Will the US specialty tea industry ever develop?

 

This really started with discussing this topic with my brother.  He's an economist, more or less, with a phd in policy analysis from a very well regarded school, and many years of consulting related to that.  Not a tea drinker though, really.  He tends to see things a lot differently than I do, which I'll fill in as background.

First, did the US specialty tea industry already develop, so I'm way off in describing this context?  Let's consider some stats:

Market size of tea in the United States from 2013 to 2021, by segment

And then there is this:

New Report Covers Specialty Tea Market (in World Tea News, in 2019)

There are 1,607 specialty tea businesses in the U.S. of which 255 outlets are chains with five or more locations, according to State of the US Specialty Tea Industry(2019), a newly released market research report published by SinensisResearch.

The total U.S. specialty retail market grosses between $690 million and $1.2 billion annually, according to a nationwide survey of tearoom owners and managers. 

Those two claims don't match, since 2019 specialty segment was identified as worth 2.68 billion USD in 2019 per the other source, but it's close enough.  Let's place that against a reference value, for coffee:

Coffee - Worldwide:  Revenue in the Coffee segment amounts to US$433.60bn in 2022. The market is expected to grow annually by 7.64% (CAGR 2022-2025).

It seems likely that is comparing apples and oranges, in terms of different kinds of stats, even beyond the drink / commodity being different.  But still comparing $13 billion in total 2022 market value to that $433 seems clear enough; there is a difference in scale.  I don't know what "specialty coffee" would even be, so let's leave off there, and accept that specialty tea demand is still limited.  1 to 3 billion USD isn't bad, but in a different sense it's also not significant.  Higher quality tea interest never really did "take off."

There are more vendors now than a decade ago, considerably more, and some of their businesses thrive.  Related to pu'er White 2 Tea and Crimson Lotus were both founded around a decade ago, and Bitterleaf and regional sources like Kuura more recently.  So awareness and demand did increase, just not on the same scale as specialty coffee or craft beer, or even matcha and bubble tea.

My brother's explanation

For background context, I don't agree with almost anything he says, but his input always seems to have some value.  

His take:  Americans appreciate foods that are easy to access, simple, and approachable, but intense in flavor and dietary input, at least in terms of providing calories, fat, protein, or a stimulant effect.  Coffee works as an example; someone hands you a cup, or maybe you brew it in a machine, and a lot of standard to-go versions contain 150 - 200 mg of caffeine, quite a jolt.  Then a minority loves the messing around, pour-over forms or whatever else, as is more the rule with tea.  Beer is like that too, either plain, simple, and cheap, or else more complex, varied, and expensive, but still not exactly something related to working through a learning curve.  A preference curve sure, but you only need to sit at a bar or buy a six-pack.

His guess at whether or not that couldn't shift, and people couldn't begin to demand less straightforward, more foreign-associated, more diverse, and healthier drink choice options is no, just no.  His reasoning is that the trend for this demand pattern change over the last 3 or 4 decades has been very consistent.  There was a craft foods sub-theme that ran counter to this pattern a decade or so ago, but it came and went fast enough that it doesn't necessarily seem like much of a counter-argument.  Craft beer, craft chocolate, and bread making all became popular, those hipster themes, but it never really impacted specialty tea as much.  I was there as a tea enthusiast across that time period; I don't really need the stats, since plenty of online discussion hearsay filled in lots of varying perspectives.  Specialty tea was seen as growing, as the potential next big thing, but everyone could agree that it was about to really happen, but hadn't yet.

According to that main graph reference specialty tea sales have doubled in the past decade; that's something, right?  My brother commented that even if inflation had been taken into account marginal gains could also relate to the marginal growth of the population and economy.  Of course our main discussion was about the larger level, about why growth seemed slow, not so much moderate, and whether or not it could increase.  I think that demand could shift and increase, past some unknown tipping point, but that hunch is not based on much.

Next we discussed what it should mean, or at least might mean, that social media group member counts have really blown up over the last half dozen years.  There are 26k+ in the Facebook group I co-founded and moderate, and 600k+ in r/tea, the main Reddit group (689k now).  His take:  exposure to all sorts of social media groups has exploded, so that may relate to people initiating such contact now, not so much a shift in preference or awareness.  Anecdotal accounts continually describe consumers being new to better loose tea, moving on from blends or tea bag types, but those are impossible to place, probably impossible to pin down decent related stats, for "tea enthusiast" counts.

His arguments and perspective don't reflect some sort of deep inner knowledge of social trends, or consumer interest shifts, but he seemed to make some decent points.  Really only that Reddit group is on that scale for high user or member count, although multiple tea groups including 25k members is something.  Youtube channels related to tea still haven't exactly blown up, and it's hard to get any feel for Instagram, since there are surely hundreds of tea enthusiasts there posting, but it's not clear how much change that's causing.  

I just moved to Honolulu, back to the States, and ran across two or three people online who are interested in tea, and a number more on the big island, Hawaii.  It's nothing like Bangkok interest levels, or Seattle or Portland.  Even Chinatown here barely sells any tea; it's strange.

