最富英国色彩的事物之慢慢死亡篇 [美国媒体]

The slow death of the most British thing there is

最富英国色彩的事物之慢慢死亡篇

By Roberto A. Ferdman

作者：罗伯托·A·费德曼
May 4, 2016

2016年五月4日



Almost 30 years ago, the New York Times nodded to a curious trend that many older English folks were growing concerned about. One of the most quintessentially British pastimes was losing its luster, largely because it was falling out of favor with younger people who hadn't the time — or really the interest — to prolong the tradition. "We're a graying bunch, we tea drinkers, I'm afraid,'' Derek Cooper, a well-known British food writer in his 60s, told the newspaper.

《纽约时报》在大约30年之前就认同了这种令英国老人们越来越关心的趋势：那就是饮茶作为最典型的英式消遣方式正在失去它的荣光。人们不禁好奇为什么会这样？这其中的主要原因在于它失宠于年轻人——年轻人要么是没有时间去延续这项传统，要么是真的对它不再感兴趣了。当年已六十多岁的知名英式美食作家德里克·库珀对《纽约时报》讲：  “我们是一帮老人，而且只有我们喝茶，所以我担心， ” 。

Cooper was a tea lover, but his kids preferred coffee. And that dynamic was growing all too common. Between the mid-1970s and the 1980s, tea consumption fell by 20 percent in the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, the country's taste for coffee was blossoming, so much so, in fact, that in 1986 coffee sales in the U.K.outpaced tea sales for the first time in history.

虽然库珀很喜欢饮茶，但是他的孩子们则更喜欢喝咖啡，而发生在代际之间的这种变化正越来越普遍。从上个世纪70年代到80年代，茶的消费量在英国下降了20%，而同期这个国家咖啡消费量却在不断增长。事实上咖啡销量于1986年实现历史突破，首次超过了茶的销量。

The generational sipping gap was both real and really pronounced. But fast-forward to today and you see that the trend was also only just beginning.

因喝什么而产生的代沟不仅存在，而且还是很明显地存在。不过再次回到今天的世界，你会看到这种趋势在当年不过才刚刚开始。

The collection of line charts below, which were made by KILN, a British data visualization and digital journalism institute, and use data from the U.K. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, allow you to peek at how the British diet has changed over the decades. And few things have changed as much as the British appetite for tea.

陈列于下面的这些线形图是由英国数据可视化及数据新闻机构KILN制作的，而他们使用的数据则来自英国环境、食品及农业事务部。从中你可以窥见在过去几十年里英国人的食谱发生了怎样的改变。而且什么样的改变也比不上英国人对待茶的态度改变得那么多。

Tea consumption per person has fallen consistently since the early 1970s, plummeting from almost 68 grams per week in 1974 to only 25 grams per week in 2014, as shown in the chart at the bottom right. The plunge of more than 63 percent is one of the biggest among all beverages in the country. Only malt drinks and coffee essences (whatever those are) have had greater drops.

自从二十世纪70年代以来人均茶的消费量一直在持续下滑：右下图显示从1974年每周差不多68克骤然跌落到2014年的每周仅仅25克。在这个国家所有的饮料中这种超过63%的断崖式下跌属于最大跌幅之一了。只有麦芽饮料和咖啡精（不管什么口味）的跌幅超过它。

Coffee's trajectory, however, has been just the opposite. Its consumption has tripled since the early 1970s. (Have a look at the line chart in the upper right corner.)

但是咖啡的轨迹却正好相反。自上个世纪70年代早期开始，它的消费量已经翻了三番。（你可以看一看右上角的线形图表。）



The years have transformed what originally seemed like a decade-long quirk into a tectonic cultural shift that now spans nearly half a century. And there is no end to the collective tea abandonment in sight.

