The Tradition of the Tea Plant

When scanning through these short stories I found many of them difficult to understand. This story is no different to me. When we were talking about these stories in class this detail also seemed to prevalent in how we understand these stories because they are far from traditional ghost stories. This story seems no exception. Its seemingly more about the protagonist and their issues then the supernatural force. It’s about this man with an issue in the way he views women it seems. He struggles to view women as more than just their form. And this world is trying to get him to understand that form, like everything else, is temporary. To not have a focus on that, and he seems to struggle with this. This especially apparent in the dream sequence. This all comes together to make an interesting depiction of what a ghost story is. He’s not really haunted by anything external. It’s really his inner demons haunting himself, and it’s his way of dealing with those, which is a very different way of looking at the ghost story because here in the west we look as the ghost as the antagonist. Here we have the protagonist as their own antagonist. It’s an interesting dynamic, and one I’d like to see explored in the west more. It’s one I think will be expressed in the west more.