Wen Chen's View

Legends say that the ancient Chinese deity Shennong, who lived 5,000 years ago, discovered tea. Shennong sampled 365 kinds of plants to test how they can influence one's health. He chewed tea leaves to prevent himself from poisons. The book "The Classics of Chinese Medicine" documented these 365 herbs. Before 200 B.C., ancient Chinese literature talked about tea soup and tea porridge. They probably used fresh leaves. About 2000 years ago, people created tea bricks by breaking, compressing, drying fresh tea leaves. Although the dried tea bricks were convenient for storage and transportation, they tasted quite bitter. The 7th century (or Tang Dynasty) marked the transition of tea from medicine to daily drink. People discovered that by steaming the fresh leaves and squeezing out the juice, tea became less bitter. Although it was still grassy, the tea-soup was pretty good as a daily drink after adding ginger and salt. Tang Dynasty people prefer metal teacups because precious ...

  Before I came to the U.S. for graduate school, I grew up in an education system filled with communist propaganda. In 1995, as a Ph.D. student at the California Institute of Technology, I argued with my colleagues, insisting that the Tiananmen Massacre never happened. After they showed me pictures and videos, I broke down in tears. As a high school student in China, the official message I received about 1989 was that students were "anti-China." and killed many soldiers. We even saw pictures of Chinese soldiers' burnt bodies on all TV programs and newspaper pages. I believed every word the Chinese government said. Ever since I had a memory, people told me that the Party loved me more than my parents did. Just a couple of weeks after June 4th, 1989, I came home seeing my Dad shouting at the TV, "You said nobody died, what about those red marks on the Square?" He was trembling with anger. The moment he saw me, he kept his mouth shut and left the room. My parents n...

Before the 7th century, Chinese people regarded tea as medicine and food. One may perceive this concept from the culture preserved in some Chinese ethnic groups isolated in rural areas. Because of their disconnection from the outside world, they kept some ancient traditions for thousands of years. For example, the Jino Chinese ethnic group in Southwest China has a "tea leaf salad" made from fresh tea leaves mixed with red chili pepper, minced garlic, ginger, salt, and mountain spring water. The Bai ethnic group, also in Southwest China, is famous for its "Three-Course Tea" to welcome guests. The first course of "Bitter Tea" was a direct brew of baked and ground tea leaves. The bitter flavor reminds one that life starts with hardship. The second course was "Sweet Tea"  A host added honey and baked walnut chips to brewed tea. So after enduring hardship, one can taste the happiness of life. The final course was "Mixed Flavor Tea" with hone...

Recently, more and more news about election fraud emerged. I noticed that several statistical analyses of the election data showed the possibility of fraud (besides the whistleblowers and witnesses). Election integrity is the foundation of American Democracy. We have been trusting our election system for many years. However, the digital era made any fraud easy. It is not a partisan issue. These allegations need investigations because election fraud can affect any candidate in any party. I am troubled to see that social media like Twitter and Facebook openly censored topics like the source of coronavirus, election fraud, and different opinions. So did most of the mainstream media. All of these reminded me of my personal experience in Communist China. I came to the U.S. in 1994, totally believed that the Tiananmen Massacre never happened. Since the Communist Party control all Chinese media, I only got fully-controlled news when I was in China. During the past 21 years, I have been an act...

There are two kinds of plants for tea-making. Camellia Assamica is a kind of tall trees with large leaves. Grown in India and Southwest China, these leaves are suitable for making black tea. Green tea or oolong tea is from leaves of Camellia Sinensis, small leaf shrubs that thrive in East Asia, although these delicate leaves are great for making all kinds of tea.   Green tea is an unfermented tea. Fresh leaves were harvested when they were tender, then laid out in the air for a while to reduce moisture. The withered leaves are rolled or pressed into shapes, then heated dry to form the final products. Because it is unfermented, green tea is the best when fresh.  During the drying process, flower tea can be created by adding fragrant flowers. Black tea is completely fermented tea. After the withering process, tea leaves were piled together and kept warm for a fermenting process. Completely fermented leaves are then dried to form the final products. Because they are fermented, bl...

I was born and raised in Communist China. My parents survived the great famine in the 1950s when 30 million Chinese died from starvation. They went through the great cultural revolution in the 1960s and 70s when 2 million intellectuals died from the persecution by the party. In 1989, the party killed 10,000 students and citizens during the Tiananmen Massacre. Just ten years later, the party started massive persecution towards Falun Gong. It is a traditional Chinese meditation practice based on the principle "Truthfulness-Compassion-Tolerance" that attracted 70 million Chinese people. Unfortunately, the Communist Party cannot tolerate any independent thinking to gain popularity. Millions of Falun Gong practitioners were detained, tortured, and became victims of the forced organ harvesting. In the U.S., it takes years to wait for matching organs from someone who dies from accidents. But Chinese hospitals promise to find donors within days because they already have millions of F...

As survivors of the Great Famine in China, my in-laws insisted that they would only plant edible plants in our garden. Fortunately, roses are edible, so they have been blooming in the front yard. The backyard has dozens of vegetables. My in-laws planted this row of chives eight years ago. Chive takes a few months to establish its root. It was worth the patience to wait because this perennial vegetable lasts for many years. Every couple of days, we harvest a patch of chives by cutting them down to the root level. We start from one end of the row. By the time we reach the other end, the beginning patch is ready to be harvested again. During the organic chive growing, the only difficulty we encountered was aphid. Fortunately, it only happened twice. We had to cut down the whole row to the root level. The aphids disappeared as there was no more food for them. After another two months, a fresh row of chives was back. My husband's family is from Northern China, where many dishes use chiv...