岁月已把那最初看来只会持续十年的不可思议之事，转变成了一场几乎跨越半个世纪并改变文化结构的潮流。而且人们一起抛弃饮茶现在看来也不会停止。

Just last year, volume sales of standard black tea bags fell by 2 percent in the United Kingdom, according to data from market research firm Euromonitor. Sales of coffee pods — the fastest-growing sector of the coffee market — rose by 33 percent. In each of the coming five years, Euromonitor expects overall coffee sales to grow and overall tea sales to fall.
根据“欧睿”的市场调查，英国的标准红茶袋的批量销售额仅去年（2015）就下跌2%。咖啡豆的销量（咖啡市场上增长最快的部分）上升了33%。“欧睿”认为在随后的每一个五年里咖啡的销量会上升，而茶的销量会下跌。

"Our forecast is based on a range of sources, including interviews with trade groups and other industry players, and none of them expect the standard black tea that is most commonly consumed to recover," said Fabian Staudenmeyer, who is an industry analyst with Euromonitor. "If you look five years out, it really doesn't look good."

作为“欧睿”的工业分析师，费边·斯道登梅耶说：“通过分析大量信息，包括采访各种贸易组织及其它工业竞争者，我们发现没人预测标准红茶何时恢复到需求最旺盛的时候。如果你往前再预测五年，行情真的不好。 ”

What. A. Bore.

真是很无聊的一种饮料

There are many reasons for the decline of one of the most celebrated tea drinking cultures in the world, but both one of the simplest and most significant might be this: tea, or really the kind of tea that has traditionally been drunk in the United Kingdom, is seen as being, well, kind of lame.

多种原因造成人们不再饮用这种享誉世界的饮料，不过最显而易见和最有说服力的原因在这里：茶，或者说英国人平常饮用的那类茶，被认为不能满足人们的需要了。

"It has a serious image problem here," said London-based Emma Clifford, who is the senior food and drink analyst at Mintel, an industry research group. "People, especially young people, are not excited about it at all. It's just too mundane."

作为工业研究组织敏特尔的一位资深饮食分析人员，常年以伦敦为研究基地的艾玛·克里福德说：“这里的人，尤其是年轻人已经完全不为它所动了。它太单调乏味了。”

Part of that, Clifford said, is intrinsic to black tea. A report released earlier this year by Mintel found that consumers associate standard tea with "tradition" more than anything else. And there is little younger generations care for less than parading around as their elders do. In many ways, the Times piece from nearly 30 years ago captures this:

克利福德还说：部分原因来自红茶的本性。敏特尔于今年（2016）上半年发布的一份调查报告称他们发现“传统”是消费者用来描述标准茶最常用的词。而且几乎没有年轻人愿意像他们的长辈那样重视仪式感了。《纽约时报》那篇发表于30年前的新闻报道从很多方面深刻地抓住了这一点：

Tea's fading popularity is attributed to faster-paced living, a generation gap and a stodgy image. Many people these days do not want to take the time to brew tea, and even fewer will interrupt their busy days for the leisurely, civilized ritual of afternoon tea, a 19th-century invention of Anna, seventh Duchess of Bedford, who decided that tea and cakes were the best antidote to a late afternoon ''sinking feeling.''

19世纪的贝德福德七世女公爵安娜发明了下午茶，认为茶和蛋糕是对抗黄昏时分出现的“沮丧感”的最好手段。（但是）越来越快的生活节奏、代沟以及茶那古板的形象造成茶的名望越来越暗淡。如今人们大多不愿意花时间去烹茶，更没人会为了显示有教养而打断繁忙的工作去制造一段闲暇的时光喝一杯下午茶。

... To many young Britons, tea drinking apparently has a dated image, vaguely reminiscent of the ''old England'' stereotype that young people find irritating. ''Tea has an old-fashioned, dowdy image,'' conceded Illtyd Lewis, executive director of the United Kingdom Tea Council, a trade group that seeks to spur tea sales. ''It is unfortunately viewed as a down-market drink.''
Many of these observations, which help explain why the generational gap is so pronounced, are just as keen now as they were then.

