While the $85 billion government bailout of American International Group Inc. is a highly unusual move in the U.S., European states have regularly come to the rescue of their distressed companies.

Despite the European Union's efforts to clamp down on protectionism, many European governments believe intervention is necessary when national interests are at stake. The question is: How bad do things have to get before governments step in?

In recent decades, European governments have rescued large financial institutions when their potential collapse risked paralyzing the economy. Some nations go a step further, and also provide financial aid to protect jobs or maintain a national presence in key industries.

Italy's government is currently involved in the latest bailout of airline Alitalia SpA. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has changed Italy's bankruptcy laws so the state can take on most of Alitalia's 1.2 billion euros ($1.69 billion) in debt, allowing the airline to transform itself into a healthier company.

Years of failed attempts to prop up the airline with state funds have cost taxpayers as much as 4.4 billion euros estimates Andrea Boitani, an economist at the Universita Cattolica of Milan.

'Unfortunately, the airline has the country's name in its logo,' he said. 'A failure of Alitalia would be seen as a failure of Italy.

France has a long tradition of intervening in the private economy, and the government often extends cash lifelines to companies in need. In 2004, when current President Nicolas Sarkozy was finance minister, the government spent 750 million euros to bail out engineering firm Alstom. The move was later seen as a success: The government not only saved the company from bankruptcy, but it later sold off its stake for a gain of 1.3 billion euros.

Germany has bailed out three banks since the summer of 2007, even though they posed little threat to the financial sector as a whole. IKB, WestLB and SachsenLB all lost money on U.S. mortgage-related securities. But their ownership by regional and federal governments meant they had sufficient political support to be bailed out with taxpayer money. By contrast, the U.K. for decades stood back while much of its industrial and mining base failed or was bought up by foreign companies.

But the credit crunch has changed all that, as it puts Britain's overleveraged households and the economy's biggest growth machine -- financial services -- at risk. On Wednesday, the government was encouraging British lender Lloyds TSB to buy rival bank HBOS PLC, whose share price has fallen dramatically in recent days, and will amend its competition law to make it happen, a person familiar with the matter said.

The Bank of England, which at the start of the credit crunch was slower to pump money into markets than other central banks, also announced the extension of a liquidity plan, in which it swaps hard-to-sell debt for treasury bonds. Last fall, the U.K. government nationalized Northern Rock after the markets in which it had financed itself shut down.

Continental Europe, too, has a history of big bailouts to shore up its financial systems. In the 1980s, France spent an estimated 20 billion euros rescuing Credit Lyonnais, then the country's largest bank, a move that economists credit for preventing a financial crisis.

A decade later, Scandinavia was hit by shockwaves that in some ways resemble those in the U.S. recently, when large parts of the banking systems of Sweden, Norway and Finland threatened to collapse. Financial deregulation, weak supervision by authorities, lax lending practices and low central-bank interest rates led to real-estate and other asset bubbles in the Nordic region. After interest rates rose and growth slowed, many banks faced big loan losses.

Norway nationalized the country's three biggest banks, Finland's government took over the savings-bank sector, and Sweden gave a blanket guarantee that banks would repay their debts. The rescue measures were expensive but are widely viewed as having prevented a financial meltdown.

David Gauthier-Villars / Stacy Meichtry

欧洲政府救助传统回眸

美国国际集团(American International Group)高达850亿美元的政府救助计划对美国来说是一个极不寻常的举动，但在欧洲国家，对处境艰难的公司实施救助的做法并不少见。

尽管欧盟(EU)一直努力打击保护主义，但许多欧洲国家政府相信，在国家利益面临风险之际，干预是必要的。问题是，政府得等事情恶化到什么地步才能插手？

近几十年来，当一些欧洲国家的大型金融机构面临崩溃、并有可能拖累整个国家经济的时候，政府伸出了援手。有些国家甚至走得更远，还会对关键行业提供经济资助以保护就业或维持国家对该领域的掌控。

意 大利眼下就有一个例子，该国政府正在参与对意大利航空公司(Alitalia SpA)的最新一轮救助。总理贝鲁斯科尼(Silvio Berlusconi)修改了破产法，这样一来，意大利航空的12亿欧元债务大部分将可由国家承担，以便让这家公司变成一家比较健康的企业。

