A Tea Reader (22 page)

The Shiurokindo is one of the handsomest and largest of the tea-houses a foreigner finds, its interior a labyrinth of rooms and suites of rooms, each with a balcony and private outlook on some pretty court. The walls, the screens, recesses, ceilings, and balcony rails afford studies and models of the best Japanese interior decorations. The
samisen
's
⁵
wail and a clapping chorus announced that a great dinner was going on, and in the broader corridors there was a passing and repassing of people arrayed in hotel kimonos.

As the wise traveler carries little baggage, the teahouses furnish their customers with
ukatas
,
or plain cotton kimonos, to put on after the bath and wear at night. These gowns are marked with the crest or name of the house, painted in some ingenious or artistic design; and guests may wander round the town, even, clad in these garments, that so ingeniously advertise the Maple-leaf, the Chrysanthemum, or Dragon teahouse. All guides, and servants particularly, enjoy wearing these hotel robes, and travelers who dislike to splash their own clothing march to the bath ungarmented, assuming the house gowns in the corridor after their dip. These
ukatas
at the Shiurokindo were the most startling fabrics of Arimatsu, and we looked in them as if we had been throwing ink-bottles at each other.

Until the long
jinrikisha
ride was over we had not felt weary, as each day beguiled us with some new interest and excitement; but when we stepped from those baby-carriages at the door of the Shiurokindo we were dazed with fatigue, although the coolies who ran all the way did not appear to be tired in the least. Their headman, who marshaled the team of ten, was a powerful young fellow, a very Hercules for muscle, and for speed and endurance hardly to be matched by that ancient deity. At the end of each day he seemed fresher and stronger than at the start, and he has often run sixty and sixty-five miles a day, for three and four days together. He led the procession and set the pace, shouting back warning of ruts, stones, or bad places in the road, and giving the signals for slowing, stopping, and changing the order of the teams. On level ground the coolies trotted tandem—one in the shafts, and one running ahead with a line from the shafts held over his shoulder. Going downhill, the leader fell back and helped to hold the shafts; going uphill, he pushed the
jinrikisha
from the back.

The
jinrikisha
coolies make better wages than farm laborers or most mechanics. Our men were paid by the distance, and for days of detention each man received twenty-five cents to cover the expense of his board and lodging. They earned at an average one dollar and ten cents for each day, but out of this paid the rent of the
jinrikisha
and the government tax, Where two men and a
jinrikisha
cover one hundred and eighty miles in four days they receive thirteen dollars in all, which is more than a farm laborer receives in a year. As a rule, these coolies are great gamblers and spendthrifts, with a fondness for saké. Our headman was a model coolie, saving his money, avoiding the saké bottle, and regarding his splendid muscle as invested capital. When he walked in to collect his bill, he was clean and shining in a rustling silk kimono, such as a well-to-do merchant might wear. In this well-dressed, distinguished-looking person, who slid the screens of our sitting-room and bowed to us so gracefully, we hardly recognized our trotter of the blue-cotton coat, bare knees, and mushroom hat. He explained that the other men could not come to thank us for our gratuities because they had not proper clothes. In making his final and lowest bows his substantial American watch fell out of his silk belt with a thump; but he replaced it in its chamois case with the assurance that nothing hurt it, and that it was with the noon gun of Nagoya castle whenever he came to town.

1
[Certain British spellings and archaic terms have been amended. Ed.]

2
“
Danna san
” can refer to a boss, manager, or husband.

3
“
Midzu ame
” is malt glucose or, literally, “water candy.”

4
“Kwannon” is sometimes referred to as the
bodhisattva
Kuan Yin or Guan Yin.

5
A “
samisen
” is a musical instrument with three strings, a square body, and a long neck.

Tea Pilgrimage

BY
J
AMES
N
ORWOOD
P
RATT

Whoever said “the past is not dead; it's not even past” could have been speaking of tea history, for the history of tea lives on in the cups we drink every day. A taste that's been known sometimes for centuries comes back to life. There is not a tea you can ask for which does not bear witness to strange and wonderful stories, if only one cares to discover them. Every tea contains history. It is a history which begins thousands of years before we Westerners first began drinking tea only 400 years ago and stretches right back to ancient-most China.

Everyone who takes much of an interest in tea runs considerable risk of falling into a love affair, sooner or later, with the homeland of tea. After long infatuation, last September I boarded a flight from San Francisco to Shanghai as part of a special tour in pursuit of romance. The next morning I headed south of Shanghai on the road to Yixing, home of China's famous purple sand clay earthenware teapots. Tea-pots have been made since about the time of Christopher Columbus, which makes the teapot a fairly recent development in the history of China tea, if anything in China may be considered recent. To watch these master potters was to witness antiquity alive and vibrant in the present moment.

From Yixing we continued south through the hills around Lake Taihu where Lu Yu lived while he wrote the world's first book about tea over twelve hundred years ago. The rows of tea hugging the contours of the hills produce the famous
Biluochun
and
Guzhu
or “Purple Bamboo Shoot” just as they did when Lu Yu lived there and enjoyed them, though under different names. By nightfall I entered Hangzhou, one of the most beautiful cities in China (or anywhere else) and the ancient capital of the Song dynasty.
Longjing
—
the incomparable green tea we call Dragon Well—grows nearby on the surrounding hillsides.