To summarize what is probably already clear, his main point is that tea is seen as foreign oriented, as difficult to find and explore, and probably tricky to brew, but people aren't even getting that far.  He explored loose tea at a specialty grocery store at one point, but talked about now buying medium range--bad quality, basically--English tea as tea-bags.  As a tea enthusiast it's familiar how putting any leaves in hot water in a remotely appropriate proportion and time could make decent tea, but it's not really about that fact of the matter, more about perceptions.

Guesses about why tea really is about to take off

This direction is tougher, no better speculation than what my brother was saying, even with a decade of exposure and continual discussion to draw on.  None of the conventional references or data seems to clearly define plausible causes for why this trickle of increasing demand would ever increase faster.  Something not currently happening would seemingly need to happen.  I doubt that it will, in the next decade, but I think it will at some point, when the conditions are right for it.

Beyond that skeptical take, that specialty tea just isn't something Americans are likely to take up in large numbers, then it's also clear enough that the early ventures into boxed tea-bag products has led to increase in offerings and sales in that range, that even at the low quality end tea interest may be diversifying.  It's not easy to see in the summarized table stats shown, but Unilever selling off their Lipton branch seems a potential indication of that.  Probably standard offerings like Lipton have suffered instead of benefitted from this diversification, even though it's as likely competition from a very broad range of other beverage choices that are impacting tea bag sales.  The plausible, but very uncertain, model for rapid increase looking forward is that earlier demand for Tazo teas, for a time switched over to Teavana brands, and now any number of others, could lead on further to higher quality specialty tea demand.

When though, and why not yet?  Up until 4 or 5 years ago we kept hearing from specialty tea interests that tea was really about to take off, or the process of that was already underway.  Sales stats always seemed a little underwhelming, the odd 10+% claim of annual growth, but anecdotal accounts always went with that, stories of new channels and forms, and spread of awareness.  Of course some vending businesses are very successful now, more so than was probably possible a decade ago, at least related to many formats.  Social media group and related app development all continue.

Maybe it's not yet clear why I have faith that tea awareness and interest probably will change, or how I place my own skepticism.  In order to shift people would have to take a fundamentally different approach to food.  Not all of them; I mean it would help if the general pattern shifted a little, since plenty of people span a broad range of ways of relating to food.  Many people must have moved on from fad diets, and instead of "throwing in the towel" and have moved on putting focus and energy into eating a basic, balanced diet.  Probably lots more still take a fad-theme approach, shifting from paleo influence to eliminating carbs, or intermittent fasting, and so on.  That could be fine, if any one approach is balanced and positive, but in general it seems the wrong direction to me, to sift through and adopt trends.  

Eating a simple, balanced diet based mostly on carbohydrates, with some limited meat, dairy, and eggs, and plenty of fruits and vegetables, would work well, without the input of the latest ideas or a guru's input.  Living in the US again brought up how expensive and problematic it is to do that; bulk goods that aren't healthy are cheap, but lots of forms of fruits and vegetables aren't.

That's not as off-topic as it might seem, related to this all really being about a specific beverage choice.  It's fine to drink water or juice, for a healthy beverage replacement for soda or beer, but tea takes a little more doing.  Not so much RTD tea or bubble tea, but brewing decent tea takes practice, and a limited degree of extra equipment.  Health concerns are one driving force for that, beyond curiosity about a new food experience, or some other interest in a foreign culture practice.  General approach to food also factors in.

This line of thought keeps switching back to supporting what my brother said better.  People taking up cooking is too problematic, and emphasizing optimum dietary input over food experience is too broad a shift.  I don't see most Americans as curious about foreign cultures, or really open to importing aspects of others.  That might seem a bit ironic, given the older "melting pot" theme, but that related to people already here sharing their own experience, not a more indirect or abstract import.  Thai food is well accepted; that's about where it typically begins and ends, related to that sort of scope.

The latest practice I'm checking out in relation to diet highlights just how far I've drifted from standard approach to diet, and behavior in general:  I'm on my second day of a fast, trying to take a four or five day break from eating or drinking anything but water.  I could write more about that separately, but it seems a clear enough parallel to show why outrageous and potentially beneficial diet practice on my part is probably coming way out of left field.  Putting tea leaves in hot water is different; it's not very hard, expensive, complicated to source, difficult to sort out in relation to options, and so on.  But good tea isn't going to turn up right there in a grocery store aisle.

Oddly this is a big part of what got me into tea:  that's exactly what happened, Thai oolong suddenly appeared in front of me in a grocery store aisle.  It's not so much better accepted here than in the US but it's definitely easier to find, for very moderate quality versions.  Thailand started producing significant amounts of Taiwanese style oolongs back in the 90s, per my understanding, so it was more likely to filter out into broad commercial availability.  I just bought quite good Hawaiian tea in Honolulu, which cost over $1 per gram, and required drawing on existing tea connections to find, asking people by message versus online search.  Even in the local health food store there, Down to Earth, tea just wasn't there, beyond a few standard form boxes of tea bags.

