Empires and Teacups

The roads carved through soaring mountains and dust-swept deserts would be meaningless without the junctions that connect them. At these points, souls from both sides of the path met to exchange whatever was worth exchanging, whether in matter or spirit. These axes of encounter diffused the components of human culture back and forth, weaving rich, multi-layered tapestries from strata of acceptance and resistance, rejection and assimilation, product and idea. And at these junctions—from Istanbul to Samarkand, Delhi to Xi'an—patches of meeting ground bloomed, yielding particularly fragrant fruit.

Of all these junctions, one of my recent favorites manifested in my mind’s eye at a teahouse opposite the Mughal Shia Mosque, in the heart of old Yangon.

Under the British Empire, from its seat on the Yangon River, the city became a vital commercial hub on the seam between Asia’s coast and its mountainous heart, between the east of the continent and the far western horizon. British and Burmese, Jews and Armenians, Hindustanis, Iranians, Afghans, and a dozen other nations turned the city into a space tightly woven in a warp and weft of trade, dreams, and colonial decadence, dotting its orderly avenues with temples to their gods, both in unity and in plurality.

Even today, long after the sun that never set has finally gone down, the streets and the bazaar complexes that link the decaying alleys still echo with other days—days when cotton, sugar, tea, and spices changed hands in coarse canvas sacks, and opium flowed in vast quantities from India, Turkey, and the rivers of Yunnan, only to be resold for great sums in the shops of Shanghai and Guangzhou, bringing the dissolving Qing Empire to its knees in sublime pleasure.

The small, dim teahouse is still managed by the lazy, pleasant hand of a pot-bellied Chinese fellow, perhaps a descendant of Kuomintang refugees, who is happy to chat in his mother tongue with guests from the mainland. Cups of Burmese tea, a strong black brew with condensed milk, are served alongside Chinese mooncakes filled with sweetened legumes and salted duck yolk, or spicy chicken samosas. Everyone has something to sip, swallow, and say; and if they don't, one can always offer a gap-toothed smile stained red by betel nut.

A heavy late-monsoon downpour drives more customers into the bustling space. They join the free half of a table to chew on a steamed bun, sip scalding tea, or inhale a local cheroot. Indian tea, Nestlé condensed milk, and New World tobacco mingle with Gujarati and a loose, exiled Chinese; the lips of one and all are filled with fragments of Burmese and locally made English tea biscuits.

It is pleasant and warm in the little teahouse across from the Mughal Shia Masjid. Time is long, the rain is heavy, and there is leisure to reflect on days gone by, on the people who remain, and on the trade in things great and small—and to order another cup of tea. Outside, the rain washes over the synagogues, mosques, stupas, and temples to Kali and Jesus, flowing into the sewers. It reminds us that every path has a final meeting point, and that everything—from eternal empires to steaming cups of tea—is destined to be washed away and pass.