NY Times article about beautiful tea

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Bok
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Mon Sep 07, 2020 3:50 am

StoneLadle wrote:
Mon Sep 07, 2020 1:49 am
I'm speechless

There are so many ways to approach this

I think the best way would be to send the article to Ricky Gervais for comment... He's quite responsive over on Twitter...
That’s a brilliant idea! Just not sure if the new continental cousins would get his old world humour...
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StoneLadle
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Mon Sep 07, 2020 4:08 am

@Bok... golden globes baby, golden globes...
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TeaTotaling
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Mon Sep 07, 2020 10:52 am

Bok wrote:
Mon Sep 07, 2020 3:50 am
StoneLadle wrote:
Mon Sep 07, 2020 1:49 am
I'm speechless

There are so many ways to approach this

I think the best way would be to send the article to Ricky Gervais for comment... He's quite responsive over on Twitter...
That’s a brilliant idea! Just not sure if the new continental cousins would get his old world humour...
The NY Times is dead 💀 Full of gas-lighting, race-baiting nonsense. They get to spout their BS, and it’s fine with me. It’s called the 1st Amendment here in The States 🇺🇸

The "woke" PC Cancel Culture can fly a kite 🪁 Everyone gets to speak their mind. Truth will prevail.

I have no problem with GTH, they can do what they like. If someone wants to make a joke about it...so what?? Joke about what I like...so what???

...and if you don’t like it, don’t listen to it, and don’t police what people say.

🏴 🏴 🏴
Last edited by TeaTotaling on Mon Sep 07, 2020 12:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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StoneLadle
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Mon Sep 07, 2020 11:25 am

TeaTotaling wrote:
Mon Sep 07, 2020 10:52 am
Bok wrote:
Mon Sep 07, 2020 3:50 am
StoneLadle wrote:
Mon Sep 07, 2020 1:49 am
I'm speechless

There are so many ways to approach this

I think the best way would be to send the article to Ricky Gervais for comment... He's quite responsive over on Twitter...
That’s a brilliant idea! Just not sure if the new continental cousins would get his old world humour...
The NY Times is dead 💀 Full of gas-lighting, race-baiting nonsense. They get to spout their BS, and it’s fine with me. It’s called the 1st Amendment here in The States 🇺🇸

The "woke" PC culture can fly a kite 🪁 Everyone gets to speak their mind. Truth will prevail.

I have no problem with GTH, they can do what they like. If someone wants to make a joke about it...so what?? Joke about what I like...so what???

...and if you don’t like it, don’t listen to it, and don’t police what people say.

🏴 🏴 🏴
We listened to it. And we are responding. It's funny as hell. They can do what they like and we can say what we like about them doing what they like because they put it out there for comment...

It's just funny as heck... I hope Ricky gets back to me on twitter and in the meantime I'm gonna drink some proper PE
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TeaTotaling
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Mon Sep 07, 2020 11:50 am

@StoneLadle Brilliant! Thank you for speaking your mind. Hope Ricky responds :lol:
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TeaTotaling
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Mon Sep 07, 2020 12:02 pm

faj wrote:
Sat Dec 07, 2019 6:03 am
The participants are described as being...
  • A former model, actress and dancer
  • British shamanic healer and movement teacher
  • A yoga teacher, musician and former supermodel
They are in the bush, far from civilization.

I think this is not an actual article. It is the first 10 minutes of the scenario for a horror or porn movie.
Drinking tea in the wilderness with supermodels?!?! Sounds great!! I might be the newest subscriber to GTH. My kind of Tea Party 🥳 🎉 🙌🏻

Beautiful Tea with Beautiful People 🌱 🌿 💚
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pedant
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Mon Sep 07, 2020 1:10 pm

hi friends,

in the opinion of the staff, this thread is starting to enter into political discussion territory. could you please do us a favor and discontinue discussion along those lines? see rules#offlimits

feel free to PM if you have questions or want to talk about why we ask this.

thank you.
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mbanu
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Mon Sep 07, 2020 3:33 pm

I don't find Global Tea Hut to be a reliable source of original information, but their translations are excellent. Their paper issues on Liu Bao are some of the only easily available English-language info out there on the subject that won't disappear into the internet graveyard one day.

