以茶为媒:明清中英贸易背景下茶的跨文化传播

Tea as a Medium:The Intercultural Communication of Tea behind the Tea Trade between UK and China in Ming and Qing Dynasties

英国是当今世界第二大茶叶消费国,而英国与茶结缘却不过三百余年,其早期所需茶叶大多源于中国。从一种来自遥远中国的东方树叶,到普及全英的国民饮料,这背后是一部恢宏的跨文化传播史。文化结构学认为,文化变迁通常是由表及里的过程。茶文化在英国的传播也依循这样的路径,经历了从物质文化到行为文化,再到精神文化的过程。

Britain is the second largest tea consumer in the world today,but it has only been associated with tea for about three hundred years,and at the early beginning,most of their imports were from China.A piece of Oriental leaves transformed to the national baverage which was prevalent in Britain,what lied behind this process was a magnificent history of intercultural communication.The theory of Cultural Structure shows that cultural change is usually a process from the outside to the inside.The dissemination of tea culture in Britain also follows this path,experiencing a process from material culture,to behavioral culture,and then to spiritual culture.