Pu'er Tea & 甘

Yesterday, I bought some pu'er tea. I haven't been able to find my original jar of pu'er since moving, and it had been too long. Pu'er is my favourite tea, of all teas. I may treat English Breakfast with milk as the default 'cuppa', but I actively adore pu'er.

I don't know if T2 can be said to purvey the finest specimens of this tea, but it's good enough for me. That lovely whole and upward-rising flavour, the beautiful clarity of the liquor; I love to disturb the water, and watch skeins of red tea rise up in the glass.

This led to me, unsurprisingly, reading the wikipedia article on pu'er. Pu'er is indeed a unique tea among all teas, and the measuring and production of it appears to be more complex than brewing of beer. Especially considering good pu'er is considered to be aged at least 10 years. Yunnan has always been high on my list of places to go, but after reading that article, oh. I want to visit the tea factories and the Six Great Tea Mountains of old, and see the 'feral tea plantations'.

As you can see, I was having a jolly good time educating myself on the basics of pu'er production, when I came to the following:

甘 is my family name. That is my family seal.

I have never, in 33 years of reading, learning, experiencing and communicating, never, not once, encountered our name beyond the scope of our family. The fact that I can't read Chinese contributes to that, regardless, I haven't even met anyone who shares our name in pinyin. 'Gān' is Mandarin; our name is Cantonese, or Hakka, but that is the character.

I forgot how to breathe, and then promptly broke down crying. I can't articulate why. I'd guess that, somewhere in the sub-levels of my subconscious, is a plaintive and desperate need to belong. To something. Let me stake a tiny claim in any culture that predates my own experience.

And it's tea terminology. It's something I love without obligation.

I'm crying again.

ETA: The lovely Charles Tan brought this site to my attention.  It provides examples of pronunciation and accent for 甘. The variations in regional accents and dialects is obvious, even without examples from all Chinese languages. 

Tintin (and Sir Tessa) in Tibet (and a swish bar)

The one book on my required reading list for Tibet was, wait for it...



Being more of an Asterix girl myself, this is the only Tintin comic I own. It's well-thumbed and falling apart. I loved this comic so much that in Grade 4 I wrote and illustrated a 31 page EPIC which was plagiarism as only children can get away with.

This comic is why I have been determined to visit Tibet for the better part of my life. At 8 years old the mystery of a country inaccessible by both geography and choice was powerfully tantalising, and the need to explore that mysterious country for myself dug down into my subconscious and has stayed with me ever since.

On rereading it, I was surprised at how little of Tibet actually features. Tintin and Captain Haddock spend most of their time with Nepali sherpas and lost in the Himalayas; a landscape that shapes nations, but otherwise pays no attention to the those nations. The few encounters with Tibetan Yellow Hat Monks and the Yeti/Migou were apparently enough to win me over.

(I did not see any Migou in Tibet, and while I did see plenty of monks, none of them were levitating.)

monks debating at sera monastery

Having established this as the primary driving force behind my desire to see Tibet, I felt a little silly. This was erased upon flipping through the Lonely Planet Tibet and reading the brief bio of author Robert Kelly:

His interest in Tibet can probably be traced to early readings of Tintin in Tibet...

I feel further vindicated on discovering that Tintin was the first fictional character to receive the Dalai Lama's Light of Truth award.

On June 1, 2006, Tintin became the first fictional character to be awarded the Dalai Lama's Truth of Light award. “For many people around the world Tintin in Tibet was their first introduction to Tibet, the beauty of its landscape and its culture. And that is something that has passed down the generations,” said the International Campaign for Tibet's Simon van Melick. During the awarding ceremony copies of Tintin in Tibet in Esperanto (Tinĉjo en Tibeto) were distributed among the attendees and journalists.

Which is more than most of us can claim.

I found some Tintin in Tibet t-shirts in Kathmandu, but unfortunately they were all so bad I could not bring myself to buy one even for the novelty factor.

