AVRL 37

The phone notification sounds rang one after another. On the screen, apart from WeChat there were countless Weibo messages—new follower alerts as well as private messages on Weibo.

Meng Chi first opened WeChat. The people sending messages were all different, yet the contents were more or less the same, such as 【Handsome Ge, you’ve gone viral again】 【Didn’t expect Little Meng was also a model】 【The photos were taken so well】…

Through the Weibo screenshots they sent, Meng Chi already knew why his Weibo had suddenly started gaining followers and why private messages were flooding in.

She Shan had posted that set of photos on Weibo. Although he hadn’t tagged Meng Chi’s ID, netizens had vast powers. They dug up the tea-brewing video that had previously made Meng Chi popular, found the Weibo account of You Ran Tea House that Yang Zile had set up, and from among the followers dug out Meng Chi’s Weibo.

Meng Chi had used his Weibo for many years. Ordinarily he only used it to read gossip and news, or to repost some tea-art-related posts. He didn’t particularly like sharing his own life content on social platforms; he had only shared his feelings when he won awards in competitions in the past, accompanied by a few photos from those competitions.

As Chen Yan had said, once a person gained a bit of popularity, the traces left on the internet in the past would be dug up by netizens.

Among those who sent him WeChat messages was also Boss Chen. Although his words weren’t as frivolous as when he had been drunk last time, they still made Meng Chi frown.

“What’s wrong?” After finishing picking a row of tea trees, Yu Tingzhi came over to drink water and, seeing that his expression was off, asked.

“Nothing,” Meng Chi gave a very light laugh. “She Shan posted the photos on Weibo, and the netizens are all coming to praise me.”

Although his tone was light, Yu Tingzhi inexplicably felt that he wasn’t happy at all—there was even a trace of aversion. He took out his own phone, logged into Weibo, and looked around. Indeed in the comments he saw many words of praise—some praising the face, some praising the figure, some praising the paintings—but apart from those there were also many harsh comments, such as saying the photos were vulgar, that they insulted tea art, and even insults to his character, asking if he was a male escort.

Yu Tingzhi’s brows furrowed slightly. He took screenshots and sent them to She Shan, telling him to handle the comments.

Meng Chi tilted his head back and gulped half a bottle of mineral water, quenching his thirst. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of Yu Tingzhi’s phone screen, saw She Shan’s name on the chat window, and the green bubble containing the two characters “delete” that he had sent.

“What are you doing? Are you telling She Shan to delete the photos?” Meng Chi asked.

“No,” Yu Tingzhi paused for a second and looked up at him. “But if you want them deleted, I can have him delete them.”

“Why delete them? His Weibo is for posting photographic works.” After saying this, Meng Chi thought it over and understood what Yu Tingzhi meant. He laughed once and said, “Leave them. I don’t feel there’s anything inappropriate.”

Yu Tingzhi gazed at him, as if trying to read from his expression whether he was forcing himself.

“Really,” Meng Chi smiled at him. “Since they were taken, they’re meant to be looked at. If they can be viewed in an exhibition hall, of course they can also be viewed on a phone.”

Yu Tingzhi nodded, put away his phone, and didn’t even look at the reply She Shan sent him.

Meng Chi walked over beside the tea trees and continued lowering his head to pick tea. Yu Tingzhi followed and walked to the opposite side of him. After a while he suddenly asked, “Is your master still angry with you?”

Meng Chi’s movements paused for an instant. He asked in confusion, “How do you know my master is angry?”

Yu Tingzhi: “She Shan told me.”

On the day the photography exhibition opened, She Shan had actually called Meng Chi, but at the time Meng Chi had only said he was going to the countryside to collect tea and hadn’t mentioned the matter of his master. Yet without asking, he could guess that She Shan would know—most likely because of that big mouth Yang Zile.

Meng Chi sighed: “I don’t know. My master’s temper is big. It’ll probably take another ten days or half a month before he cools down.”

Actually Meng Chi felt that his master should already have cooled down. After all, last time Du Feng had said he told the master about letting him go to the competition; the master had only remained silent without speaking and hadn’t flown into a rage.

But now that the Weibo photos had been posted and the popularity had risen, after being asked to annoyance by those old customers, the old man would most likely be awkward for another stretch.

“Sorry,” Yu Tingzhi suddenly said.

“What are you apologizing for?” Meng Chi asked.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have had She Shan come looking for you to take photos,” Yu Tingzhi said.

At those words Meng Chi’s tea-picking movements instantly stopped. He lifted his eyes toward Yu Tingzhi, even more puzzled: “What do you mean? You were the one who had She Shan come looking for me?”

Yu Tingzhi nodded, yet his gaze passed over Meng Chi to look behind him.

