makes many relevant points. However, no real solutions have been reached. This is because as long as we use water to treat sewage, the problem is that all water eventually reaches the ocean. Even after treatment and solids removal there is still lots of nasty stuff in the water. Urine, drugs legal and otherwise, nutrients from detergents, fertilisers, bacteria. Our local river used to have clean yellow gravel and fish. Now it's just green slime. BOB HEDDLE, KENT

Just been to Central Europe where I went to lakes near Berlin, in Czechia and in Poland. Lots of happy people bathing with little concern. Water test results are displayed for people to see and these are both recent and trusted.

Our media laughed at Anne Hidalgo for swimming in the Seine before the Olympics, yet her clean-up is paying off handsomely. In the UK we do not even realise how much we all lose due to this type of corruption. Thank you FT for this excellent reporting. REJTAN VIA FT.COM

Thank you for the fantastic reporting on this issue that has gone on for decades. Please keep it up. Articles like this are why subscribing to good-quality journalism is excellent value. AMLAUR VIA FT.COM

ON WEAVING MYTHS AND WATERS by Tanvi Mishra Fascinating article and great photographs. Enlightening. RF99 VIA FT.COM

Good weekend reading and fabulous photos. MALA TEMPORA VIA FT.COM

WHY RIVERS MAKE THE BEST COMPANIONS by Henry van Dyke

Having had the good fortune to spend the holidays in both the Mediterranean and the Alps this year, I have to admit that the most beautiful thing I saw was the River Sava Bohinjka in Slovenia, where I swam in crystal-clear waters near an orchard. G. LUCA DI LORENZO VIA FT.COM

WHY DO WE BELIEVE THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE? by Tim Harford

Credo in unum Deum As usual, Tim Harford prompts thought and reflection. Yet I wondered if the questions we need to ask ourselves are "Why do we believe?" and "Why do we change our beliefs?" RORY WORTHINGTON, SUFFOLK

I believe everything the FT tells me. And only the FT. CARNELIAN VIA FT.COM

WHY GEN Z IS RAISING A GLASS TO CASK BEER

I think nostalgia is a weak explanation. Gen Z want authenticity and something grounded for a generation that has been entirely online and digital for its entire existence.

The attraction of cask ale is in its natural fermentation and earthy, funky tastes that are the complete opposite of the vapes and ultra-processed foods they're used to tasting. LANDLORD'S BURDEN VIA FT.COM

I think craft has got people used to beer that tastes of "something" – and now they'd like that something to be pleasant rather than Flash All-Purpose Cleaner. CHARLESII VIA FT.COM

RESTAURANT REVIEW: DANTE, MAYFAIR

I love it when food critics take on obscene places like this. It reminds me that, despite all the money in the world, you can't buy taste. ZEN ZEN VIA FT.COM

Calling the place "Dante" could invite many barbs referencing comedy

AUGUST 22 PHOTOGRAPHY SPECIAL: THAT WAS THE RIVER

TO CONTRIBUTE Comment on our articles online or email magazineletters@ft.com. Please include a daytime telephone number and full address (not for publication). Letters may be edited.

or hell (or both) but, given the food descriptions and prices, definitely not paradise. Jay resisted that temptation. DANIEL EMERSON VIA ET.COM

THE STRANGE HUNGER OF HOSPITAL LIFE by Marina O'Loughlin

I'll always remember the smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel brought to me by a visiting cousin towards the end of a miserable stay in hospital for major surgery. Not just the deliciousness, but the sense of someone caring for what might make me feel better.

I know it's hard to cook for the sick, let alone on a budget, but how much would recovery rates improve if hospital food was delivered with just a fraction of the thought put into that simple gesture? L VOGEL VIA FT.COM

The FT subscription is worth it for the food writers alone. One of my ultimate food memories is being almost force-fed stodgy puddings with custard by a formidable ward housekeeper post an emergency C-section.

Turns out syrup sponge in a bath of custard is just what you need when faced with a tiny, unreasonable human being and a complete upending of life as you know it. TEAMERCHANT VIA FT.COM

SHOULD I USE AN ALIAS? by Miranda Green

Mick and Keith were always penning songs for people who were not the Rolling Stones, and for those they signed off as the Glimmer Twins. Prince would often write for others under an alias and he even recorded his own songs under an alias – but in his very high register, so he didn't even sound male.

I've needed to come up with my own alias for a bio fiction I'm writing that is also an album. It was rather fun, actually, and I find my alter ego wonderfully convenient to take cover behind when needed. Everyone should have one!

Well, this is clearly catnip to the commentariat! GIGONDAS VIA FT.COM

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Intellelect

UNDERCOVER ECONOMIST

Just how random is random?

by TIM HARFORD

ILLUSTRATION by LUKE WOHLGEMUTH

IN THE GENIUS'S PLAYGROUND THAT WAS BELL LABS IN the 1950s, Claude Shannon, the father of information theory, built an outguessing machine. The machine's task was simple: a human would choose one of two levers, left or right, and the machine would guess which lever the human would choose. Shannon was inspired by a colleague, whose outguessing machine had a slim but definite success rate of 53 per cent. Shannon's own version was simpler and even better, guessing correctly 65 per cent of the time.

The legend related in William Poundstone's book How to Predict the Unpredictable (2014) is that nobody ever beat the machine over an extended run, with one exception: Shannon himself. As the machine's algorithm was simple and elegant, he was able to mentally emulate it and play the opposite of whatever he knew the machine would predict.

How did the machines work? The logic was simple: both took notes of how their opponent behaved. For example, if you'd won a couple of times in a row, did you usually ride your luck by sticking with the same choice or did you tend to switch? The presumption was that no human plays randomly.

We all have certain habits or instincts. No supercomputing was required: Shannon's machine had just 16 bits of memory. We humans are not hard to read.

An even simpler exploit is the double-tailed coin. Any scoundrel with such a coin can decide any disagreement by offering to toss it, then calling “tails”. But even if he offers his mark the opportunity to call the toss, he will probably win, because people will call “heads” more often than not.

One of the first academics to figure this out was Louis Goodfellow, who in the late 1930s recruited volunteers to write down a series that reflected an imagined set of coin tosses. Seventy-eight per cent of his participants began their sequence with “heads”.

In a larger dataset - originally gathered in an effort to study telepathy (a story for another day) - Goodfellow found that more than 20 per cent of participants either chose the sequence HHTHT or HHTTH. Other random-seeming sequences beginning with heads were also popular, such as HTTHH and HTHHT. Few people favoured anything beginning with tails, and the least popular sequence was TTTTT, chosen by about one person in 600. Any mathematician can tell you, however, that there are 32 possible out-

comes of tossing a coin five times, and each of the 32 is equally likely.

Fifteen years later, Alphonse Chapanis, a pioneer of ergonomics, asked volunteers to take an hour or so to fill a large grid with thousands of random digits. Analysing the results produced some striking observations. The 10 least popular adjacent combinations of

For the machines, the presumption was that no human plays randomly. We all have certain habits or instincts

digits, in order, were: 66 99 00 11 33 44 88 22 77 55. And the 10 most popular? 32 43 21 76 65 10 31 87 86 54 - something about the human brain likes descending couplets, it seems. In a truly random sequence, 66 is just as likely to appear as 32, but what seems random as we scribble it down is anything but. Such regularities can be exploited by an outguessing machine, a conman, even a password guesser.

They can also be exploited by lazy students. Author William Poundstone offers a few tips to brute-force your way through multiple-choice tests. If you have no idea what the answer is on a true-false question, guess “true”. And if you know what the answer to the previous question was, guess that this time it will change. Offered four options, go for “B”. Always choose “all of the above” or “none of the above”, if available - they are disproportionately likely to be the correct answer. None of these methods guarantees success, but they do improve your odds because most setters of multiple-choice questions are more predictable than they realise.

If you really need a random sequence, then don't ask a human. One alternative is to ask a machine to generate the randomness - but be careful. In 1980, the Pennsylvania “Pick 3” lottery was rigged by staff at the TV studio where the draw was televised. Every number except the 4 and 6 balls was weighted with a judicious addition of latex paint, meaning that when the fan was switched on to blow the lightweight balls around, all the 4 and 6 balls floated to the top. Alas for the conspirators, the heavy bets on 4-6 combinations coupled with the portentous winning number 666 were enough to raise suspicions.

Almost the same story played out in the digital realm more recently, when an IT expert at the Multi-State Lottery Association admitted introducing a backdoor to the software that generated lottery numbers: while it was usually random, on certain dates it would produce random-seeming numbers that he could predict.

Computer cryptography relies on having a large number that cannot be guessed, and the best way to have an unguessable number is to make it random. Unfortunately, this is harder to do than one might imagine, and several computer systems – most notoriously Sony's PlayStation 3 – have been hacked because the attackers figured out how the “random” number was being produced.

If lottery machines - physical or digital - can be rigged, and humans are incapable of inventing truly random sequences of numbers, it is tempting to resort to the good old-fashioned coin toss. Not so fast. Persi Diaconis, celebrated both as a mathematician and magician, has found that a coin toss is, in general, a 51/49 proposition in favour of finishing the same way up that it started. To illustrate the

idea further, Diaconis built a coin-tossing machine. Insert a coin heads-up and the machine will flip it nicely in the air - to land heads-up every time.

This is no mere theoretical problem. At the International Congress of Mathematicians this summer, maths author and YouTuber Matt Parker and friends ran a stall in which maths-curious members of the public could try tossing a coin. Parker promised to give \$1,000 to anyone who managed to toss 10 heads in a row - a fun challenge to prompt people to explore what an unlikely outcome really felt like.

Alas, it wasn't as unlikely as he had imagined: having been forced to hand over the \$1,000 prize twice on the first day, Parker looked at the accumulating data and realised that the entire distribution of coin flips was unexpectedly biased towards strings of tails or strings of heads. The effect was stronger than Diaconis had predicted, perhaps because many of Parker's coin tossers were rather young and unable to reliably flip coins high enough to rotate much. Parker's solution: on the second day of the conference, he switched to dice. The pattern of results reverted to something much closer to pure randomness... whatever that is. FT

DEPARTMENTS

REPORTS from LESSER-KNOWN

FT BURFAUX

ARCHITECTURE

Brutalism of towering proportions

After it opened in 1972, Trellick Tower, designed by Hungarian architect Ernő Goldfinger, quickly became one of the most controversial buildings in London. The Financial Times rated it "one of the ugliest buildings in the world". Critics, observers and the press also called it: "Colditz in the sky", in reference to the German prisoner-of-war camp

- "Tower of terror", due to lift breakdowns, maintenance issues and crime

- "The mutant fridge", because it looks like an oversized kitchen appliance from the side SOURCE: VARIOUS

MEDICAL MILESTONE

The Eames's supporting role

Charles and Ray Eames invented a pioneering leg splint to transport soldiers injured in the second world war. The project taught the designers how to manufacture moulded plywood efficiently, leading to an estimated 150,000 splints produced for the US military. The splints laid the technical foundation for their famous moulded chairs.

SOURCE: VARIOUS

PUZZLES

Lessons from Ernő Rubik

As a professor at the Academy of Applied Arts and Design in Budapest, Ernő Rubik invented the Rubik's Cube in 1974 as a teaching tool to show his students how three-dimensional objects could move. When he scrambled his prototype for the first time, it took him a month to figure out how to solve it. He can now do it in about a minute. The world record was set this year by nine-year-old Polish speedcuber Teodor Zajder, who solved the puzzle in 2.76 seconds.

SOURCE: CBC

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'MACHINE', SÉRIE AMATO, 2019–2020

GALLERY

MARIE-PIERRE CRAVEDI by LOUIS DELBARRE

Amato Cravedi was born in 1914 in Piacenza, Italy. Looking for a job, he left for Switzerland and started working as a maître d'hotel. His plans were overtaken by the second world war. Amato was sent to fight in Tunisia in Mussolini's army. Around 1942, he was captured by the Americans and imprisoned in Casablanca until the conflict ended. "Over there, he worked in a mechanic's workshop until the end of the war," his granddaughter, Marie-Pierre Cravedi, tells me. "When he returned home, he realised Italy was in a difficult state. Everything had to be rebuilt from scratch."

With his country in ruins, Amato began a new life in Casablanca. He met Carmela, Marie-Pierre's grandmother, and worked as a mechanic. He eventually opened the Cravedi Workshop, specialising in parts for trucks and farm machinery. Amato spent 60 years in the Moroccan city, where Marie-Pierre's father, Jean Pierre, was born.

Originally from Toulouse, Marie-Pierre is now a visual artist based in Lausanne. She has only faint memories of her first visit to Casablanca, when she was seven, along with a handful of clichés about "Casa", a dreamy city of white-roofed

'PLONGEURS', SÉRIE AMATO, 2019–2020

houses by the desert. She returned in 2019. The journey became a search through her family's memories. "I was asking myself what kind of teenager my dad was," she says.

She began documenting the workshop, photographing the machines and the workers. The darkness of the factory gave way to the light of the city as Marie-Pierre began to document the lives of young Casaouis to reflect what her father's youth might have looked like. "Their energy contrasts with the workshop's slow extinction," she writes. "Between these two spaces, one on the verge of fading away, the other in full affirmation, a city in transformation emerges."

Marie-Pierre's work explores family and memory. What do we pass on, and what remains? In Amato, she pieces together a story whose key facts remain unknown to her. "What I'm interested in is telling complex stories, mixing together the workshop images with the portraits of teenagers," she says. "I'm not aiming for the perfect image, but for photos that work together to create a narrative."