I will personally continue to try to make this shift happen, even though at this point it feels a bit like tilting at a windmill.  As an example I've long since written for a Quora Space about tea, Specialty Tea, which some people must have been exposed to, but in terms of feedback or significant online traffic which came to nothing.  I first wrote for a now-defunct food news online source many years ago, out towards a decade.  I'm not sure what the next attempt will look like but I'll keep going.  But why?

This is a main point:  I see better quality tea as a healthier, far more pleasant, and more interesting alternative to standard beverage choices.  Spreading the word is aimed at helping others.  A bit foolishly idealistic, right?  I should at least be trying to sell something.  I might be more effective in spreading ideas if I were, if commercial support was a part of it.  If that communication form ends up changing I'll mention it here, or if I see signs of this change coming, that I'm questioning will happen any time soon in this writing.

Yunnan Sourcing 2021 Yiwu "Year of the Tiger" shu pu'er

This reviews a pretty good Yunnan Sourcing shu pu'er version.  I almost never read vendor reviews before writing review notes, and didn't in this case, but while adding a second comparison review of a more modest local Chinatown version (the Honolulu Chinatown, this time, since I'm not in Bangkok right now) I looked up what it was:

Golden Needle "Year of the Tiger" Ripe Pu-erh Tea Cake ($12 per 100 gram cake, not bad)

This cake is pressed entirely from 2021 Spring harvested Yi Wu area tea that was wet piled in Menghai!  This is a tippy "Golden Needle" grade ripe.  It's very smooth and sweet, with some bittersweet character that reminds us of dark chocolate.  Bitterness is barely noticeable but acts as a counterpoint to the sweet velvety taste of this thick viscous tea.  This tea also carries some dried cherry and vanilla notes as well.

Pressed in late 2021 to commemorate the Year of the Tiger this lovely tea cake would be perfect for gifting during 2022 or stockpiling for aging.  

Clean, smooth, complex, and aromatic ripe pu-erh tea that performs well beyond it's price tag!

Pressed by the Cha Nong Hao Brand

Region:  Yi Wu Mountains of Xishuangbanna

So that would be $42 for a 350 gram cake's worth, kind of a lower range than one typically runs across these days, but not far off what "factory tea" sells for.  It's interesting this is sold as "golden needle" grade; that's not familiar.  Finer material shu is usually referenced as "gong ting;" it's not clear to me how this varies from that.  It turned up through a search on Steepster, instead of on their site.  It would have been nice if vendors listing interesting products there had prevented the decline of that site.

That product summary is essentially how these notes describe it, just missing noticing any vanilla, or bitterness, with that not pointing out that it could use a year or two to age to settle out the wu doi / fermentation effect funkiness.  I would agree that it's significantly better than a $43 standard size cake version would ordinarily be.  Then it's also interesting comparing how much overlap there is with that cheap Chinatown version, which more or less represents a best case for what a $14 standard sized cake.  I wouldn't drink that range too often; there is probably as much pesticide exposure risk in drinking that kind of tea as in anything else you might find.

Editing note:  that cake includes the description "Pressed by the Cha Nong Hao Brand."  I would assume that all Yunnan Sourcing in-house cakes are actually pressed by a secondary vendor, that it's not Scott fermenting and pressing the material himself, or other employees of Yunnan Sourcing doing it, but this may relate to this being positioned as a vendor product instead of as an in-house production, which again would surely involve purchasing material and pressing by external suppliers.  Next one might wonder if that implies that this is better or not as good as other Yunnan Sourcing products, but it's probably as well to not overthink that, to just try the teas and see what you think.

Review:

this is upside down, in relation to typical framing here

First infusion:  heavy on black bread range, like a dark rye.  A somewhat familiar musty or slightly sour range adjoins that, including dark mineral, like slate, but even warmer, and a sort of wet cardboard sourness.  I suspect that some of that would fade over the course of a year or two, that this would improve, but it's ok as it is.  The depth and complexity are nice, even though it's a fairly straightforward and approachable tea.  This is how shu often goes for me.

It's interesting comparing this with a Moychay version, a decent one I brought to Hawaii, which is much older, so cleaner but faded a little in intensity.  And also to a dirt cheap shu I bought here in Chinatown, which I hadn't really planned to review, but might.  That would make a good addition here, adding a comparison review of both of those, with the three laying out a lot of shu range [I just skipped the Moychay version part; it was too much]. 

To some extent that really cheap ($14 cake) Chinatown tea matches the sour and slightly musty aspect in this, but it's stronger in that, in a less positive form.  This leans a little towards cocoa and fruit too, and that one kind of doesn't, leaving off mostly at warm earth tones, and range that also copies the dark bread theme.

