I’ve hit a strange point where I feel like I am plateauing. There is still plenty of room for me to improve in my hobbies, and while I am unsatisfied with my current ability, there’s some mysterious blockage preventing me from going further.

I first noticed it with my essay-writing. I was working on my literature review on contemporary tea history when I realized that I was wholly unhappy with how I was framing the entire piece. It didn’t rake me very long to realize that in fact, I had no idea how I wanted to frame it. As a result, nothing I came up was appealing. I knew I could do it better, but my goal was vague. I set it aside.

Then, while practicing calligraphy one night, I realized that—like my essays—nothing I wrote appealed to me. I had started learning seal script, and while that came with its own harsh learning curve, but when I tried to switch back to the standard script and semi-cursive I was so fond of before, I was critical of every stroke I made.

Then, I noticed the same thing with guqin. While I had amassed a large repertoire of songs, I was unhappy with my inability to play a certain piece with full proficiency. As I was practicing, I noticed that there was a larger issue—could it be that I had actually gotten worse? I stopped and listened to a recording I took of myself playing the same piece just one month prior.

It wasn’t that I had gotten worse, but I had realized how poorly I was playing.

Curious, I looked at my past calligraphy—I hadn’t gotten worse. Phew. But while I was more-or-less content with my calligraphy in the past (at least, content enough to post it on Instagram and Facebook), I wanted to delete everything at that very moment.

I sighed in relief. It wasn’t that I had forgotten all I had learned. That would have been disastrous. Instead, I had gradually developed enough discernment to see my mistakes.

My discernment had outpaced my skills, and now I needed to catch up. Rather than be discouraged by my new realizations, I decided that this would be my impetus to improve. After all, now that I knew exactly I needed to change, I could progress a lot quicker.

I started with more reading and writing, trying to identify a cleaner and clearer writing style. With calligraphy, I returned to the most basic strokes, producing pages and pages of horizontal strokes as I aimed to produce a consistent page of quality strokes. I returned to the most basic guqin pieces, refreshing my memory of them while also refining each movement.

This recent challenge led me to think about the process of our growth as humans. Overtime, we begin to realize our faults, and while this can be disconcerting and lead to thoughts such as “wow, I did some really terrible things” or “I’m not good enough”, this can also lead to a motivation to change—a newfound resolve to not do terrible things anymore and a renewed vigor to do even better.

I decided to get up bright and early the next day for a head-start in the expo. The hotel had run out of regular rooms, so I had been upgraded to a suite with a hot tub and ocean-view for free, so I spent my night in absolute luxury.

This time, I got to the expo, but entered through an unfamiliar entrance. Oh no, I thought to myself. This is going to be difficult.

I waded through aisles and aisles of Buddhist textiles. All sorts of tablecloths, altar cloths, streamers, banners, canopies, and every design I could possibly imagine.

I forced myself to snap out of it, and I continued walking. By the time I got to the statuary shop—only halfway to the tea expo—it was noon.

“Hey buddy!” my friend from yesterday called out. “We were just gonna have lunch, wanna join us?”

I thought about it quickly—I’d have to eat lunch anyways. Might as well eat with friends. I agreed, and we started chatting about Buddhist statues over our meal.

Halfway through lunch, Mr. Hoshino appeared from around the corner.

“I’m hungry!” he declared. “Don’t you have some food around here?”

My new friend stood up immediately, his face stricken with terror.

“Sir, are these bento boxes okay?” he asked

Mr. Hoshino inspected them.

“Eh, better than nothing,” he started eating.

Those bento boxes were supposed to be for the shop employees, but alas I guess the employees would have to wait a bit longer. My friend rushed to buy extra lunches for his staff.

“Oh!” Mr. Hoshino suddenly exclaimed. “You’re here too!”

The jerk had noticed me.

“You have time today, right?” he asked with a sleazy grin. “Why don’t you come along with me. I have a few more orders to make.”

I sighed. This time, I needed to get things done, but perhaps Mr. Hoshino could help me without knowing he was helping me.

We started walking, and as we entered a few places, he started asking about prices. During the gaps when he wasn’t asking about items he was interested in, I decided to ask about things I was interested in. I ended up with a few quotes, many business cards, and a little bit of negotiating experience.

Eventually, I was able to break free and get to the Tea Expo. Except over there, only two people talked to me.

