A sizzling hotpot in a tranquil tea lounge? A simmering pot of tea in a hotpot restaurant? After hearing about the concept of a hybrid teahouse and a hotpot restaurant, whichever way I looked at it the concept perplexed and intrigued me. It is the idea of China's largest fastfood hotpot chain brand, Xiabu Xiabu, which last June had a total of more than 500 restaurants in 34 cities across China, and whose restaurants can be found in almost every mall and commercial area in Beijing. After 18 years in the trade, Xiabu will soon debut a medium and high-end "hotpot plus tea brand" called CouCou, the first one opening next month in the Sanlitun area of the capital. With questions still spinning in my head about how a marriage between a hotpot restaurant and a teahouse could possibly succeed, I met Chang Chen-wei, CouCou's chief executive, a Taiwanese restaurateur who has worked in food and beverages on the Chinese mainland for about 10 years. In the understated way in which he talked about his project and aims he comes across more as a bookshop owner than a flamboyant veteran of the restaurant scene. "There's a downturn in profits, which are pretty thin right now in today's food and beverages industry. We needed to think of how to create a different hotpot restaurant that also produces added value. "It's surprising that I have been unable to find an authentic Taiwan style hand-shaken teas outlet in China, including in the myriad of so-called bubble-tea shops you see in every mall in Beijing. Hand-shaken teas are made to order, and the shaking process chills and dilutes a drink. "So the idea with CouCou is to create a zen-like atmosphere in which diners can enjoy a bit of peace while having hotpot at meal hours or drinking bona fide Taiwan-style hand-shaken teas at off-meal hours." Romantic name Like the name Xiabu Xiabu, the name CouCou (the initial C's are pronounced "ts") is highly whimsical. The Chinese character that represents both parts of CouCou, with the three drops-of water radical on the character's left, is rarely used these days. Shuowen Jiezi, a Chinese dictionary of the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD), defines it as "to rendezvous on the water". "In fact it's a romantic name," Chang says. "To rendezvous around a hotpot or tea. And you don't do hotpot with someone you don't like." Talking about tea, Chang says that these days young people are uninterested in devoting time to studying gongfu cha, tea prepared with meticulous attention to ritual, including various vessels. "But China is still a big tea country. So you have the foundations and opportunity to present tea to younger people, and I think demand will increase for high-quality tea blends sold in a cafe kind of atmosphere." Some so-called tea blends with fancy names he has seen are just a mixture of flavoring essence, milk and unknown tea, he says. CouCou is very particular in its selection of teas, such as Tieguanyin Oolong and Dahongpao for all its tea-based drinks, he says. Unlike other drink shops that blend their bubble teas, Chang says, CouCou hand shakes them to ensure the best taste. Bubble tea, in case you don't know, is milk tea to which rice or some other starch, such as tapioca, is added. At CouCou's headquarters they made me a bubble tea that simply oozed wow power. It had three distinct layers: thick milk foam on the top, then the crushed ice, and the rest tea. The tapioca pearls are very fresh and each has a consistent chewy but soft feel to it. To get a better mouth feel in the tea, water has to go through five processes of filtration to be softened, Chang says. "Beijing's water is very hard, whereas water in Taiwan is soft and brings out the flavor much more clearly in a tea. "Here you get the same flavor as the first bubble tea in Taiwan, which is believed to have been first been made about 30 years ago." There are 23 different hand-shaken tea drinks you can choose from at CouCou. Most cost about 20 yuan ($3). "Both hotpot and tea are imbued with the time-honored culinary culture of China," Chang says. "To enhance the hotpot dining experience the cooking utensils and tableware specially designed in Taiwan to replicate an ambiance of an ancient dining culture." Chang showed me a ding, an ancient round cast-iron Chinese cauldron, which in this case had gone through 19 moldings. "Rather than use a stainless steel pot, the ding has a primitive feel about it, adds a sense of ceremony to the occasion, and shows respect for ancient Chinese dining culture," he says. In hotpot dining the cooking broth is undoubtedly the most important ingredient, one that lays the foundation for the flavors. CouCou has five broths: Taiwan-style numbing spicy, lambspine, beef shank with tomatoes, Sichuan-style numbing spicy, and mushroom. The signature one is the Taiwan-style mala (numbing spicy) base. I did not taste the soups, but Chang says diners will find them very different to the Sichuan-style numbing spicy usually on offer. Taiwan-style broth is mildly spicy. It also has dozens of traditional Chinese herbal medicine ingredients such as bay leaves and cardamom, he says. "It contains duck-blood curd, stewed for eight hours in the broth. It is extremely tender but gelatinous, and when you take a bite you will find it is juicy. The broth makes a very nice soup, too." All the vegetables at CouCou come from the same sources that Xiabu Xiabu outlets rely on - their farm bases throughout China. CouCou also has some ingredients for hotpot that are generally hard to find, for example, the spinal cord of deep-ocean cod. "For every 150kg Alaska deep ocean cod, we can extract just one portion of 50g spinal cord," Chang says. "It's full of collagens. Just imagine tossing it into the hotpot and eating it with our secret dipping sauce. The texture and flavor are indescribable." Odor control. At CouCou, you need not worry about ridding yourself of hotpot odor from clothes and hair either, Chang says. Particular care has been taken in dealing with this issue. "This is crucial if CouCou is to be a refined place where you can enjoy the best of hotpot and tea drinking. After all, the very idea of having to have a shower or bath may be enough to put anyone completely off the idea." After much research, an extra high-powered air exhaust system was installed. In addition, the ingredients of the broth are all light, free of tallow and additives and artificial flavorings, Chang says. A service team has even been brought over from Taiwan, where, he says, service tends to be "meticulous, attentive and full of warmth". "To me, good service means an attendant should be on equal footing to the customer, rather than putting himself or herself in a subordinate position. They need to be the restaurant's hosts and to be respected as such." After the Sanlitun opening next month, Chang says, there will be seven more in Beijing this year, with more to follow in other cities. "Hotpot and tea drinking are among the most social of dining formats. There is not much better you could do than combining the two."

