Green Tea and Red China

or The Way of Tea

   Jun loved his tea. About my age, or a little older, or a little younger perhaps, Jun was on his way to William Penn University, a small Quaker institution outside of Des Moines.
   He grew up in Communist China with its grey prospects and simplified characters. True, the western Schezuan area was not as oppressively militarized as more populous areas such as Beijing; still, Chairman Mao’s flabby hand lay heavy on Jun’s life.
   But he loved his country all the same. I guess patriotism is a concept foreign to me — but after experiencing for three years America, how could he rationally love China?
   Green tea.
   Yes, I mentioned my love for tea to him; and for the next quarter of an hour, received a monologue both historical and technical, with some generous helping of fervor and nearly-religious zeal thrown in.
   Five kinds — and all expensive: that’s all he brought with him to the states. And a tea-pot, clay (or “soil”, as his broken translation-dictionary English put it), because you can’t make good tea in a metal pot.
   “The Way of Tea,” he kept saying. “The Way of Tea” dictates you cannot just “make a pot of tea.” Tea is nearly supernatural, to be catered to, appeased, and worshipped through its preparations.
   Funny, isn’t it? All he really wanted was a perfect cup of hot green tea. China was the only place in the world where one could be had. Red China. Communist China. Chairman Mao’s China. So he loved China.
   Though, if we are not prevented from enjoying — and I mean really enjoying, falling-into-a-reverie enjoying — a cup of tea, are we really oppressed? Are we really misused?
   Not for that moment, however short.
   Not for that moment.

Wonder ’tis how little mirth
Keeps the bones of men from lying
On the bed of earth.

— A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad

Crosspost: Scraps and Harbour in the Scramble