(本文选自《经济学人》20201114期)
背景介绍：
在《经济学人》中国板块茶馆专栏迎来第100期之际，该专栏推出了一篇关于中国茶馆的文章。作为中国板块下的一个专栏，你知道该专栏为什么会取名为“茶馆”吗？
For the 100th Chaguan column, customers at a chaguan muse on life
在茶馆专栏迎来第100期之际，茶馆里的客人正在思考人生
Decades spent brewing tea in rural Sichuan have left Li Qiang with firm views on what makes for an authentic chaguan, or Chinese teahouse. If age and beauty were the only tests, his shop, the Old Teahouse in Pengzhen, would pass easily.
李强在四川农村泡了几十年的茶，这段经历让他对如何打造一家地道的茶馆（即中式茶楼）有着坚定的看法。如果以年代和外貌作为唯一的标准，那么，他在彭镇所开的老茶馆一定算得上是一家地道的茶馆。
A place to drink tea for more than a century, the grey-roofed, timber-framed building dates back to the Ming dynasty, when it was a temple to Guanyin, a Buddhist immortal. Maoist slogans painted on the walls, in characters of faded red, reflect Pengzhen’s history as a people’s commune.
这座灰色屋顶的木结构建筑的历史最早可追溯至明代，它最初是一座用以供奉观音菩萨的寺庙，而近一个多世纪以来一直成为了人们喝茶的场所。墙上以红色字迹所写的毛派标语依稀可见，这显示了彭镇曾作为人民公社的历史。
Hours before dawn the air is already thick with tobacco smoke and fumes from a coal-fired stove, for the first customers arrive for “early tea” at half past three in the morning.
拂晓前的几小时，茶馆的空气中已经弥漫着浓重的烟草烟雾以及煤炉飘出的烟尘，这是因为茶馆的第一批客人在凌晨三点半就前来喝“早茶”了。
Human companionship makes a teahouse, says Mr Li, who rented the hall from a collective enterprise in 1995. Only when customers treat a teashop like a home is it a chaguan, he declares. Until then, in Mr Li’s withering judgment, it is merely “selling tea to passers-by”.
李强说：“人与人之间的友谊造就了茶馆。”1995年，他从一家集体企业那里租下了这个地方，并开了一家茶馆。他说道，只有当客人把茶馆当做是自己家时，这才是一家真正的茶馆。在那之前，李强一直认为，茶馆不过是“卖茶给路人”的地方。
Your correspondent visited Pengzhen this week to mark the 100th Chaguan column, a name that pays
homage
to China’s teahouses and their history as places where ideas are exchanged.
本周，在茶馆专栏迎来第100期之际，本刊记者来到了彭镇。该专栏之所以起名为“茶馆”，正是对中国茶馆及其作为思想交流场所的历史的致敬。
Mr Li’s establishment draws a stream of locals. Many are old men in farmers’ blue cotton jackets and caps, puffing on
pungent
cheroots or cigarettes in sturdy bamboo armchairs.
李强的茶馆吸引了许多当地人前来。许多老人穿着蓝色的棉衣、戴着帽子，坐在结实的竹制扶手椅上，吸着雪茄或香烟吞云吐雾。
Those
photogenic
customers lure Chinese urbanites, who carry expensive cameras and look for images of rural life or selfies to post on social media. Such a diverse customer base makes Mr Li’s teahouse a good place for an experiment: an unscientific survey of how Chinese think.
这些非常上镜的茶馆客人吸引着中国的城里人，他们手持昂贵的相机，记录下农村生活的图景或拍下自拍，并将这些照片发到社交媒体上。如此多样化的客户群体使得李强的茶馆成为了一个绝佳的试验场所：一项对中国人所思所想的并不科学的调查。
This columnist spent a happy (if painfully early) few hours asking people two questions often used to assess morale in different countries. The first concerns a subject’s own economic circumstances. The second is about whether future generations are likely to be better off than their parents.
专栏记者花了几个小时的快乐时光（调查之初还是十分艰难的）调查了两个问题（多用于在不同国家评估人们的斗志）。第一个问题是关于被调查对象的自身经济状况。第二个问题是关于后代是否会比他们的父辈过得更好。
The exercise generated strikingly consistent answers. Despite wide differences of age and education, patrons in the Old Teahouse are optimistic about China as a whole, after decades of rising prosperity.
Yet many also describe modern life as stressful, with too many families chasing too few chances to secure a good education, a good job and other paths to success.
不出所料，人们的回答近乎一致。尽管在年龄和受教育程度上存在很大的差异，但经历了几十年的繁荣发展，老茶馆里的客人对中国整体持乐观态度。不过，也有许多人认为，现代社会充满了压力，越来越多的家庭正在追求少之又少的优质教育、好工作以及其他成功之路。
(红色标注词为重难点词汇)
本文翻译：Vinnie
校核：Vinnie
编辑：Vinnie
自2018年《经济学人》首次在中国板块下推出茶馆专栏以来，该专栏迎来了其第100期。正如该专栏的作者大卫·雷恩在茶馆专栏第一篇文章中所说，该专栏之所以取名为“茶馆”，正是因为茶馆本身代表着一种市井生活方式，人们可以在这里喝喝茶、聊聊天，品味人生百态。
homage
[ˈhɑːmɪdʒ,oʊˈmɑːʒ] n. 敬意；尊敬；效忠
