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This is our fifth article from Issue 26, which arrived with print subscribers last week.

这是我们第 26 期的第五篇文章，印刷版订阅者上周收到了该文章。

In it, Charles C Mann explains how he learned to love porcelain.

查尔斯·C·曼 (Charles C Mann) 在书中解释了他如何爱上瓷器。

I am aware that I am a bit of a kitchen equipment nerd, okay?

我知道我是一个厨房设备迷，好吗？

So maybe you don’t have to roll your eyes theatrically like my cousins did when I tell you my wife and I got a swanky induction cooktop that was, well, kind of pricey for a middle-class couple?

所以，也许你不必像我的表兄弟那样戏剧性地翻白眼，当我告诉你我和我的妻子有一个时髦的电磁炉时，这对中产阶级夫妇来说有点贵？

And maybe you can imagine my irritation when it turned out that the swanky induction cooktop – did I mention it was pricey?

也许你可以想象当我发现这个时髦的电磁炉时我的愤怒——我有没有提到它很贵？

– did not include the necessary smooth cooking surface above the induction burners, and that you had to buy the cooking surface separately from a separate company, a fact not exactly advertised on the website, and that the surface could not be tempered glass, which is what I had thought was on top of induction ranges, a sheet of which costs maybe $30 per square foot, but a special, newly created material called Dekton that cost five times as much.

- 不包括电磁炉上方必要的光滑烹饪表面，而且你必须从一家单独的公司单独购买烹饪表面，这一事实并没有在网站上完全宣传，而且表面不能是钢化玻璃，这就是我原以为在电磁炉顶部的玻璃，一块玻璃的价格可能是每平方英尺 30 美元，但一种名为 Dekton 的特殊新材料，价格是它的五倍。

‘What on earth is Dekton?’ I asked the heavens, or at least my wife.

“德克顿到底是什么？”我问天，或者至少问我的妻子。

My question turned out to have two answers.

我的问题结果有两个答案。

The first is that Dekton is an artificial material invented by the Spanish company Cosentino in 2013 that is amazingly heat-, pressure-, scratch-, shatter-, and stain-resistant – a high-tech substance that would have been almost impossible to fashion even thirty years ago.

首先，Dekton 是西班牙公司 Cosentino 于 2013 年发明的一种人造材料，具有惊人的耐热、耐压、耐刮、耐碎和耐污渍性能，这种高科技物质即使在 30 年前也几乎不可能制造出来。

The other answer, equally true, is that Dekton is basically porcelain.

另一个同样正确的答案是，Dekton 基本上是瓷器。

Paradoxically, porcelain is both one of humankind’s oldest high technologies and one of its newest.

矛盾的是，瓷器既是人类最古老的高科技之一，又是最新的高科技之一。

The earliest proto-porcelain was created more than three thousand years ago, and was, for the time, an astonishing technical feat, as unprecedented as the roughly concurrent development of iron metallurgy.

最早的原始瓷器诞生于三千多年前，在当时是一项令人惊叹的技术壮举，就像几乎同时发展的炼铁术一样史无前例。

Iron technology had its second flowering in the mid-nineteenth century, when the invention of the Bessemer and Siemens-Martin refining processes allowed manufacturers to produce cheap, high-quality steel.

炼铁技术在十九世纪中叶迎来了第二次繁荣，当时贝塞默和西门子-马丁精炼工艺的发明使制造商能够生产廉价、高质量的钢材。

Porcelain is having its resurgence today – indeed, high-tech ceramics are key elements in the ongoing upsurge in materials science, the study of the relationship between a substance’s structure and its physical properties.

如今，瓷器正在复兴——事实上，高科技陶瓷是材料科学（物质结构与其物理性质之间关系的研究）持续热潮中的关键要素。

Much attention is rightfully focused now on the rise of the digital world and the explosive arrival of artificial intelligence.

现在，人们的注意力集中在数字世界的崛起和人工智能的爆炸性到来上。

But that attention sometimes obscures the ongoing, equally important transformation of our physical world, the built environment, by materials science.

但这种关注有时掩盖了材料科学对我们的物理世界、建筑环境正在进行的、同样重要的转变。

Unleashing a cataract of innovation so ubiquitous as to be almost invisible, materials science has literally changed the walls around us.

材料科学释放出无处不在、几乎看不见的创新瀑布，它确实改变了我们周围的墙壁。

Porcelain is a reminder that the drive to create new types of matter has long played a powerful role in human history.

