A Farm Family Experience

A few weekends ago I woke up and headed over to Mao Kong, a nearby tea cafe, to meet with Cassie and the mother of a girl Cassie has since started to tutor.

I anticipated maybe an hour or so long meet and greet over tea before returning to a day of leisurely activities. Little did I know what was in store for the day.

It started off, as i already mentioned, with tea at Mao Kong. Afterwards the mother, who to this day i still don't know the name of (a week and a half later), suggested we go to "Talking 2" (A fav. expat hangout) for lunch.

Afterwards we headed over to the daughter's (Aerial) apartment where she stays during the week for school. The apartment building had a huge marble foyer that was spotless. The strict security of the building was apparent by the fact that you had to use a key card just to get through to door leading to the elevator. And again to get to the floor encoded on the key card. All other floors were inaccessible.

When we left the apartment building we drove an hour outside of Nanjing to the family's farmhouse in the country, an invitation extended to us while having lunch. The farmhouse was very nice but not what you would think of as a traditional floor plan (think a hotel with the doors exposed on the outside). Each room, (laundry, kitchen, bedrooms, etc.) were accessible by an outside walk way.

When we arrived we had a tour of the farm. Although the green houses containing a sort of rare flowering tree were interesting, the families pack of Tibetan mastiff's (47 in all) take precedent for a detailed explanation.

The dogs were kept in a separate kennel building away from the house. The dogs seem to lead a pretty leisurely life. There's an area where they can run and exercise as well as a kitchen staffed by workers who prepare meals for them. Apparently the dogs diet consists of fresh meat, yogurt, milk, and tea.

Once back inside we had tea while we sat around and chit chatted while dinner was being prepared. The parents seem to be quite the connoisseurs of tea. On hand they had several varieties of Puer tea (a particular type of tea that goes through a fermentation and aging process). Interested readers should search "puer tea" on wikipedia.org. We had two different types of puer that had been aged 20 years. They tasted great!

Dinner consisted of several Thailand dishes and was served "family style". Generally everything tasted good and just about every dish was a first time experience. After dinner the parents showed us several of their guest bedrooms and extended an invitation for Cassie and I to come and visit for a weekend sometime.

The highlight of the evening happened right before we left. They gave us four bricks of the 20 year old Puer tea. Although its a bit difficult to gauge how much the tea might actually be worth it's easy to say that even if we walked into any local tea store in Nanjing the equivalent would be pricey by American standards.

So, after arriving back home around 9PM, about nine hours after initially leaving for what I thought would be a brief encounter, I was exhausted but glad I was able to partake in the afternoon events. It was a pretty amazing day all around.