Chengdu: My Cup(s) of Tea

In 2002 (shortly before I started considering the question of were to apply for college), Indiana University—my state school and now current home campus—was awarded the coveted-by-some dreaded-by-university-officials ranking of #1 top party school in the nation by Princeton Review.

The southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu, where I now find myself in the midst of a whirlwind of travel / sightseeing / study with my CIEE study abroad group, has a similar reputation. As I was researching this city’s history, culture, and contemporary status in preparation for my current visit, I found that the LA Times in a fun article titled “People’s Party Animals” (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/columnone/la-fi-chinaparty8feb08,1,7457737.story?coll=la-headlines-columnone) dubbed Chengdu “China’s Party City.”

So why did this similar news about IU turn me off at the time to applying there, while in regards to Chendu acting as a further attraction? Well, I’ve never been much of a party girl in the U.S. college kid relieve-the-stress-of-study-by-getting-smashed kind of sense. But the people of Chengdu have a bit broader sense of what it means to party While higher-than-average number of bars was a significant factor in earning Chengdu its title (with half of Shanghai’s population—Chengdu is home to roughly 10 million people and 3000 pubs and karaoke bars—, has more such establishments than Shanghai, a city renowned for its indulgence in leisure), Chengdu’s bars, still seen as a Western import, are still far outnumbered by the more traditional-style teahouse.

With roughly 4000 teahouses scattered throughout the city, you can find one on virtually every corner. Here, Chengdu’s residents gather—and often linger for hours or even an entire day—to enjoy a cup of tea, chat with friends, and play an assortment of games from cards to mahjong to Chinese chess. The passion that the people of Chengdu have for having fun and playing games isn’t limited to the teahouses: on the streets everywhere, you can see people with their personal portable game boards spread out on any available surface.

One of my first tastes of Chengdu was a cup of exquisite Pu’er tea at one of the city’s many teahouses. Considering that over the centuries the people of Chengdu have turned the teahouse and the beverage that it revolves around into a complex culture of its own, its not surprising that there are many different kinds that cater to different tastes, purposes, and budgets. The teahouse we went to was part of the ____ Buddhist Temple: before tea made its way into mass culture, it was refined to perfection as part of Chinese Buddhist practice. Like the tea ceremony of Japan, drinking tea was turned into an art, an intricate series of motions that became a means of meditation. The tea ceremony we saw was just that sort: two monks of the ____ Temple—in a rather touristy setting albeit, with a woman holding a microphone doing a play-by-play in Chinese—performed step by step the ceremonies that have been kept alive by monks in this temple and others like it around China. The monks’ motions were made in sync to mellow mood music, which, like the tea we sat sipping and our surroundings, had a distinctly Chinese traditional flavor.

In China in general and Chengdu in particular, tea has been turned into an art. Different types of tea have different methods of preparation, I discovered, developed over the centuries in temples like this and in the homes of the imperial elite. Pu’er tea is prepared differently than oolong, oolong differently than green tea, the method of preparation designed to suit a certain tea and optimize its taste and smell and the overall experience. As it became clear here in Chengdu, there’s not just one generic type of green tea or pu’er or oolong but dozens. The tea ceremonies we saw allowed us to sample just four varie-teas. The first was Pu’er, an unfermented but usually aged (among tea connoisseurs, the older, the better, the more such people are willing to pay, regardless of the taste) type of tea that was prepared by two monks in saffron robes with faces as serene as an undisturbed pond and hand movements as intricate and graceful as the flitting of small birds. The second tea we tasted was a sort of oolong prepared by a lovely young woman with movements even more graceful. The monks in their saffron robes then returned, the tea this time a type of green tea with a flavor and preparation more reminiscent to Japan’s tea ceremony, using a bamboo whisk.

Though by that point we were all filled with caffeine, the atmosphere of the temple and the serene demeanor of the monks brought a feeling of peacefulness. The last—but not least—tea we drank at the temple that day was served in a way that certainly livened things up. Two young students of martial arts bounded onto the stage bearing teapots with spouts a good 3 feet long. They literally bent over backwards to pour a cup of tea. The contortions they went through in the process of pouring tea were quite impressive, shock-and-awe factor increasing with each successive cup. It was martial arts and acrobatics and tea ceremony all mixed into 5 minutes of amazing-ness.

Now for tea to have reached such a legendary status, it surely must have some legendary beginnings. And indeed that is the case: the power of tea was first unlocked in ancient China roughly 5,000 years ago. Shen Nong, an early emperor whose actual existence is mixed with legend, was, in addition to being a skilled ruler, also a self-studied scientist of sorts. His far-sighted edicts required, among other things, that all drinking water be boiled as a hygienic precaution. One summer day while visiting a distant region of his realm, he and the court stopped to rest. In accordance with his ruling, Emperor Shen Nong’s servants began to boil water for the court to drink. Dried leaves from the nearby bush blew into the boiling water, creating what was perhaps the world’s first cup of tea. His scientist side taking over, the Emperor was fascinated by this unfamiliar liquid, took a sip, and found it quite refreshing. So the story goes, at least. Though the true story of the world’s first cup of tea is lost to the tides of history, that version to me sounds plausible enough. Since then, tea has made its way into all corners of the world and permeated countless aspects of Chinese culture.