瓷器提醒我们，创造新型物质的动力长期以来在人类历史上发挥着强大的作用。

The initial steps toward porcelain occurred when potters in northern China started to tinker with an unusual clay, chalk colored and fine grained, called kaolin.

当中国北方的陶工开始修补一种不寻常的粘土时，瓷器的发展就发生了，这种粘土是粉笔色的，颗粒细小，称为高岭土。

Kaolin was known for its color, useful in paints, coatings, and fillers.

高岭土以其颜色而闻名，可用于油漆、涂料和填料。

Potters learned that subjecting this soft, white, unremarkable-looking mud to extreme temperatures produced startling effects.

波特斯了解到，将这种柔软、白色、看起来不起眼的泥土置于极端温度下会产生惊人的效果。

Ordinary clay looks like amorphous glop but actually is composed of huge numbers of microscopic crystals.

普通粘土看起来像无定形的胶状物，但实际上是由大量的微观晶体组成的。

The crystals have an unusual structure: flat plates stacked atop each other like playing cards in a deck, loosely held together by hydroxyl groups (hydrogen and oxygen bound together, or -OH, in chemists’ terms).

这些晶体具有不寻常的结构：平板像甲板上的扑克牌一样堆叠在一起，通过羟基（氢和氧结合在一起，或者化学家术语中的-OH）松散地结合在一起。

When clay is cooked in a kiln, the hydroxyl groups vibrate and break free, causing the plates to fall apart and reform into long, needle-shaped crystals that lock together into a sturdy structure.

当粘土在窑中烧制时，羟基会振动并脱离，导致板分解并重新形成长的针状晶体，这些晶体锁定在一起形成坚固的结构。

Meanwhile, the free hydroxyls merge, becoming water molecules that steam away in the hot kiln, leaving behind oxygen in the new crystals.

与此同时，游离的羟基合并，变成水分子，在热窑中蒸发，在新晶体中留下氧气。

Kaolin clay is abundant in kaolinite, a mineral made of aluminum, silicon, oxygen, and hydrogen – Al 2 Si 2 O 5 (OH) 4 , with the parentheses meaning that each molecule has four hydroxyl groups.

高岭土富含高岭石，高岭石是一种由铝、硅、氧和氢组成的矿物 - Al 2 Si 2 O 5 (OH) 4 ，括号中表示每个分子有四个羟基。

When heated in a kiln, kaolinite also loses its hydroxyls and reorganizes itself into a three-dimensional web of needle-like crystals.

当在窑中加热时，高岭石也会失去羟基，并重新组织成针状晶体的三维网络。

But when the temperature rises to about 1,200 degrees centigrade, well above the typical level for earthenware pottery, kaolin does something else.

但当温度升至约 1,200 摄氏度（远高于陶器的典型温度）时，高岭土就会发生其他事情。

The silicon and oxygen break free, forming silica, which forms a thick liquid glass, filling all the spaces around and inside the web of needles, creating a dense, continuous, translucent matrix – porcelain.

硅和氧分解，形成二氧化硅，二氧化硅形成厚厚的液体玻璃，填充针网周围和内部的所有空间，形成致密、连续、半透明的基质——瓷器。

In China, like everywhere else, ceramics had been a foundational industry for millennia.

与其他地方一样，陶瓷在中国几千年来一直是基础产业。

Clay was a primary part of construction (bricks, adobe, wattle-and-daub), cooking (pots, tableware), art (paints as well as sculpture), and even communication – clay tablets were the first surfaces used for writing.

粘土是建筑（砖块、土坯、篱笆和涂抹物）、烹饪（锅、餐具）、艺术（油漆和雕塑）甚至交流的主要组成部分——粘土板是最早用于书写的表面。

But porcelain was a giant leap, a concatenation of multiple innovations.

但瓷器是一次巨大的飞跃，是多项创新的结合。

Ordinary kilns couldn’t reach the temperatures required to fire porcelain, partly because their exhaust vents, located on the ‘roof’, let out the hot air almost as fast as it was created, cooling the kiln.

普通窑炉无法达到烧制瓷器所需的温度，部分原因是位于“屋顶”上的排气口几乎与热空气产生的速度一样快地排出，从而冷却了窑炉。

(This is a problem for conventional home fireplaces, which are fun to look at in use but wildly inefficient as a means of heating.) Chinese potters designed downdrafts, which forced the hot air to escape through floor vents, trapping the heat around the pottery.

