I love you, I just called to say how much I care ooh oho I care Hi everybody welcome back we are super
excited. Charen magazine is here. Yes and in today's video we want to share a
bit about why we do this magazine and what does Charen, this word exactly mean.
And what's so special about this magazine compared to the rest out?
Yeah you bet. And if we have a little bit of extra time maybe we'll even share
with you some of the challenges we had bringing this thing into the light.
So let's get to that right now!
2018 was an awesome year for us. Back in the spring we had our annual tea trip
where normally Zhen would go on the tea trips and I would stay behind to hold down
the fort, this year, or last year in 2018, I went along on my first official tea
trip and it was amazing! Yeah it was excellent. I learned so much took took so
many images so many shots and videos. Tons of notes it was like learning through a
fire hose. Zhen usually goes over with her mom, Jianli. Jianli leads the trip.
She is Zhen's mom and our tea consultant and I got to learn from her
this time first hand to see her on the scene and more important being there I
also realized a lot of my concepts were just a little bit off. Even though they
had been explained to me, being there I was able to see, oh! I didn't quite have
that right. And we were eager to find a way to share those little 'aha' moments
with you. That's right even though this is not my first a tea trip it was still
very interesting, the people I met and being in the field, it's very
intriguing as well as thought-provoking. So I really want to share those ideas
with you, not to mention all those images, pictures and all those writings we had
jotted down during the trip. I just wanted to find a platform, a media, that can kind
of help me bundle up all those informations and present them in a more
more beautiful way. That's right when Jen told me that she wanted to do a magazine
I just rolled my eyes and thought "oh my god... more work!" I didn't really get why
wouldn't we use our blog or YouTube or something like that. Right. But as we
started to work on the magazine and I realized... and I came back to those
sort of things that I had clicked on I realized that a magazine was the best
way to package this. So that it has a theme kind of theme and a flow and even
though the each article seems unrelated as you go through the magazine and I
think you'll, it will hit you too, that you'll see these are all linked in a way
mm-hmm since it's a film and I who did the magazine you might wonder what we
didn't just call it ZhenTea magazine. Yeah I mean we were so busy doing this thing we
actually didn't even think about a title until we were until we could actually
see the light at the end of the tunnel. Yes. And then we realized we can't call
it ZhenTea magazine. Our mission is to bring accurate information about Chinese
tea and tea culture to you guys. Yeah just like all the education things we're
doing is trying to tell people more about Chinese tea not just about our tea
but to raise people's awareness of Chinese tea and its culture. That's right
and we also wanted a name that was easy to pronounce with no "ZH" in
the title, no ZH. No starting with "X". No long string of vowels that is
perplexing to pronounce. So Charen, I think, fits the bill pretty nicely. Yes
and in Chinese the Charen literally means tea person so I prefer this than
calling tea master. Or tea guru or something like that. Right because I feel like when
tea become a part of a person this kind of almost simplistic approach is more
elegant. Elegant humble simple. Right. Yes. Simple but it's more sincere, it's more
truth. Yes.
So what makes this magazine so
special compared to all the other tea magazines out there (are there that many...)? I don't know, but first
and foremost is that we don't go to China to source tea. So thanks to my mom and our
tea consultant Jianli, who has been Chinese tea industry in China for over
20 years so that experience means a lot when it comes to. Absolutely, I mean when I
was there I was, I knew she was an expert in Chinese tea, I visited her before in
China, but when we actually went to the field and I saw at first hand it was
really amazing the way she's able to communicate with the farmers and not
just a farmer, but [different] farmers all over China. Because she has been traveling like
all over all the tea regions in China she can't easily articulate black tea
green tea different processes advantages. What different steps are bringing
bringing to the tea so it really helps us to get to know the real Chinese tea
industry. What's happening there, and to share those informations with you like you
know sometimes sometimes when people having those a super-aged teas or
award-winning tea from China as if it means it's super good quality or
something. We you know... Yeah we kind of have to be polite and smile but there's
a lot of, ah, sort of, there's more information than just the 'award' going on
there it's something special. That's right and a lot of things are just for...
Because we're in the industry we know what's going on rather than just the
title the winner the gold award. Another example, people, a lot of people love
Tie Guan Yin. And it's quite a famous tea. Very famous. But do you know when it
started to become famous how did it even become so famous, not just in China but
all around the world and what is this has to do with Da Hong Pao's success?
I didn't even know it had something to do it
yeah it's quite interesting. That could be a good a good article, or a good,
maybe another video. Yeah let me know if you're interested. I think that's a
better article. Write down the details, that kind of thing. I'm curious now...
Yeah so I think that's our biggest advantage. That's a huge one! Another one
we have is, I'm a relative newcomer in tea so we've already talked about Jianli
More than 20 years experience a specialist, a professional in tea.