On our last night in Beijing a handful of us decided to hit up some bars, and were directed to Beihai Park, which wikipedia portrays as a lovely place to have a picnic. I'm sure it is during the day, but at night all the bars and lounges lining the shores of the lake open up and the place goes off.





Quite upmarket, some great places there. We stood out being severely under-dressed and, yanno, European, and were mobbed by people trying to guide us to bars and get a finder's fee.

Being as Tintin was floating around at the top of my thoughts, I nixed their efforts by squeeing in my pants at the sight of this:



YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT IT'S A TINTIN BAR.



YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT I WENT OUT AND BOUGHT THE COMIC WHEN I GOT HOME.

Sadly, being as the company I was keeping at the time consisted of a German, an American, and an Englishman, only the Englishman had even heard of Tintin, and he did not share my enthusiasm. Despite that, being I was the only one of us who had picked a bar from the many on offer, we went in.

It wasn't an opium den. FYI.

I think opium dens would be cheaper.

The decor was quite chic, with incredibly high-backed chairs fashioned like lotus petals in red leather, and bar that was so well stocked the bottles took up two whole walls. Mildly disconcerting was the live music, consisting of a couple of African-Americans (they must have been a hit, they were the only black people I saw the whole time) singing an odd selection of covers, which ranged from "Everlasting Love" to "What a Wonderful World" and clashed with the general vibe of the place.

The cocktail menu made me squee all over again. Cocktails based on the characters? Hell yes.

most people focus on the blow job here

I figured Captain Haddock would be pure whiskey with more whiskey and a shot of whiskey, couldn't imagine what Snow[y] would be, and went with Lotus Blue. Definitely blue curacao and malibu, not sure about the rest. Tasty, and not too strong.

It's interesting the different reasons which drive people not only to travel, but where they travel to. When in Japan I was drawn to places that where the host of not only major historical events but entirely fictional events as well, and in South America I felt distanced for having only a thin bank of literary associations to draw upon.

Stories are the ruling force in my life. Everything I buy, read, do and choose may have at the time entirely circumstantial reasons, may look on the surface as though I'm going about my daily life, but in the end it is all because it feeds my mind, and everything that goes in makes the knowledge I can draw upon richer, and it will all out again in the stories I write. I cannot help but pay homage to the narratives that have sustained me, because I hope that one day someone will stand in a real place and be delighted to be at the scene of something I made up.

They may be "only stories", but they make me who I am, and who I am is what I do.

"Only you could come back from Tibet with BOOKS."

I dispute the above statement.



There are plenty of people within my pocket of society who would do exactly the same. Yeah, I'm looking at you. And you. And you especially.

Alas, none of these books were bought in Tibet. The only books I met in Tibet were scriptures sold in the Sera Monastery just outside of Lhasa, and while I was tempted, the Tibetan spoken language tends to flummox me, and the alphabet is far beyond my comprehension.

Besides, the last place to buy books about Tibet is in Tibet. Thank you, CCP.

From China, I present the Little Red Book (which is not a quality print job, I think it has been made from toilet paper), and The Qin Dynasty Terra-Cotta Army of DREAMS.

This second book is signed by Mr Yan. The Mr Yan. A skim around google will teach you that Emperor Qin's tomb was first discovered "by local farmers drilling a water well".

Mr Yan is that farmer.

He's not a farmer anymore. The discovery made him a millionaire, and now he spends every day sitting in the museum shop, smoking and signing books. That is all he does. He wins the prize for being the most dour, sour, grumpy and glowering old man I met on my journey. He needs to quit smoking too.

The rest came from Kathmandu, Nepal, a city that is apparently Mecca for all manner of books concerning Tibet. Baggage space limited what I came away with, but regardless, that's a pile of pure treasure.

Return to Tibet is Heinrich Harrer's account of his return to his second home after Chinese occupation. Seven Years In Tibet, his account of how he came to live in the holy city of Lhasa in the first place, is an exceptionally wonderful read.