（这对于传统的家用壁炉来说是一个问题，它在使用中看起来很有趣，但作为一种加热手段却非常低效。）中国陶艺家设计了下沉式气流，迫使热空气通过地板通风口逸出，将热量困在陶器周围。

Alarmingly, ordinary kilns would shatter or even melt at such high temperatures.

令人担忧的是，普通的窑炉在如此高的温度下会破碎甚至熔化。

Chinese potters invented new types of heat-resistant brick.

中国陶工发明了新型耐热砖。

And so on.

等等。

When Europeans first saw East Asian porcelain, probably in the thirteenth century, they were astounded.

当欧洲人第一次看到东亚瓷器时（大概是在十三世纪），他们感到震惊。

Harder, stronger, finer, smoother, and more lustrous than any other pottery, it became an obsessive object of desire, ‘white gold’ for the Continent’s wealthy and powerful.

它比任何其他陶器更坚硬、更坚固、更精细、更光滑、更有光泽，成为欧洲大陆富人和权势人士梦寐以求的“白金”。

Enormous sets of gleaming white china became symbols of luxury – the private jets and invite-only clubs of the Renaissance era.

大量闪闪发光的白色瓷器成为奢华的象征——文艺复兴时期的私人飞机和仅限受邀者参加的俱乐部。

Unhappy about the high prices charged by the merchants who imported porcelain from Asia, European elites spent lavishly on efforts to make their own porcelain – and failed comprehensively for several centuries.

欧洲精英对从亚洲进口瓷器的商人收取的高价感到不满，因此花费了大量资金来制造自己的瓷器，但几个世纪以来却全面失败。

A key problem was that nobody on the Continent knew that porcelain was made from kaolin.

一个关键问题是，欧洲大陆上没有人知道瓷器是用高岭土制成的。

Or that kaolinite alone didn’t actually contain enough glassy liquid silicate to make proper porcelain, so that Chinese potters added pulverized ‘China stone’ – a type of partly decomposed granite containing silicon – into the kaolinite.

或者高岭石本身实际上并没有足够的玻璃状液态硅酸盐来制造合适的瓷器，因此中国陶工在高岭石中添加了粉碎的“瓷石”——一种部分分解的含硅花岗岩。

Trying to make their wares porcelain-white, European potters added materials like tin oxide and ground glass to the clay, an approach that led to Italian maiolica, French faience, and Delftware.

为了使他们的制品变得瓷白，欧洲陶艺家在粘土中添加了氧化锡和磨砂玻璃等材料，这种方法催生了意大利陶器、法国彩陶和代尔夫特陶器。

The results were often beautiful, but lacked porcelain’s impermeability to water, high tensile strength, and the distinctive ring made by porcelain cups when tapped with a spoon.

结果往往很漂亮，但缺乏瓷器的不透水性、高拉伸强度，以及用勺子敲击瓷杯时发出的独特的圆环。

Enter Count Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus (1651–1708), a mathematician, physicist, and philosopher born in the Electorate of Saxony.

埃伦弗里德·瓦尔特·冯·齐恩豪斯伯爵（Count Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus，1651-1708 年）登场，他是一位出生于萨克森选帝侯的数学家、物理学家和哲学家。

Tschirnhaus initially studied math and philosophy but in his twenties became fascinated by porcelain.

Tschirnhaus 最初学习数学和哲学，但在二十多岁的时候开始对瓷器着迷。

Beginning in about 1679, he conducted a series of experiments that used concave copper mirrors to beam intensely hot sunlight on multiple types of metals, minerals, and ceramics.

大约从 1679 年开始，他进行了一系列实验，使用凹面铜镜将强烈的热阳光照射到多种金属、矿物和陶瓷上。

Eventually he realized that glass lenses could outperform mirrors and invented a method of casting glass to make big, thick lenses for focusing sunlight, sending samples of the results to European monarchs in an unsuccessful quest to obtain financial backing to establish a science academy in Saxony.

最终，他意识到玻璃镜片的性能可能优于镜子，并发明了一种铸造玻璃的方法来制造用于聚焦阳光的又大又厚的镜片，并将结果样本发送给欧洲君主，试图获得在萨克森州建立科学院的财政支持，但没有成功。

In the winter of 1693–94, Tschirnhaus discovered a surprise: a type of clay that wouldn’t melt.