……大部分年轻人认为饮茶是一种明显过时的标志，会让人模模糊糊联想起令年轻一代大为光火的 “老式英格兰”之刻板印象。英国茶叶委员会的执行理事伊尔蒂德·刘易斯承认“茶自带一种过时的、土里土气的形象。它被看作是正在被市场抛弃的饮料真的很不幸。”不论是过去还是现在这样敏锐的观察从未间断过，它们帮助解释了代沟为何出现得如此毅然决然。

But part of black tea's wounded reputation today is also relative. The British, unlike their European counterparts in countries like France and Italy, don't have a history of coffee snobbism. Quite the contrary, in fact. The United Kingdom is among the surprisingly large number of countries around the world where people (actually) drink instant coffee more often than any other kind of coffee, a sign, above all, of coffee amateurism. And that has left a lot of room not only for innovation in the coffee space, but also excitement for that innovation.

不过今天伤害红茶名声的部分原因也是相对的。不列颠不像它的欧洲同僚——比如法国和意大利——那样有着一批自命咖啡优于茶饮的势利分子。 事实还正好相反。在这个星球上存在着大量的以消费速溶咖啡为主的国家，这种现象很令人吃惊，因为这种迹象说明了咖啡的业余性，而联合王国就位列其中。这就不仅为咖啡改革留下了大量空间，也刺激了人们去改革咖啡。

The United Kingdom "is a special case where they have long preferred instant coffee, the cheap powder coffee that really has an unsophisticated taste," said Staudenmeyer. "But that has changed dramatically."

费边·斯道登梅耶认为英国“人长久地钟爱速溶咖啡很特别，因为便宜的粉末状咖啡真的有一种淳朴的味道。但是这种状况正在发生巨大的改变。”

New technologies, like coffee pods, have proved extremely popular in the United Kingdom, likely because they are such a marked step up from the instant coffee the country has long endured. As have new caffeine-centric experiences, like coffee shops, which are quickly becoming a staple of modern British society. Today there are more than 20,000 shops in the country, a number which jumped 12 percent just last year.

已经有证据证明针对咖啡豆的新科技已在英国广泛流行起来，或许可以将它们看作是这个长久容忍速溶咖啡的国家往前迈出了一步的标志。像咖啡店这样以体验咖啡因为本的新地方正迅速成为现代不列颠社会的主要组成部分。今天在这个国家有多于2万家这样的店铺，与去年（2015）相比，这个数字跳涨12%。

Even within the tea world, a number of other less popular teas—many of them green and herbal—have been branded as exotic, tied to health benefits, and, as result, associated with coolness in a way their run-of-the-mill counterpart is not.

即使在茶饮的世界中，其它不是那么流行的茶饮品种（多数是绿茶和凉茶），因多标榜自身的异国风情以及饮之对健康有利，从而让它们（消费额）在与它们普普通通的同类下降（的消费额）相比时，显得并没有下降。   

"When you compare standard black tea to all these other drinks, like fruit infusions and green tea and coffee of course, where you have all these innovations, standard black tea is not keeping up with the level of innovations," said Staudenmeyer. "These drinks are interesting and new and exciting and fresh. Standard black tea is not."

“当你把标准红茶与其它种类饮料作比较时，例如果茶、绿茶、当然少不了咖啡，在其它所有饮料都在进行革新的时候，标准红茶没有持续革新，”费边·斯道登梅耶说。“那些饮料既有趣又新潮，既让人兴奋又有吸引力。”

The problem, Staudenmeyer points out, is that standard black tea still accounts for the vast majority of tea consumption in the United Kingdom, making the bore that is standard black tea all the more important for the overall tea market. As standard black tea goes, so does tea broadly, and volumes sales of standard black tea have fallen by 8 percent since 2010 alone, bringing the broader tea market down with it.

费边·斯道登梅耶指出问题在于虽然标准红茶依然占领着不列颠茶饮消费的大部分江山，但是出现这种现象是由于标准红茶在全球茶叶市场上正变得越来越重要带来的结果。于是标准红茶的销量怎么走，茶叶市场也就跟着怎么走。仅2010年标准红茶销量就下降8%，拖累整个茶叶市场销量下降。

Wake up call

对召唤的回应

Questions of coolness aside, there is a certain level of practicality that has propelled both the withering appeal of traditional tea and soaring popularity of coffee culture in the United Kingdom.

