But in southern Fujian province, like most of China, the tea ceremony isn’t historically so much a ceremony as it is a method. Lately, though, it seems to be turning into a bit of a fashion in this region as well.

Back in the post “Hell Freezes Over (And Other Cultural Changes Afoot in China),” I alluded to the fact that folks in Fujian’s Jinjiang area, between Quanzhou to the north and Xiamen to the south, are even making the art of brewing tea a competitive social event, replacing some of the older social habits in practice when men get together to talk business:

So if men aren’t offering each other cigarettes and drinking themselves into silly stupors with bai jiu when getting together at one another’s home or sitting down to talk business, then just what are they doing?

The answer contains a new twist on an old theme: around here, they’re now into seeing who makes the best pot of tea. And I don’t mean just putting the kettle on and pouring it out. There’s a skill to it, and a great deal of competitive pride, and all this seems to have revitalized the tea culture here in southeast Fujian province in a way that’s quite surprising to me. They’re even showing up at each other’s homes or businesses with their own tea, which formerly would have been unthinkably rude, and with small portable tea sets.

The method of making tea in this region is referred to as Gong Fu Cha (功夫茶), or if you prefer, the “Kung Fu Tea Ceremony.”

What the novice will notice first in this “Way of Tea” is how small the teapots and teacups are. The first time I was served Gong Fu Cha style tea, I felt like we were using little girls’ dolly-size make-believe tea party cups and pots. They’re that small and dainty. Not like in Chengdu, where your manly tea cup is nearly larger than your rice bowl.

But in the Gong Fu Cha “ceremony,” it’s about quality–aroma and taste–not quantity, something that took me quite some time to appreciate. Put another way, Gong Fu Cha is about tasting, not drinking. In any case, I’ll attempt to describe this method in this, my

Lao Wai’s Illustrated Primer of Gong Fu Cha

Before starting up the tea brewing, make sure you’ve got all the necessary tools of the trade–at a minimum, that probably means a drip tray, a teapot, a tea pitcher, tea cups, and the tea itself. Let’s take a look:

Instead of big bags or containers of loose leaf tea, the locals now go for these small containers with airtight individual serving pouches. These small canisters contain perhaps 10-12 packets, each with enough tea for one small pot and between a few and several brewings each:

You’ll also need a drip tray to catch the spills and overflows. Most driptrays in everyday use are plastic, with a catch-pan that slides out to be emptied, but you can splurge on fancy ones carved from rare wood if you like, decorating them with all sorts of little ceremonial tea knick-knacks:

Then comes the teaware proper. In addition to the small teacups on the left and right, here we see the brewing pot (many of which lack a handle, as pictured), the tea strainer, and the tea pitcher:

Next, on the left, we see that some fancier driptrays have hoses that drain into two-level receptacles: Trash goes on top, overflow water and tea is piped into a secondary bucket below. As shown on the right, you’ll also need a method of boiling water. This year, everyone seemed to be using this particular model from Japan:

And by the way, just as a cultural aside, teacups aren’t typically taken away for a good sudsy washing between uses, just “sterilized” by either dipping them in boiled water or pouring boiling water over them:

And in case you’re wondering: Yes, I have been served teacups with remnants of lipstick on them before.

Next, put the tea in the brewing pot, and fill it to the brim with just-boiled water:

I’ve noticed two approaches to the next step. Some people quickly drain off this water as soon as they’ve poured it, in order to “rinse” the tea leaves, then refill immediately to start brewing. Others use the pot lid to “scrape” any foam or bubbles that appear from the top of the brew:

In either case, many tea brewers then use the pot lid to gently “press” the tea leaves, perhaps helping to release better flavors.

I like my tea a bit stronger, but most folks let it steep for less than a minute.

After this, you again have two choices.

If you aren’t using an intermediary tea pitcher (and are more likely brewing in an Yixing style pot with a spout), you will have moved the tea cups into a bunch in the middle of the drip tray, and then will pour the tea out over the tea cups, circling over the cups a few times, so that they’re all gradually filled at about the same pace–meaning that they’ll all end up at about the same strength. If you were to fill one cup first, then move to the next, the first-poured cups would be too weak, the last ones too strong.

