The above photo is of tea cups awaiting the Chinese tea ceremony we participated in on Saturday as part of B’s brother’s marriage celebrations. Each cup received two lotus seeds and two red dates over which the tea is poured before being served to each elder family member by the marrying couple who kneel in front of their guests. The dates and lotus seeds symbolize hope that the couple will be fertile in their union and produce many children early in the marriage. Fortunately, this was B’s younger brother getting married so we were considered elders and thus a part of the tea ceremony ritual.
My understanding is that the tea ceremony is the most important part of the Chinese wedding ritual, and in this case it was the only ceremony we participated in. My brother and sister-in-law were legally married in New York a couple of weeks ago in order that their union would be official at the time of the ceremony without having to organize that part of it in Canada as well (they live in NYC, but both families are in BC). In turn, starting with the groom’s parents and working through all the elder relatives on both sides (grandparents, uncles, aunts, siblings), couples are called up to receive their tea and be formally addressed by the kneeling couple (B and I are 3rd brother and sister). After tea is served, the guests give a red envelope of money (or jewelry) to the person who served the tea. This serves as the marriage gift.
The aspect I most appreciated about the tea ceremony was the moment of intimacy in serving and receiving the newly married couple shares with their elder relatives. The kneeling couple and the seated guests form a very close group which gives a kind of privacy from those watching the ceremony, and the guests have a chance to congratulate or offer blessings to the couple as they receive their tea.
Following the tea ceremony was the 12-course wedding banquet which included sea cucumber, abalone, rock fish, lobster, suckling pig, crispy-skin chicken, and red-bean soup. Although they served small plates of each, everyone was crazy full of amazing food by the end of the night (this was held at Kirin in Richmond). In between courses there were all sorts of games for the adults and children, and at one point the head table (which we were seated at) had to travel around the room and toast all the tables which was a fun little procession.
Suffice to say, we had a lot of fun, and between the Friday night party and everyone coming over for an afternoon hangout yesterday afternoon, our last few days have been wall-to-wall family. I’m pretty exhausted returning to work today, and looking forward now to our wedding which is only a month away!
Tags: Chinese culture, family, tea ceremony, wedding
I’m feeling a bit transitional these days – like I need to leave behind some old things in order to move onto the new, except I don’t know what the new is. It might just be that I have to leave the old behind, declutter both physically and mentally, in order to give myself room for what’s left. That is a distinct possibility in all this. Because I’m feeling crowded – not by anyone in particular, but by the past. By things that don’t matter that much to me anymore but I hold onto, by possessions that I keep tucked away “just in case”. I’m feeling a bit weighed down by it, and ready for new challenges to boot. But we’ll just have to see about that.
September always brings new events and connections and I’m looking forward to that – not to mention our wedding at the end of the month, so this malaise will pass. To help things along, I’m planning to paint our front entrance hall bright yellow sometime in the next few weeks and build some proper shelving! And of course, more canning, more good dinners, more autumn hikes to raise my energy levels as winter comes along.
In other news, we’ve got all of B’s family in town this week for his brother’s wedding which happens on Saturday. Friday night is a party at our place for 45 people, and in between now and then lots of visiting, cleaning and getting food ready – exactly what I need to keep my mind off the end-of-August ennui I tend to suffer from.
And then lots of friends visiting on Labour Day weekend! And a block party too! Really, I look forward to September and getting back into gear again. This time of the year is really hard on me for some reason.
Tags: August
Back in the city for a couple of days now, I’ve finally had time to post our Cathedral Lakes photos to Flickr and gather my thoughts a little about the trip. In short? What a beautiful place, and we sure picked the right time to go there since it’s wildflower season in the sub-alpine and Cathedral Lakes Provincial Park has the most awesome meadows I have ever hiked in.
