Chapter 38 Let's have afternoon tea!

Tea has its way, but coffee has no way: tea is mysterious, coffee is bohemian.To paraphrase Roland Barthes, tea is the "totem-drink" of the British, and the two teas in the morning and afternoon are the desserts of human rights. Only coffee is left after lunch and dinner, and it is vulgar to insist that drinking milk tea after meals Therefore, I am not educated, I would rather ask for trouble, drink black coffee with no sugar and no milk to kill my social status, and endure foreigners laughing that the coffee they brew tastes like "wrung out of a wet and dirty sleeve water"!Fortunately, James Laver was humorous and ridiculed. He wrote the tea scriptures saying that coffee refreshes people and spirits hypnotize them. The French drank a lot of coffee in the 18th century, and a group of scholars who could compile encyclopedias came out. To kill an opponent is to fall into a deep sleep; drinking tea will neither hypnotize you nor make you argumentative, but calm your mind. No wonder the British have "forbearance".In fact, the method used by the British East India Company to monopolize the tea market back then was not "forgiving", and finally provoked the tea party and independent affairs in the United States.

Knowing the culture of tea, most of them pay attention to the right way of drinking tea; an elder joked in a letter: "Although tea is good, replacing stone stoves with gas stoves, earthenware pots with stainless steel pots, and springs with tap water will inevitably spoil the scenery." Old man Tang advocated drinking green tea as the authentic tea, saying that black tea with sugar and milk was meaningless, and he disapproved of the passage about afternoon tea written in the winter volume of George Gissing's "Caotang Essays".After all, Jixin is a master of articles, and he really understands the afternoon tea samadhi. The pen is elegantly written like a famous British porcelain tea set. Putting on an old coat, curling up in a soft chair in the study and waiting for afternoon tea, there is a trace of leisure at that moment. Not only is his writing not trivial, but it is wise.At the turning point of the pen, there will be a shelf full of good books, a few pictures, a pipe, and a few confidants; it is a pleasure to say that strangers come to drink tea, and old friends come to drink tea!Seeing outsiders, withdrawn to the point of polite arrogance, it's really fun, not inferior to Xu Ranming in Ming Dynasty's "Tea Book": "There are a lot of guests and friends, and it's just enough to exchange bells and cups; In the same tone, they are comfortable with each other, eloquent and eloquent, and they are out of shape, so they can call children to carry fire, draw water and order soup." When the maid came to serve tea, Ji Xin saw that she had changed into a clean dress and baked bread. His face was drunk.His spirit became more and more radiant.At this time, she didn't talk about tedious housework, but only picked out a few auspicious words to amuse the master, and then retreated to the warm kitchen with a smile to eat her own afternoon tea.The tea side is warm, lightly described, almost concealed, very good!

The taste of tea often reminds people of human feelings, otherwise there would be no such thing as "tea and sympathy"; Jonas Hanway in the 18th century didn't know how to measure, he scolded the maid who drank tea too much, her face was haggard, and he also scolded the road construction workers to drink tea at leisure For tea, it is calculated that one million workers work 280 days a year, and each person deducts one hour for making and drinking tea for every 12 working hours. The British treasury loses 583,333 pounds a year !To be honest, these aristocrats deliberately did not want the working class to follow them: the East India Company controlled the tea market for about a hundred years, and the price of tea in London was four pounds per pound, and only the aristocratic and rich could afford it. During that period, other European countries successively With the reduction of tea tax, the second-grade tea was exported to the UK one after another. It was only sold for two shillings a pound, and the general public began to taste the taste of tea!British pornographic publications still publish many pornographic stories about middle-class women seducing strong laborers to drink tea and go to bed. Although they are novelists' words, they ridicule James Hanway, a pseudo-husband who is both physically and mentally weak.

The novelist Fielding has long believed that "love" and rumors are the best sugar for making tea." Sure enough, after a duchess Anna invented the afternoon tea party in the middle of the nineteenth century, the laughter and tears of the ladies and ladies were reflected in the silver white porcelain. In the tea set, the separation and reunion in the tea cup is stirred between the elegant floral tablecloth, cucumber bread, and cake cubes. Since then, women and tea have added a lot of sour and sweet inspiration to literature: Dorothy Parker's The Both last Tea and VSPritehett's Teawith Mrs. Bittell are short stories, but the paper is short and the love is long. The tea is full of universe, which is enough to remind people of the ancients' theory of "drinking and sucking". The so-called tea in a pot can only be read again; The tour is delicious, and then it is mellow. The three tours are exhausted, so it is said that "the first tour is Tingting for more than thirteen years, and the second tour is the year of jasper breaking melons. Since the third tour, the green leaves have become shady"!

Later, the feminist movement in the UK uttered an angry roar for the housewives and female workers who boiled water and tea!The famous columnist Katharine Whitehom wrote in the "Observer" complaining that women spend their time with pickled vegetables is the most boring: "Some people say: without tea, who can live? Tell them to die, and they will live. I said that tea is a British disease." "And "English family life is exhausting, and it's the goddamn thing about poor tea." But what's the mood of "Last Tea"?The young man in the chocolate-colored suit in Barker's novel sat down at the table, and the woman with the faux camellia had been sitting there for forty minutes. "I'm late," he said, "I'm sorry to keep you waiting." "My God!" she said, "I've just arrived, too. I wanted a cup of tea so badly that I ordered a cup as soon as I walked in." Actually I'm late too. I just sat down for less than a minute." "That's all right," he said, "be careful, don't put so much sugar--one piece is enough. Get those cakes away. Oops! I'm in a bad mood Fuck!" she said, "Really? What the hell happened?"

fine. "Grinding tea and burning incense is always clear, so you might as well do your own work." It just kills the boring time. How can British tea lovers not learn this attitude?The turmoil in the teacup is the most boring: the description of a cartoon in the "Clumsy" magazine said: "If this cup is coffee, then I want tea; but if this cup is tea, then I prefer coffee." Gissing's maid left The tea in Gissing's teacup is still good enough: let's have afternoon tea!