Second infusion:  cleaned up a little; that musty sourness backed way off.  It's hard to express just how light it was to begin with as well, pronounced but a minor input.  Flavor depth is nice in this, even though it comes across as simple.  Again it covers dark bread, towards seed spice input, warm mineral, toward cacao / cocoa, and leaning towards fruit.  The range all mixes together; that causes inputs to seem less clear and distinct.  That warm earthiness is a bit like a coffee flavor; this kind of tea might not be bad for helping coffee drinkers to bridge over.  

Mouthfeel is nice and full, and aftertaste lends the experience length, but both aren't as pronounced or as interesting in form as can occur in some other tea versions.  It's a bit creamy.  Probably with another year to transition out that touch of sourness this would be really positive, although limited in refinement.  It's a somewhat basic form of shu, as I take shu to generally be in general, but I don't mean that as saying it's only average, instead that it's straightforward and drinkable in a typical way.  It's hard for me to place it in relation to the top end of standard factory teas, since I don't go out of my way to drink a lot of shu.  But it's pretty good.

Third infusion:  the spice range is picking up; that really resembles a dark rye now, even more, both the dark yeasty bread input and the caraway seed edge.  There is fruit range, but it's hard to identify.  To me it's close to a dried cherry, but surely others would interpret it differently, given how it's a minor input that mixes with the rest.  That's true of the coffee or cacao range too; this has so much depth because of minor additional range joining in, but it's hard to identify as distinct.  Then in the end it still comes across as a really simple experience, because it all integrates as a set.

As an aside, it's odd that Scott's tasting notes and mine ended up this similar.  The cherry isn't that pronounced that one would have to peg it as that, it's just most like that to me, and apparently to him as well.  Cool it worked out that way.

It has been interesting just drinking a half dozen tea types that I've brought for the last six weeks, not something I completely thought through before coming here.  I'd planned to add some teas at the end of packing but ran into a long list of other details to cover, and space issues to consider, and dropped it out, mostly due to focusing on the rest.  One of those teas is an inexpensive aged sheng, a version I bought in Shenzhen something like 4 years ago, and only one a shu, that Moychay version.  I'm drinking mostly sheng, as I tend to do, maybe 5 versions of it. 

William of Farmerleaf mentioned that he felt he learned from mostly drinking one sheng version for a month back at the start of the pandemic in a video, and to me sticking to a half dozen, or just over, has felt a little like that.  In one sense it's limiting, but it's also cool to keep returning to the same teas, to see what comes of experiencing them over and over.  Some people always drink tea like that, from online comments about such things, but I routinely alternate drinking a few dozen versions.

Fourth infusion:  Even for the more novel flavor inputs fading into a narrower set in one sense this is improved; it seems cleaner, and a bit more refined.  Most traces of the early sourness are gone, and a less intense dark bread effect is still nice.  Warm mineral might play an even stronger role.  Level of cacao / cocoa input seems open to interpretation, as if one might see that as a dominant flavor, or else as non-existent, depending on how aspects are interpreted.

Fifth infusion:  this seems to just be fading a bit now, ok for stretching out a few more weaker infusions, since it still has some intensity to offer, but it's diminishing.  The fine leaves and bud form, and fermented character, seemed to cause it to brew fast, accounting for that high intensity early on, but causing it to fade a bit faster than larger and more whole leaves would.  I'm still drinking this round at a normal tea infusion strength, based on brewing it for 30 seconds instead of much faster, but it was quite powerful earlier on.  Not everyone would like drinking shu a bit stronger than typical teas are brewed, as I tried and reviewed this, but that's a normal preference for me. 

Let's see how that inexpensive Chinatown tea compares.

Generic Chinatown shu pu'er review

Second infusion (as well to start here; the first was light):  not so bad.  A bit of cardboard sort of flavor joins in, but it's not really more sour than the YS version had been, or varied from that form, or probably much stronger.  Earthiness is similar, the warm mineral and dark wood kind of range.  It gives up a little in terms of a cacao / cocoa edge, and limited dried fruit, but the overlap in character is as significant as the differences.  It's similar range shu, just not quite as good.

From there not having much of a flavor list to unpack is the main difference.  It includes similar dark wood, leaning towards coffee, with a warm mineral base, and a touch of funky sourness, and that's pretty much it.  For being made of chopped leaves this is brewing slower, and some stem material, instead of finer leaves and buds, so to make it more equivalent I should stretch out the time to 20 seconds or so, while the YS version brewed quite intense for high proportion 10 second infusion times.  I'll try that.

sticks and varying fermentation showing, not a great sign

Third infusion:  a little stronger it's easier to pick up a faint touch of geosmin, of actual dirt.  Or is that petrichor, a related but difference flavor similar to the smell that occurs after it rains?  Maybe both.  I must admit, I appreciate the YS version being mostly the same but with more edge of cacao and dried fruit than this tasting like dirt.  The feel of this is a bit thinner too; it lacks a lot of that thick creaminess that decent shu has, never mind how that comes across in the best of all versions.  

