Go Drink Tea!

There is one thing about China more rich than its language, its history, its anthropology, and its cinema combined: It's tea. And it's the simplicity of tea that makes it such complex thing to understand for a Western person like me. But I'm gonna give it a go anyway.

A monk once asked Chinese Zen Master Zhaozhou, "What is Buddha?" Zhaozhou answered, "Go drink tea!" The monk then asked, "What is Dharma?" Zhaozhou answered, "Go drink tea!" The monk persisted, "What is Sangha?" Zhaozhou again said, "Go drink tea!"

When reading this quote, my instinct tells me that Zen Master Zhaozhou is being a bit obstructionist here. This monk is struggling with profound questions and he really needs guidance from his master in order to move forward in his spiritual development, but clearly his questions are not taken seriously. Master Zhaozhou is patronizing this poor monk, letting him know how superior he is.

So that's what I explained to Carolyn, but she told me that Master Zhaozhou is actually gave this monk a very valuable lesson. She believes the monk should follow the master's advice and drink - not clean the house - not worry about the laundry - not drink wine - not thinking about what the master Zhaozhou really means - no. He should go to the kitchen, prepare tea, and drink it. That's it!

Now, understanding this is understanding tea itself, and understanding tea is like having a peak into the Chinese soul. The power of tea can be found in its simplicity, in its lack of pronounced flavors, in the way the leaves unfold in the water, and in the color of the liquid. Let's end with a tea video that has a similar message:

Pretty Woman and Chinese-Language Cinema

Obviously the best place to start analyzing Chinese cinema is with the kissing scene from the movie "Pretty Woman", starring Julia Roberts and China-critic Richard Gere...

Clearly this was a key moment in this love story about a ruthless business man and a prostitute. The piano and violin music of course elevates the whole scene to an even higher level. It's clear what's happening here, and that's the way I like it.

Of course, love is a popular theme in Chinese-language cinema as well. Unfortunately, however, things are not always as straightforward as in Hollywood. Love stories are a little bit more painful here. There is more restraint, more is left unexpressed, not much actually happens and quite frankly I find them confusing. Farewell My Concubine (Kaige Chen, 1993) is such an example, although here the love is between two men. Anyway, I wouldn't recommend it.

Then I met Carolyn and she took me to "In the Mood for Love" (Kar Wai Wong, 2000). The first thing I wanted to know was the length of the movie. Well, I didn't expect it but this film made a deep impression, particularly the following scene showing the loneliness of the two main characters:

Then it suddenly dawned on me that there can be so much beauty in things that are left "unshown", so to speak. The lack of kissing, sex, or fighting scenes is the strength of this film. We as an audience draw our own conclusions - still with music but no piano, only strings...

Anthropology: There is more than one Chinese

I told my wife Carolyn the other day: “The Chinese, they are all the same”. Well, apart from the “physical” answer I got from her, she also told me to get my facts straight. So I did, and after a bit of research I found out that my statement wasn’t the most accurate one - to say the least…

In fact, the country recognizes 55 distinct ethnics groups. These include the Han, the Zhuang, the Manchu, the Hui, the Yi, the Buyi, and many others. But trying to understand the backgrounds and differences between these groups is perhaps a little too ambitious a task, so let’s keep things simple. We’re going to divide the country in two: The North and the South.

There is actually is a genetic basis for a distinction between the Northern and the Southern Chinese. Check out this page for more info, or if you REALLY want to know the facts, go here.

So now that we’ve got ourselves covered by science, let’s go to the fun part: Stereotypes!

So what are the stereotypical differences between a Northern and a Southern Chinese person? Here’s what I found out:

Northerners

      - bigger and taller in size

- longer face

- lighter, fairer skin color- smaller eyes with single eyelids

- eat more noodles, dumplings and wheat-based foods rather than rice-based food

- northern cuisine generally does not have spicy food

- speak Mandarin with a northern accent

- more boisterous and open in personality, with more direct "thunderbolt" displays of emotions

    

 

A Northern Chinese family

Southerners

- generally smaller and shorter in size

- rounder face

- darker, tanner skin color

- larger eyes with higher frequency of double eyelids

- eat more rice and spicy food

- Southerners speak a Chinese dialect that is older than Mandarin, that was spoken by Dynasties before Ming.

- tend to be more industrious and entrepreneurial

- more reserved displays of emotions

 

A Southern Chinese family

It's the Southerners that us Westerners are most familiar with because they are the ones opening restaurants and other businesses abroad. Hopefully I don't need to point out that these are stereotypes and stereotypes are never true. Still, of course, it’s interesting to know. Next time: Chinese cinema.

Some interesting links:

Portraits of Southerners

Photos from every province in China

The History of China (and a little bit of urology)

So I have have to admit I'm a little bit stuck with learning Mandarin. My wife Carolyn tells me that watching a couple of videos on YouTube is clear evidence of lack of commitment. She recommends I spend two years in Beijing doing a full-immersion language program. I didn't agree and told her that the real reason for me experiencing a "Mandarin-block" is the fact that one can only truly understand the language - and it's many subtleties - in the context China's long and rich history. So what we're going to do this week is delve into China's past. Chinese History Lesson 1:


Let's keep it simple and start at the end: The Qing dynasty was the last ruling dynasty of China, which covered the period between 1644 and 1911. According to chinaknowledge.de, this age of the Qing dynasty is characterized by "a period of prosperity, of decay, of stagnation, of revolution, of lazyness and of challenges that came upon a population that seemed to sleep a beauty's sleep of Confucian social ethics in a paradise where a wise ruler governed over a satified and happy population, and on the other side a society that was bound by rules of a backward social thinking."

The end of the Qing dynasty marked the end of Imperial China, and the beginning of the Republic of China. Instead of writing a long essay about the transition from "Ancient China" to "Modern China", I decided to show you a single picture. It's a photograph (by Henri Cartier-Bresson) of a eunuch of the Imperial court of the Qing dynasty:

The photo was taken in 1948, decades after the the Qing dynasty ended, and less than one year before Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic. This is a photo of a man caught between two worlds, a lost soul. And in the eyes of many, eunuchs were not even considered men at all! To find out why - and to learn a little bit about eunuchs in general - we need help from the science of urology. Have a quick look at page 139 (section "results and conclusions") of the following document. Don't worry, it's not too much text!

With this bit of urological information in mind I have another look at the above photograph and find it incredibly moving: One man who symbolizes China's struggle to become a modern nation - something that's still very relevant today.