In China

Last July in Shenyang, a student heading for flying school in the U.S. had difficulty with oral English. An unabashed Sinophile, he had difficulty saying anything other than preceding each discourse with, “In China.” 

I got curious on how much of China he knew; it turns out he had only been in Liaoning and Shandong provinces guarding the Gulf of Bohai. Suggesting that I might know more of China’s history than he did, he got ethnocentric, “No, I am Chinese, so I know more of China than you.” 

No matter. “In China” is usually someone’s image of China’s standard history articulated by Chiang Kaishek in 1947 and dittoed by Mao Zedong in 1949. Bohai is where the Huanghe (Yellow River) empties south of Tianjin, the coastal city to Beijing recently in the news for blowing up storage warehouses filled with explosives that killed many and now has the country in uproar over the handling of chemical storage. Beijing and Tianjin are municipal neighbors administered by the national government, along with another two, Shanghai and Chongqing. The four cities are premier urban centers of China.

The sense of space in China trumps “time” anytime, so the emphasis on learning history is not on the “when” of “past, present, and future,” but on the “where” and “what” role and status people played in the social scheme of things. The Zhou, Qin, and Han, et al, are spatial categories, which do not fit a specific time frame, save as the historiography of the Qing due to Western influence turned into chronology. ROC/PRC uses time frames but still relies on spatial images.

I once asked how long I had to wait before I could drink the tea after pouring hot water on dried tea leaves and the response was “when the tea leaves settle down on the bottom of the glass,” not a category of time but the relational condition of the tea and water.

I thought the tea ceremony was a matter of formality in Sinosphere until this July when my host in Shenyang sat me down to some tea. She had this contraption (cha ju) of bamboo slats on top of a water-retaining pan at the bottom. First, she put some tea into a covered glass and let the red tea (hongse cha that reduces cholesterol) bleed its color, then poured out the content of what was perfectly good looking tea into the cha ju, and poured another set of hot water into the tea. After what to her was a right tint on the water, she poured the tea into glass cups and let me sip the tea.

I do not know if it was watching her gracious moves during the whole process that I got deeply fascinated but I was equally satisfied by the quality of the tea taste. A bit on the sweet side, she went on to explain the nature of the red tea and why she threw out the first draw of hot water to rid of bitter taste and accent the hygienic effect of the brew.

After two more well cadenced servings of the red tea, she scooped some green tea (lvse cha) that are familiar to the west as oolong, which I saw in rows on the foothills of Sichuan, and proceeded to duplicate what she did with the hongse, throwing away the first draw of hot water, and serving the second draw. The taste was exquisite, without the endured bitter taste I usually associate with “tea” of the bagged variety from the Lipton ladies!

The casual, sans high symbolism, “ceremony” was so elegantly performed that I realized I was properly “tea’d” (caffeinated) for the occasion and the rest of the day!

A Chinese word used for “knowledge” is renshi, literally “people knowing,” and the tea ceremony was no more an objective partaking of colorized hot water as it was establishing a “relationship” layered with a lot of empathetic vibes and warm feelings. Using “In China” is not as much to denote an objective country with boundaries as it is an invitation to join an aura of sociality where identities are affirmed and celebrated. 

It was then that I understood mienzi, mistranslated as “face” in Western idiom. To save “face” is not about brushing off the lint from one’s social standing as it is to be inclusive of “together-ness” where one’s being is touched, seen, inhaled, or savored in the being of another. Like Namaste in India, a greeting that says, “my spirit sees the universe in you,” or Ni hao in China that literally means, “you good,” or, like Salud, a Spanish greeting that wishes “well-being,” mienzi is not all status symbol.

The little tea ceremony this July made me realize the various dimensions of “knowing,” more than the recitation of facts and the correct expressions of words and numbers that we consider “knowledge” in our learned world. 

I am now more charitable with listening to the phrase “in China” but I also know that it is my responsibility to keep the objective data clear and clean so that the emotional content of in China is fully appreciated; the objective underbrush of sense description is contextually laid out before the existential experience is proffered. 

Renshi is beyond objective knowledge; it is “knowing people.” Here, have some tea.