2. 10y aged Taiwanese oolong: quite sweet flavored and salivatory-making. Very smooth and drinkable, though a little too simple and un-nuanced for my tastes.

3. 2009 loose-leaf black puerh (puerh leaves, but fully oxidized like a black tea). Interesting! The dry and wet leaves smell like a black tea, but the liquor smells and drinks like a puerh. Fruit notes.

4-8: A series of plantation and wild puerhs, drunk in progression from younger to older (2009 down to 2005). These ran the gamut of smokey to mild, sweet to bitter (though none of that bile lincong, thank God). Part of the motivation for this series was to differentiate between plantation and wild tree, and also the effects of aging (however, I felt there was enough variation between the individual teas of each type that they outweighed any inter-type variation we might have seen).

9-11: Older puerhs (2001, 1994, 1988 in succession). The 2001 tiebing puerh, wild tree, from a mountain (near yiwu) I didn’t get the name of. Smooth and bitter (in a good way). It was a nice break from the younger puerhs we’d been having. The biggest improvement was in the mouthfeel rather than the taste (full and thick, whereas the younger stuff had been closer to water).

The 1994 had an improved mouthfeel, and a good earthy flavor. The 1988 (Qiwu) continued this trend with a sweeter, smoother earthiness. It was slightly faded tasting.

With these finished, we moved to the final two teas of the day…

12. 1975 7572 Orchid-scent: Sweet and full, but in an indirect way. Subtle on the tongue. A sweet huigan (most of the character of this tea doesn’t come in the taste, but in the aftertaste, which I absolutely love). The mouthfeel is thick and smooth, with a menthol coolness after swallowing. Brimming with qi.

13. 1960s hong yin
Even more depth of character. Deep earthiness and menthol. Louder and direct, while the 7572 was more indirect (though just as strong, in its own right). While this is a wonderful, wonderful tea (and the “better” one, if you count by price alone), the subtlety of the 7572 was by far my favorite of the day.

(Sorry, my last two teas I was too busy to enjoying to take any real notes…).

Random tea notes:
* My uncle’s Chinese is heavily-Taiwanese-accented, so it’s sometimes hard to follow. He doesn’t say lu cha but li cha. It’s not guoyu he speaks, but goyi.

* There’s a distinction between hand-picked and machine-clipped when harvesting leaves, and you can tell pretty easily by the edge of the leaf’s stem. Not sure how much effect this has on taste (other than the manually-harvested being perhaps of better quality).

* The puerh bubble started peaking in earnest in 2007. So teas especially in 2007 (and, to a lesser extend, from following years), are overharvested (and some fake). It you can (and if you can afford it) it’s best to buy teas before then.

* Ugh. Was up until 4am the night after, from all the caffeine. But very, very worth it.

Public vs Private: Fences: The archetypal American fence is the white picket fence. More symbolic than practical, it’s waist-high, non-imposing and it doesn’t do much to impede visibility of the interior for outsiders. The typical Taiwanese fence is a bit more imposing: seven feet high, cement, 6 inches thick, and (as if that wasn’t enough!) shards of broken glass embedded into the top to deter burglars. (And, no, this isn’t motivated by higher crime rates, though that was my first guess, too).

Private vs Intimate: Home layout. The typical American home has a bunch of bedrooms, separate from one another. When I was growing up, lots of kids would even close/lock their bedroom doors, to get that extra bit of privacy. The traditional Taiwanese home (not the modern flats, but rather the ones out in the countryside from 50 years ago) has bedrooms all connected. The master bedroom is in the very back, and to get through it, one has to walk through all the other bedrooms in series.

So, knowing this, what are the repercussions of public vs private vs intimate on use of the internet, social networks, and social software in general? Do we need to design for different cultures differently, especially in forums where people interact?

[some thoughts after spending a few weeks in Taiwan over the holidays, partially inspired by seeing a local Taiwanese parody of an American white picket fence, that reached less than knee-high]

So, it’s late afternoon (time difference, remember), we’re watching some Taiwanese variety show, when the normal programming gets interrupted with some fast-speaking, serious-looking news anchor. The language-newbie that I was, I couldn’t understand a thing he was saying. The one thing I could understand, though, was the infographic in the corner of the screen behind him: lifted straight from CNN (I assume) was a picture of a couple buildings on fire, subtitled “America Under Attack”.

Wow.

I had no idea what was going on, and I could only think of the worst. My flatmate understood, but there was no easy way for him to communicate “terrorists just hijacked some planes and ran them into a building” in pantomime. Phone calls to friends and family back in the States naturally wouldn’t connect through.

Our apartment had a dial-up internet connection… the mainstream media sites (CNN et al) were overwhelmed with traffic and not working, if I recall. (“Is America’s infrastructure wiped out?” I remember thinking!). Finally, I was able to connect to less mainstream sites like Slashdot, which were still up and had excellent running commentary of the situation. I remember being logged on for most of the afternoon, refreshing the few functioning pages every couple of minutes, hungry for any new information. There was a lot of confusion and a lot of unintentional misinformation. Was it the PLO? Was it missiles? Was it nuclear? I remember wondering about the global repercussions of this attack. At this point we didn’t know who was behind it, the extent of the damage, how long the attacks would continue, or how the United States was going to respond. Having just arrived in a foreign country, life was that much more uncertain–Would I need to return home? To be drafted?? How will the global community treat Americans? How will my neighbors treat me? Do I even know where the American Embassy (or, Taiwanese embassy-alternative) is located?

I remember, on the morning after the bombings, my (normally tactful!) language instructor told the class “and this situation is unique because it is the first time anyone has attacked America since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor”. Now, you must understand, I was the only American in the class, and the remainder of the class was an assortment of Japanese, Korean, and European. When the teacher said that, I was sitting right across from the Japanese guy. It was an awkward moment, to say the least. How to react? I think we both just shrugged at each other.

Just a few five-years-old-now scattered thoughts.

Where were you?