The Tibetan-English Dictionary I snatched up as soon as I saw it. If perhaps I'd taken a moment to think about it, I would have left it and spent more time hunting for an English-Tibetan dictionary, heh.

ནང-མཆད nan-mchod 1. mystical religious service; also offerings made to deities in such a service, the most important offering being sanctified beer poured from a human-skull-cup into the cups of devotees who drink it as something efficacious against evil. 2. a sort of potion consisting of the ten impurities, viz., five kinds of flesh (including human flesh), excrement, urine, blood, marrow and (more Tibetan characters I can't make out) (semen) all mixed together, trans-substantiated by charms into (Tibetan characters) bdud-rtsi the potion of immortality, a small quantity of which is tasted by the devotees with the lama at their head. This drink is considered of great importance by the mystics who seek to obtain gifts of witchcraft; hence every offering is sprinkled with this potion.

I couldn't find the right accent for a couple of those Tibetan characters, nor figure any accents for the romanised terms. At any rate, there's a sample of the gems you get when you randomly open a dictionary. First printed 1902, and this is a reprint, not a new edition. It shows.

These two books I bought from a book shop by the Boudhanath, the heart of Little Tibet in Kathmandu. A couple of monks were going through every single magnet the shopkeeper had when I wandered up to the counter. There were a lot of magnets, but I don't think they were pressed for time.

When at last I found myself roaming Kathmandu alone, my companions having departed for the airport one by one, I was almost immediately sucked into yet another bookshop; Vajra Books in Thamel. Spent a good hour in there, just looking. It's funny how you can find home in strange lands.

After much agonising, I came away with;

• Diary of a Journey Across Tibet 1891-1892 - Hamilton Bower
• Through Unknown Tibet 1896 - M. S. Wellby
• Riddles of the Gobi Desert 1929 - Sven Hedin
• My Life as an Explorer 1885-1935 - Sven Hedin
  

They're reprints of journals, accounts and diaries of Europeans who explored Tibet, back when the land was sealed not just by mountains but its own choice. Bower and Wellby I chose after flipping through the pages, but Hedin I was very excited to see. He was a very interesting personality, and more than a touch blinded by his own ambition. Unfortunately, they didn't have his accounts specifically detailing his forays into Tibet, so these are something of a consolation prize.

Fortunately, the publisher Asian Educational Services has those books in stock and available online. Maybe that should be "unfortunately". They're exceptionally beautiful editions, all of these books, as well as all the other books I left behind in Kathmandu. There's an absolute dragon's hoard of explorer logs available there. Very dangerous site. Click at your own risk.

(ETA: Oh dude. A book on Tibet by Younghusband. I'm tempted, yet pretty sure I'd find that nothing but an entirely aggravating read.)

My To Be Read Bookshelf is fucking awesome.

To The Knuckle, Ya Hear?

After nearly a week back in Oz, I think I’ve expelled the last of the junk that China, Tibet and Nepal laid in my nose.

Most travels become centred on the excretions of the bowel, whether or not this is admitted in polite company. Mess with the diet, never know where the next loo is and have to conquer squats and cesspits – it’s all about the poop.

This trip was equally focused on the excretions of the nasal cavity, as you just can't have too many orifices expelling at the same time, and upon which I shall elaborate upon now.

Beijing

Beijing has no sky.



That is the first photograph I took on Chinese soil, the first thing I saw upon leaving the airport, and yeah, I totally freaked out at the thought of breathing for the next few days.

I’m exaggerating. Mildly. There were blue skies while I was in the city.

But the pollution. The pollution! Blasphemy.

At Tiananmen Square they raise the Chinese flag every sunrise, and lower it every sunset. It’s quite the ritual, with a squad of the People's Liberation Army marching out from beneath Chairman Mao’s portrait over the gate to the Forbidden City, perfectly choreographed so they take 108 paces per minute, 75cm per pace, and timed so that the flag comes down exactly when the sun disappears below the horizon.

