Tea in China

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I had mentioned some of my tea in China experiences to pallid_regina the other day.  But, I wasn’t really fair as I didn’t
describe all of my experiences with it.

Most of the places I went what they gave me for tea was very simple.
They’d take a drinking glass, put some green tea leaves in the bottom, fill
it with hot water and hand it to me.  In the factories I visited, almost
everyone drank it this way.
For nothing but a bunch of leaves in hot water, it was very good.  You did
have to strain the leaves with your teeth, but it wasn’t too bad.
Honestly drinking tea any other way hadn’t seemed right since.

But, there was one time in China when I had a far more formal tea.

I was on a tour from the office furniture company I worked for at the time,
visiting all of our parts suppliers in China.  It was a two week trip
taking me to several places in China.
We had been trying to move our electrical distribution manufacturing over
there and had invested quite a bit of money to set up a company to make the
parts.  However, after about one million spent, the parts would not pass
the UL safety inspection and progress did not seem to be happening.
While I was visiting other companies I kept sending messages to the US
representative to this company saying “I’m in China, I’ve got Thursday
free, bring me to that factory.”  For a week, no answer.
Finally Wednesday he called and said “We’ll be outside your hotel at 6AM,
be there.”
At 6 a Mercedes pulled up with him in it, I got in and we drove off for a 4
hour drive to the factory.  The driver, going by the name of Joe,  was the
owner of the factory who seemed to be living the good life.  Mercedes, iPod
(this was back when they were fairly new and rare), lots of jewelry and
money to flash around.
When we got to the factory, it was a total pit.  Dirty buildings, dirty
windows, trash lying all over the place, a small garden in the courtyard
where all the plants were dead and the pond was full of mud.  (At least I
hoped it was mud…)
This was very different from the other factories I had been to where they
were very proud of keeping them clean and well kept.
I had been specifically instructed to take a lot of pictures by the owner
of my company.  But as I looked around, I hesitated.
“Is it OK to take pictures of this?” I asked the rep.
“Sure,” the US rep said.  “Take as many as you want.”
Joe understood what I was saying.
“No tour,” he said.  “We will go right to my office.”
He was “inconveniently”  in my way for most of the photos I tried to take
and we were quickly brought to his office.  Unlike the rest of the factory,
his office was VERY nice.
Joe’s brother Bing brought me some samples of the parts that had failed.
It was very clear that they were not made out of the right material and
that was why they were failing.
“This isn’t the copper we specified,” I said.
“This is much less expensive,” Joe said.
“But, it will not conduct as much power without getting hot,” I said.
“You’re failing the UL for getting hot enough to set things on fire.  Use
the right copper and it won’t get as hot.”
“We go to lunch now!” Joe said, getting up.
“It’s only 10 in the morning,” I said.
“Then, we go for tea!”
He and Bing shuffled the US rep and me back to the Mercedes and we left the
factory.  We drove around for a while and then ended up at a tea house.
They brought us up to a private room where they did a very fancy
presentation of tea for us.  A woman came in, boiled water, washed the
cups, made one kind of tea, poured tea in the cups, dumped it out, poured
tea over the bottoms of other cups, made more tea, and finally (after about
half an hour) gave us each a very small cup of tea.
It was OK.
I would have preferred a drinking glass of green tea.

Then we went to lunch.  At lunch we were again in a private room.  Waiting
for us were two guys who looked like they were auditioning for the role of
thug in a B movie.
“Who are these guys?” I asked.
“They are friends of Bing,” Joe told me.
“Why are they joining us for lunch?”
“They are here to make sure American customer is happy with what he has
seen and the money his company has invested,” Joe said, smiling.
The question of where all that money went seemed pretty clear at that point.
“Please tell them that the American customer is very happy and honored they
have joined us for lunch,” I said.
When translated, they nodded and sat down on either side of me.
When my wife saw the picture of the folks at that lunch she asked me “who
are the two tong guys with you?”
“You thought that too?” I asked her.

The good news is I was given my usual drinking glass of tea with lunch.  I
liked it better than the fancy stuff from before.

That was hardly the end of the day.  There was the dealing with snakes,
venom, blood and being abandoned at a train station 4 hours from my hotel.
But, this is where tea exits the story.