CLPP is a bit of an oddity in terms of the provincial parks, as the core area of the park is only accessible via a steep hike in, or via transportation up a private road operated by the Cathedral Lakes Lodge (grandfathered into the park, but owned privately). We elected to take the transportation in, as we had such a short time to spend up top, and so paid the $120 apiece to ride in the back of the Unimog which takes an hour to do nine miles of pretty-much vertical road. A little terrifying, but worth every penny to be able to carry in a cooler with beer and fresh food (the campsite is only a few minutes walk from the drop-off point), not to mention getting straight to the good stuff of alpine hiking.
We decided to stay at the first campsite at Quniscoe Lake, which I wouldn’t do on a weekend as it does tend to be the busiest (and the lodge across the way can be noisy) – but we were there mid-week and it was pretty quiet. Our campsite at Quiniscoe was right on the water so B. managed to get some good fishing time in on the rocks out front. Additionally, Quniscoe is the only campsite that allows fires (when they are allowed at all), and the only sites with picnic tables.
As for the hiking, CLPP is beautiful and ass-kicking terrain, with pretty much every trail involving some scrambling up and down. Ladyslipper Lake is one of the easiest hikes at only 7 km, but still involves 200 metres of elevation gain, the main trail of the park – the Rim – is only accessible by scrambling up steep, loose trail whereby one is rewarded with views for miles in every direction. If you’re thinking of doing any of these hikes, good footwear and hiking poles are pretty much a requirement. I wore through the rubber tips on both my poles last week!
When not hiking straight up and around and down, B. and I spent time beside the many lakes (Ladyslipper Lake is by far one of the most beautiful places I have every seen), and checking out the riot of alpine meadows in full bloom. Honestly, if you’re planning a trip up there in August, the Diamond Trail is not to be missed for its endless floral carpet – not to mention that it offers lots of opportunities for frolicking amongst said meadows if you are so inclined. The lodge is also open to campers for beer and meals – we went over one night for dinner which was pretty good (but pricey at $40 for the amount we eat – it’s buffet style), and had beers there on another occasion. This makes it a little less “backcountry” for sure, but it also provided a place to go one night when the wind was howling so fiercly down the lake that all we could otherwise do was hunker down in our tent. Beer by an indoor fireplace is a very welcome comfort in such circumstances.
Because of the effort required to get into the park, there were really only about 30 other people in this huge area with us at any given point during our week up there. We found that made CLPP one of the friendlier parks we’ve hiked in, as people tend to feel a bit bonded by the experience of being so remote and with so few others. Everyone has a recommendation – a favourite hike, a great spot to lunch, their particular harrowing experience coming down the wrong side of a mountain – and sharing those seems to be a big part of the CLPP trip for folks. Which was pretty neat, really, as we met all sorts of interesting folks in our footbound travels. On our last couple of nights there, our neighbours were a couple of young kids (20ish) from Kelowna who had never camped before, and who had no idea how to cook a fish that they had caught (nor any idea what to do with the bit of squash I offered them to saute with the fish – I think they had been solely raised on packaged food). It definitely made for some extra interest, and also gave me the impression that folks up there look out for each other since parks staff in the backcountry is next-to-nonexistent these days.
Because of its remoteness another feature that makes CLPP so precious is the incredible diversity and proximity of wildlife. We saw mountain goats, deer, grouse, picas, marmots, squirrels, chipmunks and whiskey jacks pretty much every day, in our camp! And because of the elevation, bears are pretty-much non-existent in the core area of the park.
Go check out the photos to see more of what we did and saw! On our way back Friday we picked up a load of fruit and spent the last two days canning it. You can check that out over on Among the Weeds where I have enumerated our great haul from Keremeos.
