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Source text - English Cups and teapots used to drink tea are small. This may be among the first of various impressions that The Westerner has when invited to drink traditional ‘gong fu’ tea with the Chinese tea lover. This simple fact may not be as conspicuous to the Chinese, who have grown up with these tools as a part of their everyday environment. Nevertheless, the teacup, in the hand of a Westerner mostly unfamiliar with Chinese tea culture, cannot help but draw the uninitiated drinker’s attention to this curious relationship in scale – the largeness of the hand compared to the smallness of the cup.
And as the Westerner samples the tea, if he is at all sensitive, he will begin to notice that the smallness of the cup is drawing the drinker, himself, to focus on the liquid that is within it. This contrast in scale increases the sense of preciousness of this liquid. After all, if the Chinese, who seem to enjoy loading up the dining table with so many dishes of food, only present me with such a small portion of tea, indeed this drink must be of great preciousness!
And so he takes care to drink it. He takes care to taste it. And this heightened attention to the liquid and its taste actually produces a change in consciousness. This is not to mention that the environment of the teahouse, with its organic, natural colors and materials – stone, wood, ceramic, bamboo, the beauty in the craftsmanship of the pots and the tea basin, the elegance of the writings and paintings that appear on scrolls about the walls, even on the cups and pots themselves, the carefulness of the preparation of the tea, perhaps the sounds of pipa or guzheng in the background have all contributed and set him up for this inevitable change in consciousness.
Be one from West or East, that which can alter our consciousness and remove us, if only for a brief stint, from the cares and distractions of our modern world, that thing is indeed a welcomed and appealing treasure. And it will not be easily forgotten.
But from this experience, our Westerner is likely to draw a mistaken conclusion. He will assume that the smallness of the cup was designed specifically in order to produce this effect on him. Or, rather, if he has not yet experienced this tea tasting, and has simply looked on the smallish implements, even less informed, he may simply conclude that the cups and pots are at such a scale so as to invest them with a certain quaintness that has a definite appeal as well. But there too, he would be mistaken.
His mistake is forgivable, of course. He does not have the familiarity with tea preparation and drinking to recognize that the size of the cups and pots is first and foremost a practical matter. He would likely never realize without an explanation that the primary role of the size of these simple and elegant implements is to control the temperature of the tea both as it is steeped and as it is served.
But if we could have seen inside the mind of the Westerner, we may find other misconceptions. As he watched the awakening of the tea, the washing of the tea in the novel cup that is the gaiwan, the transfer from the gaiwan to the ‘dao bei’, the washing of the teacups, and the repeating of the preparations in order to serve the tea for drinking, the careful handling of each cup, the setting of the cups on the smallish mats before each drinker – this quiet and beautiful flow of motion, of rolling translucent liquids that play in the light, the handling of strange and beautiful implements, many of which he has never before seen and can only guess at their functions, he often is under another false assumption. He believes the progress of events represent a sort of ‘ceremony’ or ‘ritual’.
Because he does not know the underlying functions of all of this outpouring of quiet and deliberate action, and yet is at the same time keenly aware of the calming mood it creates, he uses these terms. But it should be understood that these terms – ‘ceremony’, ‘ritual’ - are at heart religious terms. And as such, they imply that what is carried out in the preparation of the tea is primarily symbolic in its nature. Were he more informed he would realize that in fact all elements that he witnessed, were they broken down one by one, have but a practical purpose first and foremost. While perhaps one or another of the actions could have been dispensed with, or could have been abbreviated, doing so would have been at the expense of some aspect of responsible tea preparation, be it cleanliness, controlling of the temperature, taste of the tea, or even simple courtesy, such as washing (and warming) the cups before the eyes of their would be handlers.
In one sense, you might say that our Westerner has overestimated his Chinese brethren in this matter – assigning to the discoverers of these ancient processes a depth of meaning that was not intended, attributing to the Easterner a sense of mystery that he, and other members of his culture, are accustomed to perceiving, or perhaps imagining.
But we should not blame our uninitiated Western friend, as his own artistic traditions set him up for such queer assumptions. As one example, take the tradition of calligraphy that he may know of, which involves taking the very simple forms of the letters of the alphabet and adding ornamentations, investing words or characters with beauty by adding to them flourishes of the pen, or other nuances to augment and stylize their forms.
So he would be required to shed this notion of calligraphy as an exercise in ornamentation, were he to successfully approach the great traditions of Chinese calligraphers who recognize that there is an order inherent in the characters themselves, and to render them beautifully means to mine the characters, their structure, their relationships, for elegant and appropriate expressions. No, the Chinese calligrapher does not make a business of ornamentation and decoration, as is done in the calligraphy of the West.
