Miaoli, Day 6: Xmas Eve
Christmas Eve offered me more tea, teaware, and insights. Eric, Boris, Aaron and I began by finishing the Wuyi rock teas--a Shui Xian, a 2nd generation Da Hong Pao, and a Da Hong Pao from He. I liked them all, but above all I preferred He's inclusion.
Seated betwixt Boris and Eric, served by Aaron, I felt another wave of gratitude: these tea experiences, deceptively simple, have taught me much about myself, and have begun to heal me at my core, in addition to teaching me more about tea in days than I learned in a year at home. My sexual energy, before sapped and fickle, has returned, normalized and combined with my emotional reconstruction to create a new psychosexual persona. I once again can have crushes and sexual-romantic interest in someone without falling to pieces into a pathetic self-hating wretch. What a change! I hope it lasts. I feel so great to see and recognize attraction, sexual and romantic, and just sit beside it and accept it. Imagine how different my life could have been in high school had I this disposition. What I now feel about Ash compared to high school--even compared to when he first contacted me again a few months ago. I accept it and I let it be. How stupid to drag that issue out all the way to the present. What weakness.
Eric left the house. Boris said farewell to us at the train station. Aaron and I left for Yingge, ceramics capital of Taiwan. Yingge's vendors sell more teaware of top quality than anywhere I went in China, except for Yixing ware. I could spend thousands at Yingge without buyers remorse, and if I had thousands I would have spent it. On teacups, jars, tea sinks, teapots, tea utensils, braziers, and on tea itself. The craftsmanship had me thinking that Taiwanese ceramic art may be celebrating a golden age right now, at its peak or rising far along its ascent. I had a hard time imagining room for pieces to become more beautiful, though I suppose certain glazing techniques could use refining. I had a pittance to spend, so I spent it wisely on some hand carved tea tools by Ong Ming Chuan and vases for my mother and sister.
The taiwanese ceramic style mixes traditional Taiwanese, Japanese, mainland Chinese, and modern Western techniques and aesthetics. Each piece is an orgy of the rough shapes of traditional Taiwanese kiln work, the minimalistic raw over-glazing of Japan, the impossible delicacy of mainland Chinese works, and the science and abstraction of the West, directed by the neo-transcendentalist interpretation of their Taiwanese artists. I want one-thousand.
My few hours at Yingge will not suffice, and I plan to return before I leave Taiwan.
Seated betwixt Boris and Eric, served by Aaron, I felt another wave of gratitude: these tea experiences, deceptively simple, have taught me much about myself, and have begun to heal me at my core, in addition to teaching me more about tea in days than I learned in a year at home. My sexual energy, before sapped and fickle, has returned, normalized and combined with my emotional reconstruction to create a new psychosexual persona. I once again can have crushes and sexual-romantic interest in someone without falling to pieces into a pathetic self-hating wretch. What a change! I hope it lasts. I feel so great to see and recognize attraction, sexual and romantic, and just sit beside it and accept it. Imagine how different my life could have been in high school had I this disposition. What I now feel about Ash compared to high school--even compared to when he first contacted me again a few months ago. I accept it and I let it be. How stupid to drag that issue out all the way to the present. What weakness.
Eric left the house. Boris said farewell to us at the train station. Aaron and I left for Yingge, ceramics capital of Taiwan. Yingge's vendors sell more teaware of top quality than anywhere I went in China, except for Yixing ware. I could spend thousands at Yingge without buyers remorse, and if I had thousands I would have spent it. On teacups, jars, tea sinks, teapots, tea utensils, braziers, and on tea itself. The craftsmanship had me thinking that Taiwanese ceramic art may be celebrating a golden age right now, at its peak or rising far along its ascent. I had a hard time imagining room for pieces to become more beautiful, though I suppose certain glazing techniques could use refining. I had a pittance to spend, so I spent it wisely on some hand carved tea tools by Ong Ming Chuan and vases for my mother and sister.
The taiwanese ceramic style mixes traditional Taiwanese, Japanese, mainland Chinese, and modern Western techniques and aesthetics. Each piece is an orgy of the rough shapes of traditional Taiwanese kiln work, the minimalistic raw over-glazing of Japan, the impossible delicacy of mainland Chinese works, and the science and abstraction of the West, directed by the neo-transcendentalist interpretation of their Taiwanese artists. I want one-thousand.
My few hours at Yingge will not suffice, and I plan to return before I leave Taiwan.