Full-time in China, so we have that. Then you have me. New. [Only] Four years learning
about tea as fast as I can. But I see that as an advantage because I'm gonna
have a lot of the same questions the you guys are gonna have about what
does that mean really or why did you do that or what's going on with this tea, or
why does this taste so different from such a small seemingly small change and
in the middle we've got [da-da-da-daa!] Zhen! Yes who speaks Chinese obviously and English
and most importantly I know tea so I think that this really helps me to link
them and try my best to make the translations or interpretations really
accurate. Yes. Like how we point out when some people translate Shu Pu'er to cooked
Pu'er. It's technically wrong and misleading and those little things are
not rare in tea. No, in fact it's full of those little.. what's the worst thing that
can happen is you everybody thinks everybody's understood but actually
there is a break down. And you know what it's not just in tea. Just a few weeks
back I don't know if you heard of that? the Dolce & Gabanna they're racist against
the Chinese or some scandal like that but when I watch that commercial
what I realized is basically some English copywriter, English language
copywriter, wrote down the jokes and translated to the grammatically correct
Chinese and made that into a commercial but from the very Chinese side it's like
really don't get the joke it's not like a we're so fragile it's
not like D&G purposely made fun of us. It's just a
perfect lost in translation scenario. Yeah. Where you take something that's
comical in English and it doesn't translate and it doesn't come off as
comical and it can ... because I've seen some Chinese comedy .. and while I don't
get it they make fun of themselves. there's no problem there. it's the way
The devil was in the details. Right. When I watched that commercial my thought
was what does that mean in Chinese Chinese. I was like... okay. What?? But if I
translate their Chinese the back to English it's really similar to stand-up
comedy and stuff. Then I kind of get what they're doing. So you know even big
brands have those kind of mistakes or stuff is so. The problem is definitely
not unique to tea. Absolutely. And that is actually one of our biggest challenges
the hardest part in making this magazine. That was definitely our biggest
challenge and we spent lots of time going over that. Yeah. For this reason Zhen and I
went over the whole magazine sentence-by-sentence and word by word to
make sure that we got every little piece of information conveyed properly, correct
Right, Right. It's really easy to think you've got it and miss, and leave a gap.
I know it sounds really silly that we did it. Because a lot of times we were
actually talking about things that that we mutually understand or we thought we
understood each other. But as the conversation went, we realized that there
were lots of little meanings, the connotations, that were lost. Subtleties.
Right, so you know it's not a secret that English and Chinese have
different language, a different cultural background, but a lot of times
we neglect. We thought the technology tool like the translation tool
really just solve the problem. It helps, but it doesn't solve it. Right. So when
you translate a lot of nuance are lost or tones what that implies.
The worst thing that can happen is, like we said before, is you get into that
situation where everybody thinks they've understood each other but information
was lost. There was nuance and detail, that was just not conveyed. Yes. We want to
make sure that doesn't happen here ever. Mm-hmm. And it's not pleasant you
know like - ah. Two adults go through those sentence some of them are really just
the simple stuff but we want to just make sure that the articles the writings
we're presenting to you is clear and for English speaking, English speaker's
it's you understand it in your truly English ... Does that make sense? Yeah
would like... one example is I rewrote a whole section that Zhen had written. I was
editing it and so I just sort of I thought I simply massaged it and kind of
fixed up the grammar and just polished it up a little bit.
No! I completely changed the meaning I had to go back and redo it after a
little bit of discussion... (argument) ... right because I had lost kind
of waste of my time but that exact misunderstanding caught us. Yes. Sometimes it's not
because of the whole wording was wrong or something was wrong it's just a few
key words. Or the tone that could've misled him to believe something
else then I thought so yeah that was definitely not fun but yes learning a
necessity for our message. That's right, and not to mention, I'm an engineer, right, so I have
been I've built my whole life around avoiding writing. And here I am having
the write. So yeah no not so fun for me [either], I prefer to write in Chinese I have
no problem, but English I I feel like that lost a lot of hair, due to stress
But we hope we nailed it we hope that you really enjoy it and that
the meaning is all there. Yes. Special thanks to those who have helped us
improve the magazine yeah for sure we had a couple instances where specific
people jumped out and threw us some advice. In particular a couple come to
mind we had a one Reddit user, Sundaemondaytuesdae, gave us some great tips
on how we can just fix the cover a little bit
and another Reddit user. I actually made changes according to his suggestions. I
could put the before-and-after here. You will see, minor, but I think that made
it better. It was a big help and it's a pretty hard process putting a
magazine together and Andrew_brew, another Reddit user who is also a tea
lover and a graphic designer gave Zhen some really encouraging comments. That
really made my day I was doing all those like layout stuff with a software
zero experience it's just at some point it just felt like everything I did
it's not right you know like just as nothing worked and when I see that
that's the confidence a little bit of confidence that I need at that moment
yeah I was blown away by the end result and I mean just amazing. But of course
there are tons of a room so for us to improve since this is our very first
issue. Absolutely so we need you guys to give us comments, suggestions, criticism
is very welcome we love it. Yeah. Hit us in the comments, hit us however you want
social media it doesn't matter we're out here. Right. And I share with you guys how
I want this magazine to go in the future what are the contents I wanted to bring
in and of course I look forward to hearing what you want to read what do you want
to hear from us so don't be shy. yeah don't be shy foreshore because it's
spring is coming up it's right around the corner and we will soon find
ourselves boots on the ground and China again so the more suggestions we get
from you the more we can grab that information when we're over there. That's
right. Finally you can find the magazine on our web site at ZhenTea.ca/charen all
we're asking for. All the links are below as well. All the links will be
down below in the description, and all we're asking for is your email
address and you can enjoy the magazine and let us know how you like it if you
like this video please give it a thumb up and remember to subscribe to our
Channel. Keep it steeping! Keep Steeping! bye bye!