Human existence has never been easy.
Every era has had its own realities, and rightly so, because we are all experiencing this life for the first time.
In an attempt to “spare” ourselves suffering along the way, we have developed, as societies, a kind of framework that, although it varies from one context to another, almost always pursues the same thing: success. And if it comes quickly, even better.
In a way, almost every society strives to reach the highest step, following a rigid structure that seems to begin from the moment you are born. From then on, somehow, you are already expected to know how to answer a question that has become almost a requirement: “Where do you see yourself in five years?”
Seth Godin puts it more bluntly, but also more humorously:
“We run our schools like factories: we put kids in rows, we put them in batches (called grades), and we work hard to make sure there are no defective parts. We don’t let anyone stand out, fall behind, get ahead, or make a fuss.”
But who said it had to be this way?
No, I don’t mean the one found in food, but the one we encounter in the parable of Cook Ding.
“Cook Ding was cutting up an ox for Lord Wen-hui […] ‘Ah, magnificent!’ said Lord Wen-hui. ‘I never imagined that skill could reach such heights.’
Cook Ding put down his knife and replied: ‘What matters to me is the Way, which goes beyond mere skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. Three years later, I no longer saw the whole ox. And now… I move with the spirit rather than with my eyes. Perception and understanding have reached their limits, and the spirit moves where it will.’”
~ Chuang Tzu
Perhaps, after all, life is not so much about reaching a particular destination as it is about learning how to move along the way.
That is why our special guest this time has a path that is far from ordinary, and even farther from linear. Yet, as I listened to her talk about it, I pictured it as the intricate mechanism of a Swiss watch.
Not all gears move at the same time, nor are they all the same size. Some may seem small and insignificant; others, on the contrary, appear to hold much of the mechanism together. But each one has a purpose. Each one contributes to the movement.
And perhaps the most interesting part is that no gear works in isolation. One moves the next, the next turns another, and little by little, what first appeared to be a collection of independent pieces becomes a mechanism.
Because if one is missing, nothing moves.
Who better to speak about the mechanism itself than the master watchmaker behind it?
This time, that person is Shirley Chen, of Brew & Blossom.
But before we talk about chemistry (I know, that’s what this section is called), or everything that takes place inside a cup, we have to go back to the beginning.
Because no gear appears out of nowhere.
Every piece has an origin, even if we cannot recognize its importance until much later.
In Shirley’s case, that first gear began in a small mountain town, surrounded by tea:
“I grew up in a small mountain village in Shangyu, Shaoxing, in Zhejiang Province, an area with a long history of green tea production. Tea was part of the landscape around me long before it became something I studied academically. I later studied Tea Science at Hunan Agricultural University and continued in Tea Science at Zhejiang University.
What I had grown up around gradually became something I could understand through science, from the plant and its growing environment to processing, chemistry, microbiology, sensory evaluation, and ultimately what we experience in the cup.
My life then took me in a very different direction. I became increasingly interested in statistics, came to the United States for another graduate degree, and eventually worked as a software engineer. But even while I was away from the tea industry, one question stayed with me: Why does tea still feel so difficult to understand?
Even in China, where tea culture is deeply rooted in everyday life, traditional tea can still feel intimidating, especially to younger generations. In the West, that distance can be even greater.
After seven years of studying tea, many things that now feel intuitive to me can seem complicated to someone just beginning, but I don’t think anyone should need years of Tea Science education to understand why a green tea and a black tea taste so different, what processing does to a leaf, or simply how to choose and enjoy a tea.
Years later, when I was living in Louisville, an older neighbor said something that stayed with me. We often talked about Chinese tea, and she told me that I had a way of “translating” it that made it much easier for her to understand, and that I should share that with more people.
She wasn’t talking about translating Chinese into English. She meant translating between worlds, between the producer and the drinker, between science and tradition, and between everything that happens at origin and what someone eventually experiences in the cup.
That is really where Brew & Blossom comes from.
It is a Chinese loose-leaf tea brand, but I think of what I am building as more than simply selling tea. I want to connect origin, science, craftsmanship, and flavor in a way that is accurate without being intimidating.
There is enormous depth behind tea, and I don’t want to take that depth away. I just want to make the doorway into it much easier to walk through."
This conversation continues in the volume The girl with three hats of Mijología Aplicada.
Access the full volume to continue exploring the reflections, experiences, and knowledge shared by Shirley Chen, and discover a deeper conversation about the chemmistry of tea flavor.