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PaperclipPerfector
10mo ago
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Notes -
This reminds me of an experience I had in Western China.
My brother and I had been traveling through random places throughout Yunnan for about a month and found ourselves in the historic district of a city in the low Himalayas. This being the region where tea was first cultivated, we found a tea shop to browse; they had thousands of teas, fresh and aged, fermented, cakes pressed into elaborate shapes hanging from the walls. The owner and his wife were fascinated to see us (blonde, Dutch young men, one of us fluent in Mandarin) and invited us into their living area where we enjoyed drinking many rare and expensive teas with his family late into the evening. They had a tea preparing table carved into an elaborate landscape, the teaset occupying clearings and civilized areas, the runoff water and spent tea rushing down miniature mountain streams.
Now, if you've ever had much truly good tea in a short time, you may know that it can affect you in ways foreign to mere caffeine. https://youtube.com/watch?v=HrLaKX9J8Uo The Cha Zui, tea drunk, is usually a state I perceive as a mild euphoria accompanied by a moderate strengthening of subjective experience and creativity. I use it to read or write a good fantasy.
This time was different.
As we left, red lanterns burned high over cobblestone streets and lit the edges of golden carved eaves above us. We stopped for a quick drink at a basic bar; everything was delightful and dreamlike, time seemed utterly meaningless; it was just now, light, color, sway, peace. We returned to our lodgings and I sat on the bed, suddenly caught in an urge to meditate, and the elaborately carved lantern above my bed exploded into ten thousand sides and facets, each with a divine message, purpose, meaning that I seemed to plumb without end. After, I simply felt content with it all and fell asleep.
Still the most vivid ecstatic experience I've ever had. Perhaps all the new experiences of travel can leave us susceptible to such things? Or perhaps I've just never had that many decades-old teas over the course of a few hours before.
Funnily enough, a few days later we found ourselves in the home of some old crone trying to sell us some wild marijuana she had harvested from the mountainside, but that's another story.
Ha! An amazing experience, thanks for sharing. I would like to hear the old crone story at some point down the line as well, if you ever feel like telling it. The most obscure tea I have had is Lapsang Souchong which some call "bacon tea" and which was purportedly Churchill's favorite tea. I measured out a bag of it last time I was in the US (though it is a Chinese tea it is hard as hell to find in Japan). I have to keep it wrapped in said bag and locked in a metal tin to contain the odor--which I like, but which is a bit potent. Never had any groovy experiences drinking it, but a hot cup of it is great, nothing at all like the usual Earl Grey (that I also enjoy.) Did you ever get any names of those teas you drank?
Hah, Lapsang Souchong is a flavor blast to be sure! I like it from time to time, but my favorite use for it is actually to steep it in bourbon for a day to get a more complex, smokey Old Fashioned out of it.
No other tea I know of is so deliberately and strongly smoked, but some very rural/single family teas still have a bit of a smokey aroma from having been dried just in the rafters of their family homes, which tend to accumulate smoke from cooking or heating fires.
The specific teas we were drinking are long gone - they were aged Pu'erh teas, which like wine are sold by grove and year, each production being a small and local affair, and many were several decades old at that point. But you can find various ones like them, say, here - https://yunnansourcing.com/collections/aged-raw-pu-erh-tea
I stay stocked up on them, imho it's the most interesting genre of tea out there. Stark and bitter, though! It's an ascetic enjoyment.
Rock Oolong and Dragon Well are two excellent teas that will also reliably give you a tea buzz, but if you're in Japan a high-quality Sencha can do the same. Wouldn't try with Lapsang or Earl grey, you're gonna blast out your taste buds and stomach before you get close.
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