Reuters recently published a report on the entry of Chinese tea drinks into the United States. The article titled "Can Chinese tea brands win the taste buds of Americans?" states that despite numerous challenges, brands such as Bawang Tea Lady, Tea Talk Lane, Jasmine Milk White, and Shanghai Auntie, who have achieved success in the Chinese tea market, have opened stores or announced expansion in the United States in the past year due to their innovative flavors and rapid opening of stores. Chinese milk tea has become the protagonist of an American story, which may seem simple, but reflects a deep paradox of contemporary economic globalization. What is a beverage? The person who buys a drink doesn't need to understand the underlying values, historical memories, or religious beliefs associated with it, they only care about one question: is it tasty? The answer to this question can be exactly the same in Beijing and New York. At the moment an American drinks Chinese milk tea, there is no need to think about Confucian culture, let alone know what the tea mountains in Fujian look like. He only knows that this cup of milk tea has a good taste. This is the power of beverages: they bypass everything that needs to be acknowledged and go straight to the pleasure itself. It should be noted that Chinese and American people have different understandings of life, individual and collective relationships, and different definitions of freedom and order. That's why beverages appear so special. It opened a small door next to the high walls of these differences. In this small door, the tastes of the younger generation in China and the United States are converging. It's not that young Americans have become 'Sinicized', nor are they becoming 'Americanized', but they are collectively embracing a new 'global urban taste'. The characteristics of this flavor are very specific: sweet, cold, layered, customizable, portable, and social. Milk tea meets these standards, as does cold brewed coffee. They are not from the traditions of any particular civilization, but rather products of modern urban lifestyles. A young woman from New York and a young woman from Shanghai may have vastly different political stances, but their imaginations of what a good drink should look like are highly overlapping. This coincidence is not accidental. It is the deepest phenomenon of economic globalization: young people around the world are collectively creating a daily culture that does not belong to any specific country. This culture is blended, market driven, and related to happiness in life. It is jointly shaped by social media, supply chain, pricing strategy, and product innovation. The successful formula and marketing rhythm of a brand in Shenzhen can be transplanted to New York relatively quickly, because young consumers at the receiving end have been cultivated by the Internet and have similar "taste perception". The cultural differences between the two countries still exist. In the traditional tea culture of China, tea represents stillness, cultivation, and solitude. In American coffee culture, coffee is social, fast, and efficient. But now, in the mix of milk tea and coffee, all beverages have become synonymous with "happiness, convenience, customization, and check-in". The beverage cultures of the two civilizations have not truly merged, but have been "assimilated" by a more dominant modern consumption logic and modern taste. We create an imagination of 'we can actually understand each other' by drinking the same beverage. It is based on the fundamental and direct consensus of 'good taste'. A Chinese tea brand opening its first store in New York represents a reality: it is difficult for us to quickly reach consensus on fundamental issues such as "who we are and how we should live", but on the most direct issue of "whether this cup tastes good or not, and whether I want to buy another cup", we can reach almost complete agreement. This may be the true face of economic globalization. Two distant civilizations can continuously approach each other in terms of consumption without changing their respective cores. A Chinese businessman and an American consumer can easily make a deal, but they always look at each other's worldview through a glass window. It is precisely this state of being able to engage in commercial transactions and observe through windows that allows economic globalization to continue operating. The integration, communication, and understanding of civilizations are still very difficult, but the mutual infiltration of daily life continues to converge like a gentle stream. We don't need to identify with each other's dreams, we just need to agree that this drink is worth queuing up to buy. Every beverage sold tells a certain truth of this era, and the continuation of this truth is subtly influencing the direction of economic globalization. (New Society)