Eric's Beijing Diary

This morning, I went to the North Gate to catch the airport shuttle. There was a lady there who was also going to the airport, so we decided to split a cab fare. When the cab driver discovered what we were doing, he told the lady that we would each have to pay him 60 per cent. She quickly agreed, because she was saving money, but I told her that was complete nonsense. The cab has a meter. We should only have to pay whatever it says.

The lady teaches epidemiology at the Peking University Health Sciences Center, which is located across College Road (Xue Yuan Lu) from Beihang. She did her undergraduate work at Peking University, went the Medical School, and then got her PhD in Hong Kong at Chinese University. I asked her how she liked Beijing. She told me she has lived here for 25 years. She seems to consider Beijing home now.

Well, we got to the airport, and I noticed that the lady ended up paying the cab driver extra. Disgusting, but what could I say? Not much you can do for someone who wants to be cheated.

Fuzhou. This evening, as I was returning to my apartment from the coffee bar, I stopped into a teashop to get some tea. I had forgotten to bring any with me. Although I drink coffee in coffee bars (it goes good with studying, I guess), I never brew coffee at home. At home, I prefer tea. Always have. In college, it was herbal tea with honey. Stuff that came in brightly colored packages with hippy sounding names, that we put in a little tea ball and soaked in a ceramic cup. Here in China, we put the leaves in whole, and they eventually float to the bottom.

In China, a teashop is a place where tea is sold, not consumed. There isn't anything that correlates to this in the United States. In China, you have both teahouses and teashops. Teahouses are places where people gather to drink tea. Teashops are small stores that sell different varieties of teas in different kinds of packages. The tea is usually sold by weight, with the price varying quite a bit depending on the type of tea and where it is grown. I stepped into the teashop, and the ladies welcomed me in and asked me to sit down. They started right in preparing the tea service so that I could sample the tea they sold. They needn't have bothered; I was already sold. But I could tell that they were really enjoying the process, so I sat down for a pleasant conversation (as much of it as I am capable of at this point). The tea service is complicated--kinda hard for me to describe here. One thing that always strikes me is that they wash all the cups (which are already clean) with tea. The Uygurs in Kashgar last summer had an interesting variation of this. A group of Uygur men were sitting around drinking beer when I walked by. One of them grabbed a glass that someone else had just been drinking out of, rinsed it out with beer, and offered it to me. Needless to say, I was unenthusiastic. But in China proper I don't see that happening. Many times I will be at a restaurant with someone, and they will rinse out the already clean teacups with tea and throw it out.

They served the tea to me in teeny tiny cups. As I was drinking, the lady who was serving me went on and on about how little cups are so much better than big cups. I kept thinking that if she could see the mug I use for tea at my office, she would be horrified. There was another guy sitting there, and he was telling me how not good for you green tea is compared to oolong tea (I had asked for green tea when I entered the shop). Funny, everywhere else, they always talk about how healthy green tea is. But here in Fujian Province they seem to be pretty proud of their oolong tea. I concur. I am sipping it now. Good stuff. If you were here, I'd pour you a cup. But not the way they do. I wouldn't put you through all that rigmarole. Just throw a few leaves in the bottom of the cup and pour in the hot water. Good for what ails you.