Drinking Tea

Well, my head is cold, thanks to my new haircut, but that's okay, right? Short hair is so much easier when you don't have to comb it...

Unlike practically everybody else I know, I don't care for coffee, generally. Like alcohol, I find I don't really care for the taste. My drink of choice is tea. In particular, green tea, or nok-cha in Korean. (Literally, nok-cha means "green tea" strangely enough. Western black tea is generally called "hong-cha", which means red tea.)

In the USA, before I came to Korea, I was under the impression that everybody in Asia drinks tea. Wrong. Most people drink coffee here. Coffee shops abound, and so do coffee girls. What is a coffee girl? You call the local da-bong (tea-room) and order coffee or tea. A little while later, a shapely girl on a scooter brings you your coffee... and herself. Coffee, tea, or me? Or all of the above? Of course, I have no experience of coffee girls, but they're a pretty common sight, zipping around the city as they do.

Tea, of course, is closely attached to Buddhism. Myth has it that the Indian who brought Zen t0 China, Bodhidharma, was sleepy while he was meditating. Not wanting to sleep, he cut off his eyelids, and they fell into his hot water and became the first tea leaves.

Tea ceremonies are very famous, but all they are (it seems to me, and I could be wrong about this) is ritualized mindfulness while making / pouring / serving / drinking tea. You can do the the same thing when you make coffee for you friend. Mindfulness and attention is everything!

For me, there is a serenity, a holiness in tea. It is hard to drink it and not feel something ... special for lack of a better word.