On the positive side this seems to include a touch of root spice that kind of works, which the YS version more or less didn't, unless it was lost in the rest of the complexity, beyond dark bread seeming to include a little seed spice.  To be clear I think this is pretty good shu for $14 a cake; I think running across much more significant flaws would probably be more typical, gambling on buying cheap tea versions like this.  And it's as well not to overthink the likelihood that this was grown using as many chemicals as any other plant material.  It's just a guess, but I think for drinking one cake of this the risk is moderate, but for including this range of tea in what one normally drinks, even only part of the time, could really be a negative health input.  Then one wonders about what chemicals are used to grow food, but it's as well to not overthink that either.  Probably a lot of them.

Fourth infusion:  the sour funkiness is essentially gone; as with the YS version that aspect dropped out.  Then it's on to whether the extra earthiness and reduced positive range works nearly as well, with the base character pretty much the same.  To drink either mindlessly, as a beverage to adjoin food for breakfast, the experience is similar, but this tea doesn't work as well to focus on positive aspects.

Conclusions:

The Yunnan Sourcing version was definitely better, but to me it was also interesting how much the two overlapped.  In a sense it's not a fair comparison, because in another year and a half both would've dropped out a lot of that early fermentation flavor, the sourness or cardboard box range.  I think the YS version has potential to be much better then, and this Chinatown tea can only develop so far.  All the same in 2 or 3 years it would be quite drinkable, a rare case of a $14 cake working out.

The "shu is shu" theme, that it's all essentially similar, is both supported and rejected by these two examples, by the comparison.  The basic character of both is essentially the same, the flavor set, even to a limited extent the level of complexity.  But then if someone values shu being better, as would be normal for someone on that preference page, they could see a world of difference between the two.

For value the YS version costs roughly 3 times as much, but then it is better.  Still, 12 cents a gram is value oriented range for tea of that general quality level.  It's crazy thinking that the other one costs 4 cents per gram; that's like CTC Assam price range, a $40 kg.  It could've easily been undrinkable; gambling on buying something you might throw out comes up in that price range.

That's not unfamiliar, the practice of seeing how spending very little works out.  When we visited Shenzhen, about 4 years ago now, I offset the risk and demand of needing to identify tea quality (and authenticity, depending on version range) by not spending much, which comes with the same risk of failure cases, even if you can try teas.  It's possible to make bad judgement if you try a lot of teas quickly, and there's always the chance that what you try won't be what you are really going to get.  

Cheap teas tend to include significant flaws, often a very thin feel character, and lack of depth or complexity is also a routine limitation.  Some of that applied to this Chinatown shu, but not in the same sense the worst of what I bought on that trip--all sheng--also did.  A grocery store sheng version there, which sold in the $10 range, if I remember right, was better than most of what I bought in a local tea market there, all of it costing more than that.

just under $10, but conversion rates must keep changing

People recommend "using trusted vendors" for a good reason; even a less impressive Yunnan Sourcing version is going to reduce risk of experiencing really bad tea.  Since preference is relative people with developed, higher quality expectations might see half the YS catalog as a good example of poor quality tea, and as bad value regardless of the pricing, but I think that would be a minority opinion.  I've tried a couple teas from them I didn't like but many more were pretty solid, positive to experience and good value.  To me--not necessarily a universal perspective--that sort of judgment about "misses" doesn't apply as directly to shu, which is all that much closer to the same thing.  There's no reason why the extra flavor complexity, depth, feel, and refinement of the YS version wouldn't make it much more pleasant to drink than the cheaper tea I've compared it to here, and fundamentally quite different, even though I see them being as similar as they are different, in one sense.  

I suppose anyone might judge teas types that they like, but don't prefer most, in this kind of way, seeing large differences in character and quality as kind of minor, and all relative.  Or it would be possible to "not get" the higher quality focus, or to see that as quite critical.  I remember trying versions of grades of Longjing for the first time in a Bangkok Chinatown shop, before I started this blog.  I could tell there was some difference between them, but couldn't place that difference in relation to preference, not even to tell why some minor variation should be more positive.  Now I'd probably get it, although it's hard to say if I would always like the higher quality versions more.  Probably.

I do appreciate the difference in these shu versions, and that the Moychay version I've brought is probably in between the two for quality level, but perhaps better than either at this time for being older, and properly settled.  For me differences in sheng quality and character map over to preference grading better; better versions I tend to like more, versus as much just noticing differences.  

This is all a subject that James of TeaDB keeps returning to, how he drinks factory shu as everyday drinkers, optimizing value and experience by drinking a lot of basic range but pleasant teas.  He probably wouldn't buy this cheaper version, and might set this YS tea aside for a year or two if he did try it.  Not all shu versions include this much sour / funky character a year after being produced, but it's also not really unusual.  Drinking 2 or 3 year old shu resolves that issue, even if in some cases teas don't really need that much rest.

a recent outing to Waimanalo beach (east Oahu; we live in Honolulu now, more or less)

view from the bus; it's a long, clean, and empty beach

the main theme was visiting, not the postcard setting, but of course we swam too

the other view from that yard, just amazing

ridgeline hiking earlier.  I should do a travel blog post about their mid-semester break.

