Hello everyone and welcome back to Britain under the microscope advanced.
Hello, again.
So in our last episode we talked about the British pub and we're still here, we're still enjoying the drink at the moment.
In such a nice surrounding you can hear the birds chirping.
It's a really nice quite pub garden and I think now is the best time that we can have a proper chat about drinking and alcohol in the UK.
So first of all about pubs, pubs unlike bars you said last time Anlan, it's an old tradition, it used to be just like the community center in some of the villages, right? So how long a history does it actually have?
Well, pubs have been around for over a thousand years.
Wow, a thousand years!
Yeah, but these sort of places were not regulated, they were either taverns so people used to stay overnight in them, there were inns. If you go around London there were lots and lots of old pubs that actually still remain from over five hundred years ago.
Yeah, I remember those. They're almost like museums because they're so old and some of the famous pubs, I'm fascinated.
Well yeah, there's lots of great famous pubs in the UK and especially London, so hopefully probably in the future, we'll do an episode and we will take you around those pubs ourselves.
Well, since we are called lulu's happy hour, so yeah, definitely taking you around some of the famous pubs in London in one of the other episodes. And also you said none of the pubs would actually call themselves pubs, they would just have a picture and the sign, is there any reason for that?
Well, back when that tradition was first started, not many people could read.
So that was just for people who couldn't read, they could just look at the picture and they would know it's a place for drinking.
Exactly! So this pub, the one that we are sitting at the moment, The Royal Oak, you can see the picture of the oak tree and most people as I say back then were illiterate, so that's how you knew what your pub was called.
Very good solution I guess. Now back to the drinking itself, you guys really can drink. I generally don't want to challenge a British person on any drinking games because you drink a lot.
We do! British people are known for drinking a lot.
One thing I did notice is you know in china, even though there are many bars in big cities now, but in a lot of places in china, you still have kind of a social stigma for girls drinking, so people still think good girls don't drink, you have nothing like that in British culture, do you?
Nothing like that, but we'll talk a little bit about it in a second, we do have a bit of a stigma against people who can't handle their drink.
Can't handle means they get drunk.
Yet or they get very very drunk, no matter if you are a man or a woman and you get very very drunk, there is somewhat of a social stigma to it and I would say probably a little bit more if you're a woman.
Ah, so it doesn't matter how much you drink, it's if you can handle your liquor. So if you can't handle it don't over drink.
Exactly! And you mentioned the British people they do like to drink a lot, one of the reasons is we do start a little bit earlier in life.
So how early?
Well, normally around the age of fourteen.
That can't be legal though.
In the UK, strangely enough, it's legal to drink alcohol from quite an early age, but it's illegal to buy alcohol.
Oh, so for example, if you're with your parents and they're having a wine and they give you a little bit.
That's absolutely fine.
I start to understand why you allow children in the pubs.
Yeah, but a child can't drink in a pub, they can only drink in a public if they're eighteen, there is a slight law, it's bit strange if it's a restaurant, a child can drink with a meal from the age of fourteen.
Technically if you're fourteen, you're no longer a child you're teenager .
Yeah, it's all up to the parents, but it's only the age of eighteen that you can drink, well, relatively freely, you can buy alcohol and you can also drink alcohol.
So that is your actual drinking age.
Yeah, and that's the whole thing about going to university that when you're eighteen, lots of our activities, lots of times we go out with friends, they all involve drinking.
So the TV shows they're real. When you watch TV shows about you know universities kids, there's a lot of drinking, that's not exaggerated.
That's not exaggerated at all. One of the things that a lot of Chinese students they might get a little bit confused with is the idea of the student union in the UK.
Student union isn't that just in charge of all the student affairs and all that?
Partly yes, but in the UK the student union normally has their own bar which sells cheap alcohol.
So it's just a cheaper pub for students to drinking.
Yeah. So if a British university student says I'm gonna go down to the student union that normally means I'm gonna go to the bar.
You went to university in London, right? So did you do a lot of drinking?
Oh yeah absolutely, did loads and loads of drinking, I even had wine and cheese parties when I was at university.
It's hard to imagine, so I mean you are a very good student, you were like a straight A student, so you still drank a lot.
Well yeah, that's the thing. As I said before, a lot of our activities involve drinking, they do involve going out with friends.
I guess it's going to be quite difficult for you to make friends with British people if you don't drink at all.
It's a little bit easier now but when I was at university, it's quite hard because obviously all the activities do involve alcohol in some form or another.
I guess even if you don't drink you have to go to pubs, you know you can drink soft drinks to be with people, that brings us to the hard question: binge drinking, you know over drinking. Is that a big problem?
