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When we first launched the Tea Guardian, a Chinese reader from Hong Kong wrote to us asking why we have to write so much about tea. We wrote back in courtesy and got a reply that basically he did not see the point in doing this.
I wonder he ever wrote to people who write about other fine foods such as wines or cheese with similar comments. I suppose he meant that tea is so simple and taken for granted that no further detail information is necessary. And then yesterday I read in a blog in a discussion where the term “tea drunk” was raised. The blogger says this is a term where “tea geeks” describe a certain condition…“Tea geeks”?I wonder when people discussed what is alcohol intoxication that it’s a term for “alcohol geeks” who overdose with alcohol?Much prejudice exists still today when the internet is supposedly helping to bring the different cultures closer.Back in the late 18th century, the tea list in an average teashop in London can be quite long with romanized Chinese names that either the customers would have understood what quality they meant or the shopkeeper might have to explain to their patrons how they would taste. I don’t believe the rocketing sales of tea as a category in those days would mean the population in London were turning to tea geeks.Now, to so many people tea can be reduced to a Yellow Label (they don’t even say what is inside) teabag much as lunch is Big Mac. What to capitalists as reduced inventory and ease of standardization for maximum profit margin has somehow become the “advantage” for the users so the consumers do not even have to think or understand what quality they are getting. The very devise for profit making in the fast food system has infiltrated into the people’s cultural behaviour for finding security in the lowest quality denominator for a category.The odd thing is, while wine schools are setting up here in the largest wine sales centre in the world in Hong Kong, the very same people here would think better understanding of the many qualities of tea is pointless. In the origin of the modern dimsum restaurant where operators are closing down every now and then because of unaffordable high rent, the fast food chain with a 8 line long menu serving the lowest quality possible “beef” food continues to thrive. Don’t blame the American culture, the people who fail their own culture are those that are handicap of understanding quality of their own tradition.This little piece of writing is a blast that I have to get out off my chest tonight. Pls comment on it. I’ll come back to it and maybe to turn it into a writing in Tea Guardian. Maybe not. Thank you for indulging me in this emotional outburst. -
I empathize with the way you feel; you can imagine I get quite a few of such comments where I live. 🙂
However, I’d like to point out that the term “geek” is often not considered derogatory, particularly in computer / science / maths circles. People often use it to designate expertise, mastery and passion about a subject. I do not know the tone of the original article and obviously, describing an objective effect in the tone you implied is a bit silly, but perhaps the person meant that “ordinary” people (people taking tea for granted and not consuming it often) don’t commonly know of the tea drunk effect so they don’t have a term for it.
The rest of your post is so painfully true that it makes me sad even thinking about it.
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I think there’s been a devaluation of some kinds of knowledge for some time. Mainly, current generation seems to think that anything worthwhile is machine made, and anything related to handcraft is some kind of excentricity.
This involves some kind of renegation of the past, maybe an urge to get rid of the parents’ and grand parents’ shadow.People always seem surprised when they see a young woman like me doing crochet, commenting that it’s something their grandma’s like to do.I think this applies to tea… why ‘waste your time’ learning about tea quality, water, ‘complicated proceedings’ like specifications of brewing, if you could just go to the market and buy some ready tea in a plastic bottle? why bothering if it’s white or green?they just don’t know what they are missingsome countries will value more something that looks foreign and devalue anything traditional…like here in Brasil, there’s so much abundance of fresh fruit that most people won’t bother eating them, while in Europe people will pay a fortune to have a couple of bananas or a watermelon.I call this ‘colonization syndrome’… buying something industrialized seems fancier than having a handcrafted object.Or something from a foreign country seems better, no matter the quality.Sad.But i think this kind of thing reaches some equilibrium point… for example, when handcraft is so devalued that it will begin to disappear, it may acquire a high value, because there will always be people interested in rare things.Maybe i took a big detour on the subject, but i think these subjects are related. -
I sincerely think that the general culture is very gradually changing, although not as much as I want it to. The appreciation of fine quality means so much to me in the continual evolvement of the human kind. That is the biggest drive for me to dedicate so much of my efforts in promoting what seems to be a much taken for granted product.
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