英国人下午茶文化背后不为人知的故事

众所周知，中国是最早开始喝茶的国家，西方人为此深表感激。但是，多亏了葡萄牙人，特别是一位葡萄牙女性，喝茶才得以在英国广泛传播，而这一点却鲜为人知。

And while it’s fairly common knowledge that Westerners have China to thank for the original cultivation of the tannic brew, it’s far less known that it was the Portuguese who inspired its popularity in England – in particular, one Portuguese woman.

1662年，布拉干萨王朝（Braganza）的公主凯瑟琳（葡萄牙国王约翰四世之女）嫁给了英国国王查理二世，其嫁妆极其丰厚，包括金银财宝、香料以及经济价值巨大的重要港口丹吉尔和孟买。联姻之后，凯瑟琳成为英格兰、苏格兰与爱尔兰的王后，地位显赫。

Travel back in time to 1662, when Catherine of Braganza (daughter of Portugal’s King John IV) won the hand of England’s newly restored monarch, King Charles II, with the help of a very large dowry that included money, spices, treasures and the lucrative ports of Tangiers and Bombay. This hookup made her one very important lady: the Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland.

之后，她一路北进与查理国王会合，据说其随身物品中包含一些散装茶叶；也许，这也是其陪嫁物品之一。有趣的是，传说这些茶叶在《芳香植物的运输》（Transporte de Ervas Aromaticas）一书中有所记载，该书后来被简称为“T.E.A.”。

When she relocated up north to join King Charles, she is said to have packed loose-leaf tea as part of her personal belongings; it would also have likely been part of her dowry. A fun legend has it that the crates were marked Transporte de Ervas Aromaticas (Transport of Aromatic Herbs) – later abbreviated to T.E.A.

凯瑟琳刚到英国之时，茶叶只是作为一种药品在市场流通，药效是帮助人们振奋精神、理气健脾。但是，这位年轻的王后习惯于每天饮茶，坚持饮茶的习惯。久而久之，茶叶便不再是健康提神药品，发展成为社交饮品，开始在英国盛行。

When Catherine arrived in England, tea was being consumed there only as a medicine, supposedly invigorating the body and keeping the spleen free of obstructions. But since the young queen was used to sipping the pick-me-up as part of her daily routine, she no doubt continued her habit, making it popular as a social beverage rather than as a health tonic.

“与查理国王联姻之后，凯瑟琳迅速成为众人关注的焦点——她的穿着打扮、她使用的家具……所有与她相关的东西都成为王室谈资，”《布拉干萨王朝公主凯瑟琳：查理二世的王后》作者莎拉·贝丝·沃特金斯说。“她的日常饮茶活动引来许多人纷纷效仿。贵妇们纷涌而至，模仿其饮茶习惯以便融入王后的社交圈。”　

“When Catherine married Charles, she was the focus of attention – everything from her clothes to her furniture became the source of court talk,” said Sarah-Beth Watkins, author of Catherine of Braganza: Charles II's Restoration Queen. “Her regular drinking of tea encouraged others to drink it. Ladies flocked to copy her and be a part of her circle.”

凯瑟琳嫁来英国不久，当红诗人埃德蒙德·瓦勒甚至为她写了一首生日颂，将这位来自葡萄牙的王后与英国的饮茶之风永远联系在了一起。诗歌中这样写道：

“最英明的王后，最神奇的植物，

那个勇敢的国家，

阳光沐浴着的美丽之地，

给予我们的丰厚恩赐，

我们讴歌着，

用一颗感恩的心。”

Hot poet of the time, Edmund Waller, even wrote a birthday ode to her shortly after her arrival, which forever linked the queen and Portugal with the fashionable status of tea in England. He wrote:

“The best of Queens, and best of herbs, we owe

To that bold nation, which the way did show

To the fair region where the sun doth rise,

Whose rich productions we so justly prize.”

