Even the simplest drink can have the most significant meaning. Growing up in the United States in a coffee-drinking household, tea was something that the British drank across the pond on fancy china while they ate finger sandwiches. Fortunately, I have since discovered the wonderful world of tea. Now, tea symbolizes the Russian language that I am learning and the Kazakh culture that I have luckily been able to be a part of for the past few months.
In his work Testimonies About Tea, Kazakh poet Anuar Duisenbinov, turns his personal relationship with tea and the stories of others into a collection of poems to explore the complexity of a drink that is valued across cultures. Duisenbinov wrote these poems as a reflection on the installation Samovar found at the Hayward Gallery. The shining silver sculpture not only contrasts the dull, weather-beaten walls of the gallery but symbolizes the history of tea through multicultural and colonial lenses.
Anuar Duisenbinov strives to tell the same history through the medium of poetry. He interviewed other artists working in Kazakhstan who came from many different backgrounds including Kazakhs, Tatars, Koreans, and Russians in order to collect stories about the meaning of tea from across cultures. The poems are narratives about different rituals and traditions surrounding tea drinking, but some experiences are not as fondly reminiscent as others. While many associate tea with their childhood, others are more conscious of the drink’s colonial past and have difficulties reconciling that history with happy memories of their youth.
Tea played the role of a colonizing agent for centuries, the British Empire serving as a primary example of the drink’s influence in world history. British tea companies encouraged and aided in colonizing parts of the world like India in order to increase the availability of tea back in England. The image of tea is so entwined with the former colonial power that one of the first stories American schoolchildren learn about the history of the United States is the Boston Tea Party which was an act of political protest against Britain’s unfair taxation of the colonists. The protestors threw thousands of pounds of tea from the British East India Company into the Boston Harbor. Thus, in America, tea grew from simply a drink to becoming a symbol of protest over a colonizing power.
When discussing colonialism, however, the poems in this collection are not referencing the British Empire, but instead, Russia. In one poem entitled “Colonizer’s tea,” Duisenbinov writes:
“I read in primary sources that explorers and military commanders
of the Russian Empire
advised those who go to the Kazakh lands to bring along tea and a samovar
so that they (the Kazakhs) would make tea drinking their tradition”
While tea drinking is an important element of Kazakh culture, its history is blackened by the stain of Russian occupation. Through Testimonies About Tea, Duisenbinov manages to place these valuable criticisms of the colonizing drink amidst poems that praise it without trivializing the reverence other people have for tea.
Despite these different perspectives, one common theme throughout the poems is the link between tea and identity. Duisenbinov begins the collection with his own testimony, beautifully and lyrically bringing the audience into his own story about tea. He repeatedly asks “Где я,” or “Where am I,” accompanied by different roles he was supposed to play throughout his life like the “good son” or “responsible husband.” However, the stanza that follows, that describes him as a “budding poet” and a “weariless party animal” to reveal Duisenbinov’s true self.
By contradicting all of these identities and exploring the very essence of himself in a poem about tea, Duisenbinov shows that a person’s relationship with tea goes far beyond sipping a hot drink out of a mug. Similarly, the poems that follow are about much more than simply tea, and yet they grew from people’s memories about the seemingly ordinary drink.
I thought my relationship with tea was ordinary too, but reading Testimonies About Tea caused me to adopt a new perspective. Even though I come from a culture that has not been greatly influenced by tea, I have a story that Anuar Duisenbinov could try to turn into poetry–everyone does.
What makes this collection of poems so unique and compelling is its author. He transformed memories and narratives into verses, changing the way the stories were told and could be perceived. Each poem is written in the original Russian and translated into English to make Duisenbinov’s verses more accessible to everyone who wants to read them. Just as tea has diffused across cultures and throughout the world, through translation, these testimonies are able to reach audiences around the globe.
Testimonies About Tea offers a unique perspective on a universal drink. It gives a voice to average people and their individual identities that are all tied to tea in some way. Even though I am only a few years into my tea drinking journey, Duisenbinov’s work reminds me that everyone relates to the drink in different, yet significant ways. Whether it is a representation of oppression or a symbol of family and childhood, Anuar Duisenbinov’s poems are emblematic of the power of tea.
