Attending Tea Parties in the US, the British Isles, and the People's Republic of China with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
“The hors d’oeuvres are for the adults only,” said the English colleague of my mother, whom she had invited with his wife for tea at our house.
I, the eleven-year-old princess, was not going to be denied the liver pâté on crackers that my mother was serving as part of the tea. I went into my bedroom to execute my plan.
I immediately began making placards to wear over my chest and back. I wrote out my message, attached the placards with a string, and put them over my head.
I took the American flag out of my mother’s closet and reappeared in the living room. I circled in front of the coffee table before the English couple with the flag held high and the message “Equal Rights for Kids” emblazoned in red marker on the placards.
“You just have to like some children,” the Englishman said as he was guffawing American-style now. Victory won, I sat down nicely to enjoy the liver pâté and drink tannin-rich Red Rose™ tea from Canada that we always drank in my childhood home in Detroit, Michigan. I willingly fought for my tea, because I knew that “biscuits” known as “cookies” in America would soon appear.
Thanks to a trip I took to the British Isles with my mother and great-aunt when I was seven, I already knew what a tea held in store. On our trip, we visited my grandmother’s English pen pals, who plied us with cucumber, radish, and butter sandwiches served on white bread without crusts.
The sandwiches occupied the bottom tier of a three-tiered tea goodie tray. The smaller tier in the middle usually held dry yet sweet triangular scone muffins that tasted good once you dunked them in tea. The very top and smallest tier held dainty desserts and cookies. As a child, I munched away on cucumber sandwiches just waiting to get to the top tray.
More than the cookies, though, drinking tea even at the young age of eleven, conjured up the magic landscapes I had seen in the British Isles.
I liked standing in the doorways of the stone farmhouses we stayed in overnight and looking out over the misty, emerald fields with stone fences of irregular heights separating them. I always felt like I was dreaming while I was wide awake while looking at this scenery. Sipping tea helped me recall that otherworldly feeling.
Tea brought on other feelings in high school when I had the chance to visit the People’s Republic of China in 1979. At that time, China prided itself as having an “iron rice bowl” or social security blanket for all.
After reading about the Chinese war for independence, communes, and the Cultural Revolution, I had a rugged view of the Chinese, who wore blue Mao jackets.
How surprised I was to find that communists liked overstuffed furniture covered on the backs with white lace doilies. No matter where we went – train station reception rooms, hospitals, factories, hotel lobbies – we invariably sat through presentations and question-and-answer sessions in chairs like these with a warm cup of tea beside us.
Chinese tea cups offer countless play opportunities, especially while you are listening to a presentation about how tennis ball production has improved yearly since the 1939 Revolution.
The mug-sized teacups came with a cover. Every time you would take off the cover, you would get a cloud of jasmine-scented tea that you could waft toward you. Jasmine tea appeared to be China’s official function tea.
By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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