Tea

PiA: Katie Hampton

• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Messengers
  

  One of the best (read: cheapest) web sites for flights in and out of China is called E-Long. Its very name reflects the company's role straddling two worlds-- the E is for electronic but is represented by the Chinese character Yi 艺, meaning Skill or Art; Long 龙 means Dragon in Chinese (a symbol of perfection) but is also the English word "Long", which could indicate the distances being traveled.

  Paper tickets can only be purchased in major cities, so when I was in Shanghai this weekend I determined to pick mine up.

  The ticket was delivered safely, but the motorcycle messenger's handheld scanner did not accept my card. "Hop on," he said, and away we went in search of nearby banks. We had to go to several banks to find one that accepted visa, and so there I was, skirted legs off to one side, looking out over the head of the driver (being a full head taller, seated) into the bustle of rush hour downtown traffic.

  There's a Chinese expression which means to appear ridiculous-- chu yang xiang 出洋相. It translates literally-- to make a foreigner of oneself.

• Suffer the Little Children
  

  In an urban planning unit this week, I explained the concept of utopia and asked my students to describe a utopic place. Ideas ranged from the bizarre (pregnant men, talking animals) to the abstract (love, justice, peace) to something resembling American suburbia (people each have their own car). One particular item-- no thieves-- reminded me of a girl I met last week. Well, I didn't actually get to meet her.

  I was walking to the post office when I felt someone brush my arm from behind. I whirled around to see the pickpocket and there before me was an adorable little girl in a ruffly denim dress. She didn't run away-- because it would have been an admission of guilt? because she knew I couldn't get her in any trouble?-- but simply continued on as if nothing had happened. We must have made quite a sight-- a tall foreigner walking alongside and trying to talk to a little girl who walked swiftly and with dignity, not making any sound or eye contact; a hulking sullen looking teenage boy followed her at a distance of exactly one meter. After about five minutes, I stopped trying to talk to them and watched them continue down the road-- the petite, delicate figure and the bulky one always close behind.

  I also taught my students the word "dystopia".

• Hinterland Blues
  

  I'm newly returned from a week's vacation in the capital; I went up north to revisit the orphanage where I volunteered in February and spent some time in Beijing on my way back.

  In addition to the orphanage and other NGOs I had heard of on my previous visit, this time I was able to talk to expats starting a fledging outreach to prostitutes, partnering with local Chinese to implement various programs. The project combines the skills of foreigners who have backgrounds in public health, medicine, psychology, and English teaching with those of Chinese partners who bring language and cultural knowledge.

  At the hostel where I stayed, I struck up a conversation with one of my Chinese suitemates, who turned out to be a former journalist who had traveled all over China covering different stories and had a fascinating take on Chinese social issues. Our conversation was entirely in Chinese-- having had several foreign friends, she felt no need to practice her English on me or have stilted conversations about how to improve her English, the difference between British and American English, etc. She also handed me a copy of "That's Beijing!" (the local expat mag), where I read about the hot contemporary art scene-- notices of trendy exhibitions and film screenings, interviews with local graffiti artists and tips about how to use Chinese slang (fyi: tu ya is a colloquial way to say graffiti), a snapshot about what is going on in the city culturally.

  My students, most of whom are from villages, like to ask, "Do you prefer city life or country life?" (This is also a topic in one of their textbooks.) When asked their opinion, they say that city life is convenient but country life is more peaceful and beautiful. I'm pretty sure most of them associate the idea of a "city" with mid-level cities like Jishou or neighboring Huaihua, not major urban centers like Beijing or Shanghai, which they're unlikely to visit, much less live in. Living in a city means having indoor plumbing, a higher salary, a gas rather than coal-burning kitchen stove, and better access to transportation, shops, etc., but trading these conveniences for lung-crushing pollution, noise, dust and traffic. I'm pretty sure being in a city does not mean to them-- access to museums, to international NGOs, to the cutting edge of intellectual and political life.

  I chose to live in China's hinterland this year because I wanted to experience authentic traditional Chinese culture, to have a "real" Chinese experience away from the super-Westernized, modernized parts of China, where I'd be tempted to enclose myself in an expat bubble. I'm rethinking this idea. On the one hand, living in Jishou this year has been priceless for gaining perspective on China and on the developing world in general. On the other hand, city life is no less "Chinese" and also offers a valuable perspective. I will no longer assume that only in the hinterland can one truly experience another culture.

• Begging the Question
  

  A New York Times article on the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal (who rephrase their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience as, "No bling-bling, no sweet thing, Christ is King"), whose members own no personal possessions and "beg even for their food" (as the Times puts it, referring to the regular financial supporters of the Friars) causes me to reflect on a particular facet of Jishou life, namely, begging.

  Going out for night food here is a pleasant diversion-- eating cold spicy beef and eggplant with peppers, sitting on the hot-pink plastic lounge chairs on the sidewalk-- but it also presents a moral dilemma. Eating dinner, which takes about 45 minutes, means being approached by 5+ beggars, thus, a beggar roughly every 9 minutes. There are beggars in other streets in Jishou, but it is the night food beggars who are the most persistent. They won't accept food and want only money.

  In concrete situations, it can be heartrending. Do I give money to the little boy (skinny, dirty face) who just performed an unbelievably graceful back-handspring in front of our table? Who placed his little hands on the dirty sidewalk (and I mean dirty, filthy Jishou sidewalk) to do so? Can I really not give him money? The older boy who goes around with him collects the money being given-- are they two small brothers working together to fend off hunger? Or are they being exploited by people who use them to earn money? By giving, am I helping them out or am I actually creating, with my very money, an industry that thrives on the exploitation of children?

  I did give him money, but I wish instead I could be part of some organization which could deal with the situation in a holistic way. One year is such a short time to live and invest in a community!

  Instead of serving alongside monks, I was served by a monk. Last week when we went hiking we stopped at the mountain-top temple, where the monk brewed many kinds of tea for us to taste, using the elaborate traditional methods of proper tea brewing, and insisted at the end that we accept large cannisters of jasmine tea. Hao xiang!

• Petit Trianon, Jishou style
  

  I recently watched Sofia Coppola's film Marie Antoinette, where the teen queen enjoys a pastoral retreat idealized to the max-- the eggs are carefully washed before she goes out to gather them, and fresh milk and strawberries are brought to refresh her. I was able to partake in a similarly realistic experience of Chinese rural life with colleagues in Guzhang, a town a couple hours north of Jishou.

  We were met by a local "minister of tea", who explained the proper type of leaves to be picked, whereupon we clambered a little way up the hill to the tea bushes and picked leaves in a desultory fashion for about an hour. We were then led to the tea processing room, where we kneaded and roasted "our" tea leaves by hand. Finally, we were ushered into the store adjacent to the tea fields, where differing grades of tea are hawked by young women singing folk songs about tea.

  The whole time we were there, a reporter for the local TV station followed us around, filming. (Foreigners picking tea! Foreigners standing around!) At the end of the day, he asked me to take a big whiff from the bag of tea and say, "Hao xiang!" (How fragrant!) for the camera. My colleague taught me how to say this with a local dialect accent, but then said it made me sound drunk.

  Maojian (the variety of green tea grown in Guzhang) became well known after local girl made good, Song Zuyin, made a music video singing the tea's praises and featuring dancing tea pickers. The song is very popular at our college and is often re-enacted at school talent shows, complete with basket-props for