When I lived in Beijing, students hoping to study abroad would travel half a day to a certain shrine, praying to receive an “offer”. They were practicing hieroglossia.
That’s because they deemed the shrine’s name; 卧佛寺 [wo fo si] similar enough to the English word ”offer” to place their trust in, or hedge their bets on, this place for a few hours of their lives. I was intrigued that students treated it as more than just a joke, more than just an excuse for a jaunt. I was curious about this geomantic tradition and this kabbalistic faith in language, whereby language itself is the genius, not the discoverer or coiner.
Of course, I was bemused by the flimsiness of this pun, depending as it does on two languages! Nonetheless, for several months now, I have been entertaining the idea of writing a Strainer about 安溪 [An xi], the home of 铁观音 [tie guan yin; Iron Goddess of Mercy], one of China’s most-famous teas, the tea that switched me on to tea. This, I thought, was a better pun than the Sleeping-Buddha Shrine pun.
It was late 2023 when I experienced a panic attack; my face tingling as if it was stuffed with Sichuan pepper, speech slowing, vision narrowing. Maybe you have experienced something similar, but anxiety is pretty new to me. And I’ve been looking forward to this pun pilgrimage, mostly because I like tea pilgrimages, not because I believed in an instant cure.
In the event, the trip was a family holiday, a holiday not planned by me. Even getting to Anxi town from our base in Quanzhou [泉州] involved annoying people; not all family-members are into pilgrimages and, with The Festival fast upon us, no trains or buses would run.
Our hired driver took us first to a spooky deserted tea-park on Anxi’s outskirts. And, at the end of the day’s trip, we stopped off, briefly, at a tea market. But, with members of our party waiting in the car, hungry, this wasn’t the time for leisurely exploration. The tea fields themselves were tens of kilometres north; too far a stretch.
There was, however, some time in the town of Anxi which, like so many small towns, smelt of coal, though it was charming. Huge elevation changes define its twisty streets; tall blocks almost touching the concrete retaining walls of the hills behind them. I love 3D towns (like Nanjing). Most of Anxi’s tea shops closed, I walked into two smart, hotel-lobby-like stores; posh, sealed boxes on the shelves of every wall. Women in suits served prospective customers from 盖碗 [gai wan] bowls on glass tables.
And it all tasted, to my perception, like nothing very much. I didn’t buy any tea in Anxi.
Certainly, fashions in tieguanyin production have changed in the 20 years since I first swooned over it. But I have to accept that it may be the aging of my tastebuds or a function of this funk I have been in. If not for other categories of tea exciting me daily, I would be feeling like a fraud columnist right now. I just hope, dear reader, that you appreciate my honesty.
So I did not rekindle my love for tieguanyin. Nor did I find a miracle cure for anxiety. But, in the bosom of my family, I did make a breakthrough with a longstanding depression, surely the flip-side of anxiety, which had taken root for months. Visiting Anxi and these Fujian towns helped me profoundly, as did my family, and a very good professional counsellor, too.
Ultimately, this is further proof of my friend Davide Pizzitola’s Law; the law that 1) time-money spent on travel is the best possible use of time-money, and that 2) the person most in need of travel is the person (probably eyeing-up an expensive thing-purchase) least-qualified to recognise his/her need for travel.
And even that Beijing Shrine is worth a trip, when you get the chance.