Li Qingzhao
The Tea Wager
When money is tight, invent a game that belongs to the two of you
Li Qingzhao, Postface to the Records on Metal and Stone
Little money and long days. Where does the fun between two people come from? How did Li Qingzhao and her husband play?
What actually happened?
At eighteen she married Zhao Mingcheng, then a student at the imperial academy; both families were poor. On the first and fifteenth of each month he pawned clothes for five hundred cash, walked to the Xiangguo temple, and came home with rubbings and fruit to pore over and eat together. Years later, after dinner over tea, they quizzed each other on which book, chapter, page and line a passage was in. Whoever was right drank first, and often laughed so hard the tea spilled.
Turn a gift into a game
She said she happened to have a strong memory. She did not use it to show off. She made it the stake at the tea table: name the book, chapter and page, and drink first. The quiz tested memory; the game was about the books they both loved.
You both love films. At dinner, quiz each other on whose line that was; the winner picks next week's film.
Being poor is no reason to have no fun
In the first years they had to pawn clothes to find five hundred cash. They did not wait to be rich. They spent it on rubbings and fruit and enjoyed them together. The fun came from looking at the same thing, not from the money.
Money is tight in your first job. Skip the mall; hunt one book at a used stall and read it aloud at home.
Do not let rules crowd out the joy
As the books multiplied they built a library: numbered, logged, a key to sign for, any smudge to be cleaned and corrected. She wrote that it was never as easy again; they sought comfort and found anxiety.
Your sneaker collection grew until you will not wear them or let anyone touch them, though you bought them for fun.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: money is tight, or you have been together long enough that nothing feels new.
Ask first: what do we both care about? Can we build a small game around it that only we understand? Are we enjoying it, or serving it?
Where it goes wrong: turning the game into a contest or a regime. The tea wager was fun because losing only meant drinking later. Once the library had rules, the joy went first.
Lines to keep
We laughed until the tea spilled in our laps, and no one drank.
We sought comfort, and found anxiety instead.
Same situation, other people are asking
We've been together years and I feel nothing.We don't fight and we aren't close. I don't know what this is.We're together every day and further apart every month.Two years apart and we've run out of things to say.Years in, nothing left between us · all 8 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.