However, I don't think that they are doing anything unusual -- their tea practice follows an American tradition of romanticism that goes back with tea to the 1970s, at least. To me this seems really no different than the folks in the 70s who drank "Yogi tea" masala chai after their Kundalini yoga classes because it seemed to help them connect better to the practice, without knowing anything about the reality of masala chai or how it came to be, or the bancha-lovers who were introduced to it through the Macrobiotics fad diet -- to them it was the ancient health-giving tea of long-lived Japanese farmer-monks, not a product with a modern history and context. Or the 1990s lovers of kombucha tea, who did not even have a clear idea of what it was, let alone where it was from, other than being a mystical product of The East (which at least one popularizer claimed was a gift from space aliens -- still not sure if they were joking).

I think that in some ways by embracing that romanticism they avoid some of the backwards-rationalization sometimes seen in other tea practices, where people will claim all sorts of things to avoid saying, "I chose this teapot because it is pretty". I feel like this makes folks unusually vulnerable to marketing, as good marketers are excellent at ferreting out the real reasons people buy things, and sometimes the best protection against this is knowing the real reasons yourself. ;)

I also find them fascinating because they are descended from the Taiwanese tea revival just like the MarshalN-influenced blogosphere, but they took the whole thing in a different direction. It's sort of like comparing the lives of two brothers in a way. :)

*Edit: Although a lot of times tea-romanticism seems to veer towards Orientalism, there are other varieties as well -- the British tea revival of the 1990s spearheaded by Victoria Magazine would be a good example. It was all about the aesthetic of an idealized garden party, without much context of the reality of tea-drinking during the 19th century.

I think my favorite non-tea related concession to this tension is the name "The Society for Creative Anachronism", the name a group of Californian science fiction writers came up with for their Renaissance Faire group, because it acknowledged that the actual time period was rather grim for many people, where knights in shining armor were little more than gangsters and life for most was full of hardship, but while still allowing them to spend a sunny afternoon jousting and feasting and creating an atmosphere of King Arthur and Robin Hood. :)
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Bok
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Mon Sep 07, 2020 7:23 pm

Those guys are looked upon funnily - to put it mildly, here in Taiwan... a couple of white dudes wearing old fashioned Chinese clothes, not to forget, the must-have tea scarves, sitting on a hill in front of their tea bowls and meditating with their guru :mrgreen:

On the other side you’d probably have the Japanese/Taiwanese Lolita cosplay movement, frolicking in the gardens of Versailles...
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StoneLadle
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Mon Sep 07, 2020 9:33 pm

I've concluded that the writing is genius and that the NYT has done a good job of crapping on their heads without incurring defamatory liability...

... genius ...
treetime
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Mon Sep 07, 2020 10:07 pm

I think Global Tea Hut is a fantastic part of tea culture.

While I generally don’t find their tea quality to be of interest to me, I think it’s great that they make their magazines free online.

And while not everybody is into tea as a spiritual practice, for those who are interested in exploring that domain it’s really nice to have a contemporary resource - and not just old ones like Baisao’s writings.
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StoneLadle
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Tue Sep 08, 2020 1:01 am

treetime wrote:
Mon Sep 07, 2020 10:07 pm
I think Global Tea Hut is a fantastic part of tea culture.

While I generally don’t find their tea quality to be of interest to me, I think it’s great that they make their magazines free online.

And while not everybody is into tea as a spiritual practice, for those who are interested in exploring that domain it’s really nice to have a contemporary resource - and not just old ones like Baisao’s writings.
Spiritual tea for the Chinese, well, ethnic Chinese, not mainland Chinese, they don't have any spirituality after 70 years of authoritarianism, is when I make offerings to my ancestors and protector deities...

The rest is just fetishised hipster crap derived from Taiwanese practices which are in turned derived from Japanese Zen practices...

In other words, it's mostly made up
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klepto
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Tue Sep 08, 2020 1:43 am

Bok wrote:
Mon Sep 07, 2020 7:23 pm
Those guys are looked upon funnily - to put it mildly, here in Taiwan... a couple of white dudes wearing old fashioned Chinese clothes..
I've seen these types on YouTube talking about tea and honestly it lessens my respect for them. It reminds me of the Weeaboos who are obsessed with the Japanese culture. The guru's of the 70's and the self annointed tea masters of today. There's nothing wrong with a meetup to drink and discuss tea but the cringy fringe element always find a way to ruin something enjoyable :D.
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Bok
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Tue Sep 08, 2020 2:02 am

One my good tea friends here mentioned to me how he was surprised when we first met to see that there are also "normal" (whatever that is), foreigners in Taiwan who are into tea... :lol:
He was put off by these characters talking crap and putting crystals in their water, lecturing him about tea :shock:
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mbanu
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Tue Sep 08, 2020 2:26 am

Tea doesn't have to be respectable all the time -- that's the basic idea behind that most ancient of tea-pets, the Pee Pee Boy. :)
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