Great Leap Forward- and backwards….
The last of the literati
The final, educated, trained and knowledgeable few, in in-depth Chinese culture and art, are all from my parents’ generation. Those born and educated before the Cultural Revolution, that is, who have suffered tremendously for their education, and who have decided to bravely carry