on relaxing

Last Sunday we spent part of the afternoon in the courtyard of a teahouse close to home. The sky was blue, the air was clear, and we had a couple of half-birthdays to celebrate. It was all verging on perfect until we had to go and botch the simplest of tasks: we dribbled tea down our fronts and I hurt a finger trying to open sunflower seeds. Turns out that the famously relaxed Chengdu lifestyle isn’t as easy to live as you might think.

It’s my yoga troubles all over again. Other people in my yoga class used the quiet time to meditate and reflect, but I used it to draft long form to-do lists in my head. Instead of finding an inner calm, I was trying not to forget all of the things I needed to do as soon as they let me leave. Unable to appreciate the quiet, I was a yoga failure.

In Chengdu the stakes are higher. This is our town, at least for a few years, and we'd like to be able to fit in. In fact, we'd like to fit in so well that we get to keep our teacups at the teahouse just like the regulars do. Their collection of mismatched randoms is stored in a cabinet, each with the name of its owner taped to the bottom of the cup. Getting to keep a teacup in this cabinet would be the ultimate badge of Chengdu success.

But for now this city seems to doubt our relaxation credentials. So it dribbled tea down our shirts to point out that we'd neglected to appreciate the leaves inside before lifting our cups. It knew we'd forgotten to bring snacks so it paraded a girl with oranges and cotton candy past just to make us jealous. And it inflicted a sunflower seed injury so I'd remember that cracking open the seeds is a nuanced art and not blunt warfare. 

But I think it’s ok if our relaxation skills need some work. Our neighbors have been at this for a while and we'll need time to catch up. But I do suspect that the city at large would appreciate us trying just a little harder to get the tea into our mouths and not on our shirts. This could be a good first step.