准确来说，茶叶在凯瑟琳嫁来英国之前已经出现，但是当时并不流行。“据记载，瓦勒于1657年便有饮茶的习惯，这比凯瑟琳的出现早了整整六年，”伦敦玛丽王后大学的教授马克曼·埃利斯说，其致力于18世纪研究，与人合著《茶叶帝国：征服世界的亚洲树叶》。“他是有名的饮茶爱好者，这在当时并不多见，究其原因是茶叶价格昂贵，当时所有人都喝咖啡。”

To be fair, tea could be found in England before Catherine arrived, but it wasn’t very popular. “Waller is recorded drinking tea in 1657, which is a whole six years before Catherine turns up,” said Markman Ellis, professor of 18th-Century Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, and co-author of Empire of Tea: The Asian Leaf that Conquered the World. “He is a well-known aficionado for tea, which is unusual because it was so expensive and everyone was drinking coffee at this time.”

茶叶昂贵的原因有三：一是当时英国同中国没有直接的贸易往来；二是印度的茶叶还没有传到英国；三是荷兰人进口的茶叶数量少，所以售价非常高昂。

The reason for the cost was threefold: England had no direct trade with China; tea from India wasn’t around yet; and the small quantities that the Dutch were importing were sold at a very high premium.

“茶叶之所以如此昂贵，是因为从中国进口的关税非常高，”简·佩蒂格鲁说，其著有《茶叶社会史》一书，在2014年世界茶业大奖中被授予最佳茶业教育工作者奖，担任英国茶学院研究主任。　

“It was very expensive because it came from China and it was taxed very heavily,” explained Jane Pettigrew, author of A Social History of Tea, winner of the 2014 World Tea Awards’ Best Tea Educator and director of studies at UK Tea Academy.

实际上，当时茶叶的价格高得惊人（一英镑的价格相当于工薪阶级一年的收入），埃利斯还提道，“除了社会最上层、最富有的人，其他人都不可能负担得起茶叶。因此茶叶成为贵妇与王室结交的手段，通过茶叶与凯瑟琳结交便是最好的例子。”　

Indeed it was so pricey (a pound went for as much as a working-class citizen made in a year), that, according to Ellis, “it ruled out anyone but the most elite and wealthiest sectors of society. So tea became associated with elite women’s sociability around the royal court, of which Catherine was the most famous emblem.”

名人饮茶又有何妨呢？普通人会效仿名人饮茶。“无论王后做什么，其他人都会盲目效仿。于是，到了17世纪末，贵族们自然而然开始少量饮茶，”佩蒂格鲁说。　

And what happens with famous people? Non-famous people imitate them. “When the queen does something, everyone wants to follow suit, so very, very gradually by the end of the 17th Century, the aristocracy hadd sipping small amounts of tea,” Pettrigrew said.

当然，饮茶仪式并不是上层阶级的发明，也是源于模仿。据佩蒂格鲁所述，“直到荷兰人带来茶叶，我们英国人才对茶叶有所了解。我们没有糖匙，没有茶杯，没有茶壶（只有厨房水壶），所以还是沿用老办法：模仿中国的整套饮茶仪式。我们从中国进口小的瓷茶杯、杯托、糖匙器具以及小茶壶。”

Of course, the upper class didn’t invent the ritual of tea-drinking themselves – they were imitators too. As Pettigrew recounted, “Until tea arrived with the Dutch, we [the English] didn’t know anything about tea. No sugar spoons, no cups, no tea kettles (only kitchen kettles), so we did what always happens: we copied the entire ritual from China. We imported Chinese tiny porcelain tea bowls, the saucers, the dishes for sugar, the small teapots.”

