Thoughts on American Tea Culture
Or any culture for that matter. I was reading a translation by MarshalN of a Chinese blog post about snobbery in the tea world and it kind of went along with my thinking of late about tea culture here in America, where it seems like there are so many different groups with differing opinions and ideas that made up our “culture” here. I guess its a social “thing” that happens in a lot of niche industries. Let’s remove tea from the equation and talk about products in general — the masses (the majority) tend to cling to a product of lesser quality, and people break out into smaller factions surrounding the same product but a higher quality variant of it. Lets call the former group A and the latter group B. Group B begins to look at group A with disdain. From a quality perspective, group A’s version is usually lesser than B’s and usually group A paid less than group B for it. Going a bit deeper, when we look at the supply chain to group A and B, group A’s product is usually supplied by large companies and corporations, and group B’s product is usually supplied by smaller companies or sometimes group B will circumvent the middle man and go directly to the source for their product. Group A may just enjoy the product, while group B is obsessed by the product and tend to incorporate the product deeper into their lives, learning all they can about it and always seeking better quality product. Because the product means so much to group B, they are put off my people that don’t take it as seriously as them, or even those who broke out into another faction, for example those that like the product only for health reasons. When I say “put off” I mean not only that their opinions about the product differ, but also that they may not even tend to get along with the type of people in group A or another faction of group B aside from anything dealing with the product. Sorry I got to ranting here, but I always wonder how to bridge the gap, maybe it’s impossible. Maybe things like this will always happen.
I'm writing a full-length book on tea. No history, just practical tea information and SCIENCE!
I agree with Roman below hat the answer to bridging the gap lies in gently sharing our passion for tea, while acknowledging that different people have different taste.
For years, a dear friend would tell me how much she disliked green tea. I would often respond with all the usual arguments about he good it can be for you, and maybe she just needed to have a more open mind, blah, blah, blah. Then one day, she mentioned the delima of a friend having given her some fancy green tea, and her not wanting to say “blech” so she accepted it,thinking that perhaps the better quality would taste different but she still hated how bitter and awful it tasted.
That might have been the first time I had really “listened” to her reasons for not liking green tea and not emotionally responded. The way she tell this story is, I suddenly sprouted a Fu Manchu mustache and asked her how she prepared it. Of course she was preparing it the way you would a black tea, and I was able to say in a kind and gentle manner that she might be burning it. So I shared with her a more appropriate technique for green teas and suddenly she was able to enjoy green tea.
On one hand a snob is someone who simply knows what they like. The negative connotations of snobbery come from either deriding other people for their inability to appreciate what the snob likes, or sometimes from their hyper enthusiasm for it (think born again anything).
Again, a key to bridging the gap is to not fall into either of those categories. It’s great to know what you like, but part of what makes other people interesting is that they aren’t just carbon copies of us. They don’t necessarily like or dislike what we do and we have things to learn from each other if we’re willing to listen.
Many of my friends know my fondness of tea. Do I have preferences and dislikes, of course. But if a friend offers me a cup of Lipton, I’m not going to turn my nose up. If they offer me something with say Chamomile, or hibiscus, or Rooibus, I will politely decline, not with an insult about how much I detest them (which to be honest, I do), but simply with a comment about how they don’t sit well with me.
It’s often not what we say but how we say it that determines if we’re a snob, or merely someone who knows what we like. It’s entirely possible to say that something is simply “Not my cup of tea” without making someone feel looked down upon for offering it. It is also entirely possible listen to a friends dislikes without getting emotionally challenged ourselves. This usually requires, getting over ourselves. I’m not saying it’s always easy, but it is effective for the dialogue necessary to bridge those gaps.
I think that a good way to bridge this gap is to give it some time. A lot of people never try nicer teas simply because they are not easily available. Also, even if they get some of the good stuff, they don’t know how to brew it properly and end up getting mediocre flavor. Naturally, many of them never go for it again because they think it’s not worth it. So my suggestion is: Bring tea to the people! Give them ware and instruction, and everything is gonna be OK! I’ve started doing just that about half a year ago. So far so good.
It’s not surprising that if you get a graph wrong about tea, a Maths Nerd is going to correct you. I believe there is a high correlation between loose leaf tea drinkers and other groups where people are willing to risk social occlusion to follow a product or concept to a higher level.
For example, whilst the various varations of Star Trek have always enjoyed great popularity, I’m willing to be leaf tea drinking is proportionately higher amongst those who’ve learnt to speak Klingon.
In fact, once as a joke, I posted a post about tea in Klingon, and several “tea people” corrected my grammar
I think this graph is likely a good representation of tea in America, as a whole. With coffee though, I would think that there’s some plateau in the middle that breaks the sharp descent. If one considers brands like Starbucks and Peet’s mid to mid/high grade. I think tea has potential to move in this direction.
I think this is more prevalent amongst common products (coffee, tea, music) because there’s already a huge percentage of people who like what they like, not interested in knowing more. Those of us who are more emotionally invested in the product have to accept the people who aren’t. Let them live in their mediocre world. As I develop a level of acceptance of Group A, I think they need to be less judgmental of us Group B-ers. They’re the ones categorizing us as snobs, accusing us of thinking we’re better than them. I think that’s the true origin of the rift between the groups.
I am sorry I am having an absolutely difficult time understanding your graph. Granted while I think its more tongue in cheek, than actually literal. I also think I get the relation attempting to be portrayed, but my big difficulty is you have two things that indicate number of customers, and two things that indicate quality.
So If I read the green line, as the number of customers increase ( i.e. we move to the right along the axis), I can only assume you mean the more customers seek quality product/ or a high quality product becomes more widely available. But I am absolutely baffled why the green line is labeled customers. Because when I take into account the label of the line, I say as customers increase customers increases in the quality of product. Which in my current state I can not comprehend exactly what that would mean.
Similarly with the quality line as customers increase quality decreases in the quality of product. Which based on your post I think is what you were actually trying to get at in the end. Which would best be done by completely removing the green line, and removing the label from the black line. Which would just show the relation that as the number of customers increases, the quality of product they enjoy decreases.
Adam, you are correct. This was totally tongue in cheek too. I fixed the graph. When I graduated college I erased my many years of math from my brain, so well in fact that I couldn’t even plot this simple inverse relationship. Thanks for the heads up man!
No problem, its likely I am just hard wired to try and take relationships/ graphs too literally being a Math Grad student and all.