Some tea professionals, I heard, claimed that there was no such thing as Single Grove tea trees, nor that one has to climb the trees to harvest, or get on a ladder, or that there were these 600 year old trees. Whatever.
Today, the tea pickers were all in a good mood, because Mr. Wei’s 65 year old mom was personally climbing the 600 year old tree to do the harvesting.
My idol Bruce Lee, reincarnated as a fast food chain. These Kungfu fast food chains are considerably better than KFC or McD’s, and Panda Express belongs even farther on the spectrum. Still, the man who can do one handed three finger push-ups and is too fast to be captured on film, must be feeling amused.
Next to that: the now ubiquitous Starbucks.
Today: finally heading back to Hong Kong, the first half of my harvest trip wrapping up.
Ate at the farms with the families most of the times, so not much food to report. The meal with the government officials though, had this spectacular soft tofu freshly made and in its wooden tub, that you can ladle in 3 kinds of sauces. Tofu tastes like tofu here in China like no where else.
Conversation at dinner: how to make better Chinese liquor for export. IMHO, Chinese alcohol is at the other extreme of Chinese tea. The baijiu 白酒 is the most vile ‘vodka’ imaginable, the Mal Tai just burns, wuliangye 五糧液 smells like a NY subway drunk, the rice wine tastes either sweet like syrup or bland, the beer is basically water. The grape wines? Acidic, flat, no aroma. The tea is sublime. The alcohol is good to throw up with.
I didn’t share my opinion with the government officials. I said why not make a Tieguanyin alcohol. They thought it was a great idea they hadn’t thought of.
Really? They didn’t notice their alcohol could stand improvement any imaginable way possible?
Late night at the farm. Suddenly, everyone realized that what I said was true- you don’t actually get to buy property in China, it’s called ‘leasing’ in the rest of the world. However, one is told by the Communist government that one is purchasing, so down payment, mortgage, renovations etc are all yours to pay. Then the government gets to repossess it by year 50/60/70. So how is that ownership?
The more everyone thought about it, the worst the mood. Out came the Mal Tai, the rice wine, the domestic red table wine, and the snake soup. A round of cigarettes later and everyone is less depressed about being Chinese.
I focus on tea on this blog, and food secondarily, and then all the colorful people involved. However, ranting about China is a prerequisite for every travel.
China was the land of manners, with rigid, nuanced, social graces decreed by Confucius. Incidentally, Confucius’ most infamous words of wisdom were ‘one must die if the King commands’( does not appear in fortune cookies.). It is a fundamental error in Chinese social structure: absolutely everyone must obey those in power, even to the wrongful, senseless, head scratching puzzling death. That is what rulers jostle for power everafter for: the right to execute people without reason or due process, because Confucius said so.
For a country that obeys such a crazy rule though, no one follows any other rule. No one can queue up properly, no one respects any public signage ( no spitting/climbing/running/jumping/swinging), everyone, it seems, is hellbent on breaking as many rules as possible, being as disrespectful as possible, and disrupt and destroy public property, lie and cheat on goods, etc. Everyone is venting, because that one inalienable, irrefutable right of all humans to live life has been taken away- by the wisdom of Confucius, and supported by rulers for the next 2 thousand years.
Enough ranting for today….
This is a Communist country, which means you do not own anything, everything belongs to the people / government. However the Grand Experiment did not work out, the country was in steep poverty and despair, so smartly, Chairman Deng kept his mouth shut until madman Mao died, and then instituted the ‘signal left but turn right’ policy. Quietly, everyone went back to capitalism. Somethings are eternal. The Chinese will always, for several thousand years now, do business, make money, grow tea, bribe very corrupt government officials. Vast corruption will never change. The word for official has two mouths. That means they have more say than you do.
You can buy property nowadays too, but you get to own it for 90, no wait, 50, no, wait, 60, years…? The regular Chinese person has lost track. The government changes policy constantly. I said that’s called ‘lease’, not ‘buy’, if you can only have it for a limited and ever changing amount of time. Besides, technically you still can not ‘own’ anything in China. You don’t own your own shirt.
When Confucius meets Karl Marx, watch out! Complete chaos is to put it lightly.
Above photo: the eternal blanket of grey smog completely smothering every city.
Heading out to Phoenix mountain, will hold my breath till then.