米兰Cattolica大学经济学家安德里亚•波塔尼(Andrea Boitani)说，意大利政府数年来一直试图挽救意大利航空，为此，估计已花掉纳税人44亿欧元。

他说，不幸的是，这家公司的标识里包含意大利的名字。它如果倒了，会被视为意大利的失败。

法 国长期以来也有干预民营经济的传统，政府常会向处于危难中的企业提供资金支持。2004年，当现任总统萨科齐(Nicolas Sarkozy)还是财政部长的时候，政府曾拿出7.5亿欧元救助工程公司阿尔斯通(Alstom)。后来人们评价这一举动做得很成功：政府不仅让这家公 司避免了破产，后来还卖掉了它在这家公司的股份，获利13亿欧元。

德国政府从2007 年夏季以来已救助过3家银行，虽然这些银行对金融领域整体并未构成威胁。美国抵押贷款相关证券让IKB、WestLB和SachsenLB均蒙受了损失， 但由于它们是地区和联邦政府所有，因此能获得足够的政治支持、拿到纳税人的钱来弥补损失。相比之下，几十年来，英国在这方面动作较少，在许多工、矿企业经 营不善或被外国买走的时候，英国政府并未出手。

但信贷危机改变了这一切，毕竟，这场危机让英国高负债家庭和最大的经济增长引擎──金融服务业面临风险。据知情人士说，周三，英国政府鼓励英国银行Lloyds TSB收购近日股价暴跌的同行HBOS PLC，并且将修改《竞争法》以令收购得以实现。

在 这波信贷危机爆发之初，英国央行(Bank of England)在向市场注入资金方面比其他国家央行反应迟缓。现在，它也宣布了增强流动性的计划，根据计划，可用难以出售的债券换取政府债券。去年秋 季，英国政府对Northern Rock银行实行了国有化，因为该行过去赖以融资的市场已经关闭。

欧洲大陆国家同样有对金融系统实施大手笔救助的历史。八十年代，法国花费相当于200亿欧元左右的资金援救该国当时最大的银行法国里昂信贷银行(Credit Lyonnais)。经济学家赞扬此举阻止了一场金融危机。

十年后，斯堪的纳维亚半岛遭受了一场跟今天的美国颇有几分相似的冲击。瑞典、挪威、芬兰等国银行系统的大部分领域面临崩溃的风险。解除金融管制、监管不力、放贷过于随意和央行的低利率导致该地区房地产和其他资产出现泡沫。随着利率上升和增长放缓，许多银行面临着贷款损失。

挪威对国内三大银行实施了国有化，芬兰政府接管了储蓄银行系统，瑞典则对银行偿付债务的能力提供了大规模担保。这些救助措施虽然代价高昂，但人们普遍认为，这些措施避免了金融体系的垮塌。

David Gauthier-Villars / Stacy Meichtry

Why did I wander out to Long Island on a steamy day, traveling some 14 miles from the center of the American restaurant scene to a dumpy place at the end of a New York City subway line? It seemed crazy to go all that way to visit Golden Szechuan. That is, until I plunged my chopsticks into a dish of ma po dou fu, that tongue-numbing classic of China's famed regional cuisine.

I hadn't tasted anything like it in this country since the late 1970s -- the bland white chunks of tofu set off by unashamed amounts of brown Sichuan peppercorns, red-bean paste and chiles, along with a scattering of ground beef and Chinese leek.

But why did I have to make a pilgrimage to the center of Chinese immigration here in the Flushing neighborhood of New York's Queens? Why couldn't this authentic example of China's unchallenged place at the pinnacle of world cuisines, an eminence shared only by France, have been available in a grander setting in Manhattan? Why, in a period when fusion cooking has mainstreamed Japanese and even minor Asian cuisines like Korean, has Chinese food been largely ignored by young U.S. chefs hungry for new grist for their food-transforming imaginations?

Anyone worried about the rise of China on the world stage, as made clear by last month's lavish Olympics display, can take a kind of cold comfort from the almost total failure of the world's biggest culture to break into the foodie world. Yes, there are tens of thousands of places to buy second-rate pork buns and wontons in any town you might happen to be in, from Lima, Peru, to Lima, Ohio. There are also deeply rooted Chinese expat cuisines in Malaysia and the Philippines. And even these peripheral adaptations of Mother China's food can be found in modern restaurants in Manhattan outside Chinatown.

