The people between the grass and the tea tree

Learned how to write 'tea' in Chinese today. It's actually rather easy. Maybe if I were better at technology, I'd show you my half-arsed attempts. Stay tuned. Maybe by the end of this post, I can make a screen shot of my scribbling.

Went back to Laifufu Teesalon today, when I was really quite fed up with everything. I knew I could go home and drink tea. I certainly have plenty in my cupboard. However, I wanted someone else to be tea mother, so I went to my favourite local.

You know about Laifufu, right? Here, I talked about them earlier this year when Ya Ya came to visit:

tea drunk at Laifufu

She had some interesting things to say, as she often does, and I met another tea drinker called Felix, who was quite nice and friendly. As tea drinkers often are, ya know?

Then she showed me how 'tea' in Chinese is a little story. That's the way to learn this language. As if every character is a narrative.

The story is, as she told it, 'First you have "grass" up above.

'Then the symbol for "men" and underneath that is the "tea plant" or "tea tree".'

So in Chinese, tea is 'The people between the grass and the tea tree'.

This made me smile. I'm smiling more and more often these days. Must be doing something right.