By coincidence we are on the last day of 2022, but I have to get real. Plans have to be made for disposal of the tea collection. For a few years now I’ve been comforted by the plan I had of a tea vendor to pick up my tea etc in the event of my demise. Offer my son a few dollars, he will be glad to be rid of it all in one UHaul.
But this is all starting to feel a bit personal hygiene. Nobody is going to want my lovingly tea stained puerh ware. Let’s face it, because that’s what it is. It’s akin to one’s underwear. Anyone who hoards, and I’m not saying that’s me, or you, but the fact is we don’t want anyone messing about in our tea…stuff. The idea of it is completely repellant.
We all know the realistic advice is always to drink it down while you can, but really we are tea obese here. Drinking down is not possible, and for a sensible variety of reasons including, but not limited to: year of tea, current aging cycle, remediation of various storage conditions, the weather and one’s current physical capacity to consume different stages of the aging cycle. This is just the start. A person like this is as incapable as the relatives will be, the ones who come over to throw it all out. We either are or know someone deserving of support for the active stages of de-collecting.
Our friend blogger Wilson Lim wrote in his summary of tea world chatter Back to the Future, “ 2. The profile of Chinese tea buyers in China - There are less younger tea drinkers. The younger generation prefer to drink coffee at fancy establishment like Starbucks or prefer to drink bubble tea instead.”
Well, fk ‘em those young ones. Some of those lucky ones could have inherited granddaddy and grandmaw’s tea, but guess what, the only way is to bury it with you. The sole completely hygienic way for the tea, and the specially stained tea ware, to go is in the grave with the rest of your ashes.
So this is the burial option. I’d be fine really if my son dug a hole in the yard and saved the expense. Unless he can really sell it or get anything for it. The shovel is the cheapest option, and then I can leave behind a pile of ceramics in the dirt for the future generations to dig up and wonder about.
Thanks for the link to Wilson’s blog. I love a good new tea blog that I haven’t discovered yet.
ReplyDeleteNow, I wonder how many people will come out of the woodwork saying “I’ll take it!” “I’ll take it!”? 🤣🤣🤣
I'll admit, as a college student drinking decent samples when I can afford to and fu or Xiaguan Baoyan when I can't, that thought did cross my mind 😜. Using someone else's tea-stained gaiwan does feel a bit like reading their diary though
DeleteAlternatively we can curse those left behind with three month tea club subscription. They can throw it onto burial plot. That will guarantee proximity to fresh tea while going thru motions
ReplyDelete.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sUmSgxA98mk
When my grandfather passed away I was a junior in highschool taking shop classes for the first time and finding a natural talent for the work. He left behind simply the most divine woodshop I have ever seen, with state of the art machines and a truly swoon-worthy dust collection system. But none of the adults appreciated it and nobody would listen to the 16-year old granddaughter, so the whole thing was dismantled and donated (I hope, more than likely a good number of his things were tossed). Fast forward to today and I've graduated trade school in a woodworking program and am slowly, ever so slowly, building my own tool collection piece by piece. The big burly machines and dust collectors are a dream of a dream. But it's not the tools that I regret the most, it's the connection over shop work that we never got to make. All that to say, I would absolutely care for your tea collection if you left it to me ;)
ReplyDeleteCwyn, don't worry, your wonderful blog has not escaped the notice of us "young ones." Alas, my Irish grandfather had no way of knowing in the 50s that he should have been buying tongs of Red Mark with his NYPD salary...
ReplyDelete