Tea and the English

Jackie:  Hello, welcome to Entertainment! I'm Jackie Dalton. Many countries have aparticular type of food or drink which they become associated with. Swisschocolate, Cuban rum, American burgers. What are the English mostassociated with?
　　Well, for many, the English are seen first and foremost as a nation of tea-drinkers. Everything stops for a cup tea. How would the English cope withouttheir afternoon cup and all the social rituals and formalities that come with it?
　　But is this really true? Or is it just a stereotype 1? In this programme we're goingto find out. First of all, I asked some English people what role tea played intheir lives? How many say it's important? Listen to find out.
　　English peopleLady 1: On special occasions I do drink coffee, but most of the time I'm definitely a teadrinker.
　　Man: I have to one cup of tea, at least one cup of tea some time in the afternoon about 2o'clock generally – 2-3 o'clock.
　　Lady 2: I'm much more of a coffee drinker it really just sets me up for the day. I just have tohave my cup of coffee pretty well as soon as I'm out of bed.
　　Jackie:    Well, the first two people are definitely tea lovers. The third says she's more ofa coffee drinker. She said coffee 'sets her up' for the day, which means it givesher energy and makes her feel full of life.
　　The tea drunk here in England is grown mostly in Asia and other parts of theworld, but there is a tea plantation 2 in the UK: the Tregothnan tea estate inCornwall. We sent our reporter Tim there. As you listen to him try to answerthis question: How many cups of tea are drunk in the UK every day? Over toTim in Cornwall.
　　TimIt's absolutely beautiful here. Did you know in the UK we drink 165 million cups of tea a day.
　　Isn't that a staggering amount? And 96% of that tea comes from teabags.
　　Jackie:  Did you get that? 165 million! That's a lot of tea, or, as Tim put it, 'a staggeringamount', which means it's hard to believe we drink so much tea. Tim also said96% of tea comes from teabags. So most people make tea by putting a smallready-made paper bag in each cup they make instead of using a teapot. Ateapot is a container which you usually put loose leaves in and can use to makemore than one cup of tea at a time. A beautiful porcelain 3 teapot, complete witha set of matching cups and saucers was traditionally a great source of pride tomany people – something they might want to show off to their friends. But if96 % of cups of tea are now made with teabags what does this mean for thefuture of teapots? Listen to find out.
　　TimThe sales of teapots are suffering as a result, they're down two-thirds in the last five years andit seems that most 18-40 year olds think that teapots are quaint 4 and stuffy 5 and old-fashionedand don't really want to buy them.
　　Jackie:  Did you get the answer? Not so many people are buying teapots any more.
　　Most people aged 6 18-40 don't think much of tea pots. Let's look at the wordsthey used. 'Quaint' and 'old-fashioned' sort of mean the same thing. Ifsomething is quaint or old-fashioned, you associate it with the past, it's not verymodern. 'Quaint' can be quite a positive word. It can mean it's unusual and old-fashioned in an attractive way. But 'stuffy', the other word we heard is not at allpositive. It means something is too formal, too old-fashioned and serious.
　　Speaking of which, there has traditionally been a great deal of etiquette 7 or rulessurrounding tea-drinking. Which direction should the teapot face on the table?
　　How should you hold your cup when you drink from it? One of the biggestdebates people have is if you're pouring tea from a teapot into a cup, shouldyou put the milk in before you pour the tea, or after?
　　Well Mark is a true English tea drinker and expert on tea etiquette. Listen tohim telling us what we should do and why.
　　MarkTraditionally, one should add milk to the cup first, and then hot tea the reason for that is thatfine bone china will crack if you add very hot liquids to it. Unfortunately, nowadays it is quitecommon for people to just use any old mugs, not of a particularly fine quality and tea willoften be added to the cup before the milk, which is quite incorrect.
　　Jackie:  Mark says you should put milk in first so the cup doesn't crack from the heat.
　　But nowadays, people tend to drink tea from mugs, which are much simplerand stronger – than the delicate traditional fine bone china cups.
　　Sadly, tea-drinking in England today no longer seems to involve muchetiquette at all. It involves drinking it at pretty much any time of the day fromany old mug without any real sense of formality. But, as we've heard, tea-drinking is still a very popular activity here, in fact, I'm off for a cuppa now.