One is the owner of a tea shop in Fuqing, not too far from Fuzhou. Another was a tea producer from Chaozhou who currently lives in Guangzhou. But as I realized, it wasn’t from interviews that I would get my information. It was on a greater scale—from observing the entire expo as a whole.

The majority of products in the Buddhist expo and the tea expo were of Japanese design. However, very few people referred to them explicitly as “Japanese” 和式. Instead, the preferred term among Chinese customers was “Tang-style” 唐式. That is, instead of purchasing Japanese items, Chinese customers understood themselves as returning to an earlier form of Chinese aesthetic (that Japanese artists had preserved).

There are many, many issues with this line of thinking, as Japanese art has transformed over the centuries. To consider it as merely a regurgitation of Tang dynasty ideals is absolutely insulting. However, to those in traditional circles who are proud of Chinese heritage, it feels much easier to lay claim to this reinvented “Tang culture” than to admit that they’re actually adopting Japanese culture.

Over the course of the expo, there were shops that offered an experience in trying “Song dynasty tea whipped tea” which was using Japanese matcha… not cake tea as would have been used during the Song dynasty, there were Buddhist statues that made “Tang-style” altars (which were copied from Japanese designs), and as I mentioned earlier, there were “Tang-style floor mats” which were really just tatami.

I found it hilarious that despite Chinese tastes aligning with Japanese items, the Chinese market is unable to accept it as being labeled as Japanese, thus creating the need to relabel everything as “Tang-style.”

This points to a greater undercurrent of nationalism within the traditional arts communities here. A lot of the tea practitioners, calligraphers, and other traditional artists I’ve met here are extremely proud of Chinese culture. One person told me that Japan doesn’t have its own style of calligraphy. Everything they have is a copy of Chinese calligraphy, to which I pointed out that kana calligraphy is indeed unique to Japan. They tried to tell me that it was actually invented by the Tang dynasty monk Huaisu, and that’s when I stopped replying. There was no point.

Another egregious example is when I was told that kintsugi is a Chinese art because China had lacquer before Japan. While that is true, that doesn’t mean Chinese artisans were the first to use lacquer and gold to repair ceramics. But alas, convincing overly-prideful people that they don’t possess a monopoly on other East Asian cultures is completely useless. From this skewed perspective, everything that is good in East Asia came from China.

First off, sorry for the delay—there have been some internet connectivity issues preventing me from uploading photos until now.

I woke up at 7 am on Friday and began my journey to Xiamen for the International Tea Expo.

After breakfast with Sangwon, I went took the subway to the train station and eventually boarded. My seat was next to an old granny who was talking on the phone in Hokkien. After she hung up, she turned to me and asked—in Hokkien—why I didn’t stow my luggage in the slots above us.

“It’s too heavy,” I replied to her in Teochew.

She nodded in understanding.

A few seconds past and she turned to me again.

“Where are you from?” she asked.

“Chaozhou,” I answered, wondering if I could actually pass for a Chaozhou native.

She nodded again and fell silent. I had passed the test—or so I thought.

“No,” she suddenly said. “You’re accent sounds like it’s from Chaoyang, not Chaozhou proper.”

I was shocked. Were the regional variants of Teochew so drastically different? She must have seen the shock on my face because she laughed.

“My husband is from Chaozhou, so I know,” she said with a smile.

When I got off the train, I had a quick lunch before taking a shuttle to the expo. After checking in, I began walking towards the tea section.

Unfortunately, I never made it there.

I was greeted by a colossal Buddha statue as Buddhist chants played in the background. I’d have to walk through the Buddhist supply expo before I could reach the tea expo.

I knew I would be distracted and begin to browse, so I set a limit for myself. I would go to the tea section at 3 pm. That’d give me ample time to get through the Buddhist supplies.

As I walked, the sound of drums, bells, gongs, and woodenfishes surrounded me as all sorts of people walked around testing and purchasing instruments. The smell of fine aloeswood wafted through the air, and in every direction, elaborately carved statuary adorned the halls.

Now, this isn’t to say that everything at the expo was nice. In fact, most were things I would never care for. Countless booths had cheap porcelain statues, plastic statues trying to look fancier than they really are, and fiberglass statues that looked dull and lifeless.

But a few shops caught my attention with their detailed wood carvings and beautiful gold-leaf. While most shopkeepers ignored me, the staff of one of finer wood-carving shops invited me to sit down and drink some tea.

“You… don’t really seem like the typically Buddhist statuary client,” he remarked.

He was right. Most people here were at least twice my age and walked around in monastic robes.