Meng Chi noticed and turned his head—then met his grandmaster’s pair of eyes glittering with spirit. Who knew how long he had been standing there listening to their private conversation.

“Grandmaster, what are you doing? You scared me,” Meng Chi said speechlessly.

The grandmaster straightened his hunched back, pretended to be composed as he cleared his throat, and instead reprimanded: “I should be the one asking you two! Not properly picking tea—one moment playing on the phone, the next chatting. You’re not even dating—why are you always sticking together?!”

Meng Chi: “…”

Yu Tingzhi: “…”

While the two were still stunned, the grandmaster put on a stern face again, reached out and pulled over the tea-picking basket in front of Meng Chi’s hips for a couple of glances, and said with contempt: “You only picked this little bit? Not even as much as I picked. At your speed, are you planning to stay here all day? Hurry up and work, or there’ll be no lunch.”

Meng Chi: “…Fine, fine, fine. Working, working.”

Having been reprimanded, the two naturally dared not slack off any longer and concentrated wholeheartedly on lowering their heads to pick tea.

The tea leaves just picked from the tea trees were emerald green and tender, carrying a faint grassy fragrance and the unique tea scent of the leaves. To avoid high temperatures affecting the quality of the fresh leaves, the freshly picked living leaves could not be piled together; they had to be spread flat in a cool place to dissipate heat.

The sunlight grew increasingly fierce. The tea garden had no place suitable for spreading the tea leaves, so the three did not pick for long. After about two hours the grandmaster came to inspect the results.

Relying on years of experience, the grandmaster simply weighed the tea baskets a couple of times and estimated that the three of them together had picked roughly ten jin of fresh leaves.

“That’s enough. About enough to make two jin of dry tea—perfect for the two of you to split half each,” the grandmaster said.

After going down the mountain, Meng Chi took the freshly picked leaves to a ventilated, shady spot under the corridor of the small courtyard to spread and air them. Only after the moisture had dried and the leaves had become soft would they proceed to stir-fry the green.

Yu Tingzhi understood very little about the tea-making process, so while working Meng Chi explained to him.

Green tea belonged to the non-fermented teas. The production process could roughly be divided into spreading and airing, fixing (killing the green), and drying. Different varieties of green tea had slight differences in craftsmanship. For example, Anji white tea and Taiping Houkui also had a shaping (or “straightening strips”) process, producing long, slender strip-shaped leaves. Huangshan Maofeng, after fixing, still needed rolling, then drying, and finally a second drying before the finished tea was obtained.

“In the past, tea was basically all made by hand. Now that technology is advanced, tea factories have all switched to machines for making tea, and many ancient methods have been lost as a result,” Meng Chi said with some regret. “Only old masters like the grandmaster still master some of the ancient methods and occasionally make some handmade tea.”

The development of technology was a double-edged sword. It accelerated economic development, liberated the hands of the laboring people, and made life convenient and efficient—yet it also fostered laziness in people, causing the loss of countless crystals of wisdom worth preserving. Countless admirable traditional cultures were submerged by the wave of technology. People could only be pushed forward, not knowing when they would turn back for a look.

Yu Tingzhi: “Can you do it?”

“I can,” Meng Chi said, raising his own hand. “I’ve followed and learned for several years. Who knows how many layers of skin have been burned off these hands.”

Meng Chi’s hands were actually not ugly—wide and large, with quite a few calluses, appearing weathered yet powerful. On the outer sides of his palms there were indeed many fine burn marks; if one didn’t look carefully they were basically invisible.

Yu Tingzhi stretched out his hand and lightly stroked the scars on the side of his palm with his fingertips: “You’ve worked hard.”

“When learning it felt hard. Thinking about it now,” Meng Chi clicked his tongue, “it was actually quite worth it.”

Yu Tingzhi looked at the smile in his eyes and only felt that this kind of Meng Chi was far too captivating.

After lunch the grandmaster had originally planned to take a midday nap, but because today was Sunday—precisely the temple’s open day, when incense visitors were allowed to set off firecrackers—the crackling and popping made it impossible to sleep.

The three therefore sat in the pavilion in the courtyard, drinking tea and enjoying the cool air. The messages on Meng Chi’s phone still hadn’t quieted down. He picked and chose a few of the more important ones to look at, then listened to the voice message Yang Zile had sent him, saying that these past two days the shop had been extremely crowded with people, yet Old Yang still didn’t look very happy.

Meng Chi gave a very light sigh, looked at those little red dots, and also turned off the WeChat notifications.

“What trouble did you cause?” the grandmaster suddenly asked, glancing sideways at him.

“Hmm? Nothing,” Meng Chi said.

