Category: Culture
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This Can Only Happen in China!
A whole street with all the famous Brand Name Shops
To be opened at Wen An Jie – Shanghai
Yuppies’ favorite. Starbucks….being reversed, called Bucksstar…
Pizza…Huh ?
Delicious Haagen …just change the d to b, easy enough?
haagen-daze vs haagon-bozs
7-11, lower- end brand name, let’s copy,
call it T-11, hardly any difference T and 7…
Brand name bakery
You got to know this one. Why not omg =oh my god ! Unbeatable.
Watsons?
No, it is Watons – brand name drug store
When the street opens, it will be incredibly stunning.
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Why Oolong is the Best Tasting Chinese Tea
Chinese Tea Set Xiaoyan (Little Sparrow), a Sichuan girl originally from Chongqing, now residing and working Guandong Province, cultivating some of the most beautiful orchids one has ever seen, is a friend of mine. We talk about all things culturally related, and especially love to converse on the similarities and differences in Eastern and Western culture and tastes. We love to talk about books, ancient stories, art, history, precious objects, unique places to visit and the histories behind them, and a whole host of cultural topics. Our discussions are quite interesting and stimulating, and often we talk hours without realizing how much time has passed.
Recently the topic of tea was brought up in one of our conversations. It happens to be one of Xiaoyan’s passions, and from the sense I get, a passion of China and the East in general. The West though, sans Great Britain, is Coffee passionate. I know that I am, and so every time before that we spoke about the subject, I always wondered why Coffee wasn’t as appealing to Eastern Culture as it was to ours.
I’ve come to believe that it has to do with the matter of intricacy. I know that many a Brasilian will take issue with this statement but, in general coffee is coffee. Sure you can flavor it, dress it up in all sorts of toppings and such, but basically the bean is the bean. I know that some beans are better than others, depending on the climate, the roasting, and many other factors, but these are varying degrees of differences concerning the same thing, whereas tea, especially Oriental tea, as a plant, like the grape, has a number of different varieties of the plant itself and not just where it’s grown or how its processed.
Note the differences in types of tea and coffee consumption from diffen.com:
Coffee:
- Drip Coffee
- Espresso
- Brewed
- Instant
- Decaf Brewed
- Decaf Instant
- Plunger
- Filter
Tea:
- White Tea
- Green Tea
- Oolong Tea
- Black/Red Tea
- Post Fermented Tea
- Yellow Tea
- Kukicha
Note the coffee consumption differences are based on ways of processing, whereas the teas’ are based on varieties of the plant itself. So with tea, one has a variety of different palettes and experiences based on the herb itself, rather than, basically, the one experience of Coffee: the extreme caffeine high. So this leads to a more genteel sense of the tea culture versus that of the Coffee. This intricacy of experience is symbolic of the Oriental inclination towards finding its bliss in relationships and engagement with life, rather than the end product of relationships, and in all the various textures, colors, and contours found in the many different relationships one finds in daily life. “Being” for them is found through the relationship, engagement with relationships, rather than the benefits gained from them.
Chinese Tea Pot Well, I won’t go on about philosophy. Let me instead introduce you to some of Xiaoyan’s thoughts and preferences in tea itself. This is a good introduction to start me on my tea adventure, and maybe, if you’ve come upon this interest, a good one for you too. I’ve begun to notice more and more interest in tea in America lately, whether in be in the media, the internet, or friends and family, so this seems to be a timely topic.
Here are the words and Chinese tea preferences of my friend, Xiaoyan, a genteel, refined China Girl:
Do you know Chinese tea , the tea culture has been took long history in Chinese culture. there are many kinds of tea in each area of China , there are some famous teas in china , such like “Xihu Long Jing”,”HuangShan MaoFeng” “Jun Shan Yin Zhen”,”Tie Guan Yin”……
Generally, tea is classified in to two sorts , red tea and green tea , red tea is fermented tea , green tea is unfermented tea. My favorite tea is Ur long Tea, Which is a kind of tea between unfermented tea and fermented tea , it is half ferment tea .
Ur-Long Tea is light green brown colour on apparent, taste sweet like liquorices, no bitter taste like green tea , no acerbity taste like red tea, its fragrance can keep long time .
I like have a cup of Ur-long tea after my hard work when take break in my yard .or meeting friends when we chat. It is really a good drink for healthy and get energy.
Sounds like a good starting place for me, and a happy one. Also I found from here, that indeed the health benefits of tea are substantiated, while that of coffee are not and may even be, if anything, more harmful than good for the body. “Tea contains Tannin and Catechin have been associated with preventing cancer and heart diseases,” to quote this article from Diffen.com.
So there you have it. I hope you may find this little refined insight from my Chinese friend interesting, intriguing, and possibly valuable, if you have an interest in exploring the benefits, pleasures, and culture surrounding tea. I’ve got my tea press ready. Time to go search for some Oolong Tea today!
