Chapter 19 Escort

Whether it is a dining room at home or a restaurant on the street, nowadays, wherever there is food and drink, not only must there be food and drink, but there must be at least one kind of media on the side. It is clear that I am referring to the TV, newspapers and stereos that "serve" at the dinner table, or "escorts" for short, and they are legal.It is unimaginable to have a restaurant without a TV and a family without a TV for dinner. Eating this kind of unplug dinner is like watching a TV with no picture. Ten thousand do not agree. Eat while watching, reading and eating, listening and eating—people who understand "life" regard this as "enjoyment", those who love work regard it as "efficiency", and those who are good at running restaurants call it "enjoyment". It is called "value-added service of catering".All in all, the main role of the media at the dinner table is to ensure that all the sense organs of the eater are in working condition, and no one is missing, and no one is left behind.

In fact, in this era of unprecedented development of mass media and mass catering, the relationship between video, text and sound and eating and drinking is not limited to the traditional "adding to the fun" and "serving with wine". These flirtatious "escorts" were swallowed directly into their stomachs like meals. The media influences the public, and the public transforms the media.On the one hand, the meal time is a statutory rest period, which is not only suitable for eating and drinking, but also suitable for reading newspapers and watching TV, so this time period becomes the golden time for the media; It is also adjusting the dining hours of audiences in different time zones, that is to say, eating and the media influence each other and "massage" each other.To use a famous saying in communication, that is: "It is important not to look at what the media does to the public, but to look at what the public does to the media." (Not what media do to the people, what people do to the media .)

In fact, the dining table itself is a media. When it reached a communication agreement with the wine and food, diners, TV, and newspapers, catering has since become a super media, and the media has since then become a super restaurant. To investigate the relationship between food and the media, a teahouse or teahouse is an excellent "field". I found that in Chinese society, wherever the newspaper industry flourishes, there must also be a place where the tea drinking industry thrives.At present, among the big cities with better quality newspapers and the fiercest newspaper industry competition, namely Guangzhou, Chengdu, Nanjing, Hangzhou and Beijing, which one is not the most representative city in China's "teahouse culture" and "teahouse culture"?

As for Hong Kong, which has the highest number of newspapers per capita in the world (population 6 million, publishing 743 newspapers), it is not so much a region with the largest number of newspaper readers in Asia and the largest center of Chinese publications in the world. It is said to be "the region with the largest number of tea drinkers in Asia, and the largest pilot teahouse center in the world".Sitting in any tea house, tea restaurant or restaurant in the tea market in Hong Kong, Kowloon and New Territories, it is like being in a newspaper editorial office that is proofreading the layout. Almost everyone at the table is holding a cup in one hand and a newspaper in the other, lips Wandering over the rim of the teacup, eyes scanning the square inches of the newspaper.This kind of situation, which is enough to make every journalist want to cry from the bottom of his heart, will be magnified ten times every Sunday. Some people read the newspaper in their seats, and those who are waiting for a seat read the newspaper outside the gate. The newspapermen decorate the scenery of the teahouse, and the teahouse decorates the newspapers of the newspapermen.Dad is immersed in sports and horse classics, mother shuttles between cooking and shopping, beats children to read video game strategies, and children read puzzle games, just like a super newspaper group that "kills mistakes and never lets them go".

The atmosphere of reading newspapers in teahouses is strong or thick, but the way tea drinkers read newspapers is fundamentally different from the purposeful "violent reading method".The former is generally relaxed, undisciplined, and sloppy, with mixed feelings.This newspaper-reading attitude not only coincided perfectly with tea-drinking, but also to some extent influenced the content and style of at least the Sunday papers.In Guangzhou, which has a large number of tea-loving citizens, since the major local newspapers have expanded their pages in the late 1990s, the first reaction of readers is, "Drinking tea will be more enjoyable from now on." Taste, more comfortable."

Newspapers sold in teahouses represent a small, statistically insignificant share of total circulation, but teahouse culture, including newspaper reading habits in The influence of journalists cannot be underestimated. The word "enjoyment" is sometimes referred to as "sigh" in Cantonese. Enjoying smoking is "sighing a cigarette"; enjoying life is "sighing the world"; enjoying drinking tea is called "sighing tea"; enjoying reading newspapers is called It is "sigh newspaper"—especially when reading a newspaper while drinking tea.A person who is in the state of drinking tea, a person who is "sighing tea", has a completely relaxed and hedonistic mentality. To use the terminology of newspapers, this kind of mentality is basically "supplement" and "weekend".Teahouses, teahouses, supplements, and weekends are the food culture and newspaper culture with the most Chinese characteristics.

In the sense of "sighing tea" and "sighing newspapers", newspaper publishers in Guangdong and Hong Kong need to keep teahouses and tea drinkers in their minds all the time, even in those places where teahouses and teahouse culture, civil society and public space When running newspapers in underdeveloped Chinese-speaking areas, all editors and editors must keep those readers who drink tea in a large glass bottle at their desks in their hearts at all times.In addition, I think they all need to remember McLuhan's famous saying: "People never actually read newspapers. They look through newspapers every day like taking a hot bath."

Ambiguousness is McLuhan's consistent style of speaking, and this sentence is no exception. However, as far as "sighing the newspaper", McLuhan's sentence is quite accurate, although Cantonese are accustomed to taking a cold bath and absorbing heat. Water baths are collectively referred to as "showers". If the newspaper used to serve tea is a cold medium with the nature of a cold bath, then the TV that we can hardly do without at the dinner table is a hot bath and hot medium, which is most suitable for delivering meals (according to my opinion) According to observations, tea drinkers mostly choose newspapers and don’t pay much attention to TV when drinking tea).As far as the mentality of readers and eaters is concerned, drinking tea not only relaxes, but also has a sense of relaxation. Eating is different. Apart from relaxation, the animal impatience and aggressiveness cannot be avoided. There is no doubt that TV programs The way of production and broadcasting is adapted to the eating state of most viewers to the greatest extent.

Lao Mai also said: "Spiritual food is like material food, and input is never equal to output."Changed to a Chinese expression, this is called "wine and meat pass through the intestines, and the information stays in the heart".