It would be more impressive if the sun had not disappeared behind the pollution half an hour before hand.



There it goes.

I commented to a local who was “practicing his English on me” that no one would know if the timing was out with the pollution hiding the sunset. He told me that oh, the air pollution had improved so much since the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when all the big factories had been moved away from the city. It was so much better now, amazing.

This was an improvement?

Don’t think I did a good job of hiding my horror.

China Proper left black boogers in my nose, solid like concrete. Took some blowing and then poking to get them moving.

Tibet

The Tibetan Plateau is free of China’s air issues, much to my relief. It is, however, dusty.



No, I mean it. The whole country is dusty.



Seriously.



Really.



We spent a day in this dust storm. There was more dust than air about, visibility was frequently zilch and we spent a good deal of time stopped, hoping no one ran into us while the dust washed up against the windows like water.

And that shit gets everywhere, and you would not believe how much dust your nasal cavity can contain.

The air is also incredibly cold and bone-dry. Combined with the altitude, I had a permanent blood nose. No major gushing, but a perpetual ooze.

In this regard, the dust was useful. I let it collect and act as a clotting agent. While the others were occupied with clearing their noses at every opportunity, I only got the tissues out of an evening, and proceeded with the excavation before bed. With body systems slowing down with sleep, the body struggles even further getting oxygen around at altitude, so you need all the space in your nose you can get.

This did mean that I was blowing a day's worth of junk out, and oh my lord Buddha. Some of those chunks were as big as my thumbnail, no exaggeration. Green and brown, and with blood clots. First time I was afraid I'd blown out a bit of my brain. The stuff down the nostril passage was dry and caked on too. It was amazing. Seriously, could have used this stuff as mortar in the Great Wall.

Wasn't just the poor soft foreigners either. I have a very clear and distinct and unfortunately precise memory of witnessing a woman who ran a food tent snot into her palm, try to wipe it on her shoe and then turn her hand over to inspect it when it didn't come off. I saw. Oh, I saw. It was fucking huge. Then she gave me my pot noodle.

Nepal

Coming down from altitude, we were told we'd be near high with oxygen. Oxygen!

This was a lie, as the water to oxygen ratio in the air was about equal. Plus, Kathmandu Valley does not boast particularly clean air either.



Left over blood nose from Tibet plus pollution, but less dust and actual moisture in the air meant a downgrade in the alert status of what came out my nose, which, given that normally nothing comes out my nose, still meant those boogers had punch.

Didn't need to know all that?

This is the real world, kids. Snot happens.




Nose is still bleeding, actually. I think it's a touch traumatised.

Nihao! Tashi Delek! Namaste!

Dude. Running water? HOT running water? All the time?
Toilets? That are clean? And not pits? That are Western style? That I am not afraid to put my bum on?
...fruit?

Holy goats and caviar, Batman, I must be home.

This New World Order doesn't look all that different from the Old World Order, I must say. That's okay, I'm cool with that. Some creature comforts are certainly welcome right now. I haven't done laundry for more than two weeks, and I think I've only showered 30% of those two weeks as well. Still, I've seen Qomolongma aka Everest 3 times in 4 days.

How've you been?

(Shark Puppet would like it known not all of those finger puppets are staying with me. Some are presents. He wouldn't let me bring home a whole football club of puppets.)

Fly, you fools!

Roight. Bags are packed, tracksuit pants are on, me and Shark Puppet my BFF are off to China. I'm running on about two hours sleep at this point, so I'm anticipating being entirely oblivious to the 7 hours it takes to get to Singapore. The lovely KJ Bishop informs me there is a Butterfly Enclosure at Changi Airport to entertain me while I await my next flight. Sorted.

While I am away, I encourage you to indulge in mischief and mayhem. The involvement of elephants and/or strawberry mousse will not be frowned upon.

See you at the cliff of autumn.

<3