饮茶瓷器之所以风靡英国，还受到凯瑟琳的母国——葡萄牙的影响。“葡萄牙是瓷器进口到欧洲的路线之一，”埃利斯说道。“瓷器价格昂贵，但非常精致漂亮，饮茶之所以受欢迎的原因之一就是可以使用这些精美的茶具，就像拥有最新款苹果手机一样。”　　

Catherine’s home country had a hand in in popularising this aspect of the tea experience, too. “Portugal was one of the routes [by which] porcelain got to Europe,” Ellis noted. “It was very expensive and very beautiful, and one of the things that made tea drinking attractive was all the pretty stuff that went with it, like having the latest iPhone.”

也许正因为瓷器贵重才能够作为凯瑟琳的嫁妆。像其他的贵妇一样，凯瑟琳开始在英国生活之后，利用这些精美之物增加下午茶的情趣。佩蒂格鲁解释说，“一开始，她只是在王室里饮茶，将其作为一种贵族的习惯，场面奢华，十足的上层阶级做派。因此，饮茶仪式自中国传入之后便迅速与高雅生活密不可分。茶叶一传入英国，便与贵妇、豪宅产生联系，我认为凯瑟琳在这个过程中发挥了重要作用，主要原因是瓷器的价格非常昂贵。穷人只配使用陶器，只有贵族才用得起一切贵重之物。现代社会也是如此：消费的东西越贵，代表你的地位越高。”　

Since it was so prized, porcelain was probably part of Catherine’s dowry, and, like other aristocratic ladies, she would have accrued many gorgeous trappings to pad out her tea sessions once she was living in England. Pettigrew explained, “Shed it as an aristocratic habit in her palaces – very posh, very upper class, and so the ceremony that arrived from China was immediately associated with fine living. As soon as tea arrived, it had very strong connections to feminine women and very big houses, I suppose through Catherine, because the porcelain cost huge amounts of money. The poor had to make due with earthenware. So everything that was expensive had to do with the aristocracy. It’s the same as today: You buy expensive things to show how important you are.”

后来，下层阶级使饮茶变得更加平民化。但在当今社会，伦敦的游客依然可以通过高档酒店提供的下午茶服务体验贵族的奢华，尤其是在伦敦朗廷酒店（Langham Hotel）的廷廊（据称这里是下午茶的诞生地）、赫赫有名的伦敦丽兹酒店（Ritz London）和凯莱奇酒店（Claridge's）。

Eventually the lower classes transformed tea into a more egalitarian drink, but today, travellers to London can still experience the aristocratic pomp and circumstance at upscale hotels’ afternoon tea services, most notably at the Langham Hotel’s Palm Court in London (which claims to be the birthplace of afternoon tea), the famed Ritz London and Claridge’s.

此外，您还可以在葡萄牙体验极其盛大的饮茶仪式。尽管如此，就算在葡萄牙，英国饮茶之风与凯瑟琳王后的渊源也鲜为人知。然而，古镇辛特拉（Sintra）的一个酒店要努力改变这一状况。这就是提弗里瑟特阿斯皇宫酒店（Tivoli Palácio de Seteais Sintra Hotel），酒店总经理马里奥·库斯托迪奥（Mario Custódio）举办以凯瑟琳为主题的下午茶活动。“读书时，我们不了解这段历史，”库斯托迪奥说，“我什么也不清楚，就连其他葡萄牙人对此也一无所知。”

You can find fancy tea events in Portugal too, but even there, the link to Queen Catherine is not well known. In the historic municipality of Sintra, though, one hotel is trying to change that. At the Tivoli Palácio de Seteais Sintra Hotel, general manager Mario Custódio is about to launch a special afternoon tea themed after Catherine in October. “In school we don’t get this [history],” Custódio said. “I had no idea. Even the Portuguese don’t know this.”