1693-94 年冬天，Tschirnhaus 发现了一个惊喜：一种不会融化的粘土。

Dug from Colditz, about 25 miles southeast of Leipzig, in Saxony, it contained kaolin (Tschirnhaus, of course, didn’t know this).

它是从萨克森州莱比锡东南约 25 英里处的科尔迪茨挖掘出来的，其中含有高岭土（当然，茨奇恩豪斯并不知道这一点）。

Adding alabaster or chalk to the clay and heating the mix produced a hard, yellow, somewhat translucent ceramic that Tschirnhaus called ‘wax porcelain’.

在粘土中添加雪花石膏或白垩，然后加热混合物，就产生了一种坚硬的、黄色的、半透明的陶瓷，奇恩豪斯称之为“蜡瓷”。

Unfortunately, he couldn’t produce it in quantity – his lenses could focus sunlight on an area of 10 to 15 square centimeters but not heat spaces of any size.

不幸的是，他无法大量生产——他的镜片可以将阳光聚焦在 10 到 15 平方厘米的区域，但不能加热任何大小的空间。

When he tried making his porcelain in commercial kilns, their walls shattered or melted.

当他尝试在商业窑炉中制作瓷器时，窑炉的墙壁破碎或熔化。

Tschirnhaus was struggling to develop a better kiln when he was approached by Augustus the Strong, the ruler of Saxony.

当萨克森统治者奥古斯都强者找到齐恩豪斯时，他正在努力开发一种更好的窑炉。

A few years earlier, a young mountebank in Prussia named Johann Friedrich Böttger had let it be known that he had discovered the Alltinktur , an alchemical substance that cured any disease and turned base metal into gold.

几年前，普鲁士一位名叫约翰·弗里德里希·伯特格（Johann Friedrich Böttger）的年轻江湖骗子宣布，他发现了 Alltinktur，这是一种炼金术物质，可以治愈任何疾病并将贱金属变成黄金。

In a fine example of FAFO, Prussia’s gold-hungry king, who wanted to monopolize the Alltinktur , immediately ordered Böttger to be taken into ‘protective custody’.

FAFO 就是一个很好的例子，普鲁士渴望黄金的国王想要垄断 Alltinktur，立即下令将 Böttger 纳入“保护性拘留”。

Böttger escaped into Saxony, whereupon he was seized by Saxony’s equally gold-hungry ruler Augustus the Strong, confined to an attic in a fortress outside Dresden, and ordered to produce gold.

伯特格逃到萨克森，随后被萨克森同样渴望黄金的统治者奥古斯都强者抓住，关在德累斯顿郊外一座堡垒的阁楼里，并命令他生产黄金。

Böttger toiled for years, promising all the while to produce ‘alchymist gold’.

伯特格辛苦工作了多年，一直承诺生产“炼金术士黄金”。

Surprisingly, he was unable to deliver.

令人惊讶的是，他无法交付。

Augustus grew exasperated and in 1704 asked Tschirnhaus to supervise work on the Alltinktur .

奥古斯都变得愤怒，并于 1704 年要求 Tschirnhaus 监督 Alltinktur 的工作。

Tschirnhaus, who evinced no interest in alchemy, invited Böttger to work with him instead on porcelain.

Tschirnhaus 对炼金术不感兴趣，而是邀请 Böttger 与他一起研究瓷器。

To save his neck, Böttger grudgingly agreed.

为了保住自己的性命，伯特格勉强同意了。

Tschirnhaus, Böttger, and Gottfried Pabst von Ohain, a high-ranking mining official (in those days, the closest thing available to an earth scientist), developed a red clay that could be made into bricks suitable for porcelain kilns.

Tschirnhaus、Böttger 和高级矿业官员 Gottfried Pabst von Ohain（当时是地球科学家最接近的人）开发了一种红粘土，可以制成适合瓷窑的砖。

In June 1708, Pabst von Ohain found a source of white clay – nearly pure kaolin, though he didn’t know it – and shipped it to the other two.

1708 年 6 月，帕布斯特·冯·奥海恩 (Pabst von Ohain) 发现了白粘土的来源——几乎是纯高岭土，尽管他并不知道——并将其运给了另外两人。

Mixing the white clay with ground limestone and heating it in kilns made from the new red clay in August and September, Tschirnhaus single-handedly created a cup that looked and behaved very much like white Chinese porcelain.

Tschirnhaus 将白粘土与磨碎的石灰石混合，并在八月和九月用新的红粘土制成的窑炉中加热，他一手创造了一个看起来和性能都非常像中国白瓷的杯子。

He did not live to enjoy his triumph.