“I’m here on behalf of a friend actually,” I explained. “I’m looking for a statue that has pretty specific requirements—are you able to do a custom order?”

He was quick to accept, and I found myself engaged in a deep conversation over wood carved statues for about an hour. At that point, an anonymous old man sat down near us. He turned to his assistant and muttered something in Japanese.

I turned to them and—in Japanese—asked where they were from.

He introduced himself as Mr. Hoshino from Gunma. While he’s not Buddhist, he made his fortune off of selling Japanese temples Chinese-made items that look close enough to the Japanese quality to pass.

As soon as he realized I could speak Japanese and Mandarin, he pulled me over to interpret for him. It was a bit awkward because most of it was him grilling my new friend about a recent order. The wood color was uneven, meaning the hands of the statue were slightly darker than the body. My young friend apologized profusely and promised to have the issue remedied as Mr. Hoshino threatened to cancel his other orders with them.

As I would find out throughout over the next few hours, Mr. Hoshino is a jerk.

But, he’s a rich jerk, so people typically accommodated his jerkiness.

I found it ridiculous though—wood tones naturally vary, and the shop had already promised to lighten the wood so that the final product would have an even color. That should have been the end of the story.

Instead, we were there for a good while going back and forth until Mr. Hoshino received enough apologies to move on… at which point he decided to drag me along as he crossed off more purchases on his list.

Among the things he wanted were a pair of gilded altar lights, and as he was discussing the down payment for them, I whispered to him that these weren’t gilded with real gold. I didn’t—and still don’t particularly like the guy—but I didn’t like that the manufacturer was being sleazy as well.

He got up immediately to visit a reputable manufacturer from Japan, which confirmed my suspicions. The gilding at the first shop was far too dull to be real gold.

He laughed heartily and thanked me with a pat on the back and insisted that we keep on moving… except I still needed to go to the tea expo and check into my hotel before 6 pm.

And so, I excused myself, and he invited me to dinner later that night. I accepted, although thinking about it now that was a bad idea. I should have just eaten instant noodles alone in my hotel room.

Being vegetarian and trying to eat at the same table as a mega-wealthy Japanese man who enjoys fine steak, seafood, and copious amounts of alcohol is not easy.

Fortunately, we had a fourth guest: the owner of the restaurant we were eating at. Despite having just met, she was incredibly courteous and made sure I had enough things to eat (she had to scold a few waiters and waitresses because they forgot my vegetarian order)…

Throughout the night, he asked me about my language study and how I developed such a keen eye for Buddhist art. I wasn’t sure to answer him—most of it had come from exposure. Again and again, he asked if I was interested in working for him. I smiled and nodded politely.

But I would never work for the guy.

Earlier in the dinner, he mentioned that we were complete opposites, and indeed we were. In his own words, he’s a sleazy businessman who liked to profit greatly off of temples to fund his excessive lifestyle while I’m an austere student with a remarkable eye for Buddhist artwork.

I nodded and smiled faintly.

As the night grew late, I began to take my leave as the restaurant owner whispered to me that he tends to get violent when he’s drunk… and judging by his increasingly snappy attitude, I could tell that the volcano was about to erupt.

In any case, I left the dinner with Mr. Hoshino’s business card with a job offer if I ever ended up unemployed in Japan. I won’t be using it.

Being vegetarian in China is hard.

It’s not that there isn’t an abundance of vegetables, or that there aren’t enough options, it’s that the people preparing the food simply don’t understand what “vegetarian” means.

My first encounter with this happened one morning last week when the grandpa I buy my veggie buns from happened to run out of my usual order.

“Ah, it’s fine,” I told him.

“It’s okay,” he assured me. “This is also vegetarian.”

I eyed the bun he held, already packaged and ready for me to eat.

“No meat?” I asked warily.

“No meat,” he assured me with a grin.

I paid him the however many cents it was and went back to my room. Upon taking a bite, something felt… odd. There was an abundance of mushrooms, which usually meant that it was probably vegetarian. But then my teeth sank into something tougher. I inspected my meal.

Thin strips of meat were embedded between the mushrooms. My mind went through a series of evaluations: if I were to throw it away, I would be wasting food and the animal that died for this wouldn’t come back to life. If I kept eating it, I might have digestive issues in the next hour or so.

After weighing my options, I kept eating it. I was rather disgusted with each bite, but fortunately my bowels were fine. This is a scenario that would replay itself throughout the week.

