Happy Lunar New Year (Ox)
This week’s column is a reminder of the international nature of tea and how it is so often used as a medium of peaceful hospitality (I’ve been dipping into Kate Fox’s Watching the English which is intelligent and witty) not only here in Britain but for much longer in China and Japan.
When I was a child, putting on the kettle was an immediate, and expected, response to guests, whether invited or just a neighbour casually dropping in. The comfort in this gesture, signifying a willingness to stop, sit and share time and news, was great.
The demise of the tea-break, which I remember disappearing from the Southwark College timetable around the time of Mrs Thatcher’s elevation to 10 Downing Street, was very significant in the pace of life. She denied that society existed yet transformed ours into a greedy, consumerist, self-centred celebration of the destruction of industry and the creation of “jobs” involving just the buying and selling of money.
I still feel immensely sad about this and its repercussions which we are experiencing globally, though particularly in the UK. Our costs of tea have in some cases doubled in comparison with last year’s, businesses and jobs have been threatened or already lost. You have my sympathy if that includes you or your’s.
The previous (15th generation) Grandmaster, now known as Daisosho Hounsai or Sen Genshitsu, of the Urasenke tradition of the Way of Tea – the most developed form of ritual hospitality – long since coined a most wonderful motto: “ichiwan kara peacefulness” which translates as “peacefulness through a single bowl of tea”.
May this New Year bring all of us peace and a little prosperity. May the lesson be that one can have too much of a good thing.
Alex runs East Teas in Borough Market on Fridays and Saturdays. Email epoch@eastteas.com.
