Sengan-yagura
is all that stands between me
and my cup of tea
04 December, 2013
02 December, 2013
Smalltown Yunnan, Anywhere
Everyone has a personal myth that they like to believe. Everyone has an "identity", some form of understanding of what we are and where we come from. It sometimes takes quite a while before you come to recognise and understand someone else's "origin story", their personal take on their own history. Your partner, your boss, your parents, everyone has one - you may even have one.
One of my hobbies is identifying someone's "origin story", their view of themselves. It helps in many ways to understand a person, which is another of my hobbies (and one at which I am consistently unskilled, it must be said).
One of my hobbies is identifying someone's "origin story", their view of themselves. It helps in many ways to understand a person, which is another of my hobbies (and one at which I am consistently unskilled, it must be said).
One common thread that appears in many people's "origin stories" is that of being a "smalltown" or "countryside" person. Sarah Palin put this to (unintentional) comic effect when she notoriously contrasted "real America" to the rest of the country. It is a common feeling for many countries, but can have reverse connotations.
In the UK, maybe elsewhere in the west, it is highly desirable to be a "country gentleman". The goal of most City financiers is to buy that pretty landholding in the country, as soon as possible, with the intention of spending week-ends there, or as much time as they can manage. It is said that the spirit of France is defined by its town, and that the spirit of England is defined by its countryside. The country is that beautiful place that lives in folk memory to which everyone wishes to return.
In China, the countryside is considered to be highly negative. While areas of natural beauty are easy to find, to suggest that someone is "from the country" is to liken them to a disadvantaged population, and to suggest that they are rustic, uncouth, and uncivilised. Farmer-workers form the peasant underclass of China about much has been written. It is often written that, for a country that prides itself on doing away with the "Feudal system", they have done an excellent job of preserving the peasantry.
For what it's worth, while I do take a very great pleasure in using stereotypes and people's prejudice for my own amusement and manipulation, I do, at heart, consider myself to be something of a "country boy", in my own view of my past. Even my tiny university town still feels like the "big city" to me.
In the UK, maybe elsewhere in the west, it is highly desirable to be a "country gentleman". The goal of most City financiers is to buy that pretty landholding in the country, as soon as possible, with the intention of spending week-ends there, or as much time as they can manage. It is said that the spirit of France is defined by its town, and that the spirit of England is defined by its countryside. The country is that beautiful place that lives in folk memory to which everyone wishes to return.
In China, the countryside is considered to be highly negative. While areas of natural beauty are easy to find, to suggest that someone is "from the country" is to liken them to a disadvantaged population, and to suggest that they are rustic, uncouth, and uncivilised. Farmer-workers form the peasant underclass of China about much has been written. It is often written that, for a country that prides itself on doing away with the "Feudal system", they have done an excellent job of preserving the peasantry.
For what it's worth, while I do take a very great pleasure in using stereotypes and people's prejudice for my own amusement and manipulation, I do, at heart, consider myself to be something of a "country boy", in my own view of my past. Even my tiny university town still feels like the "big city" to me.
Yunnan Sourcing's two cakes described here got me thinking about smalltown Yunnan, and smalltown Anywhere - that mythical place in which all things dissolve into an orange-tinted hue of comfort and bucolic bliss.
The first of these is from Duoyizhai [dwoa-yee-djai], which is in smalltown Nannuoshan region, not a million miles away from Yakouzhai [yah-koh-djai]. I completely dug the 2010 Yakouzhai cake, which sold for the equivalent of $44 / 357g (currently the equivalent of $60 / 357g). This 2012 Duoyizhai cake is a little pricier, at $65 / 400g.
The medium-sized leaves, combined with the great enjoyment that I had with the 2010 Yakouzhai cake, have "a rumbling portent of sweetness, a promise that makes me hopeful." The scent is clean; the soup is yellow, turning orange in the air.
