Countdown! One more week until the next – and for me, the last – PechaKucha Night Dali: Architecture with intention. It has been a challenge to get the program together – architects are extremely busy professionals running big companies and big projects across the globe. In that sense fashion designers are much easier to get together in a room! But, next Saturday it’s happening and I’m proud of another event with a diverse line-up of established architects and up and coming talent, Chinese and international, men and women designers, soloists or company directors, projects ranging from the CCTV tower in Beijing to a tiny house studio just around the corner in Xizhou. They all have one thing in common: a drive and a vision to shape the world we live in. I’m very excited!
Here is a snapshot video of the last PechaKucha I did in March – Pattern Recognition.
Final countdown
I’m not just counting down to my last event, but also to the moment I will get on a plane and fly to Bulgaria. Time is flowing by fast all of a sudden. I’m doing a lot of fun stuff with friends, such as organizing a three-day hash in Dali. Kunming’s finest runners, er, drinkers came to Dali and punished me for sending them on a gruelling hike up and down Cangshan.
After the PechaKucha event I’ll have three weeks of relative downtime – only working about 11 hours a week for my online job. I plan to cram in as much Yunnan goodness as I possibly can. On the menu: I still want to do the full two-day Cangshan hike, Tiger Leaping Gorge, but mostly just enjoy the final weeks in my lovely Dali home. Before I fly I will spend a week in Kunming, getting Ding Ding ready to come with me to Europe. One more rooftop party at Lost Garden and off I go.
Time for tea
It’s been pretty hectic, with some days working from 5am to midnight. Still, every morning I make time for the Artist’s Way and tea ceremony. I’ve started keeping a tea diary, a log book of sorts. Usually I drink my tea alone, sometimes with music, a couple of times with friends. It’s nice to experiment with it and see what each ceremony brings.
With one friend I started with a 15 minute meditation which was intimate and lovely. With another friend I was just chatting away. Some days it’s really calm, other days I find it impossible to still my mind. Some days I focus on very precisely tuning the brewing process and I other days I just go with the flow.
Every day it’s good, an anchor point, a safe space to retreat to amidst the chaos and changes. In preparation of my return to Europe I started reaching out to the global gong fu cha community and I’m looking forward to sharing tea with other nerds all over Europe, sharing the stillness and joy of this simple ritual. Grateful I can take it with me to Bulgaria, or anywhere in the world for that matter. I’m also very glad I tapped into this part of Chinese intangible heritage. I’m still disappointed I didn’t (yet!) learn fluent Chinese but at least I learned this.
on on！