Category: Writings

Of tea and spirits

October 26, 2020 / / 2 Comments

After a hiatus, I am back. After reading a (or should I say the since it is at the same time big and focusing on many different lesser known topics) biography about one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, I found out in the quoted references that Sheridan Le Fanu, one of the first writer of vampire fictions, wrote a novel entitled Green Tea. With a name like that and even if it is far away from my usual topics here on this blog, I had to look for it and read it.

I didn’t find it was such a good novel (I found some parts of it were a kind of lower Sherlock Holmes with some fantastic in it) but green tea does play a role in it.

For example, Mr Jennings, the one around whom the story resolves writes a book at night and to drink tea

“I believe, that every one who sets about writing in earnest does his work, as a friend of mine phrased it, on something—tea, or coffee, or tobacco. I suppose there is a material waste that must be hourly supplied in such occupations, or that we should grow too abstracted, and the mind, as it were, pass out of the body, unless it were reminded often enough of the connection by actual sensation. At all events, I felt the want, and I supplied it. Tea was my companion—at first the ordinary black tea, made in the usual way, not too strong: but I drank a good deal, and increased its strength as I went on. I never experienced an uncomfortable symptom from it. I began to take a little green tea. I found the effect pleasanter, it cleared and intensified the power of thought so, I had come to take it frequently, but not stronger than one might take it for pleasure. I wrote a great deal out here, it was so quiet, and in this room. I used to sit up very late, and it became a habit with me to sip my tea—green tea—every now and then as my work proceeded. I had a little kettle on my table, that swung over a lamp, and made tea two or three times between eleven o’clock and two or three in the morning, my hours of going to bed.”

And tea has something to do with what happens to him (or not, I find the end rather really open).

“By various abuses, among which the habitual use of such agents as green tea is one, this fluid may be affected as to its quality, but it is more frequently disturbed as to equilibrium. This fluid being that which we have in common with spirits, a congestion found upon the masses of brain or nerve, connected with the interior sense, forms a surface unduly exposed, on which disembodied spirits may operate: communication is thus more or less effectually established. “

This might surprise you but the explanations for these two extracts and the whole atmosphere is for me twofold.

On the one hand, tea was not seen as something with only beneficial effects. I found an essay written at the beginning of the 19th century (1808) by a C. L. Cadet, a French pharmacist and even if Le Fanu lived later (1814-1873), I think some of these ideas were still alive later on (even more with the whole focus on nervous disorders that was common in the second half of the 19th century.

Even if Mr Cadet sees some uses for tea as a medicine (but prefers to use non English plants), some quotes are quite interesting (I have no further references to the books he mentions).

Koempfer, who best described this production assures (Amcen. eccot., pag. 606) that fresh tea taken in strong infusion gives dizziness, nervous convulsions.

[…]

Geoffroy reports that the tea, taken in abundance, gave insomnia, dizziness and convulsive movements in all the limbs.

[…]

Simon Pauli regards it as very harmful to asthmatics with pituitary, delicate breasts, and those with sensitive nerves. Cullen attributes the good effects of tea to hot water, but rejects tea taken in isolation as having too much effect on the nervous system, producing “spasms and tremors.

Finally, Buchan says positively that people of letters should refrain from drinking tea, because it is the most abundant source of nervous diseases.

C.L. Cadet, Le thé est-il plus nuisible qu’utile? Ou Histoire analytique de cette plante, Paris 1808

On the other hand the era where Le Fanu lived was filled with beliefs in spiritualism and other similar phenomenons (just look at the biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to see a good example of it).

The mix of both producing the supernatural effect of green tea that opens your perception of something else.

I don’t know for you but I think that after that I might stick to the other colours of tea just in case some of what Le Fanu wrote might be true.

A collection of blossoms

June 29, 2020 / / 2 Comments

A collection of blossoms in Greek is an anthologia which would later give in English florilegium (from the Latin translation) and anthology. Even if what I will write below doesn’t come from existing works, I found the name beautiful enough for small pieces of reflections on tea. So here are some blossoms.

Teas are like people. Some are open, others are secret. Some are generous, others are selfish. Some are easy, others are more complex…

See? Every reaction/thought you might have about people, you can find at least one tea matching it. And like with people, the more you interact with a tea, the more you get out of it (or the more you despair it all depends on you and them).