除了讨论人们为什么不爱喝茶了，英国还存在造成传统茶饮萎缩并推动咖啡文化人气飙升的某种实用性。      

"You can't really talk about these trends without talking about caffeine," said Clifford, the analyst with Mintel. "The fact that coffee has so much more caffeine, that it has so much more of on an energy-boosting functionality, has made it much more important to young people."

敏特尔分析师克利福德说：“如果你撇开咖啡因去谈论这场变迁，那么你还没有触及它的核心。现实情况是咖啡含有大量能激发能量的咖啡因，这种物质让咖啡对年轻人而言更为重要。”

Clifford points to the success of energy drinks in the country, sales of which grew by more than 60 percent between 2008 and 2014, according to a 2015 report by the British Soft Drinks Association, as evidence.
克利福德指出能量饮料在这个国家取得了成功，其销售额在2008年至2014年就增长了60%，并引用英国软饮料协会2015年的报告作为证据。   

She also says that there's another, often overlooked factor. The growing villainization of sugar in the Western world, which has been most pronounced over the past 20 or so years, has led to a considerable scaling back in the consumption of many treats traditionally eaten alongside tea.

她还说另有一个往往会被忽视的因素：在过去20年中，糖正在西方社会里大开杀戒。这已经引起了极大关注，因为（糖的消费量的增加）让传统上与茶一起被消费的吃食相应缩减了。



To many others, sweets might be an ideal accompaniment to coffee, but not to the British, says Clifford. "There is much stronger link between biscuits and cake consumption and tea consumption," she said. "They're seen as the perfect pairing, but now that the country is cutting back on these items, the occasion to drink tea is becoming less frequent."

克利福德说对非英国人而言糖可能是咖啡的理想搭档，但是对英国人而言不是这样。“在饼干蛋糕的消费量与茶的消费量之间存在更为强烈的联系，”她说，“（人们）将它们看作完美搭配，但是现在这个国家正在减少对这些东西的消费，这也说明人们不是那么经常地喝茶了。”

I'll have whatever they're having

他们吃什么我就吃什么

Before the British were abandoning their favorite pastime, they were going to battle for its preservation. In the 1970s, right around the time that consumption of standard black tea was hovering around record levels, a workplace dispute became a question of great national interest. Tea breaks had been a part of the British workday since at least the late 1700s, when workers brewed sugar-infused pots to keep their energy up. But suddenly they were under attack. Or rather, the leisure with which they were enjoyed was.

在英国人放弃他们最喜欢的消遣之前，他们还是要为保留它而奋斗一番的。在上个世纪70年代，正好就是在标准红茶的消费量达到创纪录的最高峰的时候，一场有关工作场所（能做什么）的争论变成了一个吸引全国目光的问题。最晚在18世纪茶歇就是英国工作日的一部分了。工人们煮一壶加了糖的茶保证他们精力充沛。但是突然之间他们受到了攻击。或者这么说吧，他们享受的闲暇时光受到了攻击。

An effort, led by then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, aimed to shorten the daily breaks, which they argued were weighing British productivity down. It was, in some senses, a revolt against the old British system by the new order. But tea breaks were held in high regard, especially among those who enjoyed them: workers. Tea time was considered a perk, just as paid holidays, medical care, and reasonable wages were. And so the effort to scale it back met fierce opposition, particularly from trade unions, which led to a series of "tea break strikes."

由于认为工作时段的休息让英国人的效率更为低下，当时的首相撒切尔夫人发起了一场旨在缩短工作时段的休息时间的运动。从某种意义上讲，这场运动是一次用新的秩序抹灭英国旧式系统的叛乱。但是茶歇是受到高度尊重的，尤其是在享受茶歇的工人们中间。茶歇时间被当作一种额外津贴、一次带薪休假、一种医疗保险、一份合理的工资。因此这场试图缩短茶歇时间的运动遇到了激烈的反抗，其中以来自工会的反抗最为激烈，他们还为此组织了一系列“茶歇罢工”。

The battle to preserve tea breaks was, of course, lost — they are no longer the staple they once were. And that defeat seems to have reverberated for decades, making its way from the workplace to just about every other place in British society.