An immigrant to my own country

 

I've already written here about some of the background of moving back to Hawaii, and how the first couple of weeks went.  I really thought the groundwork preparations were mostly finished then, but another three weeks of them continued, layer after layer of setting up our family's lives.  

In a sense this post isn't about that, or about whatever culture shock I might experience, but I'll touch on both subjects more and then set them aside.  It's really about how odd it is going through a process of immigration back to my own country, not just arranging details, or dealing with culture shock, but essentially re-joining this society from the ground up, rebuilding every bit of it.

More transition details:

In an earlier post I must have covered getting an apartment here, and of course electricity, then also cell phones, wifi service access, arranging schools for my kids, passing a hurdle of two separate health checks for them.  I probably didn't mention renewing a driver's license, restoring a bank account, struggling with online bill payment functions, and helping my wife as a driving instructor.  Let's just say that last part is ongoing, that she isn't a licensed driver yet, but not for lack of trying.  

Oddly she's an amazing driver in Bangkok, and had a Hawaii driver's license in the past, but switching back over to proficiency here is taking time, changing over to driving on the other sides of the road and car.  That was hard for me there; it took months, or even a full year, to really feel comfortable driving on the other side of the road, and that only felt completely natural after years of practice.

as one would imagine the botanical gardens here are amazing

It's all normal enough.  Something like getting a library card was easy and special; we read a few books every night, as we had back in Bangkok, but now they vary daily, because they're not just what my kids already own.  I suppose it's a little odd that details keep coming, that there is always one more layer, like setting up subsidized health care for my kids, since my last coverage plan only works in Thailand.

We really are poor now, related to using a Thai income to support parts of two households, which wasn't more than enough to support only one with a lower cost of living earlier on.  Some details we just won't arrange for awhile, like sleeping on beds instead of the floor.  It's a battle to free up spending for any small luxuries, for example spending $46 on a comfortable chair for the apartment.  It's all a trade-off, spending for anything.  We've bought shave ice a couple of times; even frivolous spending seems important in some cases.

another version not far from this place used natural reduced fruit toppings, just amazing

this chair cost less than subs from Subway, but somehow it felt like an investment purchase

There is no status update about job hunting, beyond a "headhunter" helping with the process.  It's still completely up in the air.  If anyone has a friend related to IT processes and ISO systems work in Hawaii help with that would be appreciated.  There's seemingly no chance of doing work related to tea.

Our kids do well in school, socially and academically.  Both are well behind in English, to the extent that my daughter is in a special class program, and that's the only class that my son hasn't been able to catch up in yet.  Their spoken English is on-par with their peers, or probably ahead of many, but years of limited education exposure in a Thai based school is hard to overcome.  They were in online classes for over two years back in Bangkok; that definitely didn't help.

I keep asking my son and daughter how it goes, and beyond the standard "good" Keo recently mentioned that it still feels a little like being on a vacation.  It should; we live in Waikiki, the main resort area.  And it's a complete break from their prior life, how vacations go.  They seem fine, and stable, but the odd stress indicator still gives me cause for concern.  Kalani drew a cool picture of many images that included a theme of murder more than I would like, probably partly related to video games she is playing, but stress could come into play.  Keo had melt-downs frequently earlier on, about feeling displaced, and missing the cat, just all of it, but that ended.

Let's move on to cover culture shock a little and get to that root experience of being an immigrant after.

Culture shock, layers of local culture

There are a lot of social groups here, many distinct cultures, not just one.  We helped decorate a float for a local parade, a little, and that brought us in contact with a contender for the truest local culture, native local Hawaiians.  Our uncle Al--not a relative by blood--invited us to that, as part of a Hawaiian Airlines float preparation he and his wife were involved in.  I don't feel so connected to that perspective or local group; this is definitely no sort of claim about that.  But it was welcome contact, and it is great to be considered family by him and his wife.  His nephew is really nice; it felt a little like an older cousin passing on advice in talking to him with Keo.

that one connection is probably indirectly why we are here, more than any other single input

they won first place for that float, just not even partly related to our efforts

Of course Waikiki is full of tourists, and service workers, who are generally transplants, and who form the labor infrastructure.  I was a service working in a resort area, in the Vail Valley (so tied to a winter sports theme), and here too, during grad school, so all that is familiar.  That was an earlier life though, and I'm not taking that up again, at least not yet, or not related to any plans.  There isn't much to say about exposure to those two forms of culture, not that "tourist" is a culture, more an activity and mindset, a mode people from anywhere can easily relate to, even with limited exposure.

I had thought the conservative and liberal divide in the US would show up more than it has.  Yesterday--at time of first draft--we visited a Sam's Club and heard country music there, and saw people wearing camo ball caps.  The same day we also visited a local organic foods grocery store, and saw tattooed young women wearing robe-like dresses there, who surely did yoga, and guys with long hair in a bun (not so unlike my own now; kind of strange).  We were in the presence of both sides of that, just not actually involved, beyond buying in bulk (milk, butter, OJ, and a cherry pie--we had already picked up veggies and meat there recently), and also bought protein powder, vitamins, and flax seed oil at the other place.  What to add about contact with those two groups and contexts?  We're not really a part of either.  But then I have been completely integrated with both, at different times in my life, so it's a bit odd.

