Tea by the Sea: Sharing Culture and Freedom
As I wandered barefoot along the familiar beach near my home, watching the sunset in pink and orange hues over the sea, I spotted Daniel, a friend I'd met through the local sauna where he worked as a banya boy and manager.
Daniel sat on a purple towel with a small camp stove, preparing tea on the sand. His setup was impressive: a kettle on a single burner, next to a ceremonial tea tray, with a teapot, loose leaf tea, and small tea cups. I gave him a thumbs up, admiring the setup as I said hello. He invited me to sit and share a cup of tea.
As I sat down, the warm air was alive with the sound of free-spirited friends playing guitar and singing behind us, and the lights of fishing boats glowed green on the horizon. It was an evening that felt timeless and deeply present, surrounded by good company.
Daniel was preparing pu-erh, a fermented Chinese tea known for its earthy depth and flavor that evolves with each steep. He used his ceremonial but rustic and battered tea set, splattered with red paint as if forgotten on the floor of an art studio. He rinsed the leaves and poured the tea with a kind of ceremonial devotion.
As we sat, I mentioned that growing up in the US, I just microwaved water in a mug and threw in a cheap tea bag, but that it seemed to me Russians have a more elaborate tea culture. Daniel corrected me right away: this wasn't Russian tea culture, it was Chinese, a tradition he learned from a Ukrainian tea master. We started to chat about the different ways people around the world enjoy tea. Daniel said that in Europe, people usually brew loose leaf tea in big pots, pouring it into large mugs and that in Eastern Europe, people do the same but often prefer to add lemon, a detail I hadn't thought of as Eastern European before. In South America, a "cebador" prepares tea by packing a gourd with yerba mate leaves, adding hot water, taking a sip, then refills it for each person as it is passed around and everyone takes a sip from a metal straw in a ritualistic way. In China, Daniel said, tea is also a ritual: loose leaf tea is steeped in a teapot, then poured into small cups in several short infusions, each revealing new layers of aroma and flavor, all performed with ceremonial movements known as "gongfu cha," which translates literally as "the art of making tea."
As Daniel prepared the tea, our conversation drifted to how cultural practices like tea ceremonies evolve as they are shared around the world. Like tea leaves unfurling in the pot, language also transforms as it moves from culture to culture. I asked Daniel what languages he speaks: Russian, Ukrainian, English, and a bit of Hindi. He shared a linguistic connection he'd noticed: in Hindi, "chalega" means "let's go", and in Russian, "telega" means a horse-drawn carriage, both from the same Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to go". Then I shared my own linguistic connection: the English word "coach" comes from a Hungarian town, Kocs (cs is the Hungarian ch). In Kocs, they made horse-drawn carriages called "kocsi". The word traveled with the carriages to German and English, originally referring to the Hungarian product, evolving to refer to vehicles in Hungarian, German, English, Spanish, French, and more languages. I haven't confirmed, but it might be the most widespread Hungarian word. Daniel pointed out how "coach" was like an early "Xerox," a word that started as a technology but became a generic term for a photocopy in many languages.
As we talked about the evolution of different words, Daniel reflected on his experience at an Orthodox Bible school, where they practiced contemplative reading of scriptures in Church Slavonic (the Latin of Orthodox Christianity), a tradition of reading texts aloud and discussing them in detail, savoring the meaning of each word. This method, rooted in the Orthodox Christian tradition, is about connecting deeply with language and understanding its layers, like savoring the changing flavors of tea. It was a process of thinking which made it possible to understand sacred truths previously accessible only to highly literate clergy.
We moved from discussing words to discussing the technology of alphabets. Daniel shared how an early version the Cyrillic alphabet that many Slavic languages are written in was developed by two brothers, Cyril and Methodius, in Bulgaria to make Christian scriptures accessible to Slavic people who couldn't understand the Greek and Latin Bible. It was a technology for making information accessible to the average person. But, Daniel explained, during the Soviet era, the Cyrillic alphabet was imposed on many countries to assert control. He mentioned Kazakhstan as an example, a country which is currently in the process of switching from Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet to reduce Russian influence.
Our discussion of language control naturally led to modern parallels: how governments shape the tools and technologies we use to think and communicate. For example, Russia bans Instagram and Facebook, the US may ban TikTok. In the US, people chat with SMS and iMessage, in Europe they use WhatsApp, in many former Soviet countries, Telegram is the dominant messaging app and in China everyone uses WeChat. Each country creates its own technological borders, fragmenting the digital landscape into controlled territories just like they did in the past with alphabets and sacred texts.
I asked Daniel which AI he uses, curious about the dominant AI in Slavic countries. His answer surprised me and struck me as especially profound. He said while he understands AI's utility, he prefers to limit its use. "I'm a Thinking Person," he explained. "These days, between AI and social media, technical gatekeepers are telling us what to think and say and what images we can create or share. There's a war to control people's thoughts and expression, and most people are choosing not to think anymore. That makes them easier to control."
His words resonated with me. Being a Thinking Person means choosing to engage with the world directly: to think, create, and question for ourselves rather than letting technology or authorities shape our thoughts. I’ve always aspired to be a Thinking Person and I've found this value of independent thinking in many communities throughout my life.
In the Christian community I grew up in, people valued the Protestant Reformation's push for individuals to read scripture directly and think for themselves without priests as gatekeepers. The Open Source software community that I've connected with around the world from Cuba to Hungary also values independent software controlled by people, rather than governments or corporations. And the digital nomad communities I've been a part of for over a decade also value transcending the limits of language and technology that authorities try to impose on us. I've found communities all over the world that share the value of freedom.
Yet, I was surprised to find myself sitting on a beach in Asia, having Chinese tea and conversation with a Russian man about our shared value in freedom, while both our countries see peaceful cultural exchange and personal freedom as dangerous or wrong. We’ve both chosen to live at the world's edges, where freedom, open cultural exchange, and authentic human connection still flourish despite the growing shadows of authoritarianism around the world.
As the sky faded from orange to deep blue and we finished our tea, the music from nearby drifted over to us. Our free-spirited friends had created their own ceremony: playing guitars, singing, burning fragrant leaves and flowers, and embracing each other and the natural freedom of this beach where people shed the constraints of society: a daily ritual here that, like our tea ceremony, exists beyond the reach of the content policies of AI, Algorithms and authoritarians.
As I left, I thanked Daniel for the tea, and he thanked me for the conversation. I walked home feeling grateful for these edges of the world where people still choose to think freely, connect deeply, and live authentically, and I hope that the flame of the human spirit we keep alive here will one day find its way back to the rest of the world.