What wisdom, the writer found, from the teas that she’s, drinking, translated…
Maybe it’s, the magnetic fields at work, there are, those who are, living on dreams all around me, they were, often trapped, in the solitude, that no one around them can understand, and, not being able to, attain a dreams immediately, not seeing the finishing lines in sight, and the fears that came out, every now and then, stressing them out. As those who shared the same predicaments saw, they’d, made fun of how they’re ill, or, simply, foolish, there was, that easier path to take, and yet, they’d, selected, to travel down, this, harder path of life.
What is life about? Do we, seek comforts, or, self-fulfillment, it’s hard to tell, which choice would be, the correct answers.
from this…
Most people may not know, that back then, as the Chinese from Fujian came, and planted down that very tea tree, it was, right here, in Ruifang. This was on record in the “Common Histories of Taiwan”, but rarely anyone recalls this detail. I have that romantic sort of a connection with this passage in history, by chance, I’d, actually, found that first tea plantation that the immigrants from China came to stay, looking out into the oceans, along with Keelung Islet.
The teas, with the sea breeze, I’d wondered, what it’d, tasted like? So, I went up the hillside, to pick the springtime tea leaves, the first time I’d, gone to pick the leaves personally, then, as the sun dried up the leaves, and felt the slight aroma that came, from the leaves being, dried by the sun, then, I’d, moved the leaves indoors and waited, continued, tossing them up and down, to make the leaves even, softer, then, I’d, started, rubbing the leaves with my hand, so the theophylline can come out. The entire process, the cells of the leaves needed to go through getting broken down, destruction, for it, to no longer be what it once was, then, after baking the leaves many times over, then came, the oolong teas that we drink regularly.
I couldn’t help, but feel, how making the teas, as well as life, is all about, choices, we decide what sort of person we are to become. A leaf off of the tea trees, can continue to choose to grow on the trees until it get old, and wither, die, fall to the ground, become compost for the plant, this is, the life cycles of, most plants too. But, this leaf also, have the chance of, becoming something wonderful to drink, as it was just grown in, getting plucked from the mother plant by force, getting baked by the sun, tossed around, heated up, rubbed down, baked in the fires of the oven, to get dried, for the sake of getting rid of the bitterness, to make it, more, aromatic, becoming, something that people savored. The price of becoming tea, is no longer having that original state of a tea leaf anymore, and, sometimes, the price of losing oneself, may not get you anywhere, you don’t go down a certain path that someone else went, and become legends like the person could, sometimes, life is, just, a total, joke.
to this…
There’s no absolute answers in anything we encounter in life, like how Ruifang was an originally seaside tea planting town, but because gold was discovered here, the plantations were, left to waste, and, it’d, turned into, that city of sorrow in the movies, and, after the collectives of life, death, and the assortments of walks of life, whether it be just one person, or, an entire, community, it’s like this cup of tea I have in my hand, worth, our time to think about.
And so, this, is what this woman came to understand, from this cup of tea that she’d, steeped. It takes, a lot, for a seed to grow up into a tree, and, for the leaves, to be high enough in quality, to be, plucked, to be baked into tea, and, it takes, even more, for the leaves to get baked to perfection, and sometimes, if you turned the heat up too high, or not high enough, then, the entire batch is, ruined, and it’s, this trial by error process, until we finally, get it, just right.