What is the effect on tea on me? I used to think none. However, someone made me recently reconsider my first answer but after much attention with myself focusing on myself (quite egocentric if you believe me), I didn’t find any peculiar effect. To have a real scientific approach, I should have taken the same tea brewed in the same way (which I didn’t). However, I must say that tea doesn’t seem to have an effect on me. The only explanation is that the people around me or what I am doing at the time of drinking have an effect on how am I and how I react.

What Egyptian god should be associated to tea? A rather strange question but after seeing a picture of the March Hare I found myself asking this. 3 gods truck my imagination for being able to do so. Thot, the scribe of the gods, just because he could and because a god with the head of an ibis would look cool drinking a cup writing hieroglyphs. Then Seshat the divine measurer because tea is all about measuring things (amount of tea, temperature of the water, duration of the brewing). Last but not least, Bes, the protector of households and symbol of the good things of life (and isn’t tea one of them?).

Now that I began with these gods, I should probably see if other divinities strike me as potential tea drinkers but apart from the Nordic ones (probably because of the cold winter times that struck me as the perfect time to drink a good warm tea).

Quite interesting is that the name for tea in most languages can be grouped in 3 families : te, cha and chay. And that they just show where tea was loaded or travelled to the land where they were drunk. This means that only 3 points of contact were available : two port areas in China and through a land trip and Persia (aka the road silk). From an historical point of view, this makes sense as when European powers came in the neighbourhoods from China, this land was following a rather strict isolation policy restricting their contacts with foreigners. As you might know, Chinese at that time were not trading, they were receiving tributes for the Emperor which gave away gifts. It would have probably been undiplomatic to say that this looks just like barter, in other words, trade.

Related to these trade routes, I don’t know if you know a French comic book hero called Asterix but he is the one who brought tea leaves to England and all that thanks to a Phoenician merchant encountered in the Channel that paid him with these leaves in exchange for saving his ship from pirates. Asterix then gave these leaves to the Britons as a sort of super potion to help them defeat the Roman legions.

Speaking of super potion, tea has probably like many other things good effects on health but I don’t think it is a super medicine that can solve anything and everything with people reacting differently to this drink (see my blossom on “what is the effect on tea on me?”)

It tastes like …

January 1, 2020 / / 0 Comments

How does tea taste? Why do two people drinking the same tea experiment two different things? And obviously which one of them is right? The answer is much more complex than we could think at first, which means that perhaps the two drinkers are wrong and right at the same time.

For the sake of my argumentation, I will take as hypothesis that the tasted tea is of good quality and perfectly brewed. This means that the difference in its tastes only come from the tasters themselves.

First thing, we usually lack training in tasting. We didn’t train hard enough to be able to focus on what we drink (or eat) and we lack the proper experience to understand what we taste and to be able to categorize it. Our inner taste library is in most cases not developed enough to cope with everything and to be able to express what we feel.

Just check this rather simple tea wheel to understand what I mean.

Tea Wheel

Tea Wheel from Whiskyrific

Probably because I never trained myself making me for that a newbie, I always thought of such wheel as the famous scene of the Matrix Movie.

“Operator. Tastes, lots of tastes”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oZi-wYarDs

The second thing is the link between tasting and smelling with our sense of smell being richer in our capacity to analyse things than the sense of taste. I don’t know how many receivers we have on our tongue but for smelling we have around 400 different ones, which allows us thanks to their combination to recognise at least 10,000 different smells (I wrote at least as according to recent studies, this number is more likely to be in billions or trillions).

Don’t start overreacting. A lot of these different smells are variants of another. The citrus are the perfect example of that as every member of this family can be recognized by smell but among the different oranges or lemons or…, there are different varieties, smelling almost the same as the others but not totally. And if you add to this the fact that they can cross-bred quite easily, mixing a little more their smells, you understand why we can probably recognise so many smells.

A good illustration of the richness of the taste of smell can be read in a book by Patrick Suskind, Perfume, the Story of a Murderer, in which the author describes with a vivid imagination the olfactory experiences experienced by the hero.

“This scent had a freshness, but not the freshness of limes or pomegranates, not the freshness of myrrh or cinnamon bark or curly mint or birch or camphor or pine needles, not that of a May rain or a frosty wind or of well water… and at the same time it had warmth, but not as bergamot, cypress, or musk has, or jasmine or daffodils, not as rosewood has or iris… This scent was a blend of both, of evanescence and substance, not a blend, but a unity, although slight and frail as well, and yet solid and sustaining, like a piece of thin, shimmering silk… and yet again not like silk, but like pastry soaked in honey-sweet milk – and try as he would he couldn’t fit those two together: milk and silk! This scent was inconceivable, indescribable, could not be categorized in any way – it really ought not to exist at all. And yet there it was as plain and splendid as day.”

