A Red Guard in a Chinese Teashop
Author’s Note: Somerset Maugham, the eminent novelist, wrote: “Fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work… It would not interest me to record the facts, even if I could remember them, of which I have already made a better use. They would seem, moreover, very tame. I have had a varied, and often an interesting life but not an adventurous one. All I can attempt to do now is to give a coherent picture of my feelings and opinions; and here and there, maybe, to state with greater elaboration some idea which the limitations I have thought fit to accept in fiction and in the drama have only allowed me to hint at.” The story below is an intermingling of an experience with a remarkable person whose life was far too dramatic and fascinating that I shouldn’t let pass what Somerset Maugham called the “compass of my interests.” The name of the protagonist of this story has been fictionalized.
There he was ten years later, handsomely dressed in an immaculate white shirt. Bespectacled, greyish hairs now peeping at his temples. “No necktie,” Dai Ng beamed, “too Western.” He squeezed my hand with both of his, the widest smile that showed all his front teeth. A full two minutes before he finally let go.
I revisited Kunming, capital of Yunnan province in southwestern China. It was an early summer morning ten years after my first encounter with Dai Ng. It drizzled outside when we arrived, the temperature a comfortable 63 degrees.
He had a surprise for me, he said—a special treat in Kunming. "Definitely not Chinese food," Dai Ng said. "I am sure you get many good restaurants in Bangkok. This one is Kunming's specialty. I booked two hours for us." Yes, he had my full attention.
We stop by a nondescript building. It looked more like a government housing project of standard design with darkish corridors and iron railings fastened directly in front of the doors.
Next to it was an imposing structure, a Chinese pavilion with flaming red dragons and fiery tongues resting on upturned roofs. Their eyes were the size of golf balls. The sign read Yixinyuan Banquet Hall in large gold letters, rather massive and oversized. One of many signposts on China’s rush road to modernity.
"Not that one," Dai Ng said. "That's for tourists. The owners try to put on a show every night to imitate Las Vegas. But imitation is awful. Where we are going is much better."
We turned a sharp corner. The drab building doors opened. We climbed up two flights of stairs in a dark hallway. We entered an exquisite room where tea, pots, and cups were encased in a delicate China cabinet, the sight of it doing every bit of justice to my expectations of Dai Ng’s promised surprise.
The room was filled with light, unlike the façade and the front entrance. Big picture windows looked out into the streets. We were surrounded by live plants in pots and comfortable wicker furniture. The humble tea shop created a warm, homey feeling -- a sanctuary in the middle of the city for tea drinking on many slothful days.
"This place survived the Cultural Revolution, "Dai Ng explained. Intellectuals came here to hide and discuss. One of the few places that the Red Guards did not discover. Not until after Mao died. I come here very regularly. I meet my university colleagues here, and we drink tea while we discuss our ideas freely."
He reminded me of his desire to return to graduate school ten years ago. He was in his early 40s then, but his youngish features couldn't have put him past 30. I remembered his blue jacket that hung on his lean frame; his baggy trousers flapped softly with a hint of wind. He wore thin glasses; his skin was taut and smooth. His face was calm, emotionless, a true caricature of the inscrutable Oriental. He wore none of the troubled past that was the hallmark of his generation.
Two women prepared the tea. There were small terra cotta teapots set on a bamboo tray with slats and various teacups all over the table. Another teapot was connected to an electrical outlet where water was constantly boiling. She poured hot water into one of the teapots, swirled the water as though she were rinsing the tea leaves, and then poured it directly into the bamboo tray. The water spilled out into an attached tube, then straight into a bucket tucked away near her legs, so the guests never witnessed any tea leaf washing.
"I was a Red Guard in the 60s," he said softly. His honesty surprised me. "All the universities in China were closed. I stopped going to school. When I finished university many years after the Cultural Revolution, I was much older than most of my classmates."
“You already had a degree,” I pressed him on. “Plus you stayed three months in Los Banos. Why did you want to go back to the Philippines again?”
I chuckled and teased him a bit, “I hope it wasn’t the Ford Foundation scholarship.”
He hesitated, then came forth. "I was a boy during the years of the Cultural Revolution. I lost many chances." His voice hinted at regret, partly at the impetuosity in his youth, partly at being born at a time and place that circumscribed his choices.
