Reinventing tea for Chinese palate
时政新闻学英语之148：企业家天堂2
When a typical Chinese customer walks into Martin Papp's store－it has well-arranged, colorful canisters covering the walls, and glass jars（瓶） filled with unknown herb blends（草本混合物） in the middle－he might wonder whether the store really sells a commodity（商品） with thousands of years of history in China: tea.
"When I came to China, I found almost none of my friends of my age really wanted to take me to drink tea," said Papp, the 32-year-old US citizen who started his tea business Papp's Tea in Beijing four years ago. "That was when I saw the opportunity in China to really show that tea can also be very fresh, new and exciting," he said.
Traditionally, Chinese people drink tea hot（热茶）, which is usually made by a single type of tea leaves. At Papp's Tea, however, the brew（佳酿） could be hot or iced, pure or blended, and even sparkling－that is, a fermented（发酵）, carbonated（冲二氧化碳） tea drink called Kombucha（红菌茶）.
By introducing various innovations of tea inspired by customs in different cultures to Chinese customers, Papp is trying to "reinvent tea" in China and change the old-fashioned image of tea among many young people here.
Last year, Papp's Tea became profitable and doubled its revenue（营收） compared with 2017. Papp is now building up his own Kombucha factory and plans to expand online business-to-consumer or B2C distribution channels in 2019.
"This is just the beginning," Papp said, adding his ambition is to make Papp's Tea the premium（优质的） brand for healthy, all-natural tea in China.
The Chinese market is a great place to innovate, Papp said, as customers are "hungry" for new products. "That can be very different from some other countries."
He divides his time between Beijing and Los Angeles. Papp enjoys whatever the two different cultures bring to him. After all, it is diversity（多元化） that fosters（孕育了创新） innovation, something Papp is always dedicated to.
时政新闻学英语之148：企业家天堂2
Custom corporate videos spin money
Many may mistake him for（将他误认为） a gym coach given his huge frame（体格） and a big-size gym bag he carries, but Jim Fields, 30, is the founder of a digital content provider（数码内容供应商） Relay Video.
When you start interacting with（互动） him, you'd find Fields is a down-to-earth（踏实） person, who constantly talks about Chinese memes（风格，思想） in fluent mandarin.
"If you are looking for a foreigner owning a startup in China, you have to interview Jim," said Wang Bin, founder of 10Fund, one of the investors in Relay, who referred（提到） Fields to this reporter.
Fields, a US citizen, came to China 10 years ago. "He is a living Chinese dictionary and he can totally nail a Chinese stand-up comedy（表演单口相声）," Wang said of Fields.
Fields' deep understanding of Chinese culture gives him an advantage in his career. His firm Relay provides customized（定制的） video production services to Chinese companies for their overseas roadshows（路演）.
"Just like most Westerners don't really know the character of the Asian market inside out（透彻）, most Chinese companies going global don't really know the markets or the consumers abroad. So they don't know how to communicate with them," said Fields. So, when such companies expand outside China, they look for customized promotional videos（推介视频）. That's where Relay comes in to the picture（出现）.
For example, a typical Chinese company's promotional video would apply a bold（大胆的） use of gold and red colors with an inspirational（动人心魄的男中音） male mid-tone voice in the background, which usually fails to sell the idea to Westerners as their sense of aesthetics（美感） is different.
Three years on, Relay boasts major clients, including big-name labels such as Baidu and Alibaba, despite having a small talented team of 15.
"The bigger the company is, the bigger the pressure," Fields said and laughed. Asked if Relay would hire more to expand, he said: "I'm having trouble sleeping already."
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