It also seems that among our DNA, we have 800 genes dedicated to smell with up to 30% differences in them between (and we are small players when compared to dogs).

This also explains why some people are sensitive to certain smells (and able to detect them easily) or totally insensitive.

The last explaining factor is a huge psychological one. We are sensitive and social creatures and as such, the taste of tea might change depending on the weather conditions, the people we drink tea with (if you drink with loved ones or other people, the tea will taste differently), our own experience, the price when it is known (obviously a more expensive tea is better than a cheaper one…), the name when it is known (reputation effect), even the colour of the tea…

I lost you with the colour part? An experiment was made with a white wine and people tasted honey, lemon, grapefruit, elderberry… The same wine was given back for tasting but dyed with a odourless and tasteless product.

Guess what? The wine now tasted like red plums, chocolate…

Now that we have seen how much the taste of tea is not depending on us, what can we do about it? The answer is simple: train, train, train. Remember this library of tastes? The more we train, the bigger it will grow and thus the better we will be able to differentiate the taste components of our tea.

It won’t be perfect and another people might still taste something different but it will be a move in the direction of trying to better understand tea and its uniqueness.

Every story has a beginning

November 25, 2018 / / 0 Comments

From The First Tea War: a History

The following extract is a transcription in modern English of the unpublished memories of Zhèng Hai Dong, a Chinese scholar that finished his apprenticeship at the beginning of the First Tea War.

I opened the door silently not willing to disturb my Master. As I walked in, I see him on the right side of the window writing with a pencil on a table full with scrolls. As always, he is dressed with yellow clothes, the only outstanding thing on it being a embroidered dragon, one with 4 claws, his uniform as he calls it but mostly the symbol of his charge. Right now, he seems to focus on the characters he is drawing at the exclusion of anything else. For now, my own dragon is without any claw but this is why I am here, to learn and to one day be like him in a way with claws on my embroidered dragon.

Through the window a little wind blows that makes the flame hesitate as if it wanted to disappear. A mighty roar can be heard outside, one that seems to give back strength to the fire that sparkled with what seemed to be the strength of a thousand matches.

A pot made of clay is on the fire and boils producing a little music heard in the entire room, a room that I know well, full of books, scrolls… on shelves, on the floor, on tables… Someone looking at this room for the first time might have thought that it was kind of a mess, perhaps an organised one for someone but a mess nonetheless.

Walking towards the pot and bringing shining green leaves within a small jar, I was ready to use forceps to take some leaves out to pour them into the clay pot when I heard a deep voice that stopped me right in my tracks

“Did you read all the treatises I gave you to read?”
“Yes Master.”
“Tea has intrinsic aroma…“

Why does he always try to test my memory? I remember everything I read here from the beginning, every words he told me.

“But tribute tea manufacturers like to mix small amount of Dryobalanops aromatica camphor, supposedly to enhance the aroma. The local people of Jian’an never mix any incense into tea, afraid to robe the natural aroma of tea.”
“If you can quote Cai Xiang’s works why didn’t you check the leaves you were going to take. They smell like they were badly stored and I think I can even smell some mushrooms in them.”
“Master I know you are a tea expert but no one could smell something like that from where you stand.”

Turning towards the door, my Master looked saddened at me with eyes whose colours were shifting from one to another, bringing fire to them but what looked like a weakening one, a thing that always bothered and frightened me. I know it has something to do with his powers and that one day if I succeed, I will be like him but I find this frightening.

“Did you listen to anything in the months you were here, young one?”
“I listened to everyone of your words.”
“Did you learn anything from what you listened to or from what you read?”
“A lot, I can tell you the whole list of Emperors from the Three Sovereigns and the Five Emperors until today.”
“And yet you learned nothing about who we are and how things works.”

At this moment, I hear them both, speaking at once, the deep human voice of my Master and the mighty, so human and yet so inhuman voice of … how should I call Him? I know how He is calling himself and how others calls Him but is it His true name?

“Because We are One and one day you will too become One.”

At that moment, his eyes turned back to normal and I could only hear one voice and a roar in the distant but his voice was empty, sad and tired as if he was missing something or someone and wanted to get back to where he was.

