时间：2022-10-27 05:40:04
It was my first week in China and the second time I had asked my Chinese roommate where to buy tea. For the second time， his answer was Carrefour.
“Only foreigners go to tea shops，” he told me. “They will charge you too much money. Go to Carrefour.”
The French supermarket chain would have been an acceptable answer in France or in any other European country - even in Latin America. But I was in China， the birthplace of tea and all its rituals. Tea had sparked voyages of discovery， wars and revolutions， and I was here， right where it all started.
What I had envisioned was a journey down a narrow alley to a tiny hidden teashop. I’d walk through dusty curtains. An old man with a long gray beard would emerge amidst glass bottles of curious things. He’d read my fortune through the leaves and brew an ancient elixir. In some unexpected way， it would heal me. I was not about to settle for a harshly lit supermarket.
The next week as I sat in Chinese class drinking a mug of Lipton and picturing how nicely my teashop might look tucked into the backdrop， our Chinese teacher interrupted， uncharacteristically， in English.
“I don’t understand why foreigners want this，” she said. “The hutongs are old. Many things are broken. There is no heat in the winter. Only foreigners want to live in the hutongs.”
I began to notice a disparity between expatriate ideas of authentic China and the actual lives of the Chinese people around me. Nowhere was this more evident than on Trip Advisor， which I consulted for a Peking duck restaurant. Li Qun was ranked 86th of 6，404 restaurants.“Authentic food， people， & place，” wrote Melissa from Missouri， adding， “（this is not a posh restaurant.）.”
“Very authentic place，” said another reviewer， who went on to say： “We don’t have a point of reference or comparison to other roast duck restaurants.”
Most of my Chinese friends had never heard of Li Qun. “Dirty， not that good， overpriced，”said the only one who had.
I wondered how Melissa and the other reviewers， undoubtedly on Trip Advisor because they were only short term visitors， could describe their experiences as authentic. Authenticity is not a word used to describe the many shopping malls sprouting up across the city， in which the ratio of locals to tourists is likely higher than in Trip Advisor-approved venues. And for every ancient chef carving a Peking duck， there are millions of Beijingers chatting on cell phones， singing karaoke and eating at McDonalds.
So where did this cockeyed preoccupation with authenticity come from？
Were we as travelers paying the ultimate disservice， not only to the places we were visiting， but to ourselves？ I had moved to China hoping to discover something new for myself， but how could I be an honest explorer if， despite what I saw around me， I remained fixated on what I expected to find？
I posed this question to a Spanish journalist.“I don’t know what is authentic，” he told me.“But I love the food here. I’m， how do you say， a foodie.”
When it came to tea， I had resigned myself to store-bought brands when， a month into my stay， I fell ill with bronchitis. One evening as I sat hacking on the couch， my friend Joy showed up with a plastic bottle of hot liquid， and insisted that I drink it. It looked like she had extracted a sample from the bottom of a pond.
Inside， a big brown sponge bobbed amongst an assortment of weeds and wilted flowers. It was tea her mother’s cold remedy.
I twisted off the lid to examine the contents and as the steam filled my nose， I was reminded not of pond scum， but of Bigelow Mint. My first cup of tea was probably mint， made by my mother when I was home sick. I then thought of New York City， and the company I worked for after college. Teatime was the only part of the day our windowless office felt more like a refuge than a holding cell. I was then transported to India， where every step of my field research was punctuated by steel tumblers of sweet， milky chai. For me， tea has been the perfect travel companion it brings a familiar ritual of home to places far away.
And I realized that the authenticity I sought was not in the foreign or the exotic， but in the familiar. I imagine the thousands of Chinese sitting in McDonalds every day are doing much the same as the New Yorker trawling the depths of Brooklyn for the perfect lo mein traveling all the way across the world by walking down the street.