Chinese Tea Table 
Wuyi dark roast oolong (Photo Credit: Emily Chang) Photo: Emily Chang 2009. EmilyChang.com
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How to Write a Poem
I’ve been thinking and working on blogging, the techy geeky stuff, which interests me to a point, but finally the headache begins. And the over saturation. Then I move back to what I really love which is creativity. Blogging and the techno stuff is just the new medium, the new publishing as it were, and with all its advantages, one wonders why it can be so difficult at times. Why can’t one say, I want to put this here, and that there, and have this line up over here on one’s web site without this insane lingo known as programming? It’s the revenge of the nerds on us all. No, actually, it’s a bit of the pleasure of finding things out. It does feel good when you finally figure it out. You feel a little self important. Maybe that’s what its about, feeling important. At any rate Squarespace seems to be advertising what someone like me is wanting. So maybe I’ll move in that direction. It’s just that still, all the squarespace sites I’ve see, seem to look the same. Oh well, who knows. As Loren Feldman says, “It doesn’t madda. ”Wait, wasn't this about how to write a poem? Oh yes, a poem. I get on and off streaks of writing poems like I do getting into tech, but you can guess which is more fun and more gratifying. Hands down a poem, or anything creative. A poem is not something you sit down and intend to write. It's an adventure. A line pops up out of no where, when your totally doing something else, or not doing anything at all, and what it does is not describe how you feel, because like Paddy McAloon wrote, "Words are trains for moving past what really has no name," but rather the sounds of the words, the arrangement, how they're put together, their "music" as it were, express how you feel at that particular moment in a way that is transcendent of that moment. It's an expression of eternity in the field of time. Blake said, "Eternity is in love with the productions of time." The soul is like energy. It's eternal and of the moment at the same time, but you can't see it or feel it or touch it. "Oh," you say, "but I've been shocked before!" Yes, but that shock wasn't energy hurting you. It was the atoms energy was moving that hurt you. Energy has never been seen, heard, felt, touched, or tasted. It's like the invisible man who can only be sensed by throwing a blanket over him. Energy is to an ocean wave as the soul is to art. Art is the expression, the outline in matter, of that which felt outwardly, only inwardly. Dance is a metaphor for effortless movement. Singing is a metaphor for the exuberance of being. Painting is a metaphor for the picture of the soul and for capturing in time, that which is timeless. Music is a metaphor for adventure as represented by the melody, and the magical helpers who appear from no where as represented by the harmony. Sculpting is a metaphor for finding the secret treasure that's inside by working with the "hands" those magical coming from no where helpers again. Fiction is a metaphor for existing simultaneously in two worlds and "dancing" and "singing" between them. Drama is a metaphor for knowing, not that everything is connected, but that everything is the same thing when outside, "bigger" forces, pull the hero or heroine out of there everyday existence, and also a metaphor for the Self behind the self, both participating and observing, there and not there at the same time. Poetry is a metaphor for spontaneity and quantum leaps, where something is nothing and nothing is something. "For poems say nothing," said Auden. But that nothing is precisely the treasure chest buried in your own back yard, which again is a metaphor for the dark parts of the psyche, that we ignore, disregard, or tell to sit down and shut up if they make too big of a rouse. Anger comes from attachment, taking sides with a system over a soul. Art is a metaphor, not for "living" as we so often hear spoken, but for the knowingness that eternity is right here right now, that this IS it, that you ARE it, right here right now, and that no only does magic exist but that it is the only thing that exists. So, here's how you write a poem:- You must have something to write on every second of every day for the rest of your life, which is forever. The thing about the adventure is that it never ends.
- A small pocket notebook will work just fine, but I've found the iPhone very useful because if you are at a social gathering and a poem seizes you, you look weird writing in a notebook. They don't notice you typing in your iPhone. They think you're emailing or texting. So it makes you look cool too.
- Write down every line that comes to you that sounds good, that feels good, that feels like its spontaneous, coming from some other place than your mind, that you're not writing it, but its writing you.
- If you're lucky these lines will come most often just one at a time and not interfere with your life, and then when you've got enough of them, you can gather them together into one poem.
- If three different lines come to you on three different days, don't worry about whether they "match" or sound right together, you can put them together in the same poem or not. "It doesn't madda." Look at it this way. either your three lines into a poem, or you got three different poems going on. Either way you win. But in all seriousness, you can decide later and I mean much later on things like this. There will be drafts and more drafts before the editorial process comes in. So you can save those kinds of decisions for the editorial process.
- On a really bad night, the lines won't quit coming and you have to leave the bar or party early. You have to chase down every spontaneous line like a fly ball. If they keep coming you keep running, no matter WHERE it leads you.
