On a recent visit to Cape Town, I met with Mingwei Tsai at Nigiro (a beautiful new teahouse inside Origin Coffee) in Cape Town's Der Waterkant district and over the 2+ hours that we shared tea, I learned how Mingwei's tea philosophy spills over into his daily life, filling it with more peace and more love and joy, as evidenced by his ready smile and childlike amusement with life.
Mingwei, a waste water engineer from Taiwan with a lifelong love for tea, developed Nigiro (Origin spelled backwards) to highlight the qualities of tea, especially as they contrast coffee. Where as coffee is hard, tea is soft. Coffee is masculine, tea is feminine. Coffee is is aggressive, tea is chilled out. It is these differences that make tea a perfect antidote to our hectic lives-- a solution to the problems brought on by the speed with which we run our lives; our cars, cell phones, and lack of time spent in nature.
In a way, a cup of tea is a little time out with nature that can be relished anywhere. Mingwei believes that if one comes to appreciate tea, they will not yell at their kids, smoke cigarettes or pollute our planet. That, like practicing yoga, the art and practice of taking time for tea will effortlessly seep softness and peace into your life, transforming it to one lived with more respect and intention and joy.
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