tara hung

人們生活在競爭裏頭。

爭出來的命，

一種叫工人，

一種叫商人，

母親就常跟他說，

潮州人是一種命，上海人是另一種命。

那是百年以來寫下的宿命。

Human kind live in competition.
A life fought into being—
one kind called worker,
another called merchant.

Mother told him often:
a Teochew person is one kind of fate,
a Shanghainese is another.

That a destiny written over a hundred years.

「葡萄牙人是最早在中國發現茶葉的歐洲人。」

「他們還在錫蘭發現肉桂。」

「十六世紀，葡萄牙殖民錫蘭；十七世紀，輪到荷蘭；十九世紀，才到英國殖民錫蘭。」

「阿拉伯商人，隨着歐洲殖民的路線銷售咖啡。」

「錫蘭幾乎過度瘋狂地種起咖啡。」

「咖啡葉鏽病的出現令錫蘭的咖啡失收。」

「農民在種咖啡的土壤播種茶樹。」

「聽說印度阿薩姆茶的種子，在錫蘭咖啡的土壤裏長出一種特別的香味。」

「十九世紀，錫蘭茶葉第一次在英國市場出現。」

「所以這茶葉是從咖啡的灰燼裏，種出來的。」

"The Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama established a maritime trade route to the Far East via the Cape of Good Hope as early as 1497."

 

"Ceylon also achieved world prominence for its spices, producing the entire world output of cinnamon in the late 1700s."

 

"The Portuguese were the first Europeans to arrive (1505) remaining until 1656 when the Dutch took control, eventually followed by the British in 1796.

The status of British Crown Colony was bestowed on the island in 1802."

 

"Coffee had achieved plantation status around 1823–25 triggering a land rush a few decades later. Speculators invested on a massive scale."

 

"Early in 1869 the discovery on Galloola Estate of reddish orange blotches on the underside of yellowing leaves on coffee bushes indicated the presence of leaf rust fungus or coffee rust (Hemileia vastatrix), popularly known as coffee blight. Defoliation of countless fields of coffee bushes rapidly ensued. Despite every effort, including the burning of damaged leaves, to prevent the outbreak from spreading (there was no known cure) in the moist conditions, the demise of the island’s main cash crop was complete within a quarter of a century. The coffee industry in Java, southern India and Natal in southern Africa as well as east Africa, including Malawi, subsequently suffered a similar fate causing planters to concentrate more on tea production.

Desperate coffee planters progressively switched to tea in the last quarter of the nineteenth century."

 

"Tea was interplanted with coffee."

 

"By 1880 tea had become a successful new venture, so much so that Ceylon was offering to the world fine quality high grown teas

capable of challenging the established teas of India and China."

 

"Ceylon tea had acquired a reputation for distinctive aroma and flavour."

 

"By the time the coffee industry in Ceylon had totally collapsed, the phoenix crop of tea had risen from the fertile coffee ashes."

 

The Tea Industry, Hall (2000)

「你認為種族是什麼？」

記者問古拉。

「一個人住在他自己的世界，

他只相信自己，

而不相信世界的膚色是不存在的，

種族之念約莫是這樣一回事。」

「貧窮不在乎你的膚色，

貧窮不在乎你的宗教背景，貧窮不在乎你的種族。

當你貧窮，你就是貧窮。

一個卡達山土著是窮人，

一個馬拉人是窮人，

一個華人也可以是窮人。」