But we have strayed from the topic at hand – that of enjoying tea.
So before we dismiss our Western friend because of his misconceptions, we might take care to notice that which he has certainly not failed to appreciate. He has felt the power and potential of tea drinking to transport us to a place that is spiritual. Indeed, the appreciation of a beverage and its qualities is a material enjoyment at heart. But somehow, unlike the feast offered by a sumptuous table of rich delights, the material pleasure of tasting tea is somehow transmuted into a spiritual experience – not a sensual one.
What the Westerner might not have perceived is that the way to the spiritual was not to aim directly at it per se, but was gotten at by forging a path through the material, the practical, the simple and unrefined. Just as the calligrapher derives his art from the character itself, and not from drawing in other forms to add to it, the way to heaven, we might find, is not to look outside of ourselves and our world, but to seek within it.
While the tea drinker, whether from East or from West, finds a spiritual enjoyment in his experience of tea, we must, at the same time, confess that tea is not unique in its potential for us to realize spirituality in our lives through the seemingly mundane. This same potential exists in our daily work, in how we handle our relationships, in the exercise of propriety, how we conduct our affairs, personal or professional. No, tea drinking is not unique in its vulnerability as an activity open for us to spiritualize. Maybe, because of the ease which it brings these traits to the surface, tea drinking is a challenge to us, a call to us, to invest with goodness, propriety, attention, care and love, all aspects of our daily living. The beautiful tradition and culture of tea that the Chinese have discovered and have had the privilege to have kept alive for so long, quietly reminds us that this noble goal is indeed within our reach in each day and in each and every moment.
Chinese to English: Cooperative innovation of tourism in Pan-Pearl River Delta ara bvased on a relational model of capacity composition
Source text - Chinese 合作创新是区域发展 的重要路径之一。面临日趋激烈的国际竞争环 境，加速我国由世界旅游大国向旅游强国迈进，必须进一步增强区域之间的旅游合作创新。泛珠三角区域横跨我国东中西三大地带，旅游经济互补性强，具有资源优化配置和旅游合作创新的巨大空 间。2016 年初出台的《国务院关于深化泛珠三角区 域合作的指导意见》（国发〔2016〕18 号）中明确将 “促进区域创新驱动发展”“加强社会事业领域合 作”作为发展目标；更在“加强社会事业领域合作” 方面，提出“构建务实高效、互惠互利的区域旅游合 作体系”的具体要求。可见，泛珠三角旅游合作已经摆在了十分突出的位置。为此，本文选取2015年的样本数据，借助能力结构理论，对泛珠三角9 个省 区旅游合作创新能力结构、能力结构耦合度及利益分配进行测度，分析不同省区在旅游合作创新中获益效果的空间关联，提出加快泛珠三角旅游合作创 新的建议和构想。试图通过精准的方法论支持，在理论上深化对泛珠三角旅游合作创新的理解，探讨其旅游合作创新的深层次规律，以期指导该区域旅游业合作创新的实践。
Translation - English Cooperative innovation is one of the important ways to advance regional development. In the face of increasingly fierce competitive environment around the world, in order to speed up China's advancement from a major country to a powerful country in terms of tourism, it is necessary to further enhance cooperative innovation in tourism among different regions. Stretching across the east, the central and the west regions of China, Pan-Pearl River Delta (Pan-PRD) area features strong complementarity of tourism economy and presents an enormous space for better allocation of resources and cooperative innovation of tourism. The Guidelines of the State Council on Deepening Cooperation in Pan-PRD Area (GF [2016] No. 18) unveiled at the beginning of the year 2016 explicitly takes ¡°promoting regional innovation-driven development¡± and ¡°enhancing cooperation in the field of social programs¡± as development objectives, and even raises the specific requirements of ¡°creating a pragmatic, highly efficient and reciprocal regional tourism cooperation system¡± for ¡°enhancing cooperation in the field of social programs¡±. It is thus evident that tourism cooperation in the Pan-PRD area has been placed at a prominent position. Therefore, using sample data from 2015, with the help of capacity composition theory, this paper proposes suggestions and ideas on speeding up cooperative innovation of tourism in the Pan-PRD area by measuring the innovative capacity composition of tourism, capacity composition coupling and benefits distribution in the nine provinces and regions in the Pan-PRD area and analyzing the spatial associations of different provinces and regions in profitability effect in cooperative innovation of tourism. This paper attempts to, through support of accurate methodologies, deepen understanding and discuss the underlying rules in cooperative innovation of tourism in Pan-PRD Area with a view to guiding the practice of cooperative innovation of tourism in this area.
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Master's degree - 中国地质大学
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Years of experience: 22. Registered at ProZ.com: Apr 2007. Became a member: Feb 2016.
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