Eventually, Marie-Pierre started to drop her documentary practice and let her creativity take over. "During my last trip to Casablanca," she says, "the repetition of the documenting process led me towards the abstract. I felt less like documenting and rather creating poetic, dreamlike images." FT

"Amato" is published by Rue du Bouquet, with photographs by Marie-Pierre Cravedi, book design by Valentine Thébaut and foreword by Maaï Youssef. "Amato" is at Images Vevey, in Vevey, Switzerland, from September 5 to September 27

INDIANA STATE OF MIND

WILL THE MOST ORNERY STATE IN THE CONSERVATIVE MIDWEST, ONE OF THE PLACES THAT BROUGHT TRUMP TO POWER, FINALLY REJECT HIS POLITICS? THE STATE FAIR HOLDS THE ANSWERS BY RANA FOROOHAR. PHOTOGRAPHY BY KRISTINE POTTER

Right, from top: the Lafayette High School marching band in competition; an equestrian poses with her horse and award ribbons

Previous page: state fairgoers walk through the midway

he geography of class is visible from the sky. Flying into Indiana, my home state in the heart of the American Midwest, on a sweltering summer day in August, I can see the political history of the region from several thousand feet up. There are huge, four-mile squares of

black dirt from which spring lush corn and soybeans, each evenly divided into the “country miles” that make up some of the world’s richest farmland. North of Indianapolis, the thriving state capital that is home to pharma giants like Eli Lilly, McMansions bordered by pools and lush landscaping appear. As we near the city, there are the factories and manufactured housing developments, dubbed “trailer parks” in less politically correct days. Some of my high-school friends lived in them, particularly as the farm business consolidated and the factories began closing.

I was long gone by 2016, when the small-c conservatism of my youth, which was defined by thrift, industry and local communitarianism (farmers ploughed snow-covered roads, churches ran food pantries) gave way to the rise of the insurgent wing of the American right, which became Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" politics. Thanks to an ambitious mother, I'd left Frankfort - where the German immigrants who settled here must have made that "o" their concession to the New World - for the Ivy League. But recently my home state has again emerged as a litmus test for where the Maga crowd, and the country in general, may be going.

The question posed by pundits and political analysts ahead of the US midterm elections in November is whether the Midwest is starting to turn against Trumpism. There have been signs this year, including the rise of rightwing alternatives to Trump, including Senator Josh Hawley in Missouri, who is planning a 2028 presidential run and has been willing to challenge the president on everything from the abuse of executive power to abortion rights and support for Big Tech.

Indiana, too, is pushing back against Maga. In December, 21 Republican state senators joined all 10 Indiana Democrats in standing up to Trump's efforts to redistrict in advance of the midterms. The gerrymandering would have given the GOP a further advantage in Indiana, but was nonetheless antithetical to traditional conservative sentiment, which privileges states' rights over federal intervention. Thanks to moderate Republicans' refusal to cave to Trump's pressure, the proposal was voted down in the state senate.

Retribution was swift. Railing against the Republicans who had voted against gerrymandering, the president declared: "Every one of these people should be 'primaried' and I will be there to help." In due course, Maga Super Pacs poured millions of dollars into state senate races. The money in the primary season reached \$13.5mn, compared with less than \$300,000 two years earlier. Six out of eight conservative incumbents who had stood up to the president lost their primary. As one of them, state senator Travis Holdman, put it, “Welcome to DC politics in Indiana because this means that’s what’s coming.”

There was polling showing some of those districts might have gone Maga anyway. But it seems clear that big money and gerrymandering at the national level, along with the Republican leadership's cult-like focus on Trump, has become a hugely distorting force in politics. "I'm a glass-half-full guy," says former Indianapolis mayor Stephen Goldsmith, a moderate Republican who now teaches at Harvard. "But I think the combination of out-of-state big finance and gerrymandering is making it very hard for average people's voices to be heard."

What do folk from Indiana, we Hoosiers who are constitutionally suspicious of power and independently minded, think about this? Are they angry? Are an affordability crisis, an unpopular war in Iran and a sense that Republican Super Pacs bought out local senate races going to help the Democrats running on an anti-corruption message in the midterm? Are people even paying attention? This summer there was one very obvious place to take the temperature of this political moment: the Indiana State Fair.

tate fairs are iconic in the Midwest. They are huge, month-long extravaganzas of commerce and culture. I get a taste of it immediately upon entering the fairgrounds in downtown Indianapolis. I arrive on the opening day, August 7, and the big event is the cheerleading competition, a fan favourite. I pass the carnival rides, the barns where prized sheep, goats and pigs are displayed, a group of middle-aged cloggers (performing a modernised version of Yorkshire clog dances that made their way to the US over the past 200 years) huffing it to an unexpected mix of hip-hop music, as well as something called the "dog dunk", which involves canines jumping 20ft or more into a giant swimming pool, and a display of pioneer culture.

Eventually, I reach the grandstand in the centre of the fairgrounds. Squads of teenage girls in ribbons and colour-coordinated uniforms have already begun a practice session, cartwheeling and backflipping to the sounds of Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin and Otis Redding. Parents mill about looking for seats, some carrying corn dogs and lemon slushies in containers as large as sand pails. Heftier girls lift twig-like ones into precarious mounts, then fling them up in the air. Toes are touched.

Girls are dropped. "Dang, they are struggling more than last year," one onlooker comments.

I corner a dance mom, Andrea, who looks like she may have been able to do a cartwheel or two in her day. Her 14-year-old daughter, Ashland, who cheers for the Jay County Junior-Senior High Patriots, is here with her comrade in pleats, Brenna. Both are extremely blonde, wearing red, white and blue uniforms and bright red lipstick.

"They did a round-off into a back handspring and then a back aerial," says Andrea, proudly.

"Up a hill," adds Ashland. "That was the hardest part."

Andrea is wearing denim cut-off shorts and a “We Are Patriots” T-shirt - which, as it turns out, represents not only the squad but her politics. She tells me she’s “a total Trump girl”, but her daughter has forbidden her to wear Maga gear today, since they are in Indianapolis “and they don’t like that kind of thing here”.

Andrea is 56, and has an enormous, blended family of 12 children that ranges in age from 38 to two. The smallest, a pair of blonde twins, are also in “We Are Patriots” shirts. They live in a rural area in the east of the state, 13 miles from the nearest store. Her family have been in the area for generations. Andrea ran a daycare centre until recently, and her husband now does construction. He’s doing well, thanks to a relatively robust state economy (Indiana outperforms the 11 other Midwestern states in terms of both GDP and a low unemployment rate, at 3.3 per cent). A strong state budget, low cost of living and good blend of manufacturing, services and agriculture has helped the state weather tougher times and higher prices. The steel, biotech and defence industries have benefited from re-industrialisation efforts at the national level.

That's one reason Andrea and her family still support Trump. But there are others. "He's strong," she said, when I ask why she likes the president, "and he's a very good leader. And he isn't a politician - he's a businessman. Also, he's making decisions that are going to be good for the future, that will benefit our kids. We've got a strong military again. We're bringing back patriotism and pride. We're not taking down statues. I want our history to stay... OK, some of it has been ugly, but we learn from it. I want kids to know the truth, to learn respect."

Cops and the military, she believes, should be held in higher regard. This reflects a larger cultural notion I've heard from others in many parts of rural America: that those in big cities or on the coasts don't understand their values. As the speaker of the Indiana House of Representatives, Todd Huston, put it to me: "Faith, public safety, a simpler way of living - there's a perceived lack of respect for those things."

Andrea is the sort of voter we hear a lot about, but people like her don't represent the whole state. Indiana is three states, really, and each of

'TRUMP'S STRONG,' SHE SAID, 'AND MAKING DECISIONS THAT WILL BENEFIT OUR KIDS'

them reflects a key element of recent American political experience. The northern half, where I was raised and my father ran factories, is a manufacturing powerhouse that was decimated by the China shock – that massive outsourcing of rust-belt industrial jobs to Asia over the last several decades. While Indiana is still the biggest manufacturing state in the union as a percentage of state GDP, most of the highly paid union jobs are gone, and the labour-left Democrats here swung hard for Trump in 2016.

Then there's the south of the state which is, well, the South - more Appalachia than rust-belt. Indiana still has active Ku Klux Klan members and a strong strain of anti-immigrant populism. You could draw a direct line from the nativist Know-Nothings of the 19th century, to the Klan, the McCarthyites, the Tea Party and Trumpism in my home state.

Finally there's Indianapolis, a diverse, affordable knowledge economy, with plenty of culture and entertainment. But "Indy", which like many big American cities has a large Black population, exists in an orbit detached from (and resented by) much of the rest of the state. In that sense, the state capital and the surrounding county seats are emblematic of the national rural-urban divide that arguably defines American politics as much as the red-blue divide. Which party will be able to bridge that gap? The answer will decide the midterms, and perhaps the 2028 presidential election.

fter a couple of hours of cheerleading, I move on to the Weaver Popcorn Youth Pavilion, to watch the youth riding and showing competition. Teens in chaps, jeans, Western-style shirts and boots nervously show their horses. Parents and grandparents wearing

muddy work boots and T-shirts cheer them on. A middle-aged woman shouts to one of the girls, "Look like you're having fun, Piper!" Contestants are told by an announcer and judge wearing a cowboy hat, pinkish plaid jacket and boots to "Lean forward, gallop!" And they do.

I spot an especially attentive couple in the back row. The man has a tan, sandy hair, bright blue eyes. He wears jeans and cowboy boots. The woman has an interesting face - very alert and full of feeling. It turns out Sheila Blake is a grandmother, aged 60. Her 14-year-old grandson, Tray, has just won a ribbon. "He's worked hard, and this is the first year he's done it all on his own," she says proudly. That means Tray woke in the early hours of the morning to feed and care for the horse, saddle it, exercise it and so on. "Dealing with a 1,200lb animal, getting it to do what you want it to do, that's really empowering to a child," Blake says. "Life doesn't happen inside four walls - showing here teaches them about work, about money." This push for self-sufficiency stands in sharp contrast to the helicopter parents I see in my own Brooklyn neighbourhood.

Tray looks proud and a little nervous. He's small, but sits tall on his horse, in a bright aqua cowboy shirt with white piping, as the ribbons are given. "I was afraid I'd fall off," he says to me later, though I doubt that was a real possibility. He's been doing shows at the fair his whole life. "Most of the kids just spend a lot of time on their phones," he says, when I ask about his friends at school. Then his grandmother tells him to "scratch out", meaning sign out of the competition, and go wash down his horse, which he obligingly runs off to do.

Blake is from Brown County in the southern part of the state, and from a line of farmers. She and her husband still raise animals and crops, and they are self-sufficient in terms of food. But they both need other jobs to make ends meet - agriculture is a \$35bn economy in Indiana, which is the ninth-largest farm region in the country, but farming is a tight-margin business, and only a handful of industrial farmers can afford to do it full time. Blake is a schoolteacher; her topic is Earth science. Like many people I interview, she wishes more people could spend a day on a farm. "If they did, they'd understand why the price of food is what it is. People need to get back into understanding where their food comes from and what it takes to get it to the plate. Water costs money, fuel costs money."

Blake's daughter works at the Department of Agriculture as a programme specialist, and both women feel that neither political party cares much about farmers - that politicians are completely out of touch with how people here live daily. Blake worries about the war in Iran and the unsustainability of fossil-fuel usage in general. Voting-wise, she calls herself an independent, and as I start to ask her whether Trump's war might shift how she votes in the midterms and presidential election, she's nodding before I finish the sentence. "It might. Yes, it just might. I'll have to see the candidates, but it's something I'm thinking about."

Blake's willingness to consider voting across party lines reflects not only Republican own goals like the war on Iran, but also the fact that Democrats are trying harder to meet rural voters where they are, talking more about values and religion. Across the Midwest, primary elections in recent weeks are being won not so much by party affiliation but by trust - does the candidate see me? Does he or she know who I am and where I live?

The conservative pollster Frank Luntz calls this trend the “politics of respect” and says that it could favour Democrats, particularly Democratic Socialists, in the midterms, and particularly in states like Michigan and Ohio, where union voters are turning against Trump. “Whoever shows up and makes people feel heard, regardless of their platform, will win," he says. At a national level, Republicans aren't doing so well on this score. Trump's claims that the affordability crisis is a "hoax" and that data centres won't take jobs don't play with voters who have existential anxiety about AI.

The topic of data centres comes up, unexpectedly, in the swine barn, which I can smell before I arrive. The loudspeakers are blasting Eddie Money's "Take Me Home Tonight" and Hoosier John Cougar Mellencamp's "Jack and Diane". It's as though music stopped in the 1980s, but I like it. It reminds me of high-school dances. A little girl with a giant red hair bow, who looks to be no older than 10, is shepherding a pig that must be more than 10 times her weight. The fair queen is there, in jeans and a plastic crown with paste gems, handing out award ribbons. A horde of children waiting to show their animals to judges play football in an empty show pit covered in sawdust.

Nearby, in another pit, there is a 30-something man asking questions of about 150 children and teens gathered around, learning how to be livestock judges. They are blonde and freckled, and the girls have tight, perfectly woven French braids, or even the more complicated fishtail braids that the Amish girls in high school wore. Boys have crew cuts and caps. Everyone is in jeans and T-shirts that say things like “Purdue Ag” or “Blackhawk Livestock Judging”. The announcer quizzes them: “Question 15. When you get behind ’em, which animal has wrinkly skin?” The students scribble quietly. The announcer says, “You all over there talking, you aren’t helping yourselves by cheating.” A few of the teenage boys look abashed. “Question 16. Which is the animal with the heaviest weight?” More scribbles.

I move to the cubicles, which are shared by the pigs (many of them asleep on their sides, feet up and snoring like old men) and their owners, who are chilling in lawn chairs. I chat with a couple of farmers and, in a two-degrees-of-Indiana moment, discover that one of them works at Keystone Cooperative, a farmers' collective now run by a boy I had a crush on in fifth grade. The farmer, Jason Hine, works multiple jobs like all the others. He and another farmer, Melanie Bush, say that everyone here is talking about fuel prices - and data centres. "We're following the news more closely these days, particularly at a national level."

Bush says in her part of northern Indiana, data centres are coming into the area, driving up land prices and making it tougher to buy or lease. “Then there’s the traffic, the water consumption, all of it,” she says. Both she and Hine want people in Washington to better understand how hard it is to make a living. “It’s been hard since the 1970s really,” Hine says. Bush’s husband, a quiet man, nods knowingly. They all acknowledge the Iran war and Big Tech have added fuel to the fire of inflation. Would that make them vote Democrat?

THE SUBJECT OF DATA CENTRES COMES UP, UNEXPECTEDLY, IN THE SWINE BARN

Clockwise from top: Tray with his horse after winning a ribbon; a young exhibitor guides his pig during a showmanship competition; riders hurtle through the air on the Sky Scream

Right, from top: a handler with her llama in the Leaping Llamas competition; fairgoers dine in the Pork Tent

Previous page: a cheerleading team perform in the competition

'I'M THINKING MORE ABOUT MY SCHOOL DISTRICT RATHER THAN THE MIDTERMS'

They make uncertain faces. As Hine says, “I’m thinking more about my school district rather than the midterms or the presidential election. The federal government should worry about national security, and we can worry about things like education here. There ought to be less government, not more.”

This idea that the “government is the problem, not the answer” still runs deep here and favours conservatives, who polls predict will win the state, but by a far narrower margin than in 2024. While Democrats did well in the state between 2006 and 2010, thanks to the antipathy towards the Iraq war, in which many Indiana National Guardsmen fought – the state has historically sent a high number of soldiers to battle – and the financial crisis, Barack Obama’s victory here in 2008 was narrow. Even with all the Republican errors under Trump, it still feels as if Democrats have an uphill battle to win back this part of the country.

As I walk out of the barn I ask Brandon Smiley about the politics of race in the state. Smiley, 35, works for a party company that does the catering set-up for the fair. His family, like many in the area, came to Indiana three generations ago during the Great Migration, when many Black migrants left the South and came north for economic opportunity and to escape racism. This state hasn't been that escape for his family - Smiley says he experiences racism "all day long". Indiana "thinks in black and white", he tells me, but job opportunities are good, and to him that's what matters.

I've heard much the same from other Black Hoosiers on my visit. We chat for a bit, and I ask him what he makes of Trump 2. "Well, my kids are in Catholic school and the funding cuts in education have been tough. It's \$470 a month to keep both my seven- and four-year-old in school," a significant bump from previous years. "The grocery bill has gone from \$700 to \$1,200 a month." Will his community come out for Democrats the way they did for Obama in 2008? "Maybe. People don't care until things [like prices] hit home," and now they are. Still, Smiley says he would never move to a place like Chicago, a more diverse and inclusive city with a strong Black community, because it's so much more expensive.

t's almost evening, and I make my way back to the grandstand, this time for the all-important marching band competition. (A confession: I was a flag girl in the 1988 band competition. Thank God there was no social media back then.)

I don't know whether I'm having a Sunset Boulevard moment, but the bands seem so much smaller than I remem-

ber. There is also a Cirque du Soleil quality now that feels strange - lots of costumes, theatrics, props. We just marched, threw flags and played our instruments with gusto. But the kids do seem as nervous and excited as I once was. I can see them silently counting steps, with that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look.

Technicians working the sound system chat as the kids play. "How ya doin?" one asks another. "Too early to tell - too late to care!" says another, and they both laugh. Band directors yell from the sidelines, urging the kids to hit their marks: "Go to the right, no, not that sharply!" Dozens of teenagers do a precise step formation as they blow their horns at the same time.

The West Lafayette High School is about to perform. West Lafayette is a dot of blue in a red state, the home of Purdue University, an engineering powerhouse. The band girls wear sailor caps and have something of an interpretive dance quality, almost tai chi, with some sort of ocean theme set to Debussy. The flag girls are not on their game, and as they spin and toss their props in the air, several end up in the gravel. I blame iPhones. Surely, they aren't practising as hard as we were in the 1980s, when there was truly nothing to do all summer but detassel corn, babysit, work at the local ice-cream shop and twirl flags. Behind me, in the peanut gallery, onlookers offer colour commentary. "Oh boy, are they doing the Wizard of Oz?" "No, it's Wicked." "Oh, that's better." As a French-braided Salome dances to something vaguely Middle Eastern-sounding: "She's beautiful - and I like her hair too." "Yeah. That dance was badass... want some Kettle Korn?" That's heavy-duty caramel popcorn for the uninitiated.

One could make a small study of food at a state fair. Fat, sugar and salt are the primary ingredients, with corn and pork coming in a close second. Corn dogs appear to come in sizes large, extra-large and obscene. Anything can be deep-fried - pickles, tomatoes, Snickers bars, ice cream, Oreos. I spot two women eating something that looks like a potato version of the fungi that explodes from the bodies of infected insects in the rainforest. I'm told it's the "sweet and salty spiralled potato chip", created by dunking a whole sliced potato into a deep fryer, and they can confirm it is "delicious". As a child, I would have swooned over all this and begged my parents for a hub-cap-sized "elephant ear" of fried dough dipped in powdered sugar. Now, in the 90F heat, the thought makes me nauseous. I gravitate to the line outside the pork tent, which is the longest, and with good reason - you can smell the salty goodness of the pulled pork half a mile away. Standing in line, the prairie sun starts to burn the back of my neck.

In the pork tent, I chat with an older couple from Montgomery County, an hour west of Indianapolis on the Illinois border. The husband, aged 66, is a retired AT&T technician and the wife won't speak to me ("We've had trouble with reporters before") even when I tell her I grew up in Clinton County, something that usually softens the Hoosiers sceptical of curious outsiders. Nonetheless, I learn they have two grown-up sons who work for the State Farm Insurance agency. They feel happy with their lot, particularly compared with how things were in the 1970s, when they were starting a family. "When we bought our first house, interest rates were 18 per cent," says the husband, "and we're about to pay it off soon." The husband voted three times for Trump. "I like his policies - we need deregulation - but I don't like the rhetoric. It's not necessary." What about the hoppla over redistricting, I ask? Did he pay attention? Does he care? He shakes his head, mirroring what I've heard all day. "It's a game going on since politics started." Still, he says, "I don't love this war." He's convinced that "big companies are playing a game with prices", using the war as an opportunity to drive them up.

This idea of corporate power and corruption is something that Democrats have been trying to make hay with for years now, mostly unsuccessfully. But Trump's blatant use of executive power for self-enrichment has provided new fodder. There is research to show that candidates who refuse Pac contributions are perceived as more trustworthy. But this tends to work more at a primary level, when voters are less likely to simply pull the lever for a single party. Voters say corruption matters to them, and they want solutions to it. But how deeply they consider that in a general election is less certain. What is certain is that the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee has made Indiana a target state; Democrats need just four Indiana House seats to break the Republican supermajority. Certainly, they'll campaign on corruption, but also on the rollback of Medicaid benefits, the failed Trump promises around manufacturing jobs and the rising costs for things like healthcare and housing.

It's dinner time, and my eyeballs are burning from hours spent in the sun. It's time to head back to the hotel. As I walk past the watermelon-spitting contest (the marker is set for 22ft - could anyone ever spit that far?) to the midway, I wonder who in God's name would stand in line for "Hot Wisconsin Cheese" on a day like this. (Answer: many people.)

I don't do fairground rides - I once put my neck out riding the Cyclone rollercoaster on Coney Island and needed a month of chiropractic treatment. But I'm fascinated by the scene. As the late writer David Foster Wallace put it in a piece about the Illinois State Fair, getting on these rides is like "paying to be in a car accident". I pass something called the Sky Scream, in which a three-storey-tall steel lever with baskets at the end hoists eager fairgoers into the sky at high velocity, spinning them around in the baskets as the giant lever itself rotates to the sounds of fast-paced dance music. The carney pushes the handle to go, and a timid redhead grimaces and clutches the sides of his basket as the ride starts. I can't help thinking of it as a metaphor for what's ahead - in the midterms, the 2028 presidential elections and beyond. FT

RALLYING THE FAR RIGHT IN A PICTURESQUE PART OF EASTERN GERMANY, THE AfD IS WITHIN TOUCHING DISTANCE OF FORMING ITS FIRST EVER REGIONAL GOVERNMENT

BY LAURA PITEL AND ANNE-SYLVAINE CHASSANY PHOTOGRAPHY BY SEBASTIAN LOCK

IT IS A DISCONCERTING EXPERIENCE MEETING the politician who has been dubbed the most dangerous man in Germany. Ulrich Siegmund is charming. He asks you questions. He uses your name. He may even remember your face if he sees you again in a few weeks' time. With his chiselled jaw, sharp haircut and toothpaste-advert smile, the tall, slim 35-year-old looks a bit like what AI might produce if asked to conjure a designer far-right politician.

The formula appears to be working. Siegmund could soon lead the most rightwing government to run a German state since the Third Reich. His party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), has been rattling the established political parties in the EU's most populous country. Founded in 2013, it has not yet held power on a significant scale. That may be about to change, if Siegmund wins the race to become state premier in an election taking place in Saxony-Anhalt next weekend.

In Germany's decentralised system, victory would give real power to a party that displays fierce hostility towards migrants, the LGBTQ movement and climate change policy. The AfD makes overtures to Russia and describes Germany's efforts to confront its Nazi past as perpetuating a “neuro-sis” that has “gutted our cultural heritage”. While Siegmund presents himself as friendly, relaxed and innocuous, his election platform is radical. So are many of the people in his inner circle, which includes at least two former members of neo-Nazi youth groups. The regional branch of the AfD has been officially certified as rightwing extremist by the German domestic intelligence service, which sees itself as an “early warning system” for democracy. It found that the beliefs of senior party officials - including Islamophobic and antisemitic statements and demonising language towards migrants - were at odds with the German constitution.

None of this seems to have deterred many of the voters of Saxony-Anhalt. It might even have encouraged some of them. At least part of the AfD's support comes from people keen to give the middle finger to those who keep telling them to shun its politics. That includes Der Spiegel, the news magazine that this month used a cover story to describe Siegmund as the country's most dangerous man. He responded by gleefully autographing a pile of copies.

Saxony-Anhalt, a small state not far from Berlin, feels very different from the decaying British seaside towns where Nigel Farage's brand of rightwing populism has made its biggest breakthroughs. It is also a far cry from the impoverished former coal-mining bastions in northern France, where National Rally leader Marine Le Pen has held her parliamentary seat since 2017. Much of the region is rural, with kilometres of fields of sunflowers, wheat and corn. Lots of its small towns are so pretty and well-kept that they could appear on chocolate box covers. The area is the birthplace of some of history's most significant Germans: Martin Luther, George Frideric Handel, Otto von Bismarck and Friedrich Nietzsche.

But the state's distinguished history belies a series of painful upheavals since 1989. Until the fall of the Berlin Wall, Saxony-Anhalt was part of communist East Germany. Since then, it has suffered loss of industry and an exodus of people. It has the oldest, most sharply declining population of any of Germany's 16 federal states. The laments of AfD voters are varied.

They range from high living costs to the region's many wind turbines. A recurring theme is the sense of a loss of safety and security - particularly in the region's big cities of Magdeburg and Halle, and anywhere else noticeably impacted over the past decade by the arrival of asylum seekers and economic migrants.

Siegmund, a former fragrance salesman with a degree in business psychology, has grasped the mood in his home state and bottled up a solution. The ingredients include nostalgia, nativism and vilification of those who criticise him and his party, packaged in a wrapper of positivity. His hardline policies are presented as a path to sunlit uplands. The marketing platform is TikTok and Instagram, where he has built huge followings. The campaign slogan is “anything is possible”.

ON A CLOUDY DAY LAST MONTH IN WEIßenfels, 200km south-west of Berlin, the Siegmund formula was on full display. Uli, as he is known to fans, had organised a motorbike rally in the small town, with his vintage East German moped as the central prop. It would be the starting point for a tour of the surrounding countryside that he said would celebrate “freedom – for our country and for our future”.

Weißenfels used to be the main centre of shoe production in the days of the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR). Today it feels in decline. Beyond its picturesque market square with a popular ice-cream parlour, the shops on the side streets are mostly boarded up with plywood. Siegmund was in high spirits as the rally got under way. In an opening speech, he laughed as he welcomed to “the camp of common sense” the hundreds of people gathered in the square. He decried an Islamist attack on Berlin’s pride event the night before that had killed one woman, lambasting other politicians for “spouting platitudes” about what had happened. He paused to eject a journalist who had got into an altercation in the crowd. Then he resumed: “Now I’d like to ask everyone to get back into a good mood. We’re the party of good cheer.”

After another hour meeting fans and taking selfies, it was time to set off. Several hundred motorbikes began revving their engines and honking their horns, manned by a motley crew of older bikers, middle-aged couples and several dozen teenage boys and their girlfriends. Among the bikes were a few dozen “Trabis” - a cult car from the GDR era - including one painted in the colours of the Volkspolizei, the east German police force, with its passengers dressed up as officers.

Siegmund rode his 1975 moped, painted skyblue, the AfD party colour. He likes to describe the Simson bike, or “Simmi”, as an emblem of east German identity and freedom. No matter that the company was founded in 1856 by a Jewish family, later forced to flee the country after the Nazis requisitioned the business. The family’s American descendants have decried the AfD’s commandeering of the brand as “repulsive”. “I couldn’t care less what anyone in the United States of America – someone who has had nothing to do with the reality of our lives here in Germany for decades – has to say about what we are experiencing here in eastern Germany,” Siegmund had declared to the crowd. In a haze of petrol fumes and a din of revving engines, he sped off.