Shuowen Jiezi, or Shuowen for short, is the first character book that systematically analyzes patterns and explains meanings of Chinese characters. It was edited by Xu Shen, a Confucian scholar and philologist of the Eastern Han Dynasty during 100AD and 121AD. Based on patterns of Chinese characters, Xu Shen originated 540 radicals, and categorized 9353 characters into 540 sections which were further brought under 14 broad headings. Shuowen Jiezi initiated the indexing system by radicals. This system is adopted by most dictionaries after Shuowen Jiezi. Shuowen Jiezi summarized achievements of pre-Qin, Eastern Han and Western Han literatures and preserved pattern, pronunciation and meanings of Chinese characters. It is an indispensable bridge for the study of oracle bone inscriptions, bronze inscriptions, ancient pronunciations and glosses. Above all, Shuowen provides the oldest explanations of characters, which is helpful for understanding meanings of words in ancient books. The explanations of characters with varied meanings reflect politics, economy, culture and customs of ancient China.

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Sima (司 Sīmǎ Guāng (simplified Chinese: 司马光) (1019-1086) was a Chinese historian, scholar, and high chancellor of the Song Dynasty. Life, profession, and works Sima Guang was born in 1019 in present-day Yuncheng, Shanxi to a wealthy family, and obtained early success as a scholar and officer. When he was barely twenty, he passed the Imperial examination with the highest rank of jìnshì (進士 "metropolitan graduate"), and spent the next several years in official positions. In 1064, Sima presented to Emperor Yingzong of Song a book of five volumes (巻), the Liniantu (歷年圖 "Chart of Successive Years"). It chronologically summarized events in Chinese history from 403 BCE to 959 CE, and was something like a prospectus for sponsorship of his ambitious project in historiography. These dates were chosen because 403 BCE was the beginning of the Warring States period, when the ancient State of Jin was subdivided, which eventually led to the establishment of the Qin Dynasty; and because 959 CE was the end of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period and the beginning of the Song Dynasty. In 1066, he presented a more detailed 8-volume Tongzhi (通志; "Comprehensive Records"), which chronicled Chinese history from 403 BCE to 207 BCE (the end of the Qin Dynasty). The emperor issued an edict for compiling a groundbreaking universal history of China, granting full access to the imperial libraries, and allocating funds for all the costs of compilation, including research assistance by experienced historians such as Liu Ban (劉攽, 1022-88), Liu Shu (劉恕, 1032-78), and Fan Zuyu (范祖禹, 1041-98). After Yingzong died in 1067, Sima was invited to the palace to introduce his work in progress to Emperor Shenzong of Song. The new emperor not only confirmed the interest his father had shown, but proclaimed his favor by changing the title from Tongzhi ("Comprehensive Records") to the honorific Zizhi Tongjian ("Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government"). Scholars interpret this titular "Mirror" to mean a work of reference and guidance; indicating that Shenzong accepted Sima as his mentor in the science of history and its application to government. The emperor maintained his support for compiling this comprehensive history for decades until it was completed in 1084. Such loyalty is notable, especially since Sima was a leader of the conservative faction at court, resolutely opposed to the reformist policies of Chancellor Wang Anshi. Sima presented increasingly critical memorials to the throne until 1070, when he refused further appointment and withdrew from court. In 1071, he took up residence in Luoyang, where he remained with an official sinecure, providing sufficient time and resources to continue compilation. Indeed, though the historian and the emperor continued to disagree on policies, Sima's enforced retirement proved essential for him to fully complete his chronological history. Sima Guang was also a lexicographer (who perhaps edited the Jiyun), and spent decades compiling his 1066 Leipian (類篇; "Classified Chapters", cf. the Yupian) dictionary. It was based on the Shuowen Jiezi, and included 31,319 Chinese characters, many of which were coined in the Song and Tang Dynasty. Sima Guang is best remembered for his Zizhi Tongjian masterwork, and Rafe de Crespigny describes him as "perhaps the greatest of all Chinese historians" (de Crespigny 1973:65). There is a folktale that Sima Guang broke a great ceramic container where a boy was drowning, titled "Sima Guang Da Po Gang," which could simply be a play on his name for rhyming. He was also supposed to have created a wooden log to sleep on when he wrote the book Zizhi Tongjian so as to work more and sleep less. He called this JingJen (Alert Pillow), and used it for 19 years.