Monday, October 25, 2010

China Day 3: Tea Ceremony


After a quick lunch of yet another oily Chinese “flavor”, where we were joined by the contestants’ for Miss China International (with a slightly less oily menu), we were off to a real Chinese Tea Ceremony.

Now let me first tell you about Tea Ceremonies because this is truly my favorite part of Asian culture and the one thing that I looked forward to the most in China. I’ve already attended a Korean Tea Ceremony, which was a lot of fun and very, very interesting and also bought myself a nice tea ceremony set with all the special cups, teapots and other goodies needed. So when I heard that a Chinese Tea Ceremony was on the intenary, I was super excited! Not only did it give me an opportunity to broaden my knowledge as well as collection of porcelain (to Chris’s detriment) but to also compare the difference. In Asia, tea is much more than just a beverage but a life philosophy – and learning how to do it well is a lot of fun. Just a little tit-bit of info – did you know that the proper English way of drinking tea with your pinky in the air, originated from China?

Unfortunately, this tea ceremony turned out to be the most disappointing of China’s activities. As we entered the teashop I was completely distracted by all the pretty porcelain with the result that when we got to our tea room, I got a really bad spot at the tea table which I had to share with 31 other travel mates. Sitting right at the end, I could hardly hear what the little Chinese lady, in her broken English had to say and all I could really do was to sip my tea – finger in the air of course. Luckily, another (unplanned) tea ceremony would be in my destiny, but I remembered walking out of the tea shop, very disappointed

(to be continued)

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