The swift rise of the AfD has shocked many in Germany. For decades after the end of the second world war, politics was dominated by the big Volksparteien, or people's parties: the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU), their Bavarian sister party (CSU) and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD). Rightwing populist parties took a little longer to take root in a country whose postwar identity was built around having learnt the lessons of its violent past. Even with the emergence of an influential Green party, the Volksparteien dominated German politics until as late as 2013, when they together secured more than two-thirds of the vote in the federal elections.

That year, the AfD was founded as a eurosceptic movement. It entered the German parliament for the first time in 2017. In the last Bundestag vote, in February 2025, it became the second largest party, with 21 per cent of the vote. For most German parties, that kind of result would be a ticket into coalition government. But the AfD has never held power in a national or regional government due to the Brandmauer, or firewall, an unwritten agreement between the established parties to keep out the far right, which precludes political deals and coalitions with the AfD.

In Saxony-Anhalt, however, the mathematics are different. Polls suggest the AfD could win over 40 per cent at the state elections taking place on September 6 - a result that would put Siegmund within reach of being able to form a single-party government. It's an outcome that would have profound consequences far beyond the state itself.

As well as impacting local education, policing and migration policy, there would be nationwide ramifications for security and intelligence if a party with public ties to Russia gained access to sensitive dossiers. An AfD victory also has the potential to tear apart the traditional centre-right led by Friedrich Merz. Less than 18 months into the job, the deeply unpopular Christian Democrat chancellor is already under pressure from his own party over a stuttering economy and his contentious leadership.

Standing for his party chairmanship in 2018, Merz vowed to halve national support for the AfD, amid growing discontent over former chancellor Angela Merkel's migration policy. Yet, since he became chancellor in May 2025, the far-right party has surged to first place in Germany-wide polls, at 28 per cent. Meanwhile CDU support has shrunk to about 20 per cent. That has deepened internal divisions about whether the Brandmauer can last.

SIEGMUND WAS BORN IN SAXONY-ANHALT IN October 1990, three weeks after German reunification. The son of two engineers, he grew up in the small town of Tangermünde in what he describes as “a classic East German household”. His parents’ experience of communist propaganda and pervasive Stasi surveillance taught him to question authority from an early age. “That is somehow culturally ingrained here,” he says. “People simply won’t let themselves be taken for a ride.”

He spent his early career in business, founding a corporate fragrancing company which made a valiant but unsuccessful attempt to persuade Berlin transport authorities that “scenting” underground stations with vanilla would reduce crime. He entered politics as a member of the CDU, but

IT BECAME CLEAR THAT SIEGMUND HAD THE WOW FACTOR

found the centre-right party stuck in its ways. In 2014, he joined the newly founded AfD and was elected to the regional parliament two years later.

The AfD understood the power of social media earlier than many of its political rivals. But it gradually became clear to his colleagues that Siegmund had the wow factor. He launched his TikTok account in 2021, a year into the Covid pandemic. The AfD was Germany's most vocal opponent of lockdowns and Siegmund was the party's health spokesman in Saxony-Anhalt. He chose the handle Mutzurwahrheit ("Courage to tell the truth") and his first post called for an end to "senseless" restrictions on the public.

While party videos often got thousands of views, Siegmund's own posts started going "through thereof", says Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, a long-time confidant of the AfD candidate and the party's vice-chair in Saxony-Anhalt. "We suddenly realised that there was something there. An extraordinary talent for communication."

Siegmund honed a conversational, almost confessional style for online videos. "At first I thought it was a joke," he'd tell the camera. Or: "Here's a little insight into how politics in this country really works." Today he has close to 800,000 followers on TikTok. That compares with 3,500 for his main rival, Sven Schulze, the politician from the CDU who is the current Saxony-Anhalt state premier.

Then, at the start of 2024, Siegmund made national headlines when the investigative outlet Correctiv named him as a participant in a secret meeting between senior figures in the AfD and the notorious Austrian white supremacist Martin Sellner. Sellner, the story said, had expounded a “masterplan” for remigration that not only included the deportation of foreigners but also German citizens with migrant roots who were considered “non-assimilated”. Siegmund reportedly told the meeting that he wanted to make life in Saxony-Anhalt “as unattractive as possible” for “this clientele”.

The allegations triggered mass protests across German cities as outraged AfD opponents took to the streets. The party's poll ratings took a hit. Siegmund says that initially he was scared about the fallout from the story and the safety risks for his wife and young daughter. He claims some of the reporting - such as the part about a plan for deportations - were a "fairy tale". But with hindsight, he has come to view the story as "a great, free advertising campaign for us".

In May 2025, Siegmund was selected as the AfD candidate in Saxony-Anhalt. A few weeks later, his party overtook the CDU in regional polling. Since then, the gap has widened further.

The AfD's election platform has indeed adopted the idea of “remigration”. It promises a “deportation and remigration offensive” against what it calls “illegal migrants” and rails against “culturally incompatible” foreigners. It singles out Ukrainians as one of the targets of its campaign to reduce the state's foreign population, arguing that very few deserve refugee status. It also names Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, many of whom came to Germany after Merkel's 2015 decision to allow around one million people from the Middle East to seek refuge. In total, there are about 170,000 foreign nationals in the state of two million people - a figure that has tripled since 2014. Their arrival has unsettled some locals. But professional associations say that foreign workers are essential given deep skills shortages. Close to 20 per cent of the state's doctors are from abroad.

The AfD manifesto frequently makes proposals that go far beyond what a state government has the power to do, such as abolishing the right to asylum, abandoning the Paris climate agreement and resuming gas purchases from Moscow that stopped after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But there are also policies that the party will try to swiftly implement, such as altering school curricula to reduce the focus on the Nazi era. It wants to expand Russian language lessons to help rebuild economic and cultural relations with Moscow – a nod to the enduring ties forged during the region's years as a Soviet satellite state.

Critics are alarmed by a proposal to create a “citizens’ watch” to patrol the streets and help with “safety, cleanliness and order”. Police unions have warned the plan is reminiscent of Germany’s troubled history of vigilante groups and paramilitaries during the Weimar Republic and the 1930s. The target of such groups, according to Peter Meißner, the local leader of the union of criminal police officers, is “often those with conflicting political views”.

Like US President Donald Trump, Italy's Giorgia Meloni and France's Le Pen, the AfD has also adopted a strongly pronatalist line in a bid to reverse Saxony-Anhalt's stark demographic decline. It has pledged to abolish day-care fees and promised a €2,000 "baby bonus" for each of a couple's first two children, then €4,000 for every subsequent child. Siegmund says the "demographic catastrophe" is the single biggest problem facing Germany after migration. "We simply have far too few children in this country - far too few children of our own."

The town of Dessau-Roßlau, an hour north of Weißenfels, bears the scars of the brutal transition that East Germany endured after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Beyond the modernist buildings, inspired by the Bauhaus movement that relocated to the town in 1925, lie reminders of a thriving industrial past. The aircraft maker Junkers was once based

in Dessau. Its best-known model, the Ju 52, served as Lufthansa's flagship aircraft in the 1930s. Today, its factory is a museum and a conference venue.

Across the nearby river Elbe, Roßlau was another powerhouse. At the turn of the 20th century, the Sachsenberg brothers helped transform it into Europe's largest inland shipyard. Under the GDR, both Dessau and Roßlau remained important manufacturing hubs supplying clients across the Soviet bloc. But this industrial legacy collapsed after reunification. The politically popular decision to convert east German marks to west German Deutsche Marks proved devastating for state-owned plants, whose production costs became instantly uncompetitive. Dessau's railcar manufacturer, Deutsche Waggonbau, which had counted the Soviet Union as its largest customer, was bought by a US company in 1994. Within a year, the investor had given up on the plants.

AfD candidate Ulrich Siegmund astride his sky-blue 'Simmi' moped in Weißenfels market square

Sven Schulze, the CDU politician who is the current state premier, was 10 when the Berlin Wall fell. “We’ve seen how quickly we can lose our jobs, how quickly a company can disappear,” he says. “That’s the experience East Germans have had, and it’s far deeper than West Germans think.”

More than three decades on, Dessau-Roßlau (the towns merged in 2007) has lost a third of its population. The local chemical industry has come under pressure from soaring energy prices following the government's decision to stop oil and gas imports from Russia. Unemployment in the town stands at about 10 per cent, nearly four points above the national average.

In June 2024, the AfD won the largest number of seats in the city's council, a victory that coincided with a far-right wave across the former East Germany. Three months later, in Saxony's neighbouring state of Thuringia, the AfD became the first far-right party to win a regional election in postwar Germany, although it was not able to form a government.

Germany's nationwide stagnation over the past seven years has compounded the regional malaise, says historian and author Katja Hoyer. Despite an estimated €2tn injection of public investments since reunification, eastern Germany never fully caught up with the west. The region stands at between 75 and 80 per cent of western levels across a range of indicators. Households' median net worth is a quarter of that in the west.

Hoyer, who was born in East Germany a few years before the fall of the wall, recalls “just the utter lack of a future in the East” back then. She says: “A quarter of us East Germans left.” Since then, the demographic crisis has only worsened, fuelling a sense of gloom. “If the last person who runs a club or an association sees there’s nobody to hand it over to, it’s no solace to them to know 100 Syrians are there,” says Hoyer, who now lives in the UK. “When Siegmund says: ‘We’re not doing immigration, we’re going to increase the birth rate,’ that is something people want to hear.”

But Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, a historian born in 1967 in East Berlin, says economics alone cannot explain the rise of the far right in eastern Germany. Kowalczuk argues that four decades under communist rule left a legacy of greater openness to authoritarian parties. "There was no training in democracy and freedom," he writes in his 2024 book, Freedom Shock. For Kowalczuk, the post-2005 revival of the far-left party Die Linke - the successor to the GDR's communist party - underlines a process of "trivialisation of communism".

As memories of the dictatorship faded, many East Germans began to romanticise aspects of life in the GDR, Kowalczuk says, such as social solidarity and economic security, overlooking the fact that some of these bonds had developed in reaction to the regime. Decades of close political and cultural proximity to Moscow have fostered distrust in western institutions and made it difficult, now, to see Russia as the enemy, despite its invasion of Ukraine, Kowalczuk says. The grandson of a Ukrainian, he was known as “the Russian” in the schoolyard. It was meant affectionately.

Hoyer warns against treating the rise of the AfD as an eastern phenomenon. Over the past 18 months, the party has secured about one-fifth of votes in elections in the western regions of the Ruhr valley and Baden-Württemberg, which are both also suffering the pain of deindustrialisation. She disagrees that Ostalgie – a German portmanteau that means yearning for the old east – goes along with authoritarian inclinations. Instead, she says, "It's the west Germans who are nostalgic". They cling to their political parties and economic model, having experienced deindustrialisation, populism and erosion of the mainstream parties later than people did in the east, where the attitude is more transactional, she says. "We'll vote for you if it works, and if it doesn't, we'll go somewhere else."

AFTER BEING ELECTED AS A MEMBER OF THE state parliament for the first time in 2016, Siegmund said that he and his party wanted to fight against “entrenched political cronyism, backroom deals and wasteful use of taxpayers’ money”. Earlier this year, it emerged that AfD officials from Saxony-Anhalt had created an elaborate system to employ each other’s relatives using public funds.

The 'party of good cheer': supporters and merchandise

They included Siegmund's father, who had been employed in the offices of three members of the Bundestag. One official got jobs for three of his siblings in the office of another MP. The revelations earned a rebuke from the party's national co-leader, Tino Chrupalla, who said they left "a bad taste". Yet the scandal barely dented the polls in Saxony-Anhalt, where many voters either deeply distrust traditional media outlets or simply do not come into contact with them.

Siegmund has also shrugged off a long line of revelations about extremists in his ranks. His press spokesman and lawyer were both once members of a neo-Nazi youth group that modelled itself on the Hitler Youth. The spokesman said he was “at peace” with his past. The lawyer did not reply to a request for comment. Siegmund says their membership was “many, many years ago”. He considers the negative impact inflicted on Germany by the centre-left Social Democrats to be “far, far worse” than that of the group, which was banned in 2009.

Other figures in Siegmund's inner circle give a flavour of the politics that await Saxony-Anhalt if the AfD wins power. They include Tillschneider, the Siegmund ally and vice-chair of the party in Saxony-Anhalt. The Romanian-born 48-year-old,

AfD SUPPORTERS CHANTED 'SIEG-MUND! SIEG-MUND!'

who moved to south-west Germany as a child and later relocated to the east, now describes himself as a “true easterner”. He wrote the bulk of the party’s 258-page manifesto, is a critic of Germany’s approach to its Nazi past and has argued that schools should teach “more Bismarck, less Hitler”. Last year Tillschneider attended a celebration of Vladimir Putin’s birthday at the Russian embassy in Berlin. He still doesn’t understand the fuss. “We drank some sekt, had a few chats, that’s it,” he says.

Another central player is the chair of the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt, Martin Reichardt, a former German army officer later elected as an MP from the state. A firebrand who delivers his speeches at a bellowing pitch, he has characterised the AfD as “the battering ram of the people”. He once described teachers who encouraged girls and boys to play with a range of toys as “disgusting people” promoting “sexual diversity” and has railed against gay couples having children. Siegmund’s language is more cautious. He sticks to a roster of carefully chosen phrases aimed at reassuring those still undecided about a man whose supporters last year used an outdoor event to chant “Sieg-Mund! Sieg-Mund!”, a chorus some felt was uncomfortably reminiscent of the notorious Nazi-era slogan, “Sieg Heil!”

MUCH OF WHAT HAPPENS AFTER SEPTEMBER 6 depends on the performance of other parties. Polls suggest that four of them, including the Greens and Social Democrats, may not achieve the minimum 5 per cent vote share needed to enter the state parliament. In that scenario, their votes would be discounted and the AfD could end up with enough seats to govern alone.