- And that's a KEY point: You cannot editorialize or make judgement on ANY spontaneous line that comes to you out of the blue. No matter what it is you write it down. You are not a writer. You are a secretary. And if the lines keep coming, you keep following them, like a doe that catches your eye in a forest that you follow without thinking about if you're going to make it back.
- You'll know when the rough draft of a poem is complete when a really beautiful, perfect ending comes walking in, like the girl of your dreams sitting down next to you, when you thought the night was over.
- If you write that draft into a any kind of word document to save on your hard drive, you'll never see the poem again, or think of it again, and your subconscious mind will get angry, go away, and you'll probably never write poems again, which is too bad, because they are lovely entertainment, but at least you'll have a life again.
- Publish the finished first draft on your blog. You'll be so embarrassed that you'll work on drafts all night and day, until it at least doesn't embarrass you anymore. Then you'll forget her for a while, but you'll meet up again someday in Casablanca, and she'll never stop loving you.
- 5 years later when you do meet up either she'll be married with children which won't be bad, because in some ways those children will have been influenced by you, or you'll fall in love again, and this time you'll take the ball all the way to the hole or end zone
- The whole thing will be just perfect for a while, and then you'll find yourself back in the Kingstown bar again. But that's okay, because that's where it all began. And it gets more beautiful with every draft.
- Oh, I should have put this first. My writing juices get flowing when I read. Get one of the volumes of The Best American Poetry Series and start there. Just read it for enjoyment without intending to write a poem. When I read those volumes, or poems out of the journals like the Paris Review, I find myself almost jumping to the computer to write. It's almost an unstoppable force. I WANT TO. It's FUN.
- Don't read or write poems for meaning. Read and write them for fun. Don't worry whether you understand them (whether yours or others') Art that you can understand isn't art. Worry about whether your having fun doing it. If you don't, find out what you have fun doing. Follow that. It'll lead you to the same dance. "Many roads, one destination."
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The Best Dessert Wine with Creme Brulee
Update 12/1/09 – Today I was watching the WineLibraryTV.com show that Gary Vee had with the “Great One” Wayne Gretzky, very entertaining as well. I noticed towards the end they brought up the subject of “ice” wines, specifically those of Canada and Germany, and mentioned that “ice” wines make an excellent dessert wine as well. If you follow the link to the show above you can click the last marker towards the end of the show to see the segment of them talking about ice wines in general and the specific ice wine they are tasting, a 2006 Shiraz Ice Wine from Estate 99, Gretzky’s own wine label. It’s a really cool bottle. Here’s a link to the Gretzky wines. The last two wines at the bottom of the page are ice wines, including the Shiraz.
So, I was thinking of submitting something to Digg and then I realized I didn’t have an account, or do I? Anyway, I thought, what should my username be, my own, something different? So then I thought, “Oh, I wonder what username Kevin Rose uses?”
So you know how one thing leads to another. I search for Kevin Rose on Digg. The second thing that pops up is a link to a video with Gary V and him doing a show on Winelibrary TV. Well, although I’ve never had an interest that much in wine, I couldn’t miss watching two such entertaining people. And the episode was just that, very entertaining. The first two wines tested, Kevin didn’t like very much, but the last, 2005 ChateauRabaud Promis Sauternes, a dessert wine, he raved about. So did Gary. It’s almost worth it to just watch that last segment. And you know what, it engaged me so much that I got interested in that wine. So I wanted to write a blog post about it so I could remember it. The next time I need a dessert wine, I’ll order that. It’ll make me feel very sophisticated and maybe impress my friends. That’s the value in Gary’s show. Even for the non wine enthusiast, the little tidbit of information can give you a little social esteem boost. That’s the “grabber.” In sales they have this thing called “FABG’s” Features>Advantages>Benefits>Grabbers. Here’s the video of Kevin and Gary describing this wine:
It’s 13:25 into the show,
or you can just click that third black button to the right on the playhead line to bring you to that point(I now have the video set to play automatically at that point.)I would suggest you buy it from Gary, but last I checked he was out of stock. Depending on when you read this, you may check with him again. He has a convenient link there under the show for it. If he’s still out here’s a list of vendors from Google Shopping. It’s a little pricey. $45. It’s also offered in a half bottle size for around $24. What are your thoughts? Have you ever had this wine before? Love to know your experience. I’m planning on buying a bottle. Might even make a great gift too.
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Arkansas Wine Is Absolutely Outstanding!
Well, of course, I will emphasize that he said, “Some of it” not “All of It,” but I’ll take that!
I was listening to TWIT, and John C. Dvorak, who is a wine Conasieur, said this about Arkansas Wine. Well, being from Arkansas, I was taken aback. Right here in my own “back yard” is a source or outstanding wine. And I can buy it at the Grocery Store! Amazing the little tidbits you pick up from podcasts which you don’t expect.
I Twittered John to see specifically which brand of Arkansas Wine was the best and he Twittered back to me The Post Familie brand, which I am familiar with and will have to check out now.
