‘Coffee in the morning, alcohol at night’ — Phrase of the Week
A Chinese liquor giant and the country’s largest domestic coffee chain have teamed up to create a boozy new drink.
Our Phrase of the Week is: Coffee in the morning, alcohol at night (早C晚A zǎo C wǎn A).
The context
China’s biggest domestic coffee chain and its largest premium liquor brand are coming together in an unlikely partnership.
Chinese liquor giant Kweichow Moutai (贵州茅台 guìzhōu máotái) and Luckin Coffee, which recently became China’s biggest coffee chain, have partnered up to create a new flavor of coffee: Moutai Latte (酱香拿铁 jiàngxiāng nátiě).
Released on September 4, Moutai Latte is made with a liquor-flavored milk containing less than 0.5% of the alcoholic drink. The two brands both stand to benefit by gaining exposure to new audiences: Luckin customers are young and spend their money in the daytime, while Moutai customers are typically older and more active at night.
The collaboration was an instant hit. Long queues formed outside Luckin Coffee shops across China, with a number of hashtags topping Weibo’s trending Hot List.
The business media in China have been paying close attention, with a number of media outlets highlighting a new phrase to characterize the partnership:
With the rapid development of the coffee economy and the drinking economy, “taking C in the morning and A at night” has become a lifestyle choice.
咖啡经济与微醺经济迅猛发展的当下，“早C晚A”成为一种生活方式代名词。
Kāfēi jīngjì yǔ wéixūn jīngjì xùnměng fāzhǎn de dàngxià, “zǎo C wǎn A” chéngwéi yìzhǒng shēnghuó fāngshì dàimíngcí.
And with that, we have our Phrase of the Week.
What it means
Taking C in the morning and A at night is an internet slang phrase.
It is common for Chinese slang phrases to use English letters or acronyms. Any letter ending in a ee or u sound (like P, C, or Q) can work due to the phonetics of the Chinese language. So some English acronyms or letter-based phrases can be directly absorbed into Chinese.
In this phrase, A and C behave like single Chinese characters, attached to early (早 zǎo) and night (晚 wǎn), respectively. It has the sound of a four-character idiom such as 早九晚五 zhāo jiǔ wǎn wǔ, which translates as “from nine in the morning to five in the evening.”
This modern phrase that mixes Chinese characters and English letters has three meanings.
Originally, it was a slogan from the beauty products world, meaning, “Use skin care products containing vitamin C in the morning, and those with vitamin A at night.” According to marketing gurus, the combination helps whiten and brighten the skin, making people look younger and their skin healthier. Vitamins A and C keep the English letters in Chinese translation.
During the darkest days of China’s now-axed COVID-zero policy, the same phrase would often appear on hot search rankings on social media. It became a sarcastic take on how the Chinese government’s propaganda machine works: good news about China (C) in the morning, bad news about America (A) in the evening.
The third and final meaning, which is what it means for Moutai Latte, is the phrase’s most recent evolution, where the C means coffee and the A stands for alcohol.
So the correct translation is: “Coffee in the morning, alcohol at night.”
The success of the Moutai and Luckin Coffee partnership could be their crossover into entirely new groups of consumers. But they have also created their own category and put a name on it, earning it this week’s Phrase of the Week!