Looking at my stats this morning, it appears that everything is going back to normal and the most popular posts remain my Facts about Ocean Phospheresence and the Recipe for Black/Salal Berry Jam – both of which continue to get comments even years after being posted. There’s something about that which really tickles me – the sexiness of posts about nature and wild food foraging 
Yesterday I was on the way back from the dentist – on the skytrain from Commercial to Burrard – and somewhere around Stadium Station, a butterfly flew onto the train. At least I assume it was at Stadium, but I didn’t notice the butterfly until we were underground, just before Granville. It caught everyone’s attention then, because of the incogruity of it I suppose – this delicate outdoor creature flapping around inside a rushing steel tube buried beneath twenty feet of pavement. And of course, we all knew that it was going to die, which gives rise to all sorts of lovely musings about ephermality of life, etc. I could write a poem about that butterfly, so perfect was the visual subject, but really it’s probably best I don’t.
In any case, I was watching this guy watching the butterfly and he was also in some mesmerized place by it, and just as I was thinking “someone should try to free that butterfly”, he got up and tried to catch it. This was just after we left Granville Station – but the butterfly wasn’t having any of his interference. Just as we pulled into Burrard, I decided to have a go of it as well, but again – why would that insect trust me? Better to bang itself against the dark windows of the train than follow doom into the hands of a monster. Right before the train pulled away from Burrard, I realized I was going to miss my stop and hopped off, where the guy was watching me.
So we had a laugh together, and I told him I thought the butterfly was a goner, to which he said – but you never know what’s going to happen, it could fly off at the next stop (which is true, because at Waterfront the stop is above ground) – and as we got to the top of the station escalator I said have a good day and he responded as though – yes, in fact, he was going to have a *great* day. Which I’m sure he wasn’t before, but something about trying to save that butterfly and then talking about its fate with a total stranger made the whole being downtown prospect seem much better. At least I felt that way. And I felt the amazing possibility of connection, and that made me feel stronger than I had in days.
It was the randomness, of course. Because I live so much in the reality that randomly bad things can just happen, I forget that also randomly good things can happen. And they aren’t giant good things usually, they are small ones – like sharing a joke at a check-out counter, or having a little flirt at the farmer’s market, or just helping someone at the right moment so you know it matters. It’s so easy to ignore those little moments and focus on the bigger, badder ones – particularly as the ego is conditioned to complaint – but not only do they happen, we can create opportunities for them more often by simply staying open. That’s the hard part for me, because mostly in the city I close myself down for the sake of protection, and some days it’s all I can do to make eye contact at the deli counter. The butterfly gave me an excuse to come out of myself yesterday, as it did the guy sitting across from me, and who knows what ripples that will have?
Strawberry Amaretto Jam. Summer Squash Pickles. Between the farmers market and my garden I’ve got some canning to do before we go away next week – and that’s got me ridiculously excited. Particularly in respect of the new shelves I’ve built in the basement for just such a purpose – we ran short of space in our cupboards last year by early fall which put a bit of a damper on canning. Over at Among the Weeds, I’ve written recently about food storage, including a book review – so I won’t go on about it much further here….
I am feeling really not on it this year because of our marriage festivities in the fall – but next year I would like to book the kitchen at Kiwassa and do some group canning – particularly since I know so many people are in. We could chip in for gas to go to the valley or the interior on fruit/veggie buying trip and then book a few kitchen sessions together? It would bring the price down of everything – the trip and the bulk buy. Plus I could probably order a case of pectin somewhere much cheaper than you get it at Safeway if we had enough interested folks.
Speaking of which, I’ve got a line on some 1 litre jars which I am picking up on Saturday for $5 per dozen. I believe the woman has several dozen for sale, so if you would like me to pick you up some, please let me know because I’m going over to West Vancouver for em. I don’t know if they come with jar rings – I’m guessing not – but the jars with lids new go for $20 + tax per dozen. For $5 plus $6 worth of lids you’re still getting them at half price.
In any case, I’m going to try and get some of that done this weekend before off to the Cathedral Lakes and Keremeos fruit buying next week. Hopefully by the time I get back, some of my tomatoes are ripening and ready for drying. It’s just a busy time of year, but for all the right reasons!
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