COFFEE & BOYZ | 他人的品味
By Zhirui Guan, GH‘19
ORIGINAL
人们对好大学的学 生的品味有些理所应当的想象。你可以喜欢这些东西，但那些?不可以。
“让我在星巴克和Blue State咖啡之间选择 的话，我肯定毫不犹豫地选Blue State啊，” 在我告诉她我要去星巴克之后，我的一个好朋友坚定地说。“干嘛喝星巴克啊?”她的 语气里有些厌恶和不屑。干嘛喜欢喝星巴克 呢?我无聊的时候也思考过这个问题。首 先，它离我经常出没的Loria Center很近; 其次，我实在喜欢焦糖布蕾拿铁那不加掩饰的甜——虽然很多高阶咖啡鉴赏者似乎看不上;最后，我喜欢绿色。对，我最喜欢的颜色是红色但是这并不妨碍我欣赏星巴克那种标志性的醇厚饱满的绿色啊!
有一天吃晚饭的时候，我的流行音 乐品味也收到了如此的批评。当时正 是TF Boys，我很喜欢的一个中国的少 年音乐组合，刚出了新单曲的时候。 这首单曲叫《剩下的盛夏》，编曲是 周杰伦，一个让很多八零后和九零后 歌迷爱上华语流行音乐的唱作人。记 得有人提起了音乐这个话题，而我的 手机里正好有这首新歌。抵挡不住想 和别人分享的愿望，我便问坐在身边 的三两好友要不要听听这首旋律正点 的《剩下的盛夏》。
那顿晚餐是一个中国本科生聚会， 也是我第一次一下子和这么多人表达 我对TF Boys的喜爱。“你是说掏粪男 孩?”有人说。一些笑声。“掏粪”被重 复了几遍，半开玩笑地，半嘲笑地， 我没听出来各占多少。
TF Boys中的“TF”是时代峰峻公司的 缩写，而掏粪......不用说，是一个恶 意满满的绰号。几年前TF Boys刚刚火 起来的时候，网上的喷子看不惯人们 对他们的喜爱，这个绰号就诞生了。 作为一个正义感满满的迷妹，我在社 交网站上没少看到过键盘侠使用这个
称呼，但是从耶鲁的同学们嘴里听到 这两个字让我吃惊、震动，甚至感到 悲伤。我还是给他们看了手机里的 MV，心中暗暗希望在听了这首好听 的歌之后，她们会重新思考刚才脱口 而出的那句伤人的话。我又说了些关 于这首歌有的没的，有人在听，渐渐 大家聊起了别的，话题转到了别处。
“他们的音乐太幼稚了。”“你简直跟 个初中生一样!”“拜托，他们比你年 纪还小好吗?”那次的不愉快让我想 起了一些身边很重要的朋友对我喜欢 TF Boys的评价。大概我很让她们失 望吧—喜欢喝星巴克，喜欢听初中生 才听的流行音乐——实际上，我还喜 欢边啜着星巴克边听初中生才听的流 行音乐呢我谢谢你。
对于很多人来说，喝星巴克和听 TF Boys的流行歌暗示着我的肤浅平庸 和不成熟。似乎要是想得到成人般的 对待，就应该要时时刻刻清高自好， 曲高和寡，就算面对阳春白雪孤芳自 赏，也不能作践自己去对“低微”的事 物说:“我喜欢。”
大概批评我的人每天都是边喝1982 年的猫屎咖啡边听柴可夫斯基的黑胶 唱片吧——还是说前者没这一回事 儿?
TRANSLATION
As a moderately intelligent human being and a student at a prestigious university, I am expected to appreciate certain things and not others.
“I’d choose Blue State over Starbucks any day,” my friend asserted with firm conviction after I told her I was heading to Starbucks. “Why Starbucks?” she added, disgusted. Why? I asked myself one day when I was bored. Well, for one, it’s close to the Loria Center, where I basically live; two, I enjoy the unabashed sweetness of their cascara or caramel brûlée latte that so many connoisseurs of coffee seem to detest; and three, I like green. Sure, my favorite color is red but that doesn’t mean I cannot appreciate the mellowness of green, does it?
At dinner one day, I found my pop music preferences subject to the same scrutiny. TF Boys, a Chinese teenage boy band I like, had recently released a song for which Jay Chou, a C-pop icon especially popular among the 80s and 90s generations, was the musical producer. Someone had brought up the topic of music, and I happened to have the new song on my phone. Some days you just feel like sharing, so I told my friends how amazing the tune of “Remaining Summer” was and asked if they would like to listen to it.
It was a Chinese students get-together, the first time I ever told such a large group of friends that I liked TF Boys. “You mean taofen boys?” someone said. People laughed. The word taofen was repeated several times, both jokingly and mockingly — I couldn’t tell which. While the “TF” in TF Boys refersto the acronym of the boys’ entertainment company, Times Fengjun, taofen in Chinese — okay, I’m not going to gloss over it — means “digging shit,” an unkind caricature of the name. It appeared on the internet a few years ago, when the boys first started to get popular. As a fan of the group, I have seen and heard the name many times on social media, mostly from haters who plainly did not like TF Boys and resented the fact that their music was being listened to by more people. To hear it from my Yale friends, however, was a slight shock. I remember swallowing the insult and putting on the “‘tis all good” pretense that people do at the dinner table. I showed them the music video of the song, clinging to the glimmer of hope that maybe after listening to it they would rethink their remark. I made conversation, and people listened for a little. Gradually, the topic drifted to something else.
“Their music is infantile.” “You are like a middle school girl.” “Gosh, they are younger than you are!” I remembered what other friends have commented regarding my fanship of TF Boys. So I like to go to Starbucks, and I listen to teenage pop music — hell, I listen to teenage pop music while sipping Starbucks, with PLEASURE thank you very much.
To some, both acts denote the submission to a pleasure deemed immature and unsophisticated. To earn mature people’s respect, it seems, you have to be on-top, above-it-all, calm, suave, sleek, worldly, blasé enough to know where the real, the worthy pleasure lies. I bet they all drink 1982 civet kopi while listening to gramophone records of Tchaikovsky. Or is the former not a thing?