The second time it happened was when I was getting lunch. I had ordered a tofu rice bowl and confirmed that it was 100% vegetarian, no meat whatsoever.

Then, as I was eating my tofu, I noticed something red underneath. Imitation crab, hot-pink ham, and some mystery meat. I gagged, but finished my meal nonetheless. Having not eaten meat in years, I’m actually surprised I didn’t throw up—or run straight to the toilet. But I think eating the mystery meat helped solidify my decision to be vegetarian—that stuff is absolutely gross and horrendously salty.

Now, the next two times this happened, I was in a group setting—more or less with the same group. Yamada-san, my former classmate, invited me to a dinner with the other Japanese students on Saturday night (Sep. 14).

It was a friendly, lively dinner with copious amounts of alcohol (I drank water) and seafood (I ate the tofu and veggies that garnished the dishes). But it was at that dinner that I realized I now wince when people are peeling shrimp, shelling prawns, and cracking lobsters. It just… feels barbaric.

Of the five students from Japan, four were from Okinawa: Uehara, Tomoyose, Miyagi, and a young man whom we called Sha-san because his surname was really long (something 謝?). Yamada-san, who I had assumed was from Kyoto, was actually from Osaka (eh, close enough). However, our host for the night, Oyama-sensei, was from Kyoto. He was teaching a two-week crash course on Linux at the university, and he has been doing this every semester for the past six years—possibly more.

The star of the show though, was Yamada-san’s Chinese boyfriend. He brought a bottle of very expensive-looking liquor to share, persisted through the night without understanding the conversation, and he got roped into preparing crab meat for everybody except me (since I don’t eat crab).

Oyama-sensei eventually caught on and noticed that I wasn’t eating any of the fish… or really any of the main dishes.

“You’re okay with tofu and veggies?” he asked.

“Mhm—I’m not much of a seafood person,” I replied.

“Do you want something meaty? We can order something else,” he offered.

“It’s fine,” I assured him. “I don’t eat meat.”

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “You’re vegetarian.”

I was actually surprised he noticed—nobody else at the table had mentioned a thing.

The rest of the dinner went smoothly, and we finished the night be exchanging WeChats information.

Then, a few days later, I got a message from Yamada-san’s boyfriend, Zijing.

“Hey, do you wanna get dinner?” he asked.

“Sure! Who else is coming?” I replied.

“Just you, me, and Oyama-sensei.”

And with that, I met them at the mall (a bit late because I decided to get a massage at a spa near the bank—it was really nice, and they gave me a cupping and guasha session too!). The dinner was at a sushi restaurant.

I walked in to find Oyama-sensei and Zijing already there. They had ordered, but the food hadn’t come yet, meaning I wasn’t that late.

“Can you eat anything here?” Oyama-sensei asked me.

“Mhm,” I answered confidently. “Egg, cucumbers, and inarizushi.”

He laughed, “That’s barely anything!”

Indeed, which is why I typically avoid sushi restaurants. But Zijing wanted me to come, and I think it would have been rather awkward with just the two of them, so I showed up.

It was all-in-all a mediocre meal over fun conversation in which we discussed anime, the overabundance of mayonnaise in Chinese sushi, and the difficulties of learning Japanese.

Since then, my meals have been smooth. I’ve figured out which dishes are truly vegetarian, and my accidental meat consumption has gone down to practically zero.

The one major slip-up was when I walked into Pizza Hut thinking I could just order a cheese pizza.

First off, the prices were essentially identical to the US. I ended up paying about $10USD for a personal pan pizza and a soup. It was kind of funny to me that in China, Pizza Hut serves pasta, steak, and is actually kind of high-end.

When I ordered a cheese pizza, the waitress stared at me.

“That’s just cheese, sauce, and dough,” she said.

“Yes, I know.”

“There’s nothing on it.”

“Yes, I know.”

“We can’t sell that.”

“… What?”

“You must put something on it.”

“Fine,” I relented. “Pineapple.”

“Ah,” she exclaimed. “One Hawaiian!”

She turned around and left before I could protest, and a few minutes later, a pizza with bits of ham sat in front of me. I sighed. A cheese pizza is literally the simplest pizza order, and yet it was unheard of here.

Among the various challenges of living in China, I honestly think food is the biggest one for me. And this is after being relatively open to whatever is put in my plate. Nonetheless, I’ve become familiar with the dining halls on campus, and my meals are now (almost) stress-free.