“The Philippines was so free,” he said wistfully. “There, you could think and speak without watching yourself all the time. I needed more time to learn how to do that all over again.”
It was an Augustinian moment --- a confessional about a revelation that surprised even himself but also a deeper anxiety. In the classroom, Dai Ng learned how to unlearn the past. He underwent re-education, but not of the Maoist kind. It was the hard labor of a scholar, not the forced labor of a condemned bourgeois.
Just then, a second pour as we waited a few minutes. We drank. There was a slight sweetish flavor. The teacups were tiny, like the size of sake cups, and you gulped everything down in about two swigs. Then, the teacups were refilled.
He asked many questions silently, he said. The difficult ones nagged him. How did he submit so quickly to propaganda? I looked at him and imagined an inner ferment, just like our tea. A long-brewing boiling feeling deep inside that won't rest until the best was extracted.
It’s been a decade since Dai Ng moved forward. Along the way, he cast aside his unspeakable past and decided instead to undertake his journey of a thousand questions.
He joined the university, the same one that was closed during the Cultural Revolution. "I carried white banners with slogans that time; I shouted and screamed," he said. "Now I bring my notes and books for class. I no longer shout, I just scold my students when they don't come prepared."
He emerged whole, a transcendent human being dedicated to the pursuit of a higher purpose. The women refilled our cups with rich black and crimson-red tea. My stomach, like my spirit, was soothed.
The shop owner arrived and took over the demonstration --- a well-dressed, neatly coiffed woman in a silk blouse and palazzo pants. She motioned with her hands to the staff to bring more trays of freshly boiled water. Deftly, she handled the tea and explained that older teas have their dedicated teapots because the leaves and the terra cotta interact to give off a unique flavor. Only a long-time practitioner will know the appropriate pot and cup to use.
She told us that Puerh (pronounced 'pure') tea is the specialty of Kunming. They are cultivated high up in the mountains, processed into dried tea leaves, and then aged as one would age wine. On a glass cupboard nearby, under lock and key, are boxes and canisters of pressed tea. Some of these have been aged for five years, others for eight. The little round red and black boxes are the regular daily teas drank during meals. Those packaged in black square boxes with yellow silk cloth inside cradled a square block of processed tea that was older and more expensive.
Because Dai Ng was a regular customer, she treated us to a rarity. She had us sample Puerh tea aged fifty years. It was reddish in color, smooth, fragrant, and without any bitter aftertaste. It had that sweetish, subtle taste of leaf and stem that gently rolled on your tongue.
I held the tiny teacup and swallowed the black-red liquid with awe and reverence. Some unknown tea farmer planted these somewhat at the same time of my birth into this world. Now both of us fully grown and aged, the tea waited for my return to Kunming, to taste her, to marvel at the mystery of time and the gift of patience, to enjoy the sanctity of a tradition I had unexpectedly discovered in a tea shop.
And then her parting gift ---- she gave me a small canister of the fifty-year-old. A small present, she said, for visiting her shop even if the building was in disrepair. "Keep it in a dry, cool place. It will age better," Dai Ng translated her advice.
On the way to my hotel, Dai Ng took me back to Green Lake Park. “A small detour for your memories and mine,” he was almost mischievous with the suggestion. I obliged. It was as good a time as any to indulge in nostalgia.
Dai Ng returned to that time of our interview on a park bench facing the Green Lake in the middle of the city. It was a crisp, cool late morning. The air smelled of New England just at the brink of autumn. There was a slight feel of dampness, like dew droplets sitting on grass. It was the same bench where we sat ten years ago.
He looked at me through his thick spectacles. "My life changed here. You inspired me to become a teacher like yourself, and I will always be grateful to you," he said.
Giant red African daisies and potted yellow bells surrounded us. Ahead, we watched the boats ambling on the still waters, all shaped into giant white swans and multi-colored dragons. This park was one of the city's last sanctuaries from the encroaching malls.
Cyclists drove by. Many of them were headed for the wet market. A girl with braids and peach-colored cheeks pedaled a cart of bananas and apples. Exercise enthusiasts performed Tai Chi on the pavement. This poetry in motion was mesmerizing.
The dragon and swan boats glided on the lake, fixtures of a decade that survived all the changes that swirled in both our lives. The warm Puerh tea churned in my stomach while we watched the sun gently drift into late afternoon. The waters shimmered a faint yellow-red and we sat in quiet repose.