But if the AfD falls short of an outright majority, that creates what many in Merz's Christian Democrats see as a nightmare scenario for their party. It could force them to consider teaming up with some unpalatable partners in order to try and govern. The CDU, currently polling at around 23 per cent, has formally ruled out entering coalitions with the far-left Die Linke. But, as the likely third-largest party, the latter is the only group that could supply enough votes to pass legislation in the state parliament. The CDU would therefore have to consider trying to form a minority government that sometimes relied on the hard left's support. Some local officials in the conservative CDU could reject that idea, and push instead for a coalition with the AfD – or even break away to join it.

While Merz and Schulze have sworn to uphold the Brandmauer, some CDU insiders have started to question it. Critics argue that ostracising the far right has forced Merz into forming a federal coalition with the centre-left, strengthening the AfD.

In June, an incident at the CDU party congress showed just how fraught that debate is. The Dessau event that was supposed to launch Schulze's campaign was instead dominated by a photograph taken two days earlier, showing senior CDU official

Guido Heuer pictured alongside a grinning Siegmund. Heuer insisted he had been trying to grab the microphone during a panel discussion. But the photo sparked fears that the firewall between the two parties was crumbling.

Heuer does not believe in the concept of the Brandmauer. "Since 2016, there has been a resolution in the parliamentary group in Saxony-Anhalt: delimit but not ostracise," he says. Locally, the idea is difficult to maintain. Some reports suggest that a clutch of CDU members of the regional parliament could quit their party to help bring the AfD to power.

An AfD-led regional government in Saxony-Anhalt would push both state and country into uncharted territory – with ramifications that would reach Berlin. Defence minister Boris Pistorius has said that he is reviewing how to withhold classified military information from a party whose “close ties to Putin are undeniable”. Interior ministers from other German states have warned that far-right control of the regional intelligence agency would give it access to highly sensitive information such as the names of informants or espionage activities by foreign states.

If Siegmund becomes state premier, he would gain control of four out of 69 seats on the Bundesrat, the Berlin-based second chamber of the German parliament. He could not veto legislation, but it would complicate the process of passing bills where votes were tight.

He has promised that his first act as regional premier would be to abolish state funding for the public broadcasters his party calls “leftwing propaganda lackeys”. He would kickstart his efforts to deport “illegal” migrants, introduce mandatory work for asylum seekers and end mainstream schooling for their children. Also in the plan for his first 100 days is axing funding for programmes aimed at combating rightwing extremism. Rainbow flags would be banned at schools and replaced by German ones. A committee of inquiry into Covid would be launched. The state’s “think modern” branding campaign, which draws inspiration from the Bauhaus movement, would be replaced with a new slogan: “think German”.

Many of these plans would face pushback, legal challenges and protests. Barbara Steiner, who heads the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, is among those already preparing their defences. She has taken out insurance against lawsuits and is talking with other cultural organisations about how to respond to funding cuts or political interference. The arts, she says, could be the first target of “a party that has understood that culture is the most important political field of all: the one that helps you seize power without exerting violence”.

The AfD's opponents hope that if the party does take power, it will serve as a cautionary tale for voters elsewhere in Germany. But Reichardt, the party's regional chair, dismisses that idea as "arrogance". He draws a parallel with 2017, when the AfD first entered the national parliament in Berlin. "Everyone in the Bundestag believed that there was a horde of idiots coming who would unmask themselves after speaking three times – and then no one would vote for them any more," he says. Since then, the AfD has almost doubled its share of the vote. FT

Laura Pitel is the FT's Berlin correspondent. Anne-Sylvaine Chassany is the FT's Berlin bureau chief

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Appetites

WINF

The battle over British bubbles

by JANCIS ROBINSON

ILLUSTRATION by DEBORA SZPILMAN

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ENGLISH SPARKLING wine and sparkling wine of England?

Quite a lot, it turns out. Usually at least £15 on the shelf. And probably at least four years - that's maturation in bottle, as opposed to just months in a giant tank.

The most common complaint I hear about the first category, English sparkling wine - wine made like champagne by what is known as the traditional method - is that it's too expensive.

Entrepreneur Mark Dixon, an Essex native now based in Monaco, who owes his fortune to the serviced office group once known as Regus (now IWG), is busy capitalising on this. His UK wine company MDCV UK specialises in the carefully but confusingly named sparkling wine of England, made in tank in a few months by the accelerated and less expensive method known as Charmat, or cuve close. MDCV UK sold half a million bottles of its sparkling wines of England last year. Dixon's right-hand man in England, Gary Smith, predicts sales will be double that this year, and that the company will break even some time in the next 18 months. The aim is to produce five million bottles a year eventually and become

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- Sugrue South Downs, The Trouble with Dreams 2020 £48 VIN COGNITO, £49 WINE REPUBLIC UK

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• Hundred Hills Blanc de Noirs 2019 £63 THE GRAPE WIZARD AND THE SOMMELIER, £64.50 LOTTS OF WINE

- Exton Park Blanc de Blancs 2013 (11.5%) £65 EXTONPARKVINEYARD.COM

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- Nyetimber, Tillington Vineyard 2014 £89 FRAZIER JONES, £89.99 DRINK FINDER, £109.99 TESCO

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England's biggest wine producer by 2030. (Total sales of traditional-method English sparkling wine were 6.2mn bottles in 2024, although "the current stock-to-sales ratio is rather scary", according to Smith - far more is made than sold. Its biggest producer is currently Chapel Down in Kent.)

MDCV UK's base is Silverhand Estate, a sprawling 1,400 acres of Kentish downland south of Gravesend on the Thames estuary. The first vines went in as recently as 2019 but it already boasts the largest single vineyard in England, and the winery there, currently being expanded, also processes fruit from vineyards the company has acquired in East Sussex and the fashionable Crouch Valley in Essex. Pride of place is given to a pair of 600-hectolitre tanks – so large that, I was told, the Mont Blanc tunnel had to be closed to other vehicles in order to transport them to England. A few other UK wine producers make a tank-method wine, but on nothing like the scale of MDCV UK (which also produces a little bit of traditional-method fizz and even less still wine).

"We're disrupters," Smith told me happily. "Our aim is to grow the category by providing accessibly priced English wine that can compete with prosecco and cava, and from vineyards that are more local." He has a point. If it's impossible to find a traditional-method English sparkling wine for under £30, that rules out a huge segment of wine drinkers who would potentially try it. On the other hand, those who explore the multiple examples of MDCV UK's Charmat-method wines currently on sale in UK supermarkets at around £15, such as M&S's Bramble Hill and Tesco's Kingscote, are unlikely to find them as compelling as the many, more expensive, traditional-method English sparkling wines - and may be put off English fizz altogether.

MDCV UK aims to provide accessibly priced English wine to compete with prosecco and cava

As you may imagine, few members of the English wine establishment are thrilled by the advent of Mark Dixon and his ambitions, although at least in theory consumers should be able to tell the difference on a shelf by the marked price differential between the two types of English fizz.

In restaurants, however, it may be more difficult. MDCV also supplies vast quantities of The Ivy Cuvée that is billed rather misleadingly on the restaurant group's wine list as English Sparkling Wine at £75 a bottle. Remembering the distinction between “English sparkling wine” and “sparkling wine of England” is probably a step too far for most wine drinkers, whether in shops or restaurants.

There's an argument for insisting that the production method is spelled out on labels, but again I wonder how many consumers understand the difference between "traditional method" and "tank method", or one of its many other names. It's probably only wine geeks who know that virtually all mass-market prosecco is made by the tank method, whereas cava, not doing nearly so well despite rock-bottom prices, is made by the much more expensive traditional method.

Smith has cleverly joined the producer organisation WineGB (a name acceptable to Welsh wine producers, and one that might even encompass Scottish ones if the planet continues to warm up) and is now on its board.

BACK TO BASICS

THE WORLD'S MOST IMPORTANT SPARKLING WINES

Champagne is the most famous and is almost invariably made from Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and/or Pinot Meunier grown in the eponymous region in north-east France. It is made by the traditional method: a way of ageing wine in which a second fermentation is provoked in individual bottles. (It was once called the champagne method, but the Champagne lawyers have been assiduous in banning any mention of Champagne that does not relate to their own precious wine.) About 300 million bottles are made annually. Various Crémants are made in other French wine regions by the traditional method and are of increasing interest.

Prosecco now outsells champagne by a considerable margin: almost 700 million bottles globally. It's made from a grape initially called Prosecco that was cunningly renamed Glera by the Italians in 2009, so that they could register a vast area of north-east Italy as a protected geographical entity called Prosecco, to keep the name to themselves. Italy also makes fine traditional-method fizz from much the same grapes as Champagne, especially Trentodoc from north of Lake Garda and Franciacorta from west of it.

Cava is made mainly in Spanish Catalunya, by the traditional method, with local grapes Macabeo, Parellada and Xarello, which tend to have a much stronger flavour than Glera. Drought and market pressure have reduced total annual production to less than 250 million bottles. Many of the best producers have formed a breakaway group called Corpinnat, whose production rules are stricter.

Annual production of English sparkling wine varies considerably with the weather: between 11 and 22 million bottles in recent years.

The Silverhand Estate has also focused on sustainability, with an unrivalled suite of eco practices. It was the first UK vineyard to achieve carbon negative status, with no offsetting. Its vines are all organically farmed with cover crops and no synthetic chemicals. The next step, regenerative farming and its focus on soil health, is currently being explored via the Regenerative Viticulture Foundation's One Block Challenge. It says it has planted 20,000 native hedgerow plants in the past three years, has just achieved B Corp status, and makes quite a thing about using lighter bottles even for sparkling wine (although its tank-method wine is fizzier than most at six bars of pressure, so needs a bottle heavier than the 600g recommended in the new Sustainable Roundtable Sparkling Bottle Weight Accord).

Six recycled wildlife towers are dotted around the estate, designed in conjunction with the Highways Agency, providing a home for barn owls and the like. During my recent visit there, skylarks, sheep, Longhorn cattle, deer, swallows, orchid banks, a lavender field, alpacas and badgers were all enthusiastically mentioned. (The estate was a working organic farm when the winery purchased it.)

Silverhand claims to be the only UK vineyard with a dedicated conservation team (of five) on its site, which is part of the North Kent Woods and Downs National Nature Reserve. The 160 full-time employees notably include ex-gurkhas who are bussed in daily. According to Smith, "they've changed our world. It was hopeless to rely on locals who don't turn up." They are supplemented by a viticultural robot that can work up to 16 hours a day.

The work is by no means confined to the vineyards and cellar. The Silverhand team have taken over the local pub, have a busy visitors' centre, are planning to offer accommodation, and expect to welcome 15,000 guests this year, with plans to grow that figure to 50,000 or even 60,000. Smith cites the footpaths that cross the estate and its proximity to local towns and Ebbsfleet, on the HS1 rail line, as drivers for the planned expansion of the tourism business.

Dixon's Provençal wine empire, MDCV (for Maisons, Domaines, Châteaux et Vignobles), includes several wine estates, is focused on the luxury Ch de Berne hotel and restaurant, and also sells considerable quantities of Provençal rosé at knockdown prices to French supermarkets, with no mention of organics or sustainability.

The UK branch has been benefiting, like many of the more commercially successful producers of English wine, from the current glut of stock. Smith told me that last year he was able to buy in grapes at £700 a tonne, about a fifth of the price previously asked. A problem for English sparkling wine seems to be a boon for sparkling wine of England. FT

REVIEW

Saawaros, Elephant and Castle

by JAY RAYNER

ILLUSTRATION by DANIEL EGNEUS

nteresting things happen in the back rooms of old pubs. The Bolsheviks met the Mensheviks in the back room of an Islington pub called The Three Johns in 1903 to agree jolly tactics for the Russian revolution. The Rolling Stones first rehearsed in

the space out back of a long-gone Soho pub called The Bricklayer's Arms in the spring of 1962. They are where book groups argue over lousy novels, important birthdays are marked and community associations are convened, full of hope and quiet ambition. They are where intriguing ideas can be tried on for size without too much hassle.

That's exactly what's happening right now in the wedge-shaped room above The Albert Arms in London's Elephant and Castle. The Albert Arms is an old boozer that has monthly quiz nights, occasional bingo nights and Brixton Reliance Pale Ale on draught. One of the best ideas on display in that room, reached via a tight looping staircase, is a salad of fried eggs, cooked so the edges are frilly and brown and crispy, so they look like a petticoat of old lace. The three eggs, with their runny yolks, are piled with a fragrant salad of Thai herbs, buxom tomatoes and fresh red chilli, then dressed with something sweet, sour and piquant. It's a bunch of simple things, brought together through wit and good taste.

It's served at Saawaros, which is the Thai word for passion fruit, or at least one version of it. It

FIND IT

SAAWAROS

Upstairs at The Albert Arms, 1 Gladstone Street, London SE1 6EY 020 3337 0313 (for bookings within two days) thealbertarms.se1@gmail.com (beyond two days)

Small dishes £4-£16 Large dishes £14-£28 Dessert £8

was originally spelt without the double “a”, but was changed “due to feng shui and good luck”, I am later told by the young chef, Ice Pongnat Ramanat. He trained in his native Bangkok at fine-dining restaurants but only in the European tradition, before coming to London to cook at Fallow in St James’s. Staff there were encouraged to run pop-ups at its sibling restaurant, Fowl, exploring their own ideas, when it was closed on Mondays. Ramanat started working on a menu of what he calls “evolved Bangkok street food”, before deciding this year to quit his job at Fallow and commit to this extended residency. It all feels very personal, as if it’s one man’s effort to remind himself of home, one dish at a time.

