All the Tea in China

I found it. I found where they keep it. It's all in on a small street known, in English, as "the tea market." Go figure. Ben, Hillary, Nell and I took a nine hour tour over to the Tea Market today just for fun. We're getting much better at the subway- only took us an hour and a half to get there.

Once we arrived at the street, we were greeted with the familiar opening of doors in every direction and the ubiquitous "hallo!" of the shopkeepers. Upon browsing through one of the chock-full-of-tea stores, I had a realization- I know absolutely nothing about tea. I felt very silly to even be in a place called the Tea Market. As we walked around, salespeople would shove plates full of dried up leaves at me. I wasn't really sure if I was supposed to smell it or touch it or just look at it intently, so most often I just tried to ignore them, which is HARD to do in a place where determined sellers will actually come up to you and physically pull you towards their wares. It's more annoying than invasive- as I've said before, I'm pretty sure I could take a small Asian lady if she got violent.

After finishing up the smaller shops, we set our sights a little higher- the Beijing International Tea Market Building. A giant mall filled only with tea shops. We spent a good deal of time discussing how such an arrangement could work out for the individual shops economically. Anyway, we were harassed by the standard "Jin lai kan yi xia!" (Come in and look right-quick) and we dutifully (like the easy targets that we are) went in and looked right-quick. Finally, on the top floor, we passed a shop and were NOT yelled at or attacked in any way. At first we thought that someone forgot to man his or her battle stations, but then we saw a friendly looking lady just sitting at her table and sipping some tea. When she saw that we were looking at her, she said, in English, "Would you like to try some tea?" And then we had a two hour tea-party as we tried every kind of tea in her store, learned about its origins and proper preparations, and bought most all of the aforementioned tea. A little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing.

Afterwards, we went to "snack street" where I had all the hunger scared out of me by piles and piles of scorpions-on-a-stick. The shopkeepers would wave them in my face, and the scorpions would wave too because they were still very much alive. I am not very squeamish, but I am sane, so I went and got a happy meal.

I haven't put any pictures up lately because my camera ran out of batteries and I have to borrow a charger to make it work again, but it should be clicking away this weekend when we go to the Great Wall. Last weekend was pretty decent, but nothing particularly noteworthy other than going to the Summer Palace, which would have been fun to talk about if I had pictures. We're going back, and I'll take pictures then.

I hope everyone had a happy Easter!