But tell me where I can find a quality, high-end Chinese restaurant anywhere in a U.S. urban center aimed at nonethnic diners and I will beat a path there. So would other gastronomes indoctrinated into the mysteries of tongue-burning Sichuan and elegant Beijing dishes during the golden era of authentic Chinese food in America, which followed Richard Nixon home from his historic visit to Mao Zedong in 1972. We remember when the arrival of a chef from the mainland to a midtown Manhattan location was headline news. Now when we want to recapture the excitement and taste of those times, we trek to Flushing, or to Rosemead outside Los Angeles.

There are a few exceptions to the decline of Chinese food in U.S. urban centers. In New York, Wu Liang Ye in the shade of Rockefeller Center and Shun Lee West near Manhattan's Lincoln Center continue to wave the flag of Sichuan. We read recently about a reputedly excellent new place in the city's Garment District, but on closer inspection, Szechuan Gourmet turned out to be a sloppy, indifferent rendition of the great, hearty food of the earthquake-plagued province, whose dishes Fuchsia Dunlop gathered there as a student chef for her book 'Land of Plenty' (2003).

The ma po dou fu at Szechuan Gourmet was muddy in flavor, beef-starved, with barely a shred of green. We are also eager to try Yujean Kang's in Pasadena, Calif., and Sang Kee Peking Duck House in Philadelphia. And we'll be glad as always to hear from readers about their own picks.

Perhaps we can blame the poor quality of virtually all Chinese restaurants outside Chinese enclaves on their patrons -- descendants of the same non-Chinese who enabled self-taught immigrant Chinese chefs to invent chop suey. But that was generations ago.

Today, a greater cross-cultural shame is the paucity of Chinese fusion dishes on the same menus that ambitious, home-grown chefs fill with Japanese and other non-Chinese Asian hybrids. Think of Manhattan's Nobu and the Sushi Samba chain, with their South American takes on sushi. Recall all the eclectic menus that don't bother to explain the Japanese ingredients ponzu, nori and uni. Or, if you eat at one of the three hip Manhattan spots of Korean-American chef David Chang, ask yourself why his splashy fusion dishes can feature Korean kimchee and the Thai hot sauce sriracha without more than a nod to the master food culture that underlies Mr. Chang's melting wok?

Maybe the reason is that Chinese cuisine is just too massive an edifice for a superchef to assault. No less a kitchen titan than Jean-Georges Vongerichten closed his idiosyncratic and widely panned 66, a pseudo-Chinese place in Manhattan's Tribeca, and handed it over to a Japanese team. Or is it that investors in glitzy restaurants think their clientele will dismiss real Chinese food as uncool?

We recently tried the Peking duck at New York's only elegant midtown Chinese restaurant, Tse Yang, an offshoot of a similar place in Paris that puts a display of wine bottles and smoked salmon on the home page of its Web site. We'd call Tse Yang's Peking duck, that great procession of crisp duck skin and duck parts, an inept homage. Like its Sichuan dishes it's neither authentic nor a fusion of edible worlds, Gallic or otherwise. Michael Chow's international Mr. Chow chain, meantime, smothers a basically Beijing menu with cosmopolitan settings and service.

In downtown Manhattan, we love to order a true French-Chinese fusion dish at Annisa, where the Chinese-American chef Anita Lo has long featured Shanghai soup dumplings empowered with foie gras. But her diverse menu is no more weighted to China than to the rest of Asia, France and her own imagination.

In California, Wolfgang Puck has been trying his hand at Chinese fusion with Chinois on Main in Santa Monica since 1983. On its surface, this ought to be what I'm seeking -- a Chinese restaurant with a name partly French, and located outside Chinatown by its Austrian creator. In fact, only about half the entrees on a current Chinois menu look to China for their inspiration. And I am including in my tally some marginal items. Ditto at Boston's much-admired fusion outpost Blue Ginger, where China plays a distant second fiddle to Japan and southeast Asia.

To improve on this, at least superficially, you have to head for the hills, the L.A. suburb of Agoura Hills, where Mandarin Express Chinese Fusion Restaurant has been playing with tofu in 36 varieties since 1988 -- from strawberry-peach to Cajun style. It also offers a vast array of 'mock' meat dishes evidently based on Chinese Buddhist vegetarian recipes. Some of Mandarin Express's entrees are for carnivores, but I don't have high hopes for many of chef-owner Dan Chang's 'signature creations': orange chicken/beef named after actor Kelsey Grammer and raspberry Captain Morgan rum chicken.

