Today is our forth and final (until further notice and request) part of out Green Doodles. What we must say is that we had enormous fun writing them, and even more fun researching upon them. And we really hope that you have fun too reading them.
Some of the things we wrote here were out of our curiosity for them, but some of them were written as a request from our readers, which wanted to know more on green tea, aliens, the green M&Ms and so on.
Green Tea
We have to start by saying that there is no other food or beverage that is known to have as many positive health benefits as green tea, and to prove it there are record showing that the Chinese used it as a medicine ever since 4000 years ago. Green tea has been used as both a beverage and a method of traditional medicine in most of Asia, including China, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Korea, India and Thailand, to help everything from controlling bleeding and helping heal wounds to regulating body temperature, blood sugar and promoting digestion.
The secret of the green tea lies in its high content of anti-oxidants, which are extremely efficient in preventing and also curing cancer, lowering the LDL cholesterol and inhibiting the abnormal formations of blood cloths that lead to thrombosis.
What makes green tea so special, among the other forms (black, oolong) is the way in which it is processed. Green tea is made from unfermented leaves and reportedly contains the highest concentration of powerful antioxidants called polyphenols. By contrast, black and oolong tea leaves are made from fermented leaves, which results in the EGCG being converted into other compounds that are not nearly as effective in preventing and fighting various diseases.
Since we don’t want to go any more into its curative properties, we are sure you know all the diseases green tea is good for, or into its etymology since it is far too complicated for us, we thought that might be of interest are the various tea drinking customs.
There are several special circumstances in which tea is prepared and consumed, some of which you can find here:
- Serving tea as a sign of respect – in Chinese society, the younger generation always shows its respect to the older generation by offering a cup of tea.
- Serving tea at a family gathering – Chinese family values are shown by how often younger and older families meet and serve tea together.
- Serving tea to apologize – in Chinese culture, people make serious apologies to others by pouring tea for them.
- Serving tea to express thanks to your elders on one’s wedding day – in the traditional Chinese marriage ceremony, both the bride and groom kneel in front of their parents and serve them tea. That is a way to express their gratitude.
- Serving tea to pass on the tradition.
In Japan though, tea has been brought about 1000 years later, in the 9th century, form China, by the Buddhist monk Eichu, this according to the legend. The form of tea popular in China in the era when Eichu went for studies was “cake tea” – tea compressed into a nugget. This then would be ground in a mortar, and the resulting ground tea decocted together with various other herbs and/or flavorings.
Quotes about “GREEN”
Green has not only been a source of health, food, beverages and many more, but it has also been an inspiring source of different quotes and funny sayings, some of which, we will give you right now:
- If you refuse to be made straight when you are green, you will not be made straight when you are dry – African Proverb
- If I keep a green bough in my heart, then the singing bird will come – Chinese Proverb
- Lord, keep my memory green. – Charles Dickens
- O! beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on – William Shakespeare
- An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight… The truly wise person is colorblind. – Albert Schweitzer
- You could cover the whole earth with asphalt, but sooner or later green grass would break through – Ilya Ehrenburg
- A hedge between keeps a friendship green – German Proverb
- The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. – Dutch Proverb
- One piece of green wood is enough to stop the others from burning. – Bahaya proverb
- Green maize abounds at the houses of those without teeth – Shona Proverb
- Three things cause sorrow to flee; water, green trees, and a beautiful face – Moroccan Proverb
- Green with envy = appearing jealous; appearing envious.
- Sure as God made little green apples = absolutely certain.
- Have a green thumb = to have the ability to grow plants well.
- Green around the gills = looking sick
- Give somebody/something the green light = to give permission for someone to do something or for something to happen.
- The green-eyed monster = the feeling of being jealous.
- The rub of the green = if you have the rub of the green, you have good luck, especially in a sports competition.
Why are aliens green?
Why we chose “aliens” as our final topic for today’s doodles? Apart from being a requested topic, we were interested ourselves to find out why, in the acceptation of so many, are aliens always depicted as green little monsters. Here is what we found out!
Considering the fact that aliens are, in fact strange to our knowledge, we can only think of the answers to this question. And for that, we have three variants. The first of them is that taking into consideration that nobody has yet seen creatures from outer space, and that at this point into history they are imaginary, green is really the alien color for skin. Coloring their skin green, in our imagination is nothing but the attempt to separate them, in our minds, from the society. So in early space fantasies and science fiction stories, one way to make them appear extremely different from us was to imagine them as having a completely nonhuman color.
The other hypothesis, that is somehow related to the one stated above is that if you stick to nonhuman colors for skin, you can stay completely away from any racial associations or symbolism, in much the same way that Sesame Street has a lot of blue guys and other toy colors for people.
Finally, once “little green men” became a cliché for Martians, the cliché kept repeating itself. In cartoons, all you have to do is show little green guys with some kind of weird things around their heads or faces, and the audience knows you mean space aliens. It’s an easy kind of shorthand for humorous purposes.
If, in fact aliens do exist, we believe it is a matter of one’s choice. So far the skeptics have their disbeliefs, while the believers have reason to think they are true. What is true is that we have now finished our green doodles’ chapter number four and we really believe you loved it!
