Blood, Sweat and Tea
After Hong Kong, mainland China came as a major shock. Hong Kong is user-friendly with a Westernized veneer whereas Guangzhou (also known as Canton) was the real China: a difficult crowded place with no English signs and clouds of brown smog.
Ninety-nine percent of the storefronts in Hong Kong are spotless and air-conditioned, most of the filth relegated to back rooms. In Guangzhou, things come raw, in-your-face, and it’s all quite strange: sun-dried snakes; stretched-out sea horses; sliced up deer antlers; giant plastic bowls full of live scorpions; cat, dog, and owl butchers; barrels of chicken feet; steaming turtle shells. Somehow the Cantonese manage to find a culinary use for all this. Semiconductor shops sit next to dried seafood stalls. Two-storey ten-lane highways zoom next to quiet flagstone alleyways shaded by clotheslines where old people play mahjong. Life happens on the street, things flow organically, and interiors are indistinguishable from exteriors.
As I made my way out of the crowded alleyways of Qingping market, I came across a group of cops kicking a handcuffed old man in rags, scowls of anger on their faces as the victim yelled out obscenities in Cantonese. A circle of bystanders stood by, watching. The man was writhing in pain, yet the cops kept kicking him in the crotch. It was barbaric and unprofessional. I was horrified. God knows what he had done. He probably hadn’t paid his weekly bribe to stand on the corner selling pickled eel heads.
It was 35 degrees in Guangzhou and everything was getting to me: the heat, culture shock, senseless police brutality. I needed to escape somewhere for a minute or two, somewhere air-conditioned. I felt self-conscious and sweaty, a smelly hairy Westerner in a land without sweat glands. Apparently some Chinese think Westerners give off a smell of rotten dairy products on an average day. What would they think of me now?
I dodged into one of the rare places with an English sign that read “Official Chinese Tea Culture Transmission Center.” Great, I thought, they’ll have a menu I can read. This was important: I didn’t want to end up with a plate of pig’s ass braised in duck’s blood. All I wanted was to sit back, relax, and read in quiet surroundings with minimal stimulus and a cup of tea to sustain me.
Unfortunately, I soon found myself in the middle of an awkward tea ceremony. Here I was, sweaty me, with a beautiful Chinese girl preparing tea in tight lime-green dress. It would have been perfect if I hadn’t been so worn out. I tried to read my book, to look away, but the girl sat down in front of me. Reading felt impolite. I felt I should pay attention to the “cultural transmission” going on but I wasn’t in the mood. It’s not that I wasn’t interested in learning about Chinese tea—I was, but not immediately after seeing a screaming man kicked repeatedly in the crotch. The image kept coming back, making me sick.
Bicycles and propaganda art
“You look hot,” said the girl, and by that she meant “hot” as in sweaty and disgusting. “Go sit by cool,” she continued, pointing to the air conditioner with a fake smile. I obeyed, blushing. How embarrassing! I hoped she would leave soon so I could stew in my own sweaty corner alone. Instead she sat there, pouring tea, painfully struggling for words to explain the process. She tasted it, then filled my thimble-sized cup.
I felt more paranoid with every minute. What was the appropriate ritual? How the hell is one supposed to behave at a Chinese tea ceremony? Surely you’re not supposed to show up in a ratty t-shirt smelling of fermented milk with police brutality and dog-meat stew on your mind. Clearly it wasn’t something you did alone, but in groups, since all the tables around me were tables for twelve. The waitress had seemed baffled that I wanted a teapot on my own and now I understood why. It was too late. The damage was done. This wasn’t the kind of place you came to relax and read by yourself. No, it was a rigid ceremonial affair that commanded cultural respect and attention. I was stuck here, alone, with no idea how to behave.
The large group at the next table looked at me with amused confusion. Do you drink the thimble in one shot? Do you hold the cup with two hands? Fuck this. I needed to get out. I wanted to lock myself in my hotel room. The old man’s face as the cop kicked his crotch kept coming back to me. I needed to leave.
“You here for business or study?” asked the waitress, pouring herself another thimble. Guangzhou clearly isn’t the type of place you come to as a tourist, and I soon realized this. Aside from a few American couples walking with their newly adopted Chinese babies, I seemed to be the only white person in the city of 4 million people.
“Tourist,” I said, struggling to smile.
“Tou-rist?” she repeated, confused, “Long time?”
“Four months,” I answered. “China, Xinjiang, then Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, maybe Thailand.”
It took a while to register but then she asked “alone?” with a frown.
“Yes,” I said. “Alone.” I wanted to add that I liked being alone but realized it would not be tactful.
She continued to frown, baffled, mumbled something in Cantonese, and went back to her staged smile. I was clearly operating outside her cultural framework and that, my friends, is counter-revolutionary behaviour in the People’s Republic of China. There was no way I could even attempt to bridge the cultural gap without a knowledge of Cantonese. Things were growing more awkward by the minute as we sat there drinking tea over phony smiles.
“You smell,” she finally said.
My face turned beet red. What?! I knew I stank but this was really impolite. Perhaps this was the brash Chinese behaviour I’d been warned about.
She picked up her thimble, smelled the tea, then took a sip. “You smell,” she said again, “then taste. Taste with smell.”
I felt relieved. She hadn’t been commenting about my smell after all. I picked up the tea, smelled, then tasted. This gave me a brief tinge of satisfaction in this sea of horror—using your sense of smell really did improve the tea drinking experience. Unfortunately, this tea was awful. It needed sugar, but I knew enough about Chinese tea to realize that they don’t drink tea with sugar.
Sensing my thought, she asked “You taste sweet?”
“Not sweet,” I said. “Bitter, and jasmine. Strong jasmine taste.” How inane. I really had a way with words! Of course it tasted like jasmine… it was jasmine tea for crissakes!
“Chinese people taste sweet in mouth, after,” she explained, pointing to her throat. I smiled as my dirty mind kicked in, but there was no point throwing out sexual innuendo in response. They would go right over her head. Besides, it was drastically out of place. Instead I just picked up the cup and tried to taste the sweetness but my mouth felt like pasty bitterness.
“Yes,” I replied with a phony smile, “very sweet.”
After a few more thimbles she boiled water for a third teapot. Fuck. My throat felt like asbestos from all this bitter tea. No more tea, please! I really needed to get out. I gestured no in the most polite way I could. After paying my bill, I was back out in the sweltering heat breathing a sigh of relief that I had escaped the awkward rigid ceremony.
Oh wait… it’s fucking hot out here!
Originally written in 2003.
Tags: Cafés, Exploring the City, Guangzhou
Montreal Apartments
Sean says:
Glad you enjoyed Hong Kong, I love it here
June 27th, 2007 at 3:41 am
Patrick says:
Hong Kong is the best city in Asia.
June 27th, 2007 at 5:38 pm