A third very short outing brought up limited contact with a third group, which I experienced as a mild culture shock.  I ran around Diamond Head a couple days ago (which I'm still feeling), and saw a sport enthusiast group there, that I'm also not really a part of, but I do some of the same things.  We rented a car for that driver's license test and later visited the beaches there, catching a look at local surfing spots, and surfers.  Of course those people look amazing, like those old "Point Break" characters come to life, but much more impressive.  A Hollywood actor can pack on 20 pounds of muscle and strip off body fat in 6 months of prep but it takes a long lifestyle to look like those people, just lean and ripped, sun darkened and agile.  Even a half dozen years into being a "snowboard bum" I probably wasn't that fit, but I could accomplish impossible athletic feats back then, with ease, so it was really just how different sports activity training changes outward appearance.

Kalani's school; I never take pictures of the classmates, since parents might not be ok with it

It's odd how recognizing they are a different group felt different than related to the others, or walking through my old UH Manoa campus seeing almost every female student wearing yoga pants (which we "didn't have" back then).  I don't know who those surfer people are; maybe that's the difference.  I've been a version of all those other groups, and it's a stretch to say that being a snow-sports enthusiast shared common ground.  I suppose that it did, but the local culture would've been quite different.  It makes me think back to picking up some "dude speak" back then, with people using brau instead of bro or dude marking how they saw the role.

I was briefly in a higher tier social status club here once for a short meeting, and caught a look at another group, the more successful locals.  It's odd that I've never been a part of that circle either.  Earlier academic progress and short starts toward a successful career made that seem within reach, but it never really came together.  The wealthy class was familiar from that ski resort time, serving them.  The different social / economic levels in the US associate mostly within their own range, which is fine, but depending on the form of contact with other levels that can be uncomfortable.

That leads on to discussing my current immigrant status.  I've mixed with other immigrants here, or local versions of them, parents of my kids' classmates, or visiting Chinatown.  For now those are as much "my people" as any other, outsiders who might only get so far in joining other groups.

Immigrating back to the US

At least I've got the paperwork, right, a passport and working rights?  It was easy to get a new Social Security card, one of many, many errand steps.  All the same re-integrating feels like the layers add up to building a new life, and it feels like my status as outsider is something to bridge over.  It's not mostly about culture shock, shifting perspective, or not really truly matching how others see things.  It's how it all adds together, spending time feeling out of place, even in relation to living in a foreign country, although that was worse for the first half dozen years or so.

Another aside will fill in some context.  My daughter has two best friends, and lots of others, one from Japan (a wonderful girl, just as special as my own, which is kind of amazing).  The other, who is surely also wonderful in her own way, I don't know so well.  She is the daughter of two Americans, a military family, with a mixed genetic background but still from that culture.  There's a language divide in talking to the first girl's mother, but the feeling of being a little out of place seems like as much common ground as I have with anyone.  I share most of the other details about local culture and experiences, and US culture, the past decade of history, I share with the other family, but only to a limited extent.  I experienced most of all that last decade's worth of US culture changes through online contact.  

It's interesting thinking back to when I last lived in the US mainland; I was here from 2005 to 2007, so even then Facebook and smart phones didn't exist yet.  A lot changed since.

Parts of cultural background run deeper, not related to changes, like growing up with Christmas as a theme, knowing and loving the American music tradition, or American food preferences, and I only lived out selected parts of that in my Thai life.  My kids have never carved a jack-o-lantern, for example, and have never been trick-or-treating.  I just bought them a bag of candy corn, and they tried it for the first time (so-so for them, but my daughter likes it better than Keo).  I won't be here at the end of October to support them through that, although we probably will carve that pumpkin earlier on, to get that part in.  And we should buy a costume of some kind for my daughter, but we're not good with those kinds of details.

No need to mince words:  to repeat, we are poor now.  I could write a 1000 word post just about that, but these ideas aren't mostly about that, as I see them.  At this point we need to do what we have to do to build up a life, to eat whatever we need to eat, to walk instead of drive when it's time to do some things, to see busing as a luxury we can't always rely on (although with better planning related to monthly passes that would've went better).  I don't feel bad about exposing my kids to that experience; I think they can learn a lot from it.  I keep telling them the best way to get through it, to endure it to the other side, if there is one, is to delete most of the automatic "I want" response from their thinking and vocabulary.  Of course that's not possible, but they will become conscious of what they consume in a different way from this, and of what they've taken for granted in the past.  We were middle class in Bangkok; we lived in a nice house, had a car (of course), went out to eat all the time, enrolled them in lots of extra sports activities, traveled quite a bit, and so on.