“But We are also two and we have to.”

* * *

Later that day, I heard my Master calling me and when I came back into his library, I saw he was packing things up.

“Hurry, go to the stocks and bring me the usual selection of teas for travelling.”
“Where are you going?”
“WE have been summoned and we will obey. After you go to the stocks, I need you to bring me the true Dragon Well leaves, those from the imperial bushes that the Quianlong Emperor wisely protected. I will prepare them myself as any error in the tea would have tremendous and unwanted consequences for me. And don’t forget after to pack some more just in case. I don’t know what will be expected from us but I am worried we might not be able to get back home anytime soon.”

And this is how our trip began, a trip that would lead us to wars, to battles and sufferings, to great losses and to great discoveries, through Asia for the greater good or so we thought at that time.

As long as it is good

May 28, 2018 / / 0 Comments

I often hear or read that tea people are a bit snobbish, asking for loose leaf teas, for specific blends, for specific water quality or temperature.

But what do people mean by that? And is it true?

According to the dictionary, snob is :

1. a maker of shoe,

2. one who blatantly imitates, fawningly admires, or vulgarly seeks association with those regarded as social superiors,

3.

a : one who tends to rebuff, avoid, or ignore those regarded as inferior;

b : one who has an offensive air of superiority in matters of knowledge or taste.

 

The first option is rather interesting and funny (from a tea point of view) but obviously out of place.

What about the other definitions?

The imitation of upper social classes might have been true sooner in certain parts of Europe or in areas under European influence with nice bone China sets and trying to stick with what the aristocracy does like drinking tea only at 5 o’clock

But first, people drank and drink tea outside of this area (otherwise, tea wouldn’t be the second most consumed beverage in the world) and second, this might have been true but when I look around nowadays, I see people drinking at different times, trying different blends or pure leaf teas, having tea to go, sitting with friends, drinking alone…

A Reading of Molière or Reading in a salon by Jean-François de Troy

Tea is still sometimes part of a social ritual like the famous 5 o’clock tea that could be the English answer to the French salons (the gathering of people under the roof of someone more prominent or inspiring to discuss about literature and other cultural things (or let’s face it, gossips)), but I don’t feel drinking tea is only that.

 

Do tea drinkers rebuff, avoid or ignore those regarded as inferior?

I have two problems with this definition. First, it describes something that almost everyone does. Human beings tend to stick together and for doing this, define “us” and “them”. This has been going on since the beginning (just look at a history book to see it).

Second, who would be the inferior ones? People drinking other drinks, people with different drink habits? This seems to me completely ridiculous as I know a lot of people who drink several drinks along the day and I can’t think of them in any way as being superior or inferior to me.

This point goes along the last definition.

I mean we are humans and even if I just wrote that I can’t think of people not drinking tea or not like I do as being superior or inferior to me, we are prone to think of ourselves as right as opposed to the others being wrong. Doesn’t this ring a bell in you?

Yes we do this all the time. Sometimes we are not even aware of judging the others but we do it all the time (just look for those driving, how we all think we are the best drivers around and how other people are just bad drivers).

However, even if we think we are doing it right or are very specific about what kind of tea leaves should be used in our drinks, why should we be offensive to those that think in a different way? Beauty comes of diversity and tea drinking is in no way a religion with a strict dogma.

We might want to have our tea made in a certain way because it is better (for us) this way and we, the so-called “tea experts” might shiver hearing someone saying “tea is always bitter” simply because he or she let it for too long in a water that was too hot but having a sense of superiority will not change anything. We should try to explain things (like not so long and not so hot) and let people make their own choices.

And for those curious about it, the title of this post is a part of a quote by Jerry Greenfield (the Jerry of Ben&Jerry): “I eat many different ice creams. I’m not an ice cream snob, although I do think Ben & Jerry’s is the best. But I’m happy to eat anybody’s ice cream, really. As long as it’s good.”

And guess what? I think it can be applied to teas, so avoid being a snob and let people drink tea how they want, as long as they find their tea a good one.

Let’s throw the dice

May 29, 2017 / / 3 Comments

I spoke a few posts ago about a game based on tea trade, Yunnan (http://teaconomics.teatra.de/2014/01/21/we-grow-old-because-we-stop-playing/). Wait, hold on for a second! This post is so old? Well, it happens.