Still, I will definitely be reserving a table at Mandarin Express -- to see if there is a serious confrontation with Chinese tradition behind the fruit and flimflam -- on my way to China, where, Ms. Dunlop reports, Chinese food is evolving in new directions of its own, while pioneering European restaurants are offering possibly unintentional versions of Euro-fusion to Chinese diners.

Until then, I will be commuting to Flushing, for dan dan noodles at Spicy & Tasty or the hot pot favored by hip young Chinese diners at Golden Szechuan.

中餐为何难上档次

为 什么要冒着炎炎烈日，从美式餐厅云集的纽约市中心前往长岛，奔波14英里，来到地铁线最末端一个不起眼的小地方？跑这么远的路，就为了去一个名叫 “Golden Szechuan”(金四川)的中餐馆吃饭，这简直太疯狂了。
然而，当我把筷子伸进一盘“麻婆豆腐”，
品尝这道中国名菜留在舌尖的麻辣滋味时，立刻感觉这 一切都是值得的。

白色的豆腐被切成块状，和大量棕色的四川花椒、红色的豆瓣酱和辣椒炒在一起，点缀着一些牛肉丝和绿油油的葱花。从20世纪70年代末以来，我从没在美国吃过这么好吃的中国菜。

但 我为什么要长途跋涉去纽约皇后区法拉盛(Flushing)的中国城品尝中国美食？为什么这道足以代表中国屹立在世界烹饪金字塔顶端（只有法国可以与之并 肩而立）的名菜不能在曼哈顿更高档的餐厅出现？为什么在混合式烹饪(fusion cooking)盛行的时期，只有日本料理、甚至影响力更小的韩国料理在美国大行其道，而中国菜却往往被那些渴望从其他民族烹饪手法中吸取创新元素的年轻 美国厨师所忽视？

2008 年8月的北京奥运会以其华丽的开闭幕式让世界目睹了崛起的中国，但任何对中国崛起持 虑态度的人，至少可以在饮食方面松上一口气，因为中国菜在进军世界美食高端市场时，几乎遭到全线溃败。诚然，在世界任何一个地方，从秘鲁首都利马市到美国 俄亥俄州的利马市，你都可以找到中国餐馆，买到猪肉包子和馄饨这样的便宜小吃；马来西亚和菲律宾的烹饪受到中国菜系根深蒂固的影响；甚至在唐人街外曼哈顿 的现代餐厅里，也能品尝到经过改良以适应当地人口味的中国菜。

不过，你能告诉我，在美国哪个城市的市中心能找到一家高品质、面向各类顾客 的高档中式餐厅吗？如果能说出来，我马上就会冲过去。和我一样的还有当年那些沉醉于神奇麻辣的川菜和高贵典雅的北京菜的美食家们。1972年尼克松总统 (Richard Nixon)访华归来后，美国兴起一股正宗中国菜的热潮。我记得当时有个中国大陆的厨师来到曼哈顿市区，各大报纸纷纷刊登头条新闻。如今，要是我们想再次 感受中国菜给人带来的兴奋和回味，只能去法拉盛的中国城，或洛杉矶郊外的罗斯密德(Rosemead)。

中国餐馆在美国市中心的日渐衰落 也有几个例外。纽约洛克菲勒中心附近的“五粮液”餐厅(Wu Liang Ye)以及曼哈顿林肯中心附近的Shun Lee West餐厅仍然高举着川菜的大旗。最近我们听说纽约制衣区开了一家不错的中餐馆，但去那儿一看，这家名叫朵颐食府(Szechuan Gourmet)的餐厅并没有让人耳目一新的感觉。四川前不久刚刚遭受地震灾害，但那里的美食却让人赞不绝口。扶霞(Fuchsia Dunlop)曾以厨艺学徒的身份在四川为其《天府之国》(Land of Plenty)一书（2003年出版）搜集了多种菜式。

朵颐 食府的麻婆豆腐口味不佳，没有牛肉丝，青葱也很少。我们很想找机会品尝一下加州Pasadena市的“Yujean Kang”中国餐馆以及费城“生记北京烤鸭馆”(Sang Kee Peking Duck House)的菜肴，也很希望读者能踊跃来信，谈谈你们自己中意的中国餐馆。

