Page 110 - #86 eng
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          Fusion Between West and East:
          A Modern Narrative of Tea and Coffee

              If  we  call  my  experience  with  sculpture  and
          calligraphy a collision between western and eastern
          cultures, then tea and coffee somehow also represent
          differences between the two cultures. Maybe I am born
          as a fun guy, I never plan to be a “good boy”, always
          eager to break the traditional boundary of tea and find
          a broader world...
              We live in a brand-new world, where the east and
          the west, and the modern and the traditional coexist.
          It is also an era full of unparalleled conflicts and op-
          portunities.  How  can  tea,  a  key  medium  in  Chinese
          traditional  fancy  events,  be  fun  today?  Maybe  the
          answer will be clearer in the western context. That’s
          why I assigned myself a “homework task”: learn some-
          thing about coffee, jump between coffee and tea, and
          see what I will get.
              Tea and coffee have been a necessary ceremony
          in our daily life. Deciding to know about coffee, I felt
          like I traveled from the east to the west, and viewed
          the eastern world with a western eye. Some shining
          sparks will no doubt show up in the collision. We are
          in an era never seen before, which allows us to know
          both ourselves and each other and to encounter new
          things  with  expectations.  Wonderful  stories  will  be
          created in this process.

          How Can Tea Be Fun?
          “I Wanna Be a Saboteur.”

              How  to  play?  This  is  not  easy!  For  the  “artist”,
          creating a new narrative and expression is what he is
          after. In the six or seven years of ups and downs in the
          tea industry, he has been seeking the new possibilities
          to save tea in modern times, and exploring and expand-
          ing the boundaries of tea.
              “I was born in the west.” “You were born in the
          east.”  Though  civilization  retains  unique  charm  and
          freedom, it leads us to think that we, as a collective,
          will go to a world with a shared future.
              In this world, I will not obey certain rules to be
          a rigid man. One night, I was thinking of something
          that I have forgotten, but I wrote in my memo: BE A
          SABOTEUR.  With  no  courage  to  break  the  state,  it
          would be impossible to march. I don’t know what it
          will  end  up  with,  but  I  firstly  should  allow  it  to  be
          different in my head.





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