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Coffee
and Tea
Chinese
Original
Jingsong Chen
The
first time I drank coffee was 10 years ago when I was still in
China
. Trying to be fashionable, I went to the Beijing Hotel with three
friends and we ordered four cups of coffee. To prove that I was a
pro, I took my coffee without cream or sugar, but the first sip
was so bitter that my tongue almost fell out of my mouth. I
decided to stop there without taking another sip, and completely
wasted the whole thing. From then on, I've never had a good
impression of coffee. Once I left
China
, I decided to never drink coffee
 I
would only have tea. My home village produced green tea. The color
was a delightful green and it tasted so good that people were
crazy about it. In the village, it was often presented to
relatives and friends as a gift and was regarded as an
extraordinary thing. Naturally, when I left
China
, I didn't forget to take a few boxes of tea with me. So, during
the first few years after I left the country, I only drank tea.
But the second time I drank coffee was something that happened
five years later. I was writing my thesis at the time and because
one of my advisers had to leave town the next day, he wanted to
take my draft thesis with him to read while on the road. Even
though I was basically done with the draft, it still wasn't ready
and I had to spend the entire night editing it. I usually don't
stay up all night and would go to sleep no matter what happens,
but I couldn't that night. At first I drank a really large pot of
strong tea to get me going, but it didn't do the trick. My mind
was cloudy and I couldn't think. But just then I thought of
coffee. I didn't have any at home, so I went next door and had to
wake up an American friend who had already fallen asleep. I went
through the niceties at first and then explained why I had come
over. He was very polite and took out some strong instant coffee.
It is said that this coffee can wake the dead. I thanked him
profusely and left. I put a lot of coffee grounds in the first
cup, probably filling it a quarter of the way. And I can't explain
how bitter the first mouthful was
it
was just like taking Chinese medicine as a child. But I thought
about what I had to finish for the next day and I motivated myself
by thinking of images of Guan Gong having poison scraped from his
bone 1 and the characters that were branded into Yue
Fei's back. 2 Sure enough, I felt much more confident.
What was strange, though, was that after four or five sips I no
longer noticed the bitterness and went on to drink several cups,
one after the other. Naturally, I was really awake after that. I
was so awake, that after I turned the draft in the next day, I was
more energetic than ever and played two hours of ping-pong before
I finally started to get sleepy. From that point on I've had a
certain respect for coffee.
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Cantonese packing house where, after weighing,
the tea was placed in lead lined
chests and sealed by Chinese labourers, c.
1790, Victoria & Albert Museum, London. |
Later on, however, this started to give me
problems. Each time there was a day when I felt like I had not
slept enough, I just had to drink some coffee to feel better. If I
didn't, I just kept yawning like I had drugged myself with opium.
If I didn't drink coffee, I was in trouble, and it was probably
because I was getting older, had more stress, and had less energy.
But I always had to add sugar or saccharin for it to go down. Of
course, when I didn't need to drink it, I just didn't drink it,
because drinking coffee still felt foreign to me. I always felt
that I was trashing my insides by pouring that black, murky stuff
down. So, when I couldn't get by without drinking it, I steeped
some light, green tea to go along with it. After having a cup of
coffee I would quickly drink a cup of tea to wash it down.
Otherwise, I just didn't feel comfortable. The feeling was just
like when I felt the need to go back to my cultural roots by
walking around in
Chinatown
after I had spent a lot of time among Americans, or when I felt
the need to rent a Chinese movie after having watched too much
American television. If I didn't do this, my heart wouldn't be at
ease, I'd feel a little off, go into a trance, and feel somewhat
lost.
I
associate all of this with the so-called food culture. Actually,
culture is played out in every corner of people's lives. Some
aspects of culture are abstract and some are tangible, but food
culture is a very particular type of thing. A person's eating
habits demonstrate his cultural roots. Some people jokingly say
that everything changes as a result of being away from one's own
country for so many years, but your "stomach" cannot be
changed. It is the same with this coffee and tea issue. My
personal experience has been that coffee is a type of medicine
that will give you a boost. I drink it to finish what I need to
do, but I don't drink it to enjoy it. Now, tea is different. I
drink it to free myself of worries and to imagine I'm flying. Take
a small sip and it's like the old thatched cottages and
tile-roofed houses of home
 flowing
water under a little bridge. Take a larger sip and it's like the
refreshing breeze and clear moon of my native land
great
mountains and wide rivers. Take an even bigger drink and it's like
the Taoist masters' ' indescribable Tao'
something
so good it has no name. On the other hand, the artificial flavor
of coffee is too thick. There are not many people who drink coffee
straight, without any cream or sugar. Tea is just so much more
natural. You just grab a handful of tealeaves, boil some water,
and it's ready. More importantly, looking at those tealeaves in
the cup helps you to appreciate them. It's not like coffee where
once it's brewed that's it. With tealeaves, you can see them sink
naturally to the bottom of the cup and open up. It's as natural as
the floating clouds and flowing water of home. Lastly, coffee is a
type of feeling, but drinking tea is a type of experience. Of
course, coffee drinkers can describe the taste of each sip of
coffee. But for me, I'm afraid that nothing beats our exquisite
teas. With coffee, if you use too much the taste gets a little
bitter, and if you don't use enough it becomes a little weak.
That's all there is to it. Tealeaves, however, are different. The
steeping of tea has a lingering charm to it. It's like listening
to a performance at the Peking Opera. We must also consider the
number of times we can steep the tealeaves. The first cup is not
the best; it's only used to bring out the flavor. It's like
setting the stage of an opera by hoisting up the flags and opening
up the umbrellas. The second cup is the best, so with the first
cup of tea you don't want to add too much water. If the cup is too
full, it will destroy the flavor that is trying to come out. This
is what they call ' the presumptuous guest usurping the role of
the host'. It's like watching a supporting character come onto the
stage to beat the drum
pounding
away without stopping
and
never getting to see the main character emerge at all. The Chinese
saying 'when filling a cup with tea, fill only 70% of it; but when
filling it with wine, let it overflow' is appropriate in this
case. The role of the third cup is also significant; it's just
like the end of a play. It acts as a cushion that allows the plot
to come down softly from its climax. It smoothes the transition
and enables the troops to rally to sing yet another
"episode". Without it, the experience is not complete.
Now, it's best to not drink a fourth cup of tea, of course. That
is, unless you don't have enough tealeaves and are trying to save
them. But that's another story. So, the process of drinking tea is
like watching a traditional opera or listening to a zheng
3
it's
full of flavor.
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Jan A. Garemijn, Afternoon Tea, 1759, Groeninge museum,
Bruges
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Taking tea in
China
, c. 1780, Groeninge museum,
Bruges
. Western interest for tea-drinking, a vogue of
chinoiserie, in 18th century is highlighted.
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I don't know when Chinese people started drinking
coffee. It is probably something that has happened only in the
last 100 years. But people in the West have been drinking tea for
centuries. It is said that when tea arrived in
Europe
, the Europeans did not know that it had to be steeped. For a long
time, they chewed on the tough leaves. After the leaves were worn
out they would spit them out. This was surely a waste. What is
interesting is that when tea arrived in
England
, it underwent probably three changes. The first change was in
color. The English drink black tea. Of course, Chinese people in
some regions also drink black tea, but the majority of Chinese
drink green tea most of the time. There are several explanations
for why the English drink black tea. One is that by the time the
tea crossed over the seas and arrived in
Europe
with the traders, its color had already changed. This led the
Europeans to believe that the color of tea was black. Another
explanation is that Europeans can't grow green tea because of the
nature of their soil. We'll let the experts decide whether that is
accurate. The second change is the addition of sugar and even milk
to tea. Maybe that grassy, leaf-like taste is somewhat
unacceptable to the English. The third change is the time during
which one should drink tea. We Chinese drink tea at any time of
the day or night, but the English love to drink tea in the
afternoon.
It's
probably because I'm biased, but I've never seen English tea as a
part of the 'tea culture'. Instead, I believe it's a variation of
tea. It's really neither here nor there. Whenever I am a guest in
an American household I don't drink their tea. I'd rather drink
their coffee. It's just like the way I never use those teabags
that you see in the market. I feel that they are an insult to our
lovely tea culture.
Trans.
Kevin Graham
Notes
1. It is said in Romance of the Three Kingdoms 《三國演義》,
that General Guan Gong 關公, also
known as Guan Yu 關羽, an
ancient Chinese hero who lived in the 2nd century CE, was shot in
the arm with a poison arrow during combat. Guan Gong watched
bravely as his physician cut open his arm and scraped the poison
from the bone with a surgical knife.
2. Yue
Fei 岳飛 (1103 1141 CE) was a
general during the Song dynasty. In a show of patriotic love for
her country, Yue Fei's mother inscribed in his back four
characters: jing zhong bao guo 精忠報國.
The characters represent loyalty and service to the country.
3. A zheng 箏 is a 21-or 25-stringed plucked instrument
similar in some ways to the zither.
Picture Acknowledgement
Tea Time in
Flanders
.
(Ludion Press)
(Original
Translation at www.cityu.edu.hk/ccs)
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晓鲁杂文集«咖啡与茶»