华人聚居区以外的中餐馆之所以品质都不佳，也许与这些餐馆的非华人顾客有一定关系，正是这些非华人顾客的先辈促使移民来的中国大厨无师自通地发明了美式中国菜，而这是好几代以前的事情了。

今 天，在跨文化饮食方面一个更为令人遗憾的现象是，在很多雄心勃勃的美国本土厨师的菜单上，有日本和亚洲其他国家的菜肴，美式中国菜却寥寥无几。想想曼哈顿 的Nobu餐厅和森巴寿司连锁店(Sushi Samba)，那里带有南美风味的寿司卷；想想所有那些异国情调餐厅的菜单，上面对一些日本食材根本不必多加解释，比如ponzu、nori和uni。或 者，如果你去韩裔美籍厨师David Chang在曼哈顿开的三家热门餐馆中的任何一家吃饭，不妨问问自己，为什么这位厨师在用韩国泡菜和泰国拉差辣酱做出融合式料理时，可以完全不用理会作为 其烹饪之本的中国菜文化呢？

忽视中国菜的一个可能原因是，中国菜对外国大厨来说像是一座难以逾越的大山。举例而言，国际著名厨师Jean -Georges Vongerichten关掉了风格独特、备受瞩目的“66”餐厅，一家位于曼哈顿Tribeca区的中式风格餐馆，转而交给一个日本团队经营。或者还有 另一个原因，高档餐厅的投资人觉得提供原汁原味的中国菜会让食客们难以接受？

最近，我们去纽约市区唯一一家比较上档次的中餐馆Tse Yang吃北京烤鸭。这是巴黎一家类似餐厅的纽约分店，其网站宣传图片展示的是很多支红酒和烟熏三文鱼。北京烤鸭应该皮脆肉嫩，但Tse Yang的烤鸭只能说是差强人意；那里的四川菜不中不洋，也不好吃。与此同时，国际华人餐饮业巨子周英华(Michael Chow)开的Mr.Chow中餐连锁店，虽然提供的大多是北京菜，但用餐环境和服务方式基本上都西化了。

在曼哈顿商业区，我们很喜欢去Annisa餐厅点一道真正意义上的法式中国菜，由美籍华人主厨Anita Lo烹制的鹅肝馅上海汤馄饨。不过，这家餐厅菜单上的中国菜并不比亚洲其他国家菜肴、法式料理和自创菜的比重大。

在 加州，主厨沃尔夫冈•帕克 (Wolfgang Puck)自1983年以来，就在圣塔摩尼卡(Santa Monica)的Chinois on Main餐厅尝试中式风格的菜肴。从表面来看，这家餐厅正是我在寻找的那种─一家名字带有法语的中餐馆，不在唐人街附近，老板是奥地利人。但事实上，菜单 的头盘只有约一半带有中式料理风格，而且其中几道算成中国菜实在有些勉强。在波士顿热门的异国情调餐厅Blue Ginger，中式菜肴屈居在日式料理和东南亚菜肴之后。

要想品尝更多的中国菜（至少表面看来是中国菜），你得前往洛杉矶郊区的亚哥拉山 (Agoura Hills)，那里的“Mandarin Express Chinese Fusion Restaurant”从1988年起就有36道豆腐做的菜－－从豆腐做的草莓和桃子，到阿卡迪亚风格的豆腐等，此外还有不少根据中国佛教素食菜谱烹制的 “素”肉菜肴。有好几道头盘是给爱吃肉的食客准备的，但我对老板兼主厨Dan Chang的这些“自创招牌菜”大多不抱太高期望：比如以男演员凯尔塞.格拉莫(Kelsey Grammer)命名的橘汁鸡肉/牛肉，以及树莓“摩根船长”(Captain Morgan)郎姆酒鸡肉等。

不过，我绝对会在这里订个位子，看看那里的“中西合璧”是否天衣无缝，还是会出现重大的文化碰撞。美食作家扶霞在书中说，中国菜在本土也出现了不少新变化，而一些走在创新前列的欧洲餐厅也在无意中创造出不少融合欧洲风格的中式菜肴。

在出现更好的中餐馆之前，我还是会长途跋涉去法拉盛的中国城，在Spicy & Tasty川菜馆点上一碗担担面，或者去年轻人爱去的“金四川”餐馆点一个热辣辣的火锅大快朵颐。

Raymond Sokolov