This day, 13 April, 1988, the First Session of the Seventh National People’s Congress passed its decision on the establishment of Hainan Province and its resolution on...
I’m going to stop doing it.
And not only because the law has changed.
I’m going to put this filthy habit to bed… if I can.
Like that petty criminal in that O. Henry story, I will reform.
My vice is tea-leaf chucking.
I’ve long thought of myself as better than other litterers. I would never have thrown the contents of an ashtray out of the window, nor plastic yoghurt pots.
I’ve thought of the tea leaves I chuck as “like the leaves of Autumn”; fresh from nature and eager to return to nature.
Indeed, the...
The first thing that hits is how inefficient this whole game is. It isn’t quite May as we climb the mountain. Picking only began on 31st March. And already the season is over. Not a basket or wicker hat to be seen.
And it isn’t that these tea bushes have stopped producing; glossy, thick leaves are growing abundantly. If fact, what work we see is the two-man job of sawing off the top 40% or so of the bush along each terrace. Baseball bats are worn for the less-romantic (but...
Tea is supposed to be zero calories. So what is this shiny slick on the surface of yesterday’s drink?
It’s like the blue-brown façades of blocks in China’s fourth tier. It’s like a rolled scarab carapace. It’s like the squeezed temple of a liquid crystal.
Shake it and the metallic tectons quite collapse, broad shards collecting into one bronze rim-stain. Perhaps this is why we are frequently warned not to drink tea that’s been left overnight.
Well, if there is a swollen cigarette-butt floating on top, let me concur; that cup may...
Of course it’s not reasonable to expect commemoration or contemplation.
The “Great War” was concluded more than a century ago. How can I expect “the eleventh day of the eleventh month” to resonate somewhere so far away from where the Armistice was signed?
Yes, China was the non-European nation which committed most men to that war, with real casualties and real costs. It’s a story that needs telling, one which may one day receive more airing. But those events are too far away to claim such as exclusive calendar slot in...
