Long train rides from farm to farm. Luckily the trains are so fast nowadays, saving me a lot of time. Someone in the U.S. thought I was on vacation in China. I don’t believe I have ever taken a vacation there. It’s either a mountain climbing pilgrimage, tea buying, or other business. Vacation means de-stress usually, not ‘multiply the stress’. China, with its overpopulation, jostling, chaotic systems, possibility of being cheated, not to mention the random spitting that one must dodge with lightening verve, is simply not a relaxing situation.
I do enjoy talking to all the farmers, tea producers, and all kinds of business people I meet, and exchange perspectives, as entertainment. They are much more open minded in some ways and wanting to hear, for example, just how bad this coming election is going to be. Isn’t Hillary going to win, they asked? Putin is not easy to deal with, he is the kingpin of thugs, they said. I laughed. What about Xi Jin Ping? Just a tough guy, huh? They seem to be slowly waking up to the dangers and failures of the patriarchal, Confucian system.
No one has any solutions, but acknowledging the mess is a good step. If you are 1.3 billion people trapped inside a wall, what do you do? The Chinese are conditioned not to resist authority, they lamented. Curious. I didn’t start the conversation, and promised myself not to be an instigator this time either. Here in this photo, someone else’s thermos of tea, a typical scene of low end, repeatedly steeped, but at least, whole leaf tea, to be drunk all day long.
Comments are closed.