 

After going through its rules once more and looking all over the Internet (perhaps not all over it but still) and on blogs about board games (mostly because I like games) and not finding anything, I came up with an idea or rather several ideas for a game on tea.

Four coloured 6 sided dice arranged in an aesthetic way by Diacritica

So here they are for you to comment on them and perhaps tell us if they could be mixed up all together or partly:

1. a garden management game that would go from investing to create your garden to selling tea;

2. the other part of the chain with people taking part in auctions with different unknown qualities and trying to send them back to Europe and selling them for a profit while trying to meet the quantity needed by the market. This would be a double blind auction;

3. focusing on the transport part with a race on the Russian road to be the first to arrive in Moscow;

4. doing the same with ships and letting you choose different roads with plus and minus on the speed, the length and the price;

5. going for the tea and horse setting (a bit like Yunnan),

6. managing a tea company trying to implement tea houses all around the country and facing problems with among others, competitors (which might or might not be other tea companies), supplies, customers, human resources;

7. going for the little alchemist approach and trying to do a mix that would receive positive awards and sell well.

 

As you can see, it would be possible to get some of them together in one big game, going along over small periods of time or bigger ones, focusing on one aspect or on another of the big screen.

What do you think? Would you be interested in such games? Do you have other ideas that could be useful?

We are not going to launch a game anytime soon but brainstorming about what a game on tea could be and on what it could focus is something that could be interesting.

Lean back and just enjoy the cup of tea!

April 26, 2017 / / 1 Comment

The things you have to do for tea… Here I was in an unknown mountain, climbing on a rattan ladder, which with every step I took was turning back into a forest.

“Why did I get myself into this strange dream?” was the first thought that crossed my mind. Of course it was a dream, how else would I travel to China looking for … who was I looking for? And how did I know it had anything to do with tea? When I told you it was all a dream.

Suddenly, I find myself in a clearing with lots of herbs and plants. While looking around, I saw a tall bare-chested man with some belly, dressed in a wild skirt and with a collar of leaves around his neck looking for leaves and trying them before speaking about what he felt and writing what looks like ideograms in a sort of book

Finding that I was here, he just stopped and looked at me before beginning to speak.

– Who are you?

– I am the Dream Walker that got lost on his way...

Obviously, not really answering a question is a wise move when you are in a dream or facing a potential threat as a certain Barrel-rider tells us “This of course is the way to talk to dragons, if you don’t want to reveal your proper name (which is wise), and don’t want to infuriate them by a flat refusal (which is also very wise). No dragon can resist the fascination of riddling talk and of wasting time trying to understand it.” (in the book that should be known as There and Back Again, 1937)

… and …

– Could you just give me a hand and try these plants?

– Wait. You want me to try some unknown plants?

– Yes and tell me what they do to you.

– Are you kidding?

– I have done this for circa 5,000 years and I am still here.

– What did you just say? 5,000 years?

– Yes. Are you deaf? If so I have found a peculiar plant that grows in the mountains of …

– No, no. I am perfectly fine.

…

…

How should I call you? Your Highness? The Great One?

– Don’t call me and keep on making so much noise, you are disturbing me in my task.

– May I ask you something?

We just looked at each other without saying a word.

– You won’t stop, will you?

– I don’t think so. So tell me, since you studied plants and herbs from all over Tianxia, could you tell me if there is any truth in the wonders described by some sellers about the virtues of tea leaves to solve everything?

– Don’t you have a better question to ask me?

– Sorry, it is the best I could do and this is one that I have been asking myself a lot.

– What do you think? If there was a panacea, don’t you think I would have found it? No, tea is not something that can solve every problem on Earth or every health problem you might have. You can try all the teas you want, they can help but will never do all the work by themselves.

– So they are lying to us?

– Or are you not lying to yourselves? Fooling yourselves by believing into some of the oldest tricks around here. It is like Alice in Wonderland, you follow a White Rabbit hoping to catch something and then one day you wake up and you’ve lost everything you were purchasing.

Speaking of which, I think I saw a Hatter looking at you with a clock and saying something about a tea party. Is someone waiting for you somewhere?

With these words, I felt like I was drifting away from him and getting back to reality and my cup of tea. Without thinking anymore about it, I just drank it and wondered what was that all about. What is in a cup of tea that makes us like this so much?

As I kept thinking about it, I saw a tea leave falling into my hot water cup and I smiled. The answer was simply to lean back and enjoy the cup of tea.