outdoor experiences replaced mall outings, but I never take a phone to the beach to capture that

In some senses it is sad, and goes a bit far.  We just took my daughter to "picture day" at her school and her wardrobe here doesn't support dressing up beyond what other kids would tend to regard as "play clothes," the more disposable garments they own.  Her school theme relates to members being middle class and below, with immigration and poverty being running themes, but in terms of her clothing she is at the lowest end of that range.  That's a bit much; we could work on that part.  Oddly Keo won't stop wearing polo shirts to school, when no one at his school does; their two sets of clothing ended up differing so much related mostly to how they packed, which we should've checked better.  I guess it's also that she had lots of clothes for a slightly smaller body size, then grew, and we never re-upped it all.  The main input seemed to be that only a bit of both of their wardrobes made the trip in a single suitcase worth of space, and apparently we didn't review that.

Kalani is quite confident, and makes it work anyway.  She doesn't miss keeping up with such appearances, instead it's the random things she wants that we can't provide, a popular toy, whatever beach gear she wants.  She does own two snorkel sets, a body board, plenty of swimsuits, and a second swim ring (the last one just broke, and we replaced it from a thrift store), so it's not about owning nothing, just missing this or that.  We just bought her some Legos yesterday, with that swim ring, but there is no way to replace everything that is Bangkok, or provide a normal amount of things, or a housing setting that matches her friends', yet.

I guess that a true immigrant wouldn't be building on all the connections that I've already mentioned.  I've been an overlapping member of most of these social groups; that's why I can sort of relate to them, and am not really a true outsider.  My wife and I married here in grad school, and lived in this same building for a year, 15 years ago.  I'm working remotely online now, so the financial struggle is not quite as desperate as it would be if this was a running tab working off debt.  My mother-in-law is supporting that end too, really more than we are, so the financial stress is more an abstract theme than a pressing daily concern.

That one point keep keeps coming to mind, about how all the people here are in different social groups too, with a mix of varying interests and types of connections.  It feels normal to them because it built up organically, and there are other friends and family who see the range as a normal set, so they can too.

There's a standard idea that the service industry types that transplant here tend to leave later because they tire of struggling to make ends meet, related to the high cost of living.  It's that "living in paradise" eventually doesn't seem like a fair exchange for putting in extra hours and doing without, whatever they end up doing without.  I've seen that cycle in a ski resort more, and also here.  Maybe it's not so much about doing without, and costs, as it is the connections seeming unbalanced after awhile.  

There was an idea that ski-bums would "come for the winter, and stay for the summers," that the feel and environment having two dimensions of appeal made people stay.  It was probably that people could connect to more than just 4 to 5 months of a couple of sports.  By "stay" that often meant spending a half dozen years instead of the shorter form of 2 or 3.  To really stay an employment theme needed to click, for example venturing into real estate sales, or at least restaurant management instead of just serving.   There's a pretty broad middle level of resort service work management here to access too.

It could click well for me here since I never will have a completely single-culture perspective again, and that all mixes here.  As one expat once put it eventually you just feel equally out of place everywhere.  I'm still a long, long way from seeming like a local insider to people in an IT industry though, or any industry I might work in, maybe unless service work can work out, which I don't foresee.  I'm not local, and to some extent can never be, just as was the case in Bangkok.  Half of everyone here lives like that though, so maybe it's still common ground, of a unique sort.

It's interesting asking my kids how they experience that, if there is any tension about being mixed race, or foreign.  In a word, no.  Kalani was accepted quickly and completely, and her classmates look like the cast of some sort of diversity oriented commercial.  Two favorites are black, one is Thai, and I'm not sure any of them are completely white.  Keo said that people asked where he was from, and upon hearing "Thailand" they only paused and then responded "good for you."  His accent is from the mainland, but a conventional "haole"--a local racial slur meaning white--isn't mixed race and Asian.  

It reminds me of my wife joking in Chinatown restaurants how I was the only haole there, many years back.  It was funny because she was better accepted than me, in my own country, but not in my native culture.  You have to go to local Hawaiian places to actually experience that racism, so it was just a joke there, but the Hawaiians I've met have been wonderful people, with absolutely no hate in their hearts, at least as far as I could tell.  That "aloha" theme is a real thing.  I suspect that they have deep reservations about the negative sides of development, or issues like increasing homelessness, but faced with actual transplants they can relate to them positively.  Maybe I should leave off there, and get back to that in another post, about how you can't miss a range of amazingly positive sides here.  

true local culture is about connections between people, not stereotype images, not only here

That's if you get out of Waikiki; turning a beach theme into an immersive outdoor shopping mall, restaurant, hotel, convenience store, and bar environment is nasty.  It's like the Vegas strip, but with an ocean beside it.  It's fine if people are on that page, but to me it's the opposite of what Hawaii is really about, the appealing and magical sides of it.  But I'll get back to all that.  

For now, aloha.

cheerful enough on a break, but the driving instructor role has been really stressful

from the latest hike, a ridgeline version

view of Honolulu from up there