Mountains in a shroud of mist, hanging curtains of greenery…you are quite sure that nobody lives here…but —
Do you believe in six impossible things before breakfast?
You walk up the mountain trail, chasing not a white rabbit but a stray dog…whichever one though, it doesn’t matter. Time has stopped here regardless.
Here — a pocket of wonderland.
Yes, these are the mountains of Liuzhou, China. You have come at the best and most beautiful time of the year, which by every definition, means tea time. Here, it is always tea time. And someone quite mad is ready to serve.
Meet Cao Qing Li (曹庆励), master of metalworking and the other forgotten arts.
His abode is a mystical, stone temple of a place, with all the magic of a historical period drama. It has no place in our modern, fast-paced, brilliant world of dazzling lights and sharp honks — but it has air conditioning.
Now come in.
The master has offered you tea. It is the best kind of tea, steaming hot and poured into small porcelain cups. But don’t drink it quite yet. This kind of tea ceremony is best begun with all cups full.
While you’re waiting, take a look around instead. Look at the low table, the mats, and the shelves of pottery and metal tea pots. These are things that often linger at the edges of our imagination — things many see only in restaurants and film sets. But they are a reality. A reality oddly as ordinary as the air conditioning whirring in the background, through a cloud of cigarette smoke.
The tea has been poured. Take a sip and notice the works in front of you. The tea pot is handmade and the teacups are special — their gradient bottoms and light blue coating reflect a beautiful blue, yellow, green, top to bottom, when the cup is full. After you have finished, the master immediately refills your cup. This goes on for several rounds until the tea leaves have been seeped of flavor and you are ready to enter the master’s workshop.
Low and behold: the secret of the whole magic. It looks rusty and dim, but darkness is a key ingredient to art’s illumination.
See this plate of sheer metal, as bright as the moon. It is only a couple millimeters thick, yet banging it into the shape of a proper bowl or tea pot can take dozens of hours. And all around, pottery fills up the room like chunks of solidified sweat. The master however says his weeks are well spent, filled with a sense of accomplishment at the birth of each cup, each handle.
“I fix things too,” he says. “Using small metal rods. Just patch it right up and these sets look as good as new.” You finger one slowly, and notice an ornate flower lid.
“Oh yes, this is an ancient artifact. Old and coveted enough to be in a museum. But see, we don’t work too often with museums, because they can’t have us tinkering around with history. No — here we just see beauty.” And practicality. But then again, how much of modern practicality can you have in the middle of a mountain?
You thank him, and leave, walking past the same bamboo groves and statues as the ones on your way in.
Tick, tick, tick.
A dog runs past.
Suddenly, time is alive again, and you’re back in a leather-seat car, riding in our bright, dazzling world. Your Aunt is at the front with her DSLR camera, flipping through her shots of the master’s work. She’s a photographer and a student of the master, promoter and diligent disciple of his works. Her family and the master might meet up sometime this week for hot pot.
You turn back, looking at the mountains shrouded in mist, the hanging curtains of greenery where nobody seems to live…
But somebody does. And with bamboo mats and air-conditioning and dogs.
Evidently, there’s practicality in wonderland too.
Lives sustained on everything that seems impossible and ludicrous and distant and not — not proper, not stable.
But it feels so close, those substances of dreams. In fact, if you look closely, they’re everywhere, the paths less taken. In a pen, in a brush, in a book, or an instrument of brass…
Just submerge your head and look.
Don’t worry about what’s around you. Don’t worry about whether your sights are real or realistic or really there. They are. They’re there. And we’re all mad here. Just in different ways, about different things.
And if you believe in six impossible things before breakfast…
Well, they’re still going to be impossible. But it’s up to you to define what is and isn’t possible. Just remember: impossible isn’t as common as you think.