他没有活着享受他的胜利。

In October, Tschirnhaus suddenly dropped dead, supposedly of dysentery.

10 月，Tschirnhaus 突然去世，据说是死于痢疾。

On his deathbed, he gave Pabst von Ohain a black box filled with documents.

临终前，他给了帕布斯特·冯·奥海因一个装满文件的黑匣子。

The box was found in Böttger’s belongings after his death, which may explain why he wrote to Augustus in March 1709, claiming to be the sole discoverer of the process to make porcelain.

这个盒子是在伯特格死后在他的遗物中发现的，这也许可以解释为什么他在 1709 年 3 月写信给奥古斯都，声称自己是瓷器制造工艺的唯一发现者。

Augustus officially chartered the Royal Porcelain Manufacture in Meissen, another small town near Dresden, the following year and put Böttger in charge.

次年，奥古斯都在德累斯顿附近的另一个小镇迈森正式特许成立皇家瓷器制造厂，并任命伯特格负责。

It took ten more years for its workers to figure out that ‘China clay’ (or, more precisely, a similar local stone) was a better additive than limestone.

工人们又花了十年时间才发现“瓷土”（或者更准确地说，一种类似的当地石头）是比石灰石更好的添加剂。

Meissen then became Europe’s porcelain center.

迈森随后成为欧洲的瓷器中心。

Augustus made so much money that he built a ‘Japanese palace’, filled it with Meissen copies of Asian originals, and crowed to visitors that he had beaten the Chinese – correctly, because Meissen porcelain was harder and less porous than the original.

奥古斯都赚了很多钱，以至于他建造了一座“日本宫殿”，里面装满了亚洲原件的迈森仿制品，并向参观者夸耀他打败了中国人——正确的是，因为迈森瓷器比原件更坚硬、孔隙更少。

If Meissen was Porcelain 2.0, the Dekton for my cooktop is Porcelain 3.0 or more.

如果 Meissen 是 Porcelain 2.0，那么我的灶台的 Dekton 就是 Porcelain 3.0 或更高。

Made by baking a slurry of ground porcelain, glass, and quartz into slabs, running the slabs through a huge hydraulic press that applies 25,000 metric tons of pressure, and hardening them at 1,200 degrees centigrade, Dekton took six years and almost $200 million to invent.

Dekton 的发明方法是将磨碎的瓷器、玻璃和石英的浆料烘烤成平板，然后将平板通过施加 25,000 吨压力的巨大液压机，并在 1,200 摄氏度下硬化，Dekton 花了六年时间和近 2 亿美元才发明出来。

Traditional ceramics contain microscopic voids and flaws that act as ‘stress concentrators’, focusing rather than diffusing the energy from impacts, which is what causes them to crack.

传统陶瓷含有微小的空隙和缺陷，它们充当“应力集中器”，集中而不是分散冲击产生的能量，这就是导致陶瓷破裂的原因。

The high pressure and heat used to produce Dekton cause atoms in the particles of kaolinite and quartz to diffuse across the boundaries where they touch, turning the entire thing into what amounts to a single solid mass.

用于生产 Dekton 的高压和高温会导致高岭石和石英颗粒中的原子扩散到它们接触的边界上，从而将整个物体变成一个单一的固体块。

In consequence, Dekton has nearly eliminated porcelain’s long-standing weakness: its brittleness and structural fragility.

因此，Dekton 几乎消除了瓷器长期存在的弱点：脆性和结构脆弱。

Dekton is but one part of an ongoing resurgence in porcelain, which itself is part of the still larger revolution in materials science.

Dekton 只是瓷器持续复兴的一部分，瓷器本身也是材料科学领域更大规模革命的一部分。

The field was founded in the 1940s and 1950s, when physicists, chemists, and engineers had to work together in the Second World War, the Cold War, and the space race.

该领域创立于 20 世纪 40 年代和 20 世纪 50 年代，当时物理学家、化学家和工程师必须在第二次世界大战、冷战和太空竞赛中共同努力。

But it really took off in the 1980s and 1990s, with the development of precision measuring and manufacturing techniques.

但随着精密测量和制造技术的发展，它真正起飞是在 20 世纪 80 年代和 90 年代。

Most of its innovations have been incremental, but the accumulated total has had enormous impact in our daily lives.

