A Teacup's Journey... and cookies...

The room was tight and didn’t exactly make sense as a room. Everything seemed to have been made to fit somewhere it couldn’t, or wouldn’t, or shouldn’t. A decidedly straight row of stairs somehow swayed outwards to accommodate the curve where a plasterer of a bygone era had made the wall suddenly bulge, belly-like, just a bit too far out into the room, and a wall that started out nice and flat and ordinary had somehow become cavernous and unreliable as it continued on into the dim light of the room. On and on.

“C’mon, c’mon,” the bent  figure in front of us insisted. “Must have it!”

Within the small space—more of a closet than a room, to be fair—the walls at first seemed to be formed from random blobs and wads of curious fabric, but upon closer inspection these proved to be a multitude of small, padded, cloth bags, beautifully stitched and fitted with drawstrings and wooden dongles and hung over wooden pegs that had been fitted into the walls. Where a peg was lacking, bags were securely stuffed between their fellows until the resulting space was all very well cushioned.

I looked down at my hands, and at the marvelous little glazed ceramic green and brown teacup, hand-thrown on a potter’s wheel by that very same bent figure who was guiding us into this world of cloth bags and uncertain angles.

“Cup needs bag. You take with you. Bus! Train! To work! Take and drink tea and cup will be safe in bag!”

So I must choose the right little padded traveling pouch for the ceremonial teacup I have just selected. There would be no leaving this vessel at home. It had to come with me, and to be used as a teacup.

“Don’t sit on shelf!” She had insisted through a patchwork maze of Mandarin and English and all those things that are lost in translation . “Use to drink!” It was very important that her wares not end up as decorations. No. They were crafted as vessels for tea, and must be put into service. I gave her my promise. I would USE this teacup.

But now I had to find a pouch for it amid a dizzying array of such things which were now coming at me from every corner. I looked to her for help.

“Which one does it go with?”

“Your teacup, your bag. Only you know.” And she abruptly turned to my travel companion and began fussing over another teacup pouch.

So, what to do? My teacup. My bag. Only I knew which one it needed. I closed my eyes, turned around, opened them, and there it was.

There it was. In that dim basement below a potter’s workshop in Shanghai, China. And not only did that lovely little teacup pouch keep that treasured teacup safe on a bus and a train (as promised by its maker), it also kept it safe on an airplane hop across an ocean. And I have kept my promise to that fiery little lady who guided me through that strange room of teacup bags, and who turned and glazed this lovely treasure.

This cup does not sit on a shelf as mere decor. It is used, to drink hot and soothing liquids, as the potter’s hands intended. It holds espresso today, perhaps tea tomorrow. Oh, and there were cookies, too.