Plucking tender shoots off the Dragon Well tea plants with my own fingers and pressing the mass of leaf against the bottom of a hot wok with my own hand gave the product of these labors a fresher, sweeter taste. We drank the tea we'd made while cruising Hangzhou's West Lake aboard a “dragon boat” and listening to classical Chinese music played on traditional instruments. To be at its best, ancient authorities always agreed, Dragon Well should be made with water from Tiger Run Spring, a source miraculously discovered in the hills above West Lake when Lingyin Temple was founded there by
Chan
(Zen) Buddhists well over a thousand years ago. Ancient Authority is spot on. This spring water will float a Chinese penny, and makes Dragon Well elegance itself, exactly as claimed. Following a short flight south to Fuzhou, directly across the straits from Taiwan, we are welcomed with a jasmine
oolong
Buddhist banquet at Drum Mountain monastery, after sunset chants as old as stone. Gongs' unforgettable peace. Vegetarian delicacies to go with our Drum Mountain tea after dark.

Six hours by train up river, deep in the interior of Fujian Province, grows “Bohea” meaning
oolong
tea, from the obsolete English word for Wuyi, the Chinese name for a spectacular mountain range and the
oolongs
produced there. Wuyi-shan looks like China the way Disney would do its dizzy cliffs to climb and clefts mysterious to enter. Entranced, I float down Nine Bend Creek on a bamboo raft, or is it the peaks and precipices which are floating past as if in a dream? When you enter the canyon where the ancient plants grow and drink the greatest
Wuyi yancha
or “cliff tea” in situ, you see it's no wonder they worshipped Da Hong Pao.

Awesome Beijing, like Buddhism, is inseparable from the culture that tea came from, and, of course, we had to visit. Its splendors included unforgettable teas at a pavilion in Prince Gong's garden-mansion, and dinners prepared in the Imperial kitchens at Fangshan Restaurant. For fourteen days all told, the spirit of ancient China always inhabited whatever tea we drank. Then back to San Francisco. Never to be the same again, of course, returning transformed, as if from pilgrimage to a holy land....

This piece originally appeared in
Fresh Cup'
s
Tea Almanac 2001.
Reprinted with permission.

Sipping and Tripping through Asia

BY
L
AURA
C
HILDS

Just before I began writing my
Tea Shop Mystery
series, I spent a fair amount of time traveling through Asia. I think this is where my true passion for tea was finally realized. Not just through sipping tea and broadening my tea-tasting horizons, but experiencing a number of serendipitous tea moments.

One of my most special memories involves traveling on the bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto on Christmas Day. I was deep into a book and hypnotized by the motion of the train, when my husband suddenly told me to look up. I lifted my head and there, directly out the window, was a spectacular, terraced tea garden with Mt. Fuji in the background. The bright, verdant green of the tea shone like neon against the white snows of Fuji, like a color photo pushed to the max. Later, I learned there are dozens of tea gardens outside the city of Fujinomiya and that several of the local bath houses even offer tea baths. It must be heavenly to steep in a warm, bubbling brew of fresh-picked tea leaves. No agony of the leaves here, just tired muscles unkinking, while tea leaves tickle pink skin and release their sweet, earthy aroma.

Later, while wandering the ancient, narrow streets of Kyoto, marveling at the temples, gardens, and tori gates, we got hopelessly lost. A woman from a small tea shop noticed our wandering and beckoned us in to take a seat. We sat down, a little dazed and travel-worn, and were delighted when she produced cups of bright green tea and fresh-baked yams.

Another trip took us to the oldest tea house in Shanghai: lovely Huxinting Tea House, located in a pagoda-like pavilion in the middle of a lake in Yuyuan Garden. There is nothing like sipping tea while lounging on silk cushions and admiring three hundred year-old Chinese bonsai, also known as
Pen-jing
.

In Hong Kong, we visited the Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware. My husband, who teaches Chinese and Japanese art history, was head over heels for the collection. Of course, he already had well over two hundred different Yixing teapots!

On a trip to Bali, a small bowl of hot tea was my comfort after thirty-five hours of air travel. Standing on my hotel balcony, gazing out at a live, steaming volcano with the South China Sea stretching endlessly toward the equator, I sipped Java's own Agung black tea and counted my blessings.

Imagine my surprise when I returned from Bali and found out that Berkley Prime Crime had offered me a three-book contract to actually write my
Tea Shop Mysteries
!
Twisting tea lore into tales of history and mystery seemed daunting at first, but after ten books I'm more than up to the challenge. And readers constantly tell me there's something very satisfying about reading a
Tea Shop Mystery
while sipping a cup of Golden Monkey Yunnan or Blue Mountain Nilgiri or classic, aged
pu-erh
.
Come to think of it, I wouldn't mind a cup of tea right now myself!