The grandmaster gave a snorting laugh: “Still pretending with me. If you didn’t cause any trouble, why didn’t your master let you go to the capital to compete, and instead sent Du Feng?”

Meng Chi: “…”

How did his grandmaster know everything?

“I didn’t cause trouble,” Meng Chi said, holding the tasting cup and avoiding the grandmaster’s gaze. “Just earned a bit of extra money in my spare time and slackened a little on tea art.”

The grandmaster stared at him for a few seconds, then pointed at him with the fan in his hand: “Don’t you think your grandmaster is some old antique. I can go online too, okay?”

Without waiting for Meng Chi to speak, he continued: “Lele sent me those photos of yours to look at. They show a bit more skin than usual, but you kid aren’t ugly-looking. The shots actually have quite an artistic feel.”

Meng Chi: “…”

===Chapter 34===

That big loudspeaker Yang Zile—why did he have to say everything?

Beside them, Yu Tingzhi’s motion of drinking tea paused for an instant upon hearing this.

Meng Chi felt somehow a bit embarrassed. He let out an “aiyo” and called out helplessly: “Grandmaster, stop embarrassing me, okay?”

“Hmph, praising you and you’re still not happy?” the grandmaster asked jokingly in return. “Do I have to scold you foully like your master before you’re pleased?!”

“No—” Meng Chi dragged out the tone, carrying a hint of coquettishness. After thinking he added, “Actually Master didn’t scold me either. He just knocked some sense into me and told me to put my mind on the proper path.”

The fan the grandmaster had been waving in his hand suddenly stopped. He turned his eyes toward Meng Chi; a faint light flashed in those aged yet not cloudy eyes.

A few seconds later he murmured in a low voice “the proper path” while continuing to wave the fan again, only much more slowly.

“Little Meng, tell me—what do you think tea is?” the grandmaster suddenly asked.

“Hmm?” Meng Chi was stunned for a moment, then answered, “Tea is just tea.”

The grandmaster turned his gaze toward Yu Tingzhi opposite him. Yu Tingzhi set down the tasting cup in his hand and answered: “Strictly speaking, it is the leaves of the tea plant, or a beverage made by steeping processed leaves of the tea plant.”

This official answer, comparable to a Baidu Encyclopedia entry, left both Meng Chi and the grandmaster stunned. After a moment of silence the grandmaster burst into loud laughter and pointed at him with the fan: “Not a single word wrong.”

Meng Chi looked at Yu Tingzhi speechlessly: “Why didn’t you just say it’s a plant?”

The grandmaster laughed for a long time. When he finally caught his breath and stopped, he asked again: “Then tell me what tea art is.”

Yu Tingzhi: “An artistic form of expression of tea culture.”

Before the grandmaster could react, Meng Chi said speechlessly: “Now I really feel you’re a university teacher.”

The grandmaster laughed twice and turned to look at Meng Chi: “Then you tell me.”

Meng Chi, however, suddenly fell into deep thought. He seemed unable to answer this question, so he asked in return: “Grandmaster, what do you think tea art is?”

“Tea art, ah,” the grandmaster said slowly in a leisurely tone, “is probably just pretentiously brewing a pot of tea with an air of elegance.”

Pretentiously elegant.

This word that could hardly be called complimentary, coming from the grandmaster’s mouth, actually felt a bit incongruous—yet it did not leave Meng Chi feeling very shocked.

Perhaps it was because the grandmaster had always been strict with others and lenient with himself. In tea-art teaching he strictly followed the behavioral codes of tea masters when instructing students, yet in his own daily life he always did whatever was comfortable.

“I used to ask your master this question too. He, like you, couldn’t answer,” the grandmaster said, then suddenly laughed once. “Now he should be able to answer it.”

Meng Chi subconsciously asked: “What is it then?”

The grandmaster glanced at him and ruthlessly asked in return: “Does it have anything to do with you?”

Meng Chi was stunned by the words, as if he suddenly understood what the grandmaster was saying.

“Take those people who come here looking for me to taste tea and discuss the Way. Some of them feel tea art is entertainment and recreation; some feel it is a pursuit of cultivation; still others feel it’s merely a profession,” the grandmaster said slowly, gazing at the white mist curling among the mountains.

“I won’t say they’re right, and I won’t say they’re wrong. Just as when I teach them how to make tea and how to brew tea, I’m only transmitting the skills I have mastered. How they make use of it, how they view it, and what kind of path they walk in the future—that’s all their own business, unrelated to anyone else.”

At this he paused, then turned to Meng Chi and said: “You’re the same.”

The legs grow on your own body. What path you walk is related only to what path you want to walk.

Author’s note:

Teacher Yu: Come walk into my trap—within three chapters we’ll arrange the next-time appointment.