保护茶歇的斗争当然都失败了。而茶歇也不再像它们当初那样必不可少了。而那场失败的后果几十年以来依然波澜不息，并从工厂扩展到英国社会的方方面面。

Some might mourn the slow but steady fall of standard black tea. But in retrospect, the national obsession might have benefited from a bit of scaling back, at least according to outsiders. As NPR noted earlier this year, around the same time that British workers were vehemently defending their right to take long tea breaks, American expats living and working in the country were "baffled by the rigor with which teatime was observed." It just seemed pretty inefficient, as an incredible anecdote shared in the piece shows:

有些人可能会哀叹标准红茶缓慢却无法阻挡的衰落。但是追根溯源，这个令举国魂牵梦绕的东西本来是可以从略微后退中获得好处的（至少在外人看来如此）。正如今年（2016）早些时候国家公共电台指出的那样，就在英国工人激烈捍卫他们争取更长时间茶歇的权利的同时，生活并工作在该国的美国人“对他们看到的茶歇的那一套僵硬刻板感到困惑。” 就如下面这段令人难以置信的趣闻中讲到的那样，茶歇似乎真的没有效率。      

In the summer of 1976, Lucas was shooting the first Star Wars in England's EMI-Elstree Studios, chosen for its enormous empty studio space. He had a hellish time, writes J.W. Rinzler in The Making Of Star Wars. The English crew had little respect either for Lucas or his peculiar film involving light sabers that kept breaking. And while Lucas admired the crew's technical skills, he was bewildered by their work habits. Work began at 8:30 a.m., stopped for an hourlong lunch and two tea breaks at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., and ended at 5:30 p.m. sharp, after which the crew promptly went to the pub. When it was break time, filming would stop dead, even if things happened to be mid-scene.

1976年夏天，卢卡斯看中了英格兰的百代埃尔斯特里摄影棚巨大空旷的空间，开始在那里拍摄第一部《星战》。林兹勒在《星战制造史》一书中写道：卢卡斯在那里过得很不开心。英方工作人员既不尊重卢卡斯，也不尊重他那部光刀被不断折断的古怪电影。当卢卡斯称赞英方工作人员的技术及技能时，也被他们的工作习惯弄得手足无措。一天的工作从早上八点半开始，（中午时分）停止工作吃一个小时的午饭。除此之外在上午11点和下午4点分别还有两次茶歇。一天的工作会在下午五点半准时结束，然后英方工作人员马上进了酒吧。只要是休息时间，即使拍摄进行到中途，整个拍摄过程也会突然停止。

Today, there's a bit of irony in the sort of culture clash Lucas experienced while filming in England 30 years ago. The decades have turned a growing number of British against their national pastime, and onto coffee, which has long been a staple of the U.S. workday. Meanwhile, just across the Atlantic, Americans are fawning over tea. Sales of tea quintupled between 1999 and 2013, according to data from Euromonitor. And they continue to grow. Just last year, the market for black tea grew by 5 percent in the United States.

今天，我们在卢卡斯30年前于英格兰所经历的文化冲突中只看到一点点讽刺而已。几十年的时光已经让越来越多的英国人起而反对他们的国民消遣，并转向咖啡这种长久以来一直是美国人的工作日燃料的饮料。但同时在大西洋彼岸，美国人却在开始夸赞茶。根据来自“欧洲商情调研”的数据，从1999年到2013年（在美国）茶的销量翻了五倍，并在持续上涨。仅仅去年（2015）里，美国市场对茶的需求就增长了5%。

Everything is relative. Even the coolness of standard black tea.

每一件事情都是相对的。即使（在英国）遭到冷遇的标准红茶。