CURRENT MISSION

To travel as we work. We want to learn more about tea culture, meet suppliers and knowledgeable and intersting people, while buying and selling tea.

ABOUT ME

We are actually a couple. My name is Patrick, and my wife is Xianna. We are inseparable, and have been since our first date. I am American, and Xianna is Chinese. We met in the beautiful region of Yangshuo, Guilin, Guangxi, China. We have been together since November of 2010, and we were married twice in 2013, once in Guangdong, China in February and once in Florida, USA in July. We worked together for years teaching English in China, but we changed gears and began selling tea, a part of the Chinese culture Xianna grew up with and a part I really admire. But we are still working side-by-side every day!

We've traveled North and South, East and West, across both China and the USA. We're always looking to meet interesting people, learn more, and share our knowledge and experiences.

We previously hosted visitors to our city of Shenzhen, for our first few years on Couchsurfing, but we plan to do quite an extended bit of traveling ourselves for the near future.

PHILOSOPHY

I feel I've already included a good idea of my philosophy in the other sections. But it's difficult to answer, as this is really a dual profile for me and my wife. We get along amazingly and have much in common, but we also have quite different philosophies. We are from opposite sides of the world! You'll really have to meet us to learn the answer to this question.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

We used to mostly host travelers, but seeing as we're in the process of establishing ourselves in the the US to sell tea and promote Chinese tea culture, we're mostly looking for hosts and interesting/interested people who can help us in our mission, even if that means a couch to crash on, a good conversation, or simply an open ear.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Our experience has mostly been in hosting people. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment, right across the bay from Hong Kong. So we got a lot of people coming to and from Hong Kong. Shenzhen isn't a very interesting place, but several Chinese travelers were there just to see Shenzhen. We stayed with fellow Couchsurfer friends as well, but we knew each other outside of Couchsurfing.

We're planning to travel extensively across China and America, so I expect we'll have a lot more experience staying with hosts in the near future.

Interests

Where to start... Our interests vary greatly, but if you're into tea, then look no further. We can teach you the art of gongfu tea and introduce you to a whole new world of connoisseurship! We love animals, but at the moment we only have our little white Pomeranian. She's a superstar, and when I walk her in China, people no longer point at the foreigner - they point at the little, cute dog! We've had birds, fish, lizards, amphibians, and others. We like to ride bikes (I sometimes rollerblade), and we had access to miles of seafront parks in Shenzhen.

Of course we are interested in travel. Travel and tea will be our future for quite a while. We are just beginning our new life, after years of ESL teaching in China. We will spend two months traveling China and learning more about tea from the heart of tea culture, and then we hope to travel the US, with our little dog, selling tea and promoting true Chinese tea culture.

• animals
• cats
• dogs
• birds
• fish
• amphibians
• arts
• culture
• dining
• drinking
• crafts
• traveling
• fishing
• swimming
• parks

Music, Movies, and Books

I don't know what it is, but I don't really have the patience to sit through movies anymore. They spend tens of millions, sometimes hundreds of millions, to make these long stories that bore me by the end. I need to be playing Freecell at the same time or I get bored, and Xianna falls asleep 90% of the time. Movies are okay, but I just don't think cinemas are worth the price!

TV's where it's at! Hollywood movies are losing their heart, yet they still make so much money. I prefer TV shows, and our mutual favorite is Breaking Bad. Though we do like a wide range of shows. Game of Thrones finally started making sense in season 4, so that's exciting too!

We don't really have a lot of interest in music. I don't know what it is, but I guess I just don't have the time to research it. It's not easy for me to find music I like, and the music I've loved has been introduced to me by friends, or painstakingly researched on the internet. Who has the time, really?

Novels are Xianna and my favorite form of storytelling. Books can just get your imagination to places and details that no other way can. Fantasy was my first love, and that's how Xianna got started on English novels too! But books offer a lifetime of discovery. Who can really say which books they are interested in? I could start a list, but that's not fair to all I have yet to discover. I'm not going to confine myself to one book, one series, one author, or even one genre. Nobody should! In recent years it's been hard to find the time to spend on novels, with so much educational reading to do. One day we'll find the time to get back to novels.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

You should find me on facebook, and then check out my pictures and videos. We don't like to do dangerous things, like take wild buses along steep mountain passes in developing countries, but we sometimes do to get where we really want to be. I am unreasonably afraid of heights, and Xianna is completely unreasonably fearful of cats. She also can't swim well, but she's learning. We've seen a lot and met a lot of different people. We have an appreciation for many different things, and living in China (and marrying into the culture) these last several years has increased my perspective greatly. Xianna has also changed so much since meeting me! Now we're moving to the US, so it's her turn to live as the fish out of water. We're just looking to keep the experiences coming!

Teach, Learn, Share

Saving the most difficult until the end, huh?

I've already mentioned that we drink gongfu tea. Xianna is from the heart of the gongfu tea ceremony:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gongfu_tea_ceremony

We are both interested in any genuine cultural experiences. Even if we can't find a Couchsurfing host, we try to stay in smaller guest houses and get to the old city where we can meet real locals and soak up the real daily life.

We love to visit local markets and see local crafts. We love to learn about the food and drinks of local people and learn about their values. That's a true experience for us.

We're also offering good conversation and whatever life experiences you care to discover!

Countries I’ve Visited

Canada, China, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Philippines, Spain, United Kingdom, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

China, Ireland, United States

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