The second infusion is more green, more straightforwardly bitter (perhaps as is common for southern Nannuoshan, unlike the canonical northerly Nannuoshan regions). Pushing through the third infusion allowed me to enjoy a little sweetness, but there is not much of significance or distinction that I could find in this cake. Perhaps Scott loves it. I don't think that I do. My advice, for those looking for some decent southern-Nannuoshan action: just buy the 2010 version.
I loves me my cakes from Lincang diqu, and these outlying regions are something of a speciality for Yunnan Sourcing.
This 2012 Lian'gezhai [leean-ger-djai] cake comes from far, far Lincang, right on the border with Burma. That is some remote countryside out there - as small town as small town gets, in Yunnan. Scott writes that this is some of the most difficult-to-reach countryside in the province, and that the village of Lian'ge itself is 1600m above sea-level, with the surrounding tea gardens up at Wuliangshan-scraping 1800m altitudes. Those heights have resulted in ridges that are covered with "untended" 60- to 200-year-old tea-trees, he continues.
The opening infusions of this cake are warm, rounded, very smooth, and quite chunky. The phrase "well-balanced" is heavily over-used with pu'ercha, but it might be applicable in this case: it has lots of different components, none of which exceed the others in strength, and all of which result in an equilibrium state that is pretty decent, initially. The kuwei [good bitterness] balances the rounded sweetness; the thick texture balances the sharp-grain Lincang flavour.
It is not a grand tea, but there are fun times to be had. Priced at $35 / 400g, I am reminded that Scott is one of the few people left in the Western pu'ercha game who still sell reasonable cakes at reasonable prices. He is also one of the few people who has been in the game for a long, long time. I think that this is not a coincidental coupling.
If I were being brutally honest, I would say that there are other cakes to get your Lincang and Simao thrills from the 2012 line-up from Yunnan Sourcing, which are priced similarly. I liked the Wuliangshan, Ailaoshan, and Mangfeishan in particular.
Smalltown Yunnan, smalltown Anywhere. For me, it still holds its charms. Maybe that's because how I see myself, at heart.
If I were being brutally honest, I would say that there are other cakes to get your Lincang and Simao thrills from the 2012 line-up from Yunnan Sourcing, which are priced similarly. I liked the Wuliangshan, Ailaoshan, and Mangfeishan in particular.
Smalltown Yunnan, smalltown Anywhere. For me, it still holds its charms. Maybe that's because how I see myself, at heart.
28 November, 2013
Tag Team, Back Again
Being tag-teamed by a Chinese academic brings to mind a highly amusing mental image.
However, the fact remains that I have been slammed into the figurative ropes of the wrestling ring, and need to extricate myself by means of answering the following questoids.
Make it so.
1. "How were you introduced and fell in love with the wonderful beverage of tea?"
You know, I'm completely the wrong person for such questions. To begin with, I see only the grammatical error in the question. I cannot see past it. Clauses have to agree, grammatically, and in this question, they do not. It is the kind of error that leads me to wonder as to the nature of the soul behind the question. So, I start following the chain of links up from the Duke of N, all the way up to the ultimate source: "the tea cup of life".
It is an illuminating journey. I am familiar with the first link in the chain, because I have reading the output of the Ducato di N for the majority of the last decade. The Duke of N may be many virtuous things, but a murderer of grammar he is not. We work our way slowly back up the chain of "tea blogs" and suddenly I am far, far, far out of my comfort zone. All of sudden we have curly fonts and pictures of white porcelain. We have pictures of table settings (i.e., with tablecloths) and, may the Lord have mercy on our souls, we have discussions of teacakes. I don't know where we are, but I am scared. There are things out there that people shouldn't have to see.
I've seen things... you people wouldn't believe... attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion...
Curling up into a ball, hugging my knees tightly to chest, I begin to regain control of my breathing. In... out... in... out... My vision returns. My mind recoils from the horror of an infinity of tea blogs, stretching out in all directions as far as the eye can see. I focus on the present. I return to safety.
Some things are beyond the comprehension of the mortal mind. The only thing that keeps us from madness is our inability to see the horrific, infinite truth, stretching off into the abyss.