它的大部分创新都是渐进式的，但累积起来的总量已经对我们的日常生活产生了巨大的影响。

To give a personal example, my late mother-in-law was injured permanently by slipping on a wet porcelain bathroom tile – something that happens to tens of thousands of people in the United States every year.

举个个人例子，我已故的岳母因在潮湿的浴室瓷砖上滑倒而受到永久性伤害——这种情况在美国每年都有数万人发生。

In the past, firms made nonslip tiles by coating them with rough, jagged grains – a bit like laying sandpaper over the surface, and deservedly unpopular in the home.

过去，公司通过在瓷砖上涂上粗糙、锯齿状的颗粒来制造防滑瓷砖——有点像在表面铺砂纸，在家里理所当然地不受欢迎。

Ten years ago, Italian and Spanish tile manufacturers like Ceramica Sant’Agostino and Inalco introduced ‘wet-activated’ or ‘in-out’ tiles, with special crystalline compounds baked onto the surface.

十年前，Ceramica Sant’Agostino 和 Inalco 等意大利和西班牙瓷砖制造商推出了“湿活化”或“进出”瓷砖，表面烘烤有特殊的结晶化合物。

Dry, they look and feel like ordinary porcelain tiles.

干燥后，它们的外观和感觉就像普通瓷砖一样。

But when they are wet and someone steps on them, the pressure drives the water into thousands of pores on the surface, creating a suction-cup effect between foot and tile, instantly making them less slippery.

但是，当它们潮湿时，有人踩在它们上，压力会将水推入表面上的数千个毛孔，在脚和瓷砖之间产生吸盘效应，立即使它们不那么滑。

(How much suffering will wet-activated tiles prevent?

（湿活化瓷砖可以防止多少痛苦？

Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest it would be equivalent, in terms of deaths prevented, to curing childhood cancers.)

粗略计算表明，就预防死亡而言，这相当于治愈儿童癌症。）

Another personal example: My daughter, hit with a rare bone infection at age eleven, now has a porcelain hip joint – porcelain because the previous cobalt and chromium replacement joints can release metal ions into the bloodstream, which can migrate into the placenta of pregnant women, potentially harming the fetus.

另一个个人例子：我的女儿十一岁时患上了罕见的骨感染，现在有了瓷质髋关节——瓷质髋关节是因为以前的钴和铬置换关节会向血液中释放金属离子，这些金属离子会迁移到孕妇的胎盘中，可能会伤害胎儿。

About the same time that ceramics firms introduced wet-activated tiles, researchers deployed 3D printing to create porous, lattice-like ‘bioceramic’ structures to replace defective bone.

大约在陶瓷公司推出湿法活化瓷砖的同时，研究人员利用 3D 打印技术来制造多孔、格子状的“生物陶瓷”结构，以替代有缺陷的骨骼。

The structures are not permanent replacements but scaffolds that allow blood vessels and bone cells to migrate into the spaces in the bioceramic.

这些结构不是永久性的替代品，而是允许血管和骨细胞迁移到生物陶瓷的空间中的支架。

Over time, the porcelain structure dissolves and is replaced by the patient’s own tissue.

随着时间的推移，瓷质结构会溶解并被患者自身的组织所取代。

(The scaffold is expelled from the body.)

（脚手架从体内排出。）

I could go on to talk about the use of nanotechnology to fill porcelain pores to enhance color depth and stain resistance, imprinting porcelain with silver ion layers to enhance antimicrobial activity, or the use of lithium disilicate to make ultrathin dental implants of unprecedented strength.

我可以继续谈论使用纳米技术填充瓷器孔隙以增强颜色深度和防污性，在瓷器上压印银离子层以增强抗菌活性，或者使用二硅酸锂制造具有前所未有强度的超薄牙科植入物。

But maybe the best way to say it is that my grandmother, who proudly displayed her mother’s eggshell-thin Meissen china on the sideboard, would have been astonished to find that I was cooking on a thin slab of porcelain, heedlessly dropping heavy pots of boiling water on its surface.

但也许最好的说法是，我的祖母自豪地在餐具柜上展示她母亲的蛋壳般薄的迈森瓷器，她会惊讶地发现我正在一块薄瓷板上做饭，不经意地将一大锅开水掉在它的表面上。

But when I tried to explain how remarkable this is to my son, he gave me a blank look.

但当我试图向我儿子解释这是多么了不起时，他茫然地看着我。

He had never lived in a world that wasn’t made of porcelain.

他从来没有生活在一个不是瓷器组成的世界里。