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Tea and coffee are not only two beverages, but also important means of communication through which strangers can make friends at the tea table or the coffee table, friends can promote their friendships while drinking tea and coffee, business operators can do business transactions in the teahouse or coffee shop. Therefore, it is necessary to do a comparative study on them for furthering the economic and cross-cultural exchanges between China and western countries.
Scholars from China and overseas have done an in-depth study about the Chinese tea culture and
western coffee culture. Crozier (2011) firstly states the myth and legend about the tea and coffee. Crozier also quotes a celebrity’s words that tea is intimately linked with Asia, herbal medicine and Buddhism. Almost 4000 years ago, in 2737 BC, the great herbalist, ‘Divine Healer’ and Chinese emperor Shen Nung discovered tea. In the meantime, the author tells a story about the origin to deepen the understanding. While as to the history of coffee, it originates from Northern Africa. There is also a story about the evolution of coffee that coffee was not initially consumed as a beverage; instead, the beans were often mixed with fat and eaten as a high-energy snack during long journeys (2011:4). Coffee was converted from food to beverage later and widely accepted in Muslim world as a kind of beverage without alcoholic drink. The different origins reveal the different natures of tea and coffee, which also gives people a general idea.
Then, how tea goes overseas and coffee becomes generally available is described in detail. Beginning with the pronunciation of Ch’a, it spreads to Japan (Cha), Persia (Cha), Turkey (Chay) and Russia (Chai). The chapter comes to the point of how tea spread from the ancient China to the rest of the world roundly. So does the coffee in globalization. What mentioned in the book provides lots of help to analyze the tea culture and coffee culture in globalization. But the author only tells the popularity of tea culture in western countries and the coffee fashion in China. What this paper supplements is the fusion of tea culture and coffee culture in either China or western culture without lack of its own cultures.
Wild（2005：43) tells how coffee, an imperial commodity, influences the coffee-producing countries in the aspects of commercial alliances, secret societies, debate between politics and art, especially in economy and industry.
Tucker (2010:7) discusses the Coffee culture that it refers to the ideas, practices, technology, meanings, and associations regarding coffee. The reasons why coffee becomes meaningful include the attachments or fondness of the ways of preparation and service, the places or contexts where they consume coffee, and the ideas and feelings when drinking coffee. Then the author discusses the coffeehouses. It is the coffeehouses that popularize coffee and build coffee culture. It is in coffeehouses that people can have social interaction and feel a sense of community. So does the teahouses that can reflect the profound tea culture in China. Ma (2007：46) tells in detail about the coffee house in western countries, including its history, spreading, management, and the evolution. Another scholar, Liu (2010) focuses on tea house’s true sense, origin, function, decoration, development and expansion. Through referring to the analyses and studies from the books above, the comparison between two cultures can be easily seen reflected by the teahouses and coffee houses.
Jolliffe (2010) illustrates a series of linkages between coffee culture and the tourism and hospitality. Coffee and tourism venues have been explored everywhere in the world, ranging from the cafe districts of Australia, Canada, Germany and New Zealand to the traditional and touristic coffee houses of Malaysia and Cyprus to coffee-producing destinations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific. The feature of openness and freedom of western coffee culture is embodied here. Hu (2009：13) mainly tells us the entertainment brought by tea culture, including tea sets, friendship caused by drinking tea on the progress of tasting the art of purple clay teapots. Wang (2001) makes an overall and systematical introduction about the history, various kinds of famous tea, the custom of drinking tea in both modern and ancient times and the tea art of Chinese traditional tea culture. From these three books, parts of characteristics of two cultures are conducted here, but still there are some other facets needed to explore.