辛特拉地区距离里斯本大约30分钟的行程，向外延伸到植被茂盛的山脚下。这里因云集欧洲浪漫主义建筑而闻名，被列入教科文组织世界遗产名录。瑟特阿斯宫（Seteais Palace）由荷兰领事丹尼尔·吉尔德梅斯特（Daniel Gildemeester）于18世纪80年代建成，宫殿装饰奢华、造型独特，成为辛特拉景观中的一道亮丽风景线。婚礼蛋糕式样的怪异装饰物高高耸立于交错蔓生的花园与公园之上。虽然凯瑟琳王后从未居住于此，但这里云集的古老财富、经典的建筑群将葡萄牙贵族过去的生活呈现得淋漓尽致。想象一下，一群衣着华丽的贵妇正在富丽堂皇的会客厅聚会，时不时传来清脆的茶杯撞击声，以及叽叽喳喳的交头接耳声。　　

The area of Sintra, spread across lush green mountains about 30 minutes outside Lisbon, is a Unesco World Heritage Site, noted for its concentrated displays of European romantic architecture. The Seteais Palace, built in the 1780s by Dutch consul Daniel Gildemeester, is just one of several ornate, whimsical estate homes that dot the Sintra landscape; wedding-cake follies overlooking intricate, sprawling gardens and parks. Queen Catherine never lived here, but the concentration of old wealth and must-see mansions makes it the perfect place to reflect on what the lives of Portuguese nobility used to be like. You can easily imagine opulently dressed noblewomen gathering in opulently draped drawing rooms, clinking teacups and swapping news and gossip.

库斯托迪奥认为，将这些鲜为人知的历史碎片通过现实呈现出来，可以帮助游客获得更独特、更个性化的旅游体验。“我之所以努力将这些不为人知的历史呈现出来，是因为这些是现代社会的财富，”他说。　

For Custódio, bringing these little-known bits of history to life is what makes the travel experience special and personal for visitors. “I’m trying to [present] these things that are very unknown because that is luxury today,” he said.

日常下午茶服务（只对酒店客人开放）能够凸显葡萄牙与高雅饮茶传统之间的渊源。例如，库斯托迪奥正与历史学家合作，希望能够做出凯瑟琳王后当时饮用的茶（埃利斯认为很可能是绿茶，原因是王后死后很长时间，直到19世纪30年代，才有印度来的茶叶引入到英国）。库斯托迪奥还希望能够做出橘子酱，这是因为在研究过程中，他偶然发现橘子酱也是布拉干萨王朝公主凯瑟琳诸多神秘传说之一。据说，世界上最好的橘子有一部分来自于葡萄牙，凯瑟琳王后会定期将这些橘子运往其英国的新家。有些橘子在运输途中品质下降，最后就被做成了橘子酱。若是能享用到完好无损的橘子自然最好，但如果凯瑟琳王后送给您的礼物是橘子酱而不是橘子，那说明她并不是非常看重您呀。

The daily tea service (open only to hotel guests), will highlight aspects of the Portuguese connection to this genteel tradition. For instance, Custódio is working with a historian to serve the type of tea Catherine would have drank (Ellis thinks it’s most likely a green tea, as no tea came out of India until the 1830s, long after she’d passed away). Marmalade will also be part of the menu, as that’s another part of the Catherine of Braganza mythology that Custódio has stumbled across in his research. The tale goes that, since some of the best oranges in the world come from Portugal, Catherine had them shipped over to her new English home regularly. The ones that didn’t make the journey in top condition were turned into marmalade. Of course, whole oranges were a more prized snack, so if Queen Catherine gave you a gift of marmalade instead of oranges, it meant she didn’t think that much of you.The spread at the Seteais Palace will come with no such judgments. Custódio is simply hoping that by mingling with visitors during the themed tea service and by gifting them with a small book – complete with QR codes for more photos, historical facts and fun stories – he’ll be helping to share some of the culture and colour of his home and reinforce the long-term influence of a little-known transplant queen.

“凯瑟琳王后对茶文化做出了巨大的贡献，我们葡萄牙人不愿意对此视而不见。我希望这段珍贵的历史能够得以延续。”

“We Portuguese want to believe that Catarina was responsible for the tea. I don’t want this history to die.”

图文来源：新浪网

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