A glass of green tea is a beautiful thing.
Greatly unappreciated – subsumed by the old, mashed up, fermented teas sold in these overly bright-coloured commercial shops that line my city;
A city that often makes one lose their identities;
I miss the young shoots standing upward in thrice filtered water;
Elegantly dancing as if in a well-rehearsed synchronized swimming routine;
Tender, slightly bitter – the memories of those lost days;
I can’t remember the year, but the tea was of that same age;
Hand-picked by a distant relative, shared in limited supply in carefully curated tin cans;
Gifted to me as a I returned back as a stranger to the town that carried my ancestral name;
The warmth of the glass, the hot steam fogging my glasses, liquid burning the roof of my mouth;
I remembered being surrounded by those who were supposedly my family;
Those I only met that day, previously unseen and foreign to my existence;
What brings two people together or a group from across oceans?;
To this table of dishes even more plentiful than the seats surrounding it;
The taste of stinky tofu fried, with simultaneous stench and savour;
Pickled vegetables from the months of painful potted preparation;
The meat fry, a tradition, for this time of year now the basis of a dish stewed and steamed;
The fish a staple, a bottle of local brand beer accompanying the lighter fluid, rice wine;
All around me kids, babies, a community, our town, my family;
Communal tables, low stools, barely inches up off the ground;
Fireworks the distance sounds, stray dogs, and motorbikes
Not colour but contour, roads surrounded by dikes.
I am not from here but part of me from a past was;
Now the product of fading five-second memories;
…..
Fast forward years later, what seems like a lifetime ago;
I had to go to work today, unlike Green Day – I was not on a holiday;
I see a lot of people who remind me of the cousins I feasted with;
Perhaps everybody is going for some sort of a feast tonight or at least have a bite of something that reminds them of who they are;
But they aren’t sharing their planned menus nor extending their invites. This seems like just a regular rainy day;
We all left our separate ways, barely even greeting each other in our own mother tongue;
I am at a table of four but today there’s only three;
Today I sit with a tea bag, lacking flavour. I ran out of the good stuff – it’s back to the bulk;
The tap water started out an unearthly nuclear green. But it has now been watered down by cup three;
I would be drinking a beer if anybody cared to ganbei;
I’m wondering why my culture has been watered down over time.
I’m wondering why I don’t have anyone to talk about this with;
I dream of that tea, that flavour, that depth;
Whether in another world I would be surrounded by elders;
By a heated coal fire, sharing stories of days past and ambitions for tomorrow;
Today I barely keep up with news present;
They fill our minds with our supposed backward practices;
They tell us we’re infectious and that we don’t belong in nice homes;
We walk zombie-like through these white corridors at work;
Pompous posturing in this supposed post-everything world;
For breakfast I had bland coffee and a bag of candy;
I can’t pretend this shit is all good and dandy;
When it’s through other people’s misdoings, that they shelf me and brand me;
Turned from fresh leaves into ground sand, into ground up orange pekoe;
An unnatural colour tainted like when vanilla hits your chai;
Perhaps I will return one day to the tea fields;
So I can pick the shoots myself and dance once again;
