Green Tea Please

It's very cold already in Paris - temperatures are in the upper 40's-low 50's F, or low 10's C... To stay warm, I drink a lot of tea. Right now my favorite is Kusmi's green tea with ginger and lemon essences - a very fresh taste. It can't hurt that Kusmi's teas come in super stylish boxes.
A few days ago, at a friend's place, I also enjoyed some frothy Japanese green tea served in a delicate blue and white bowl. It reminded me of my discovery, in Taiwan, of the classic Chinese tea houses. While in mainland China in the 1960's the Cultural Revolution, targeting all things deemed "bourgeois", eradicated the ancient tradition of tea houses where intellectuals would meet to chat over some tea and treats (say, salty plums), Taiwan has retained and cherished both the buildings and the rituals, something I was delighted to discover when I visited Taipei as a teenager.
Though it can't be compared to the highly arcane Japanese tea ceremony, tea drinking in those quiet, precious wooden tea houses is still a rather codified matter; for instance you pour the water several times over the leaves, then emptying it into different bowls and then back into the teapot before thinking of having a sip... Going with a connoisseur definitely helps!

The Olympics - Remembering China (2)

The Olympics start today, so here's a post about sports and Beijing, both of which come together in my gymnastics memories...
Every Saturday morning, my mum would drive us to a gymnastics center in Beijing for a couple of hours' fun. The Chinese teachers were ruthless with their local charges, children from all over the country who trained to be future Olympians - we witnessed their classes sometimes and would see tears dripping silently down tiny little kids' cheeks as they were twisted and forced into all kinds of postures.
With us, the teachers were just adorable and never pushed us hard at all. My sister (lower picture), age , with her flexible yet muscular little body, never one to shy from acrobatics, was a favorite whom the head instructor took care of personally, cheering at her exploits. As for me (top picture), nimble but weak, and struggling with growth spurts at the age of 9, I just had fun and longed for ballet, which I tried to recreate on the beam, my favorite apparatus.

The Olympics - Remembering China (1)

On this blog, I have often talked about the years I spent in Kenya, Iran and Iraq back when I was a child; people who have known me for years have repeatedly asked me why I never posted about the 5 years I spent in China. As the Beijing Olympics are about to start, I thought I'd share some recollections of my time in that country and try to explain why it took me so long to write about it.
My family moved to Beijing in January 1987, when I was 9, and a few months later we traveled to Inner Mongolia with a friend of my mum's and her two boys. The beauty of Mongolian landscapes stunned us - my mum and I are standing in front of an immense sand dune on the top picture and lest you ask, yes, I was very tall and leggy for my age. As horses are an intrinsic part of the Mongolian lifestyle, we also hopped on some horses (and camels); my sister and Etienne, a friend, are riding one on the lower pic.
In most villages we went through, no one had ever seen foreigners, so people would crowd around our van and stare, gently poking fun of our big noses and light hair. Clean water was virtually impossible to find and back in those days, neither bottled water nor Coca-Cola were available; indeed, the only canned beverage that could be found was beer, so while the grownups sipped on their beer, we kids would remain hydrated thanks to the sweetest watermelons ever.
It was an amazing trip.

I am still friends with our travel companions and as of Friday I will actually be visiting Etienne, now in his 20's, as well as his parents, at their family castle in South-Western France... So stay tuned for more memories of a Chinese childhood and pictures of my week at Etienne's.