As my hands stop trembling, I realise that I have not answered the exam question. I steel myself, trying not to prevent my mind from wondering about the remainder of the questions yet to come.
So, then. How was I introduced and [HRRRNNNGGGG] fell in love with the [HRRRARRRGLE] wonderful beverage of tea?
A searing pain tears across my chest, making my vision white, as I struggle to parse the sentence. My breathing is laboured, hoarse; my tongue, a dry rag slung against the side of my throat. A number of pills may have passed from pill-bottle to mouth; I cannot recall. Merely, I am aware that later, much later, my consciousness returns.
---
Tea. I was introduced to it in the womb. It came down the umbilical cord in its unadulterated form. Tea is the glue that binds life together in England. We drink it by default. It is the cure to all ills, the panacea.
Did I "fall in love" with it? Is a dry, rancid soul such as my own capable of such lofty emotion? I can tolerate tea in a way that I cannot tolerate much else.
Perhaps I really am the wrong person for such questions. Let us plough on.
2. "What was the very first tea blend that you ever tried?"
I conclude that the writer of these questions is foreign to me in a way that I will never understand. Is this the stage of the proceedings at which one should write "mint chocolatte eggnog nipple-tweak energiser"?
Like every other life form in England, I have consumed "tea" since before the day I was born. I imagine that the real answer to this question, in my case, is "English breakfast", but that really depends on whatever it was that my mother happened to be drinking when I was happily gestating.
3. "When did you start your tea blog and what was your hope for creating it?"
Heavens, we're only on question 3. At least this one is a little more explicable. I fired up the ol' Half-Dipper in the spring of 2007, back when I was a fresh-faced young man, eyes wide in joyous wonder at the rapturous possibilities that the future held in store. Obviously, I am now a decrepit crustacean.
Documentation forms a major part of my life. I have a some fifty or so journals, stretching back to when I was 18, and two dozen logbooks that describe my work and the details of the experiments that form part of it. A tea blog was a natural extension of this process. I cannot remember very much at all, and so having a searchable list of my conclusions concerning matters related to tea seemed to offer the same possibilities as do my journals or laboratory logbooks.
Later, after tonking around for some considerable period, I came to appreciate that the real fun with the web-site came from bouncing ideas off like-minded (i.e., rabidly strange) individuals. There is a chance, Gentle Reader, that you fall within this category, if you are reading this.
4. "List one thing most rewarding about your blog and one thing most discouraging."
We have may surmised, looking at the above text, that I (and probably you) are not immediately similar to that which the majority of people might call "tea people". I dislike that label immensely, in fact, because it is a diminutive. You, Gentle Reader, are so very much more than a "tea" person. You are, quite probably, entirely fascinating. You might be a scholar, a warrior, a poet, or perhaps even (as the youth of today might say) a d-bag. You are, undoubtedly, more than someone who consumes a drink.
I sigh a weary sigh as I realise that I have not even remotely answered this question. What is rewarding about my blog? People. Connections. If you were not here, Gentle Reader, then I would be just a strange individual shouting at an empty space. Instead, I enjoy the luxurious facility of intercourse. Intercourse! With you! It is an entirely satisfactory experience.
The most discouraging? I don't find much, if anything, discouraging about the whole affair. People come and go - even you and I will go, perhaps sooner, perhaps later. This transient behaviour of readers and writers is a charming feature of the medium, in fact - it is the constant reinvention that makes for renewal.
Actually, I just thought of something. The one thing I dislike. It is the adoption of the word "scholar" when referring to tea. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the one discouragement that I have encountered: "scholar tea". The chap who coined this phrase is a lovely one, whom I like very much. You might remember him. It is more the phrase itself that is the problem - the notion that something I love so dearly (i.e., scholarship) could be co-opted to hawk tea.
"That's all I have", as our American cousins might say.
5. "What type of tea are you most likely to be caught sipping on?"
I feel that these questions are quite revealing as to the texture of the mind that generated them. It is not a texture that is immediately recognisable to me, and I have to feel my way around it in the same way as a newborn might require continued tactile sensation to come to an understanding.
I drink Right Tea. I do not drink "good tea" or "excellent tea", because that is rather a lazy description. Sometimes, I drink downright horrible tea. However, I always drink the Right Tea. Every day.
6. "Favourite tea latte to indulge in?"
I would like to meet the person that created these questions solely for the purpose of extending my comprehension as to the vast and infinitely-varied spectrum that comprises humanity.
I am consistently amazed, year on year, by how many new types of people there are out there - people thinking and existing in a manner that I would have hitherto not even thought possible. Rather, so alien are these souls to my own that I could not even conceive of their existence, let alone their impossibility.
And yet, somehow, such people exist.
It's a miracle, really. Nature is a miracle-worker, and we, Gentle Reader, are witnessing the results of that magic. It is a humbling thought.
7. "Favourite treat to pair with your tea?"
Malaise? Ennui? Artery-splitting terror that I might be asked such a dread question?
8. "If there was one place in the world that you could explore the tea culture at, where would it be and why?"
If there was [HRRRNNNGG] one place in the world that you could explore the tea culture at [HR-HR-HRRRUNNNNNGGGH], where would it be and why?
My physiology attempts to cope with the brutal violence done to our dear language. Merely writing it, tapping fingers against keys, has caused my systolic blood pressure to rise beyond that of an exploding sun.
I... I... you win. You win. You have challenged me, and won. You have bested me in combat. I am honour-bound to answer the remainder of your questions.
9. "Any tea time rituals that you have that you'd like to share?"
I begin to suspect that the victor in this combat, which is to say the originator of these fell questions, may come from the United States of America. The notion of "sharing" in this context is very definitely foreign. It makes me feel similar to that sensation I experience when I hear the word "leverage" used as a verb. It is akin to describing a problem as a "space" or as an "issue".
I have rituals, and plenty of them, all of which are automated and performed without intervention by my consciousness. I am sure that you have them, too, of your own sort, Gentle Reader.
We have learned the rules, and then forgotten them.
10. "Time of day you enjoy drinking tea the most: Morning, Noon, Night, or Anytime?"
Such cavalier use of capitalisation is to be admired, really. They say that Shakespeare created three times more new words, and new usage of existing words, than anyone else in the history of the English language. This spirit lives on in the driving force behind these questions.
I would love to experience the complete freedom to play with language and syntax in such a way, but I am constrained and limited in a way that the questioner is not. The ceiling is low indeed, for me, and I scrape against it, while the devisor of these questions soars high above, in the clouds, free and unbound.
11. "What's one thing you wish for tea in future?"
Tea is just a drink. My advice would be, if I may be so bold as to venture advice, do not limit yourself by association.
"Buddha is in the details", it is said, and so while tea is "just a drink", it contains so much more. Do I wish anything for tea? Not particularly.
However, I wish very much for you, Gentle Reader, and that is surely the purpose of our time together.
12. "Whom do you tag?"
The buck stops here. I will be the Atlas to your globe, Gentle Reader, and bear the weight of your subsequent judgement.
I pray you, be favourable.
However, the fact remains that I have been slammed into the figurative ropes of the wrestling ring, and need to extricate myself by means of answering the following questoids.
Make it so.
1. "How were you introduced and fell in love with the wonderful beverage of tea?"
You know, I'm completely the wrong person for such questions. To begin with, I see only the grammatical error in the question. I cannot see past it. Clauses have to agree, grammatically, and in this question, they do not. It is the kind of error that leads me to wonder as to the nature of the soul behind the question. So, I start following the chain of links up from the Duke of N, all the way up to the ultimate source: "the tea cup of life".
It is an illuminating journey. I am familiar with the first link in the chain, because I have reading the output of the Ducato di N for the majority of the last decade. The Duke of N may be many virtuous things, but a murderer of grammar he is not. We work our way slowly back up the chain of "tea blogs" and suddenly I am far, far, far out of my comfort zone. All of sudden we have curly fonts and pictures of white porcelain. We have pictures of table settings (i.e., with tablecloths) and, may the Lord have mercy on our souls, we have discussions of teacakes. I don't know where we are, but I am scared. There are things out there that people shouldn't have to see.
I've seen things... you people wouldn't believe... attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion...
Curling up into a ball, hugging my knees tightly to chest, I begin to regain control of my breathing. In... out... in... out... My vision returns. My mind recoils from the horror of an infinity of tea blogs, stretching out in all directions as far as the eye can see. I focus on the present. I return to safety.
Some things are beyond the comprehension of the mortal mind. The only thing that keeps us from madness is our inability to see the horrific, infinite truth, stretching off into the abyss.
As my hands stop trembling, I realise that I have not answered the exam question. I steel myself, trying not to prevent my mind from wondering about the remainder of the questions yet to come.
So, then. How was I introduced and [HRRRNNNGGGG] fell in love with the [HRRRARRRGLE] wonderful beverage of tea?
A searing pain tears across my chest, making my vision white, as I struggle to parse the sentence. My breathing is laboured, hoarse; my tongue, a dry rag slung against the side of my throat. A number of pills may have passed from pill-bottle to mouth; I cannot recall. Merely, I am aware that later, much later, my consciousness returns.
---
Tea. I was introduced to it in the womb. It came down the umbilical cord in its unadulterated form. Tea is the glue that binds life together in England. We drink it by default. It is the cure to all ills, the panacea.
Did I "fall in love" with it? Is a dry, rancid soul such as my own capable of such lofty emotion? I can tolerate tea in a way that I cannot tolerate much else.
Perhaps I really am the wrong person for such questions. Let us plough on.
2. "What was the very first tea blend that you ever tried?"
I conclude that the writer of these questions is foreign to me in a way that I will never understand. Is this the stage of the proceedings at which one should write "mint chocolatte eggnog nipple-tweak energiser"?
Like every other life form in England, I have consumed "tea" since before the day I was born. I imagine that the real answer to this question, in my case, is "English breakfast", but that really depends on whatever it was that my mother happened to be drinking when I was happily gestating.
3. "When did you start your tea blog and what was your hope for creating it?"
Heavens, we're only on question 3. At least this one is a little more explicable. I fired up the ol' Half-Dipper in the spring of 2007, back when I was a fresh-faced young man, eyes wide in joyous wonder at the rapturous possibilities that the future held in store. Obviously, I am now a decrepit crustacean.
Documentation forms a major part of my life. I have a some fifty or so journals, stretching back to when I was 18, and two dozen logbooks that describe my work and the details of the experiments that form part of it. A tea blog was a natural extension of this process. I cannot remember very much at all, and so having a searchable list of my conclusions concerning matters related to tea seemed to offer the same possibilities as do my journals or laboratory logbooks.
Later, after tonking around for some considerable period, I came to appreciate that the real fun with the web-site came from bouncing ideas off like-minded (i.e., rabidly strange) individuals. There is a chance, Gentle Reader, that you fall within this category, if you are reading this.
4. "List one thing most rewarding about your blog and one thing most discouraging."
We have may surmised, looking at the above text, that I (and probably you) are not immediately similar to that which the majority of people might call "tea people". I dislike that label immensely, in fact, because it is a diminutive. You, Gentle Reader, are so very much more than a "tea" person. You are, quite probably, entirely fascinating. You might be a scholar, a warrior, a poet, or perhaps even (as the youth of today might say) a d-bag. You are, undoubtedly, more than someone who consumes a drink.
I sigh a weary sigh as I realise that I have not even remotely answered this question. What is rewarding about my blog? People. Connections. If you were not here, Gentle Reader, then I would be just a strange individual shouting at an empty space. Instead, I enjoy the luxurious facility of intercourse. Intercourse! With you! It is an entirely satisfactory experience.
The most discouraging? I don't find much, if anything, discouraging about the whole affair. People come and go - even you and I will go, perhaps sooner, perhaps later. This transient behaviour of readers and writers is a charming feature of the medium, in fact - it is the constant reinvention that makes for renewal.
Actually, I just thought of something. The one thing I dislike. It is the adoption of the word "scholar" when referring to tea. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the one discouragement that I have encountered: "scholar tea". The chap who coined this phrase is a lovely one, whom I like very much. You might remember him. It is more the phrase itself that is the problem - the notion that something I love so dearly (i.e., scholarship) could be co-opted to hawk tea.
"That's all I have", as our American cousins might say.
5. "What type of tea are you most likely to be caught sipping on?"
I feel that these questions are quite revealing as to the texture of the mind that generated them. It is not a texture that is immediately recognisable to me, and I have to feel my way around it in the same way as a newborn might require continued tactile sensation to come to an understanding.
I drink Right Tea. I do not drink "good tea" or "excellent tea", because that is rather a lazy description. Sometimes, I drink downright horrible tea. However, I always drink the Right Tea. Every day.
6. "Favourite tea latte to indulge in?"
I would like to meet the person that created these questions solely for the purpose of extending my comprehension as to the vast and infinitely-varied spectrum that comprises humanity.
I am consistently amazed, year on year, by how many new types of people there are out there - people thinking and existing in a manner that I would have hitherto not even thought possible. Rather, so alien are these souls to my own that I could not even conceive of their existence, let alone their impossibility.
And yet, somehow, such people exist.
It's a miracle, really. Nature is a miracle-worker, and we, Gentle Reader, are witnessing the results of that magic. It is a humbling thought.
7. "Favourite treat to pair with your tea?"
Malaise? Ennui? Artery-splitting terror that I might be asked such a dread question?
8. "If there was one place in the world that you could explore the tea culture at, where would it be and why?"
If there was [HRRRNNNGG] one place in the world that you could explore the tea culture at [HR-HR-HRRRUNNNNNGGGH], where would it be and why?
My physiology attempts to cope with the brutal violence done to our dear language. Merely writing it, tapping fingers against keys, has caused my systolic blood pressure to rise beyond that of an exploding sun.
I... I... you win. You win. You have challenged me, and won. You have bested me in combat. I am honour-bound to answer the remainder of your questions.
9. "Any tea time rituals that you have that you'd like to share?"
I begin to suspect that the victor in this combat, which is to say the originator of these fell questions, may come from the United States of America. The notion of "sharing" in this context is very definitely foreign. It makes me feel similar to that sensation I experience when I hear the word "leverage" used as a verb. It is akin to describing a problem as a "space" or as an "issue".
I have rituals, and plenty of them, all of which are automated and performed without intervention by my consciousness. I am sure that you have them, too, of your own sort, Gentle Reader.
We have learned the rules, and then forgotten them.
10. "Time of day you enjoy drinking tea the most: Morning, Noon, Night, or Anytime?"
Such cavalier use of capitalisation is to be admired, really. They say that Shakespeare created three times more new words, and new usage of existing words, than anyone else in the history of the English language. This spirit lives on in the driving force behind these questions.
I would love to experience the complete freedom to play with language and syntax in such a way, but I am constrained and limited in a way that the questioner is not. The ceiling is low indeed, for me, and I scrape against it, while the devisor of these questions soars high above, in the clouds, free and unbound.
11. "What's one thing you wish for tea in future?"
Tea is just a drink. My advice would be, if I may be so bold as to venture advice, do not limit yourself by association.
"Buddha is in the details", it is said, and so while tea is "just a drink", it contains so much more. Do I wish anything for tea? Not particularly.
However, I wish very much for you, Gentle Reader, and that is surely the purpose of our time together.
12. "Whom do you tag?"
The buck stops here. I will be the Atlas to your globe, Gentle Reader, and bear the weight of your subsequent judgement.
I pray you, be favourable.
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