The menu is short, but full of very good things at thoroughly amenable prices. Start with the dressed oysters, under a salty-sour-sweet nam jim vinaigrette, with a toasty dollop of chilli paste, then heaped with crispy, golden shallots. Follow that with a deep-fried chicken wing. It's a triple-jointed affair, which has less a coating than a dark, undulating carapace that shatters beneath the teeth. It's seasoned with northern Thai prik laab pepper, a mix of toasted spices, including lightly numbing peppercorns. Finally, it's slicked with a little fish sauce caramel, which does nothing to soften the crunch but everything to dial up the flavour. It's a chicken wing as a marquee name, one that deserves the red-carpet treatment.

We have a slow-roasted slab of aubergine, the spoonable white flesh slumping in its blistered skin, on a hefty jungle curry and topped with crisped mushrooms and the verdant green of deep-fried Thai basil leaves. The curry of the day features roasted chicken, but in truth it's all about the earthy brown broth, which has a soothing, spicy,tom-yum depth. It tastes like it would make any bad day so much better, and a good one better still. Alongside is a flaky,oily roti,for prime dunking purposes. There are cubes of pork belly with shattering crackling and a sweet soy dip, plus a take on prawn toast, but heaped instead with minced chicken, covered with black sesame seeds alongside a rugged satay sauce.Step back a little and you quickly clock that this dish is just the shameless thrill of that full-English breakfast favourite - deep-fried white bread - only made more socially acceptable by the glamorous addition of poultry, copious sesame seeds and Asiatic flair. But it's still fried bread. This is not a complaint.

The star dish at Saawaros, at least according to Ramanat, is the 12-hour-roasted beef short rib, which arrives looking dark, glowering and surrendered. It is smothered in a fragrant and spicy "pad krapao" glaze of a sort usually associated with Thai stir-fries and piled with more crispy Thai basil leaves. It has all the virtues of long-cooked short rib, which is rich in the sort of connective tissue that turns sticky and gelatinous in sustained heat. It really is a mighty and assertive plateful.

But for me it is still that fried egg salad that is the standout. Start with a prime ingredient like a short rib, and you're already ahead of the game; but start with just a few eggs and some tomatoes, and it takes real flair to come up with something so diverting. There is just one dessert, but it's damn good: a warm roti, with a scoop of roasted banana ice cream, crushed peanuts and dribbles of condensed milk.

Service is likely to be by Ramanat himself, who will happily stop by to tell you the story behind his dishes. Do not expect a quick night, especially where drinks are concerned. They come from the saloon bar downstairs, where they have other priorities. But then you are very much eating in a room above a pub. There are dangly lights, white walls, stripped wooden floors and the sash windows are open to let in a light breeze on another sultry London night.

There is nothing new about a London pub back room being used specifically as a Thai restaurant. It's generally agreed that the very first was at The Churchill Arms in Kensington, which opened in 1988 and runs to this day. There have been examples all over the UK in the years since. That makes it less a trend than a fixture, and a very agreeable one at that. As a result, Saawaros feels like it is part of a noble tradition, but it is taking it in a very personal and utterly compelling direction. FT

THE TABLE

A mostly make-ahead Chinese feast

HOSTED by FUCHSIA DUNLOP

PHOTOGRAPHY by OLA O SMIT

When most people think of Chinese cooking, the images that spring to mind are hot dishes produced from a smoking wok or a billowing tower of steamers. But in many parts of China, meals typically begin with cold dishes that have been prepared in advance. In Sichuan, where I learnt to cook, the appetisers are often so scrumptious that they are the highlights of any menu. They whet the appetite for the hot dishes that will follow, and, for the home cook, remove much of the stress of entertaining.

Whenever I'm cooking for friends at home, I do my best to minimise the number of last-minute stir-fries on the menu so that I have time to talk to my guests and enjoy myself too. I usually make one or more Sichuanese cold dishes, with their excitingly layered flavours and characteristic edge of spice and tingliness. I'll mix them up with recipes I've learnt in Shanghai and other parts of China, as well as some I've invented myself by blending Chinese and western culinary ideas.

A while ago, I noticed my guests relishing their first courses so much that I realised hot dishes could be optional, or could make up just a small part of the meal. (Sometimes people were just too full to cope with all the later dishes I had planned.) More recently, I've started creating whole menus of Chinese dishes served mezze-style, with bread on the side for mopping up delicious sauces (any bread is fine, but I particularly love to pick up heavenly Pakistani flatbreads from the Ararat bakery in Ridley Road Market in Dalston).

In summertime, such a meal is perfect for a table in the garden, though it can and should be enjoyed year round. On Boxing Day, Chinese cold dishes go beautifully with leftover Christmas meats, and you can serve them any time with a barbecue or a roast.

All the following cold dishes can easily be scaled up to cater for a big party, unlike stir-fries, and many can be prepared wholly or partly in advance. You can make larger portions of fewer dishes or the reverse: just to try to include a pleasing variety of colours and flavours. Lay the table with chopsticks or spoons and forks, as you please. Just don't forget to supply bread to accompany the food.

The Chinese don't normally require dessert, but often serve fruit at the end of a meal. At home in London, I like to offer what's in season with bought sweetmeats for the western sweet tooth (Turkish delight, baklava, halva and/or chocolates are my personal standbys) and a pot of nice Chinese tea.

THE MENU

TO SERVE SIX

Overnight fish-fragrant aubergines

Poached chicken with Sichuan pepper oil

Green beans with strange-flavour sauce

Sour-and-hot silken tofu with avocado

Lettuce salad with fermented tofu vinaigrette

Kohlrabi with spring onion oil

"Italian" wood ear mushroom salad

OVERNIGHT FISH-FRAGRANT AUBERGINES LIANG BAN YUXIANG QIEZI 凉拌鱼香茄子

I devised this version of my favourite Sichuanese dish to be served cool rather than hot in the traditional manner. It's best made a day in advance to allow the aubergines to mingle with the flavours of the sauce.

• 2 aubergines (about 700g)

- 1 tsp salt

- 6 tbs cooking oil

- 1½ tbs red oil chilli bean paste or sambal oelek

- $1 \frac{1}{2}$ tbs finely chopped garlic

• 1 tbs finely chopped ginger

- 100ml hot water

• 4 tsp caster sugar

• 1 tbs Chinkiang vinegar

- 6 tbs finely sliced spring onion greens

1 Cut the aubergines into slices about 2cm thick and then chopstickable strips. Sprinkle with the salt, mix well and set aside for at least 30 minutes to drain out excess water. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan and line an oven tray with baking parchment.

2 Rinse the aubergines, drain well and pat dry with a clean tea towel or kitchen paper. Add 4 tbs of the cooking oil and mix well to coat the pieces evenly, then spread them out on the oven tray. Roast in the hot oven for about 30 minutes, until tender and golden. Then transfer to a container in which they can sit overnight in the fridge or larder.

3 Heat the remaining 2 tbs oil in a seasoned wok over a medium flame. Add the chilli bean paste or sambal oelek and sizzle gently until it smells delicious and the oil is red. Tip in the garlic and ginger, turn the heat up to high and stir-fry briefly until they smell wonderful too. Then pour in the hot water and add the sugar. Bring to the boil. Stir in the vinegar and 4 tbs of the spring onion greens and give them a brief lick of heat. Then pour the hot sauce over the aubergines. Turn the aubergines gently in the sauce, then leave overnight for the flavours to infuse. (If you eat it soon after cooking, the flavours won't have had time to seep into the aubergines.)

4 Bring the aubergines to room temperature before serving. Garnish with the remaining spring onion greens.

POACHED CHICKEN WITH SICHUAN PEPPER OIL TENGJIAO LIANGBAN JI 藤椒凉拌鸡

This is my latest version of one of the great Sichuanese culinary ideas:

the spicy cold chicken salad. In this case, it's enlivened by the tingliness of Sichuan pepper oil. You can use leftover roast chicken (or turkey) for this recipe, but the meat will be most tender and silky if you poach the bird in the Chinese way. Bring to the boil enough water to fill a pan that will take the chicken without too much spare room. Immerse the bird in the boiling water, return to the boil and skim. For best results, then add a spring onion and a small piece of ginger, smacked to release their flavours. Turn the heat down to a gentle murmur and poach until the bird is just done; use a temperature probe to make sure the thickest part has reached 75C, or remove the chicken from the water and insert a skewer into the thickest part of the thigh to make sure the juices run clear. When the chicken is done, remove from the broth and allow to cool before deboning.

- 600g cold poached chicken meat, with or without skin (the meat from approximately one small chicken)

• 3 tsp toasted sesame seeds

• 4 tbs finely sliced spring onion greens

For the sauce

- $4 \frac{1}{2} \mathrm{tbs}$ light soy sauce

- $2 \frac{1}{2}$ tbs chicken stock or water

- 2 tsp sugar

• 2 tsp Chinkiang vinegar

- $2 \frac{1}{2}$ tbs chilli oil and sediment

• 1 tbs green Sichuan pepper oil

1 After the chicken is poached and deboned, cut the meat into chopstickable strips and pile up in a serving dish.

2 Then make the sauce. Combine all the ingredients except for the sesame seeds and spring onions in a small bowl and mix well. Before serving, pour this sauce over the chicken. Garnish with the sesame seeds and spring onions. Mix well before eating.

GREEN BEANS WITH STRANGE-FLAVOUR SAUCE GUAIWEI JIANGDOU 怪味豇豆

A classic Sichuanese strange-flavour sauce, named because it balances a whole gamut of seasonings, is so irresistible that it makes almost anything taste delicious. In Sichuan, people typically apply it to cold chicken or noodles, but I love to eat it with vegetables, as in the following recipe.

• 400g fine green beans

• 2 tsp sesame seeds (optional garnish)

For the sauce

• 2 tbs sesame paste

• 2 tbs light soy sauce

• 1½ tsp Chinkiang vinegar

- $1 \frac{1}{2}$ tsp caster sugar

TABLE NOTES

A DAY IN ADVANCE Make the fish-fragrant aubergines Make the kohlrabi salad Poach the chicken, allow to cool, then remove the meat from the bones and slice or shred Mix up the strange-flavour sauce Mix up the fermented tofu salad dressing

A DAY IN ADVANCE OR THE MORNING OF THE PARTY Trim and boil the green beans Rehydrate the wood ear mushrooms, then blanch and drain (keep immersed in cold water until needed)

AT THE LAST MINUTE Wash and spin the lettuce Make the sauce for the chicken Make the sauce for the tofu dish Assemble all the dishes

- $\frac{1}{4} - \frac{1}{2}$ tsp ground roasted Sichuan pepper or 1-2 tsp Sichuan pepper oil

• 2-3 tbs chilli oil,

- 2 tsp sesame oil

1 Place the sesame paste in a small bowl and stir and mash with a spoon until the consistency is even. Then gradually mix in the soy sauce and vinegar, taking care to incorporate completely so you end up with a smooth, emulsified sauce. Add the sugar and mix well. Stir in the Sichuan pepper (or Sichuan pepper oil), chilli oil and sesame oil.

2 Trim the beans and cut into bite-sized lengths. Tip into a panful of boiling water and boil for a few minutes until cooked to your liking (I prefer my beans just beyond the squeaky stage, at a point where they are tender but still a little taut). Then drain and cool immediately in a bowl of iced water or under the cold tap to preserve their bright green colour. Shake well in a colander and allow to dry off.

3 Tip the beans into a serving dish. Give the sauce another stir and then use it to dress the beans. Sprinkle over the sesame seeds.

SOUR-AND-HOT SILKEN TOFU WITH AVOCADO SUANLA NIUYOUGUO DOUFU 酸辣牛油果豆腐

This dish showcases the surprisingly blissful harmony between the silky textures of tofu and avocado, with a classic Sichuanese dressing. Add the preserved duck egg (otherwise known as century egg) for an extra dimension of creaminess and umami flavour. The cured duck eggs (pidan 皮蛋), which can be found in most Chinese supermarkets, do not require cooking, but simply need to be shelled and rinsed before use.

• One preserved duck egg (optional)

• One carton silken tofu (about 300g)

• One perfectly ripe avocado • 2 tbs finely sliced spring onion greens

• 1 tsp toasted sesame seeds

For the dressing

• 1 tbs Chinkiang vinegar

• 2 tbs light soy sauce

- $1 \frac{1}{2}$ tbs chilli oil plus $1 \frac{1}{2}$ tbs chilli sediment

1 Gently shell the preserved duck egg, if using, and rinse away any fragments of shell. Chop into small cubes. In a small bowl, mix together the vinegar, soy sauce and chilli oil to make the dressing.

2 To make it easier to extract the tofu from the packaging intact, turn the packet upside down, snip off the corners with a pair of scissors and then squeeze a bit to let some air in. Then remove the cover, drain off any excess water and tip the tofu on to a serving dish. Make one cut lengthwise down the block and then cut crossways into 0.5cm slices. Press gently on the tofu so that the slices lean to one side and then fan out on the dish.

3 Just before serving, scoop the avocado out of its shell and cut into small dice. Lay the avocado along the top of the tofu. Add the preserved egg, if using. Pour over the sauce, then sprinkle over the spring onion and sesame seeds and serve.

LETTUCE SALAD WITH FERMENTED TOFU VINAIGRETTE FURU SELAJIANG BAN SHENGCAI 腐乳色拉酱拌生菜

This gorgeous vinaigrette, enriched with fermented tofu, is one I originally concocted as a dressing for steamed leeks, but it's also fabulous with lettuce, sliced tomatoes and many other salad ingredients.

