Spirited Away in Sips of Tea at Jiufen

The bus leaves Taipei for the hills of the east, the driver treads up and down sharp curves and hairpin bends. At the junction of railways and roads at Ruifang, I get off one bus arriving from Taipei and board another departing for Jiufen. Hills play hide and seek with clouds for a vanishing veil.

Entering the main street of Jiufen, I merge into a crowd of visitors, locals, city folks, and foreign tourists that slithers down a tunnel of shops selling drinks made with Aiyu jelly, dessert rolls of ice cream filled with scraped peanut-jaggery, as well as restaurants opening up to a view of the valley.

Assailed by an avalanche of sensations of the main street, I hold the hand of alleys that take me away to some quiet corner amidst sleepy houses. Before a closed window, I find some steps to sit in the soothing cool shade sheltered from the sun, touched by a wandering breeze, passed by a few kids running downwards, or an old man gently climbing upwards.

The absence of destination in their eyes and the sprawl in their spirit tells me they are not visitors to this mountain town made famous by the lenses of Hsiao-Hsien and the canvases of Miyazaki. As the rumbling bus journey and motion sickness seep slowly away, I stand up to lose myself deeper in the lanes.

There are no maps, no routes to follow, just hiding from the sun to seek shadows and nourished by the shade, seeking the Sun again until eyes find a wooden sanctum of stillness wearing the label of a teahouse.

Drawn inward by the dry leaves of camelia sinensis stored in tin jars, I am greeted by an old lady. She is alert to the scent of hesitation that novices give and takes me on a tour of the place. I could sit inside, down where the walls are decorated by glazed porcelain in the shape of teapots, cups, gai wans and kettles.

When I have sipped enough from the wellspring of shadows, I convey that I would like to sit in the open. She leads me through doorways framing doorways, down rooms with tables and tea paraphernalia, that finally open into a terrace.

Rough grooves of the stone slab floor bring something of the streets within, steam rising from kettles on boil atop coal furnaces sends the air into a Caribbean shimmer. Under an awning where three tables rest, supplied with a metal pot, I point towards one and take my seat.

Another woman runs between the shelves and brings me a stash of tea leaves, a wooden tong, a small teapot, and a cup, placing them on the table before me. The motions begin as she adds coal to the pit fire and fills the kettle with water, and places it atop smouldering cinders.

Turning to me, she asks if I know how to brew tea. ‘I would like you to show me,’ I say. And she pours some water over the teapot and cup, rinsing the remains into a porcelain bowl. Adding a few curled-up tea leaves into the pot, she fills it with water, and immediately pours out the barely yellow liquid. She takes the lid, brings it close to her nose, and inhales deeply.

When she offers me the lid, I follow her suit and take a deep whiff. The aroma fills my nostrils, titillates my chest and lungs, whetting my appetite and fixing my tongue in deep anticipation. With a gesture of her hands, she suggests I take over.

The kettle, made of cast iron, weighs in my arm, as I pour steaming water down the small opening of the teapot, replace it over the coals, close the lid and count to ten. What pours out of the teapot into the cup is the color of mid-autumn. In the depths of the teapot, the leaves begin to open like a flower bud in bloom.

Holding the cup between the tip of my thumb and index finger, I feel ripples of heat run like current through my hands and collide with the chill of the body open to elements. I bring it under my nose, and take a whiff. Satiated, I lower it gently close to my lips and take the first sip.

Crashing like a tide

on the parched beach of my tongue

I taste the elixir of life,

and begin a pilgrimage

to mahi-sagar-sangam (where earth meets the sea).

I melt over the chair,

in sips,

of boiling water

steeped in leaves,

that are neither hot water

nor leaves.

In the alchemy of the two,

neither remain,

suffused,

a spirit is born anew,

what the knowers call Cha Qi - the spirit of tea.

In the distance, piercing the curtain of clouds, rays of the day bounce off the roiling sea and the yearning earth below. Boats hover, come closer, go father, over the edge of the horizon, another place of pilgrimage forever at bay from approaching footsteps. Some places cannot be reached by walking, but are readily attained in stillness wherever you are.

Others come and occupy the spots lying vacant next to mine, brewing their own tea, flowing through time. I sit, pour water in my teapot, feel the heat of burning coals on my face, bathe in the scent of the sublime, and go swimming in tiny sips of the sea.

On the terrace, women come and go,

Filling kettles with water and firepits with coal.

My guardian for the day, every time she comes to attend to the burning hearth and the boiling sea, we exchange a few words. She comes from another island, from another shore, she tells me. ‘I do too.’

In the distance, the slender streets begin to hum with new arrivals, I brew another batch and see the leaves unfurl some more, take another sip and look up find the couple just arrived has gotten up and gone.

‘Decades have passed by,’ she tells me, ‘since I first arrived.’ I can see those years in the depths of her ageless eyes.

Reaching its zenith, the ball of fire peeking through the gray-blue urn begins a homeward run. ‘Family I have at home, the kids are all grown and gone.’ I know for I am the kid who has grown and gone, leaving a family at home.

I do not count how many cups of tea. She does not count the number of refills of coal and water. The clouds do not count the hour; the Sun approaches lower.  

On the terrace, visitors come and go,

Sipping for a while, spirited away by the flow.

On that day, I quench some long-burning thirst, and rest after the vessel of exhaustion was full to the brim and beginning to overflow. With every sip, emptier I become. As one Sun sinks in the world behind hills, another rises within. Bowing for her kindness, lifted by her few spoken words bobbing like islands in the silent sea, I rise as the fire goes out in the hearth, vacate my seat for another visitor, and walk into the night.

Tender is the night, and whispers echo farther in the light of lanterns. Holograms dance on the cobblestoned floors bearing signage for the shops now closed and keepers gone to rest. A group of friends giggle and pose; some lovers discover themselves in entwined fingers. Through the open windows of a workshop, I see someone rehearsing her trade, giving shape to a lump of clay, to be baked in a furnace and glazed some other day.

The deep blue sea turns dark ether,

all horizons appear lost.

Silver red ripples glisten here and there

mirroring silent castles,

and wooden frames,

drowning the hum of days in the well of night

where the skies meet the sea.