It was a very big problem and somewhat it still is a big problem in the UK. I would say less so because that truths are changing but generally binge drinking is the idea that you go to the pub on a Friday night, you go out with your friends and you just keep drinking.
I mean you don't have to get up early the next day, but strangely I don't really see a lot of hugely drunk people in pubs or bars in the UK.

Well, partly that's because bars are not allow to serve people who are drunk.
It's kind of a paradox. So if people who are working in a bar, if they see that you're really drunk, they will stop serving you drinks.
They will stop serving you and a lot of files especially on a Friday night they would have a bouncer.
A bouncer, is that like a security guard?
Yeah, it's a security guard and they have the right to remove any person that gets too drunk or gets … well, when people drink a lot they get stupid and they start arguments and they might even start fighting.
You will be kicked out.
You'll be kicked out and in the UK you'll not only be kicked out, but you'll also be barred.
Be barred? Like b-a-r-r-e-d?
Yeah, barred means that the landlord does not want you to go to their pub ever again, if you're barred from a certain pub that means you're banned from that pub.
You're in a blacklist for life.
Well, not for life but for quite a few years.
Okay, so drinking is essential but getting drunk publicly is definitely not a good thing.
I would say in the UK and some English speaking countries, the idea of getting so drunk that you can't control yourself is not seems good. We do somewhat respect people who can handle their drink, but the idea of being a drunk or the idea of being an alcoholic is definitely very very bad.
Definitely negative. And also I hear these expression of people wanting to go on a pub crawl, I have been invited on a pub crawl, c-r-a-w-l, like crawling on the ground? What does that even mean?
Well, if you're going to a pub crawl, that means you go to more than one pub in a night.
So it's just visiting different pubs to drink a few drinks in each pub.
So for example, you can go on a pub crawl around a particular town, one very popular one in London is to go on a pub crawl of a tube line. So you go round London and every single tube stop you will get off go to a pub then get on again and then go to another pub.
I like that idea. But coming back to the drinking, you said that now it's getting better the binge drinking. Does that mean that younger people actually drink less than their elder counterparts?
Yeah, at the turn of millennium, there was a huge problem with binge drinking, but then you have to choose sides to change, so that younger people don't drink as much anymore. And a lot of the reasons are because of health and also the expenses as well.
Drinking outside is expensive.
It is, but I would say it's mostly health and also the idea that among young people especially young people nowadays drinking that much is not seen as a good thing, it's not seen as something that you should be proud of.
So the attitude is also changing. I do have to admit and with older people I tend to drink a lot more because they tend to drink a lot more in the UK, every time we sit down in the morning it's always tea but in the afternoon or in the evenings it's always alcoholic drinks. Sometimes you see these billboards in January that says dry January, dry here means no alcohol. So I think you do see these kind of events now.
Well, you do.
So since people are drinking less what is the future of these pubs? You still got loads of pubs, are they facing a challenge?
Well, they are. One of the biggest challenges was the smoking ban in the UK.
That's everywhere. You're not allowed to smoke indoors.
Yet, so many people would go to the pub and they would probably have a smoke as well as having a drink. But now you can't do that so a lot of smokers they would prefer to stay at home. Unfortunately many pubs are closing, some very old historic pubs they are closing down.
That's a pity.
But in the same breath, it's forcing the existing pubs to be better quality. So for example, we now have gastro pubs that are opening up.
Gastro like g-a-s-t-r-o, gastronomy.
Yeah, these are pubs that becoming more popular as restaurants as well. So it's not just the same, to be honest, quite bad food you get in pubs.
So the focus is shifting from just drinking to drinking and food.
Yeah, so they're forced to actually focus a lot more on the quality of their cooking and the quality of the dishes they have, and this has become very popular. And in the same way that specialized bars and pubs have become popular.
I would say especially bars in such a vibrant metropolis like London, apart from the old fashioned pubs, you do get a lot of cocktail bars and also craft breweries 精酿啤酒，like in Beijing we get a lot of those now.
Yeah, while in the UK they're particularly popular at the moment, craft breweries, wine bars are a little bit less so, but definitely speakeasies, speakeasy cocktail bars.
Again speakeasy, that's essentially what our brand is called, speakeasy, but put together speakeasy means a hidden bar.
Yeah, it means a place that not many people know about and is somewhat hidden but always very good quality and lots of great drinks inside as well.
Like a hidden gem, so on that note...
We better start finishing of our drinks.
And we are sure that you are gonna get very good company at Lulu's happy hour, our own speakeasy. So cheers again
Cheers
See you next time. Bye
Bye.

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