• 2 little gem lettuces (275-300g)

• 2 tsp toasted sesame seeds

For the dressing

• 3 cubes white fermented tofu (about 40g)

- $\frac{1}{2}$ tsp runny honey

• 1 tsp Dijon mustard

• 3 tbs extra virgin olive oil

• 1 tbs white wine vinegar

- Salt and pepper to taste

1 Place the tofu in a mixing bowl and mash with a spoon until smooth. Mix in the honey and mustard. Gradually whisk in the olive oil to make a smooth emulsion. Add the vinegar, and salt and pepper. Dilute with a little cold water if necessary to make a pourable consistency.

2 Wash and spin the lettuce leaves, then tear into pieces. Shortly before serving, dress and toss the salad. Finish with a sprinkling of sesame seeds.

KOHLRABI WITH SPRING ONION OIL CONGYOU PIELAN 葱油茎蓝

A classic Shanghainese flavouring technique, often used with chicken or slivered radish, applied here to kohlrabi.

• Two kohlrabi stems (about 700g)

- $1 \frac{1}{2}$ tsp salt

- 1 tsp caster sugar

- 2 tbs cooking oil

• 5 tbs thinly sliced spring onion greens

1 Peel the kohlrabi. Cut into thin slices and then narrow slivers. Add the salt, massage it into the vegetable and set aside for at least 30 minutes to drain out excess water.

2 Squeeze out as much water as possible from the shredded vegetable. Stir in the sugar.

3 Heat the cooking oil in a wok until smoke rises from the sides and dipping a shred of kohlrabi or a scrap of spring onion into the oil produces a dramatic sizzle. Turn off the heat as you tip the spring onions into the hot oil and stir briskly as they release their fragrance. Add the kohlrabi and toss in the fragrant oil. You probably won't need any more salt but taste to make sure. Set aside until needed.

'ITALIAN' WOOD EAR MUSHROOM SALAD YIDALI LIANGBAN MU'ER 意大利凉拌木耳

For fun one day, I decided to use Italian dressing ingredients with slippery-crisp wood ear mushrooms instead of Chinese rice vinegar and sesame oil. I've been making the dish ever since.

• 20g dried wood ear mushrooms

- $\frac{1}{4}$ tsp salt, plus extra to taste

• 2 tsp finely chopped garlic

- $1 \frac{1}{2}$ tbs Chinese chopped salted chillis (optional)

• 1 tbs white wine vinegar

- $1 \frac{1}{2}$ tbs extra virgin olive oil

• 2 tbs finely chopped flat-leaf parsley

1 Cover the mushrooms generously with cold water and leave for an hour or so to rehydrate completely. When they are ready, tear larger pieces into suitably chopstickable pieces, discarding any knobbly bits. Bring a panful of water to the boil, add the mushrooms and blanch for a minute or so, then refresh in a colander under the cold tap and shake dry.

2 Add $\frac{1}{4}$ tsp salt, with more to taste, and then the other ingredients. Mix well and serve.

OTHER TIPS

TO DRINK

With so many dishes on the table at once, choosing a specific wine can be challenging. It's best to offer a few different bottles that guests can dip in and out of. Sparkling wine or a light and fresh white wine (avoiding anything too oaky) such as Riesling or Gewürztraminer work nicely, as does Pinot Noir or another light-bodied red.

...

PANTRY ESSENTIALS AND COOKING TOOLS Chinese food can be highly technical – there are numerous complicated cooking methods – but home cooking is often remarkably simple. You don't need much kit; a good knife is essential, while a wok and a mandoline are useful to have too.

You do need half a dozen or so core seasonings such as Chinese vinegar and soy sauce, but once you have them in your cupboard, most recipes are at your fingertips.

FLOWERS AND CANDLES

A Chinese meal is typically served family-style, with everyone sharing the food that's in the middle of the table, so flowers and candles usually get in the way – and can be high risk!

PROJECT KITCHEN

Rome's Big Four

The city's most celebrated pasta dishes are variations on a handful of simple ingredients. Then do as its chefs do. By Tim Hayward

PHOTOGRAPH by KENNETH LAM

t is early on a warm spring evening and I'm sitting outside a small family restaurant on the edge of the Testaccio neighbourhood in Rome. Everyone at the table orders pasta. This is possibly because the idea was mooted by Anthony Bourdain in one of those shows that everyone now turns to as an itinerary. He didn't invent the idea, but he single-handedly made sure that nobody can ever visit Rome again without doing The Big Four Pastas: cacio e pepe, alla gricia, carbonara and all'Amatriciana. You must collect them. It is The Law.

There are dubious origin myths for the dishes. Carbonari were supposedly ancient charcoal burners. An amatrice is an amateur or enthusiast, and grici were said to be “street sellers in Papal Rome” – though these last facts are contested to the point of knife fighting by the villages of Amatrice and Grisciano and the Swiss canton of Grigioni.

All are commonly assumed to go back in the mists of Roman antiquity, though nobody should need reminding that tomatoes didn't exist in Italy until the Columbian Exchange, and carbonara only appeared on menus in the 1950s. So what connects them? I was desperate to find out.

There were seven of us as we ordered our "primi", but one of us ventured a pasta with mushrooms, at which the lovely waiter went into a polite panic. We had no Italian and he had little English.

"It is impossible," he said, unusually insistent. "Four pans," he gestured to the open kitchen.

And it was here I realised that the Four Pastas have evolved uniquely as a function of the kitchen set-up in a small restaurant or café.

It works like this. There's a big pot of water in the centre of the range into which, in individual baskets, the pasta is dropped to begin cooking. The boiling water is occasionally topped up, but isn't usually changed during service.

There are four curve-sided finishing pans. One receives a splash of olive oil, the three others fatty little chunks of guanciale (cured pork jowl) that have been rendered down to produce hot fat.

Eventually, the part-cooked pasta is dumped into the four pans. As the floury water hits the hot metal and steams, it binds with the oil or fat, creating a creamy emulsion. The cook adds a splash more pasta water to each pan to keep the process going. All of the pans receive a heavy grind of black pepper, then one, two and three are granted a handful of pecorino Romano, while the fourth is hit with a ladle of crushed tomato pulp. Finally, an egg is cracked into pan three as the cook pulls it off the heat. All are kept in constant motion with ceaseless stirring, and then, after about two minutes, the pasta is poured on to plates and run to the table.

It's an astonishing routine. Entirely a function of commercial food prep, a particular batterie of equipment and a mise-en-place established by generations of cooks. Ray Kroc legendarily never stopped tweaking the "line" at McDonald's, in a lifelong search for efficiencies and economies. He never dreamed of anything as perfect as this.

At a stroke, it answers long-standing controversies. Cream in carbonara? Garlic in all'Amatriciana? It would make no sense. Can we par-cook, drain and hold pasta? Should sauce be poured over or stirred in? Isn't pasta heavy and rich? Is pasta a main? These all become stupid questions.

Pasta made this way explains the architecture of Italian dining. A 100g serving of dressed pasta is the perfect intermezzo between antipasti and “secondi” - and even explains why the main is then served without a carb.

CACIO E PEPE

This is the starting point. As the name suggests, it's just cheese and black pepper. Cacio e pepe is the place to get the emulsification technique exactly right - and once you know you've got it cracked, everything else follows.

You'll need 100g of pasta. Make your own egg pasta if you can, then cut it into noodle-like tagliatelle, maltagliati (irregular shapes badly cut from pasta sheets) or, if you have a chitarra, tonnarelli - effectively square-section spaghetti. You can, if you wish, buy vacuum-packed fresh pasta from the supermarket, but toss it in a couple of tablespoons of semolina flour before dropping it into the water. This whole dish depends on the starches built up in your pasta water. If it's not the 50th serving of the night, give it a helping hand.

Use a wide pan with curved-up sides. Something that will facilitate fast boiling, evaporation and vigorous tossing. Place it on the hob next to your pasta-boiling pot and put in a modest glug of olive oil. Don't use an absurdly big pot, it's not necessary, and don't bother with all that old toot about salting the water until it tastes like the sea. Modest salting is perfectly adequate.

Make sure you're in sight of some kind of clock, or prop up your phone where you can see a timer. Pre-grate 60g of pecorino romano on your finest grater and coarse-grind heaps of black pepper into the bottom of the pan, along with a restrained splash of olive oil.

If you're using shop-bought pasta, make a note of the cooking time. You'll be pulling it out of the water one minute short. Bring the water to a rolling boil and drop in your floury pasta. If it's fresh, you'll need to boil until it floats to the surface.

The finishing pan doesn't need to be screaming hot, just enough so the water will boil, so turn on the heat beneath it as you start the pasta cooking. It will come gently up to temperature and loosen the aromatic oils in the pepper.

OK. Here goes. Pull out a small ladleful of cloudy pasta water and pour it into the finishing pan, where it should immediately start to steam and bubble. Swap to a pair of kitchen tongs and hoick the pasta out of the water and into the steaming pan. Do not attempt to drain it. Not even a little shake.

Cocio e Pere Guanciele

Gricia Egg Carbonara Tomato A'matriana

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TIM HAYWARD

Cacio e pepe. The simplest of the sauces really shows off homemade fresh pasta. Extra egginess is never bad.

Gricia. The first appearance of guanciale, one of the greatest treasures of Rome. Pancetta or bacon really won't do. They lack the gamey funk.

Carbonara. A hill worth dying on.

Amatriciana. Probably the most foolproof of the four. Can't 'split' and no eggs to accidentally scramble. Can be prepared drunk.

Now, add the cheese and stir like a demon. A lot is happening here. The steam is completing the cooking of the pasta. The water is reducing, and the flour is helping to thicken it. The heat, your stirring and the agitation of the bubbling water are helping the melting cheese to emulsify into the liquid without going stringy or grainy. You are effectively making a flour-thickened cheese sauce, but in the pan at high speed and among the pasta you're going to serve it with.

As you stir (I do it with the tongs) and toss the pasta, occasionally pull it to the side and look at the texture of the liquid sauce. It should be smooth and silky, like thick paint. If it's runny, keep stirring. If it starts looking thick, add more pasta water. Weirdly, this bit doesn't feel so rushed. It's going to take a good minute or so for the pasta to be fully cooked - plenty of time to adjust the sauce.

I realise this will get me immolated in the town square by enraged English Italophiles, but I honestly no longer believe the myth that Italians eat their pasta al dente. I think they cook it al dente, so it's perfect when it hits the table. Bear that in mind as you plate the pasta and run it to your eager guests.

PASTA ALLA GRICIA

Once you've cracked cacio e pepe, alla gricia is a logical progression. Here you're also going to make an emulsion of flavour-packed lipids, but this time, instead of olive oil, we're going for pork fat. Guanciale, specifically, a kind of by-product of the industrial butchery going on at the Testaccio meat markets. A pig will spend its entire waking life either rooting with its snout or masticating. The muscles in the face are complex and hard-worked, packed with flavour and, if cooked straight away, as tough as hell. To transform them into guanciale, they are buried in salt, seasoned with huge amounts of black pepper, then hung up - not just to dry but also to undergo a kind of lactic fermentation, which breaks down the toughest fibres. The flavour is strong - a little goes a very long way - but possibly more than anything else, it's the authentic taste of Rome.

Once again, allow 100g of pasta per person, but this time use the dried stuff. Particularly ridged, tubular pasta. If you can get it, bronze die pasta has a rougher surface at a microscopic level, which further increases the maximum surface to which sauce can cling. Arrange your pasta pot and finishing pan in the same way as before.

Cut 60g of guanciale into little sticks, drop them into the pan and put it on a medium heat, stirring occasionally. The fats should begin to clarify and render out. Once this happens, turn up the heat and stir obsessively. When the maximum amount of fat is rendered and the guanciale has crisped beautifully, lift it out with a slotted spoon and set aside.

Now make a cacio e pepe, exactly as you've practised. Because the pasta is dried, you'll need to pull it three minutes short of the recommended time (and you should still make your life a little easier by adding a spoonful of semolina flour to the water).

Keep your eyes on the sauce texture as you finish the pasta. You obviously have a little longer this time, and as you feel you're approaching the finish, add the bits of guanciale back in to heat through.

PASTA CARBONARA

This might be the single pasta dish that's provoked more violent debate than any other. So many bitter skirmishes in an unending war. Can you add onions? Is cream ever forgivable? Pancetta? Smoked or streaky bacon? All questions definitely worth arm wrestling over but, I dare to suggest, once you position carbonara within the framework of the emulsion sauces, all questions melt away. It's perfectly simple.

Make your carbonara with either dried or fresh pasta: spaghetti, bucatini, tonnarelli or anything long and thin will work. Once again, go for bronze die if you can - but in a carbonara, the sauce is richer and stickier, so no need for ridged tubes.

Now you're going to make a gricia, just like you've practised. But before you start, add egg to your finely grated cheese. One egg and one yolk per person. Once again, render the guanciale, emulsify the fats with the pasta water.

As you finish, put the guanciale back in, then take the pan off the heat and stir through your egg and cheese mixture.

As before, keep your eye on the sauce texture. If it thickens too much, add more pasta water; if you're worried by runniness, you can slip it back on to a little low heat. Just don't let the eggs scramble (I watched one chef rest her finishing pan on top of the steaming pasta pot, creating a rudimentary double-boiler. I nearly died of joy.)

PASTA ALL'AMATRICIANA

All'Amatriciana's place in the quartet is, at least theoretically, a carbonara with tomatoes replacing the eggs. In practice, the process is nearly reversed.

This time, you should choose a dried pasta. I find the sauce robust, and it feels like it overpowers the subtleties of fresh pasta. In fact - I know this is going to get me stabbed in the neck and dumped in the Tiber - I'm not particularly fussed what shape or type of pasta is used for this. Further, God forgive me, I believe we can stray here into parmesan cheese. Once you start messing with tomatoes, all bets are off.

After you've rendered your guanciale and put the meat aside, add half a can of San Marzano tomatoes to the hot fat and stew them down gently. In a restaurant set-up, you might well have prepared a large quantity of this in advance (though that's not quite in the spirit of the thing, for me).

Lift out your pasta two minutes short of full-time and stir into the sauce. Add the cheese and mix it in, checking the texture regularly, adding pasta water to modify where necessary.

WHEN YOU EAT IN FLORENCE, THE FOOD celebrates the bucolic riches of the surrounding countryside. It's about abundance and nature. In Venice, the food reflects the sea, from where wealth came, and the luxuries resulting from conquest and mercantilism. You'd expect the seat of the greatest empire to hark back to the grandeur of emperors, but Roman food is proudly about its poor, its working class, its literal plebs. Pasta is a cheap, manufactured carbohydrate. Small quantities of strongly flavoured trash meat and sparse gratings of redolent cheese are used to enhance. Instead of luxurious cream or butter to enrich, they emulsify the existing fats in water.

It's almost impossible to think of dishes that make more out of less, or a method of cooking that's more ingeniously evolved to create them quickly and inexpensively.

In researching this piece, it seemed necessary to set up the full rig and cook all four dishes to hit the table at once. I positioned the pans, the pot, the ingredients, planned and drilled and finally, went for it - the process I'd watched a 60-year-old Italian in busted Crocs do, in a kitchen that looked like it had last been modernised when Il Duce tried to ban pasta.

I failed. Messily and spectacularly. Thank God no one was watching me and taking bloody notes. It must take a lifetime of practice to get this right, and none of us has the time. So, don't try this at home.

Take the individual dishes in order, practise getting them right, then move on. You might never knock them out Roman style, but you'll eat some terrific pasta as you try. FT

MINI CROSSWORD NO 124 SET BY SLEUTH
8 clues:
2 straightforward
2 general knowledge
2 cryptic
2 anagrams

ACROSS
1 Goes with rivals (7)
5 Considered sympathy (7)
6 Aged person (7)
7 Liz_, politician appointed Work and Pensions Secretary in 2024 (7)

DOWN 1 The county town of Derbyshire (7) 2 Walked on (7) 3 A height (4,3) 4 US ultra (7)

Access FT crosswords from the past 30 days – Cryptic, Polymath, Weekend and Sunday Puzzles – on ft.com/crosswordapp

THIS WEEKS QUID ANSWERS A round on the links 2. The Major (Fawly Towers) 3. Austin Healey 4. Julia Ward Howe 5. Hammond 6. Vic Reeves 6. The Hunt for Red October 7. The Darling Buds of May 8. The Hunt for Red October 9. Mark Lawson 10. Osborne House (Isle of Wright) The picture round Christopher Walken + Bernie Nolan = Christopher Nolan

SOLUTIONS FOR ISSUE DATE AUGUST 22

Mini Crossword No 123

WORD CIRCLE NO 124

How many words can you form that use the centre letter plus two or more of the other letters? No letter may be used more times than it appears within the circle. There is one word that uses all nine letters.

BINARY PUZZLE

NO 124

Place 0 or 1 in every empty square so there is an equal number of each digit in every row and column. In any row or column, there must be no more than two of the same digit in succession.

1		0	1	0
1		0	1				1
						0
		1	0	1	1	0
	1	0	1	0	0
	0
0				1	0		0
			1	0	1		0

0	0	1	0	1	1	0	1
0	1	0	1	0	1	1	0
1	0	0	1	1	0	1	0
0	1	1	0	1	0	0	1
1	0	0	1	0	1	0	1
0	1	1	0	1	0	1	0
1	1	0	1	0	0	1	0
1	0	1	0	0	1	0	1

Word circle No 123

dish, dos, dross, firs, fish, fords, his, hiss, hods, hows, ids, ifs, ohs, rids, rods, rows, shod, show, shows, sir, sirs, sis, sow, sows, swish, sword, swordfish, swords, whirs, wish, words

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28

The Across clues are straightforward, while the Down clues are cryptic.

ACROSS

1 Plot, plan (6)
4 Rain protection (8)
9 Not matured (6)
10 Sufficient (8)
12 Venture, task (7)
13 In the direction in which the wind blows (7)
14 Ancient Roman 'Metamorphoses' poet (4)
15 Insistent, forceful (8)
18 Pianist, violinist, eg (8)
20 Curved entrance (4)
23 Diet plan (7)
25 Selfishness (7)
26 Optometrist's visual item (3, 5)
27 Noted, renowned (6)
28 Laterally (8)
29 Slumbering (6)

Crossword No 807

ALAMY, GETTY IMAGES

DOWN

1 Artist's bonus raised without having caught peak (8)
2 Instrument's drone incorporates A minor variations (9)
3 Charted with software in European sea (6)
5 Being confused, he gets mad, deluded, crazy (6-6)
6 Ask for quiet rest to be organised without it (7)
7 Animal masters carrying everyone up (5)
8 Wrongly named - start seeking reparations (6)
11 Notice my rage's terrible source of power (6, 6)
16 Drug company is following right treatment initially with a person (9)
17 Approval's in this way finished without doctor (6, 2)
19 In any way possible, courts without edging get put up (7)
21 Commonly mandated intake for the young group of politicians (6)
22 Bog with tailless eel's primarily swampy (6)
24 Gekko thought it good to snatch head of grasshopper on long grass (5)

All the answers here are linked in some way. Once you've spotted the connection, any you didn't know the first time around should become easier.

1 Ursus arctos is the Latin name for which animal, native to North America and Eurasia – including Japan and Turkey?

2 Gowen is the surname of which character in the show that was named as the best British TV programme of the century by the British Film Institute in 2000?

3 Which former England rugby union player – now a commentator – is nicknamed “the Leicester lip”?

4 Who wrote "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"/"Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory"?

5 Which electric organ was first manufactured in 1935? 6 Which comedian's real name is Jim Moir? 7 Which 1958 novel by H E Bates takes its title from a phrase in Shakespeare's Sonnet 18? 8 In which 1990 film did Sean Connery play a Russian submarine captain (with a Scottish accent)? 9 Who was the main presenter on Radio 4's arts programme Front Row from 1998 to 2014? 10 In which royal residence did Queen Victoria die?

THE PICTURE ROUND BY JAMES WALTON

Who or what do these pictures add up to?

Answers opposite

WHAT FRESH HELL

Have you got 10 minutes? Work, life and family dilemmas solved by Miranda Green

K, I'm glad you asked because this is a really easy one. No. I do not have "just" 10 minutes and neither do you. Which means, I'm afraid, that we must present a firm, united front to the hordes trying to convince us that we do.

The message in the flood of content being pushed across social media? A new dawn, a new day and a new you can be ushered in with such a pitifully tiny amount of time and effort that, honestly, what is wrong with you, you loser? Why aren't you on top of these easy life hacks already?

Well, the fightback starts here. We simply do not have time for your “simple” three-move core exercises, your “easy” midweek meditation, your micro-lesson on French colloquialisms, nor for your “limber up” morning rebounder session, your instant bake-this-cheesecake-from-kefir-that’s-gone-off dessert, your “divide the perennials before you brush your teeth but have you tried a quick rub with coconut oil to whiten them?” advice. No, not for any of it. Not even for the rapid daily declutter that promises to allow me to see out from behind the current curtain of clobber all over my room.

You see the problem. It's sold as self-help or self-improvement, but cumulatively all these life hacks make you feel much worse, rebuked that you're not doing things properly. Like, who doesn't have 10 minutes? Well, it's me. I'm the one that doesn't, that can't and that jolly well won't. There aren't enough 10 minutes left of my life to want to waste them on daily facial yoga. Even if I was 21 again, it would still be a dreadful way to live. Do you want to be so distracted from what you really want, what you could achieve of any actual meaning?

For me, this online menace started quite benignly with reels offering individually achievable goals (mend that beloved sweater with Japanese economy and elegance) or useful tips (a breathing exercise devised for the Royal Marines to get through stressful situations like being taken captive by the enemy, or for my busy Friday shift).

Here's what I was served up today, however: a couple of total crazies telling me, while they demonstrate, that 10 minutes spent stomping in bare feet on a pile of Epsom salts will cure pretty much all ills physical and spiritual.

ILLUSTRATION by LUCAS VARELA

Gee whiz, thanks guys, move over and gimme some room on that wrecked bit of floor in your shonky video.

Clearly my algorithm, which I have tried to train towards thrift flips and plein air painting, thinks I want to be nagged about this perfectibility nonsense. Presumably it's age profiling - so many exhortations to lubricate your hip joints! But being targeted by a bunch of guilt-inducers and their quick fixes is narrowing the world the internet was supposed to open up for us all.

Algo Fomo swiftly resulted from asking friends what they get served up. One of them has to put up with a certain amount of the same, but it's leavened by videos of witches around the globe sharing spell tips, which sounds just as woo-woo as the Epsom salt people, but way more entertaining and less messy. Though I've heard there's a lot of burning sage leaves involved and that could also be bad for the soft furnishings.

If you are similarly being told about these crappy little 10-minute paths to enlightenment, perfect health, beatific calm, multilingual mastery and all the rest of it, then remember this: each may sound doable but the aggregate is a disaster. Add up all the 10-minute hacks and where has your day/week/life gone? Good luck rotating that loosened hip joint as you eat your cheesecake, meditate and repot the plants, while emitting a stream of French idioms to describe how great your salted feet now feel. And you won't have time to sit back and enjoy any of it because you need to keep on self-helping. Chop chop!

Never mind J Alfred Prufrock, lamenting that he has measured out his life in coffee spoons. We are in danger of measuring out our life in desperate attempts at everything-maxxing. Twentieth-century aimlessness and ennui sound frankly preferable to our deadly attention-economy-driven pursuit of (health and) happiness.

It's a multiplying morass of snares and delusions, but we can make a break for freedom. Repeat after me: nobody's perfect. Adopt this little mantra a few times each day and you'll never look back. What are you waiting for? It'll only take you 10 minutes. FT

Miranda Green is the FT's deputy opinion editor. Robert Shrimsley is away

CHISWICK AUCTIONS

Japanese & Korean Art

Thursday 10 September, 14:00

PATEK PHILIPPE GENEVE

BEGIN YOUR OWN TRADITION

YOU NEVER ACTUALLY OWN A PATEK PHILIPPE.

YOU MERELY LOOK AFTER IT FOR THE NEXT GENERATION.

CALATRAVA REF. 6119 PATEK.COM

QA Report - Financial Times Magazine - 29.08.2026.pdf

Pipeline

• Extraction route: mineru-vlm
• extraction_route=mineru-vlm
• Translation chunks: 49
• Extraction warnings:
• [MINERU-VLM] Successfully extracted via MinerU VLM (batch: 57e7bda9-4dc9-42e7-a5e0-c8c8ec15f966)

Non-model Checks

• WARNING: Missing proper nouns in translation: Actor Fiona Shaw, Alfred Prufrock, American Midwest, Ancient Roman, Anne Hidalgo, Applied Arts, As Hine, At Beachcomber Resorts, Author William Poundstone, Barack Obama

Model QA

经过严格审核，本次翻译件的 QA 报告如下：

═══ 审核结果 ═══

1. [BLOCKING] 交付标签/内部清理标签残留 - 问题：译文中出现了多处类似 ![](images / ...℃...) 的路径标签，其中包含非正常的字符（如 ℃ 替代了原路径中的部分字符）。 - 详情：例如 ![](images / 98f95e293ec7ac39deff05℃62f50d8a67b186172ad63fabe43f3f584d47b5ee3.jpg)。 - 判定：此类标签属于未清理干净的内部处理痕迹，且路径字符损坏，属于致命缺陷。

2. [WARNING] 术语翻译不准/不一致 - 问题：人名翻译不统一。 - 详情：在“极右翼政治家”相关段落中，同一人物在译文前半部分被译为“西格蒙德”，在后半部分（如“这些人中包括...”一段）突然变为“齐格蒙德”。 - 判定：影响阅读连贯性，需统一。

3. [WARNING] 残留英文/未翻译内容 - 问题：部分专有名词或短语未翻译。 - 详情： - “REJTAN 通过 .COM”、“AMLAUR 通过 .COM” 等（原文为 VIA FT.COM）。 - “WINF”（在“食欲”章节标题下，无实际意义且未翻译）。 - 判定：属于低质量残留。

4. [SOURCE_OCR] 文本截断/缺失 - 问题：译文在“德国选择党”相关报道的末尾出现截断。 - 详情：译文在“...照片显示基民盟高级官员 吉多·霍尔（Guido Heuer）与笑容灿烂的齐格蒙德并肩而立”之后，虽然继续翻译了后续段落，但原文中关于照片的描述在 ...[MIDDLE PORTION OMITTED FOR QA]... 区域有缺失，导致译文逻辑跳跃。 - 判定：根源在于提供的抽样原文（Source Preview）本身存在大量 [MIDDLE PORTION OMITTED]，导致翻译无法完整覆盖。

5. [FALSE_POSITIVE] 幻觉核查 - 核查项：译文中提到的“2009年被禁的组织”。 - 核查过程：在抽样原文中未直接看到“2009”这个数字，但通过标题索引和上下文逻辑，该段落对应原文关于新纳粹组织的描述。由于原文被省略，且该信息符合新闻背景，不判定为幻觉。

---

═══ 总结 ═══

结论：发现阻塞性问题（Blocking Issues Found）

主要阻塞点： - 译文中大量残留损坏的图片路径标签（包含 ℃ 乱码），严重影响交付质量。 - 关键人物译名（西格蒙德 $\leftrightarrow$ 齐格蒙德）在同一篇报道中不统一。

建议： 立即清理所有 ![](images/...) 标签，并统一全篇人名译法。

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═══ 自愈质检微创修复记录（Self-Healing Audit Trail）═══

• 成功修复分块 #1（共修复 1 处问题）
• 成功修复分块 #45（共修复 4 处问题）