If you are using a tea pitcher, you’ll instead pour the entire brew into the pitcher, using the lid to hold the leaves back, so that the tea mixes to an even strength before you pour it into the cups. Note the strainer placed into the pitcher to catch any stray bits of leaf or stem:

Now pour out into the cups:

If you’re feeling all fancy, use one of these contraptions to move the tea in front of your guests:

Last step: Enjoy!

In case that was all too remedial for you, try this Wikipedia entry, which takes a more linear approach to Chinese tea ceremonies. This one adds a few more details.

We had a great time walking up and down the grand staircases, exploring big dark empty “Cinderella ballrooms,” as she thought they looked like, and just checking out the scene.

At one point we ended up near a back entrance off the beaten path and found a scene where she asked to have her picture taken. Being as how she’s sometimes camera-shy, this was a pleasant surprise.

She was four when this picture was taken, and since has just turned five, but I’m going to leave a message for her here in case she someday finds this entry and has a question or two.

Dear Elder Daughter,

I’m calling you “Elder Daughter” here not because I’m trying to sound all Confucian or anything, but because your mother and I don’t like the idea of putting your name on the Web. Even though it’s a darn cool name.

Thank you for asking to have your picture taken that day at the Marco Polo in Xiamen. The way you asked, so thoughtfully and politely, was one of the sweetest things I’d ever seen and heard.

I have to apologize, though. I’m the one who helped you get dressed that morning–your mother was sleeping late–and so I’m to blame for putting striped Big Bird-like stockings and purple tennis shoes together with your beautiful dark flower dress and red coat. But see, they were all in the “clean clothes” suitcase that morning, and they all fit, and for Daddies like me, that’s the same as, “Hey, perfect match!”

Don’t worry, though. You were still picture perfect. And thank you again for all your smiles and giggles. That was a great morning.

Love,

Dad

Some quintessential Xiamen-related bedtime reading:

China’s Industrial Reform and Open-Door Policy 1980-1997: A Case Study from Xiamen (Ashgate Studies on the Economic Reform of China)

This is Uncle Ted in front of the house…This is Uncle Ted at the back of the house…And this is Uncle Ted at the side of the house….

This is the back of the house, with Uncle Ted coming round the side to the front…And this is the Cultural Revolution hiding behind the coal shed….

M’kay, just to tip this blog’s mundaneometer a tad bit further to the right, here are some pictures of the apartment, or flat, or condo, or whatever you want to call it, that we stayed at while in Xiamen. (Just a stone’s throw from the Marco Polo hotel, for those of you who have any notion of the layout of Xiamen.)

The place belongs to one of my Wife’s cousins–it’s sort of their “Weekend Home,” though they’ve been thinking of renting it out.

The partially-covered front balcony:

This is Uncle Ted behind the front door:

One side of the living room:

The other side of the living room, with the home office through the window:

The dining room (modeled by our girls and their dogs having breakfast)–and the darndest thing about that goldfish in the bowl in the center of the table: We asked my Wife’s cousin if we should feed the fish while we were there, and she looked at us like we were nuts. There’s a sprig of some plant, a vine, in the bowl, and the fish apparently nibbles at the plant and in return provides the nutrients to keep it growing. It had been living that way, one fish, one plant, no water changes, for nearly a year. Make me feel silly for the filters and food and water treatment drops we’ve spent for our goldfish:

The kitchen:

There is also a nice hall bathroom and two bedrooms, but I somehow ended up with no great pictures of those.

In case you need more Xiamen apartment video tours, this fellow has one too.

And if you seriously think you might like to get into the real estate game in Xiamen (or anywhere in China, really), better buy this first–or make sure your legal adviser has a dog-eared copy on his or her bookshelf:

You read a lot about the real estate booms and busts in Shanghai and Beijing (on alternate days, depending on what you read), but from what we learned, Xiamen is perhaps a better place to throw some cash into real estate investments if you’re so inclined.

It’s one of China’s top livable cities, and unless some great Hong Kong-style land reclamation project ensues, land remains scarce: Xiamen is an island “garden” city.

If “apartment in China” still brings to your mind visions of cramped five-story concrete blocks with walls decorated only by cheap Chinese New Year calendars, this clip might begin to help squash that notion. Notice the tennis courts and gardens down below and other high-rise towers on the plot. And in the post following this one, I’ll take you inside an apartment (privately-owned; “condo,” I guess) in Xiamen as well.

But for now, click to watch:

The first time I was aware of any Internet usage in China was in early 1996, when Xiamen University, where I was taking some advanced Chinese language courses during a holiday break from my teaching job in Korea, was considered pretty advanced to have one e-mail address for the faculty of each department to share.

A combination of availability and restrictions, however, seemed to prevent much access to the World Wide Web beyond that.

Fast-forward to 2000, when my wife’s family home here in Anhai, Fujian Province, was pretty much cutting edge by having a dial-up Internet access account. I took advantage of that to convince my employer at the time to let me take a “working vacation” and telecommute from China for a brief period.

I don’t work for the same company now, so I don’t mind telling you that it was a dismal failure. The connection was supposed to be 33.6K, but I think it functioned more like 3.6K, if you can imagine that. I once timed it to see how long it took my employer’s company home page to load.

At home near Seattle on DSL, it was an instant load.

On 56K dialup in the United States, it was somewhere between five and ten seconds.

From my outpost in China: 4 minutes and 24 seconds.

But not long after that, the “lightning speed/bursting at the seams” phenomenon I mentioned took off.

Using my wife’s family as an example, a “3.6K” connection was followed just two years later by readily available ADSL for homes, and my Wife’s Younger Brother, by being familiar with the Net and having a degree in electrical engineering, found himself serving as the chief IT person in his place of employment (even though his job title isn’t IT-related, as I’ve mentioned earlier).

Then my Wife’s Younger Sister and her Husband opened their Internet cafe for a time. And several members of the extended family–siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews–are operating pretty successful small business operations through China’s answer to eBay, called TaoBao. (As a side note, you might like to check this Google News link for insight into a competitive tiff actually going on between eBay and TaoBao).

On one hand, most of the Internet in China news you read about in the mainstream press these days focuses on the negatives: censorship (the so-called “Great (Fire)Wall of China”), restrictions, and the like. But the other side of that story–the much bigger side, I don’t mind saying, thankyouverymuch–is how quickly broadband access poured into the more developed regions of China.

And the increasing rates for Internet usage are pretty dramatic as well.

For comparison, the United States has about 135 million Internet users, which accounts for around 67% of the country’s population. In mid-2000, there were estimated to be only about 24 million Internet users in China. The most recent estimates put that number at over 100 million. And that’s only about seven percent of China’s entire population. (Just wait until that percentage grows!)

There was a statistic floating around a couple years ago that by 2007, the most common language on the Internet would be Chinese. That claim, however, has since been refuted.

Based on what I’ve seen, I too think it won’t happen until later. Like, say, in 2008.

Now, one gets used to seeing these sorts of cards all over London, and in certain parts of Hong Kong, but this was the first time I’ve seen one in mainland China. In the P.R.C., working girl “hired companionship” is typically more visible as red-light “beauty shops” and such.

Anyway, here’s the card, front and back, advertising sexy models, college students, and housewives as specialties, though I’ve blurred out the cell phone contact number. Don’t want anyone to think I’m an affiliate or anything.

And isn’t it, I don’t know, weird that the gal in the second picture is wearing a Minnie & Mickey Mouse necklace?

The island these days features quite a lot of new construction–Chinese folks with means are building luxury villas and such now–but much of the old construction is still intact. Or at least “fixed up” a bit. Westerners weren’t evicted by Mao’s revolution so much as by the Japanese when they invaded and partially razed the place during WWII.

In any case, one can still see lots of “European” style buildings on the island–a few streets almost make me think of walks I’ve taken in small German or Dutch towns–though some of these bear the marks of (1) being old, (2) being damaged at some point and (3) maybe being “patched up” along the way without attention to the original archiectural style. Others look great.

Here are some photos showing a bit of “Euro” building influence that I took of the scene looking out from a sports field on the island. To view them as a low-tech patchwork “panorama” shot, click here.

On our recent visit to Gulang Island, just a short ferry ride from Xiamen, my daughters spotted these boats in the water and wanted to take a picture of them.

Here it is (and that’s acrid smog obscuring the nearby Xiamen skyline, not some fancy telephoto filtering effect, unfortunately):

But it’s now 12 1/2 years since I first came to China, and 10 years since I married into a Chinese family, and there is still one “strange Chinese way” that continues to baffle me.

I’m posting it here in case any scholars of Anthropology or Far Eastern History or Abnormal Psychology can shed some light.

In a nutshell, it’s this:

Dear People of China,

Look, that over there where you’re walking is a street, or a vehicle right of way in a parking lot–the place where the cars are coming and going, in other words.

See this over here? This is a sidewalk, or maybe the shoulder of the road, or something else that isn’t smack dab in the middle of where the cars want to be.

Why, dear ones, do you habitually fan out in groups into the traffic lanes or paths? Those honking horns you hear behind you, those are the cars and trucks and buses that want to drive over the ground you’re now walking on.

And me over here, I’m pointing frantically at this patch of ground that I’m standing on, the designated or common sense-dictated place for people–you know, the ones of us who don’t have engines built in–to walk. This is called a “sidewalk.”

Do you see the problem here?

Perhaps there’s some historical basis in China’s ancient history to explain this, this, this walking or standing in the bloody traffic lanes!, but so far it eludes me.

Please, please, tell me now why you do this, and get out of the friggin’ street!

Sincerely,

Mark Baker

And this isn’t just me trying to take some morally superior stance over the people of a foreign culture. I mean, my own Wife has yet to completely shake this habit even as we’re walking along the streets and parking lots of the Seattle area after living there these several years.

We visited a mountain “wilderness preserve” park near Xiamen not long ago, a group of about 15 friends and relatives, and as the group got out of the cars and discussed which direction to go, they stood, yes, smack dab in the middle of the lane where cars were trying to enter and leave the parking lot, not moving aside until the horns started honking, but then not even looking about to realize, “Oh, we’re blocking traffic.”

A few nights later, looking down on a busy Xiamen street from the apartment where we were staying, I saw two young men walking along down the middle of a traffic lane. And I don’t mean “near the sidewalk”; I mean right in the middle of the street. A busy street, as I pointed out, with cars and buses and taxis trying to drive.

In New York (or anywhere else, really), you’d expect drivers to honk and shout out the window, “Hey, !$%%&!, get out of the street!” But there, drivers only honked in a perfunctory way and then swerved around them. And they just kept walking along down the middle of the street, this Chinese Beavis and Butthead duo.

These aren’t isolated incidents; I see it everywhere.

So I’ve tried, but I can’t figure it out. Can anyone out there explain this Chinese pedestrian penchant for standing and walking in the motor vehicle traffic lanes?

During our recent visit to Xiamen, I had in the back of my mind the notion to write a post about how people seem, as compared to my previous visits to China, to be shouting “Lao Wai” and staring at foreigners much less and so on. And generally, in Xiamen and Quanzhou and Jinjiang and Anhai, I’ve found this to be true. It happens, but far less than before (“before” = 1993-94, 1996, 1997, 2000).

I was even thinking of a punch line for a post of, “I guess all those ‘Please Do Not Stare at the Foreigner’ t-shirts are starting to pay off.”

But then we visited Gulang Island, just a short ferry ride away from Xiamen, and it was like a step back in time to when entire traffic flows would grind to a halt to stare at a foreigner.

For some reason, the “locals” over on Gulang Island (gulang yu) haven’t caught up with their Xiamen neighbors in becoming disinterested in staring and shouting “Hello!” at foreigners and all that, but even more so, the tourists coming from other parts of China to visit Gulang Island are still stuck in that “earlier phase of social development.”

This is my revenge post.

We were walking along the “boardwalk” after getting off the ferry to Gulang Island, and this old woman, who we could tell by dress and mannerisms wasn’t from “around here,” sauntered up to us, as we stopped for my Wife to tie one of my daughters’ shoelaces, inserted herself without a word right into our midst, and stared at our girls like she was disapprovingly examining some sort of abnormal fleshy growth.

In the first of the revenge photos that follow, you see her doing the close-range staring thing, while her husband, some distance away in the background, has spotted the situation. In the second photo, he’s at her side after telling her, “Let’s go; the foreigner is taking your picture.”

Even as he lead her away, she looked back to stare at our girls with that same Bill Murray/Steve Martin/Saturday Night Live sketch “What the hell IS that thing?” expression on her face.

We’ve gotten used to people “spotting” us and “looking” at us, but most who approach us have drummed up some conversation, maybe said our daughters are pretty, or asked if they speak Chinese, or something.

But not this woman–she spoke not a word, but went straight to her work–it was quite a throwback to the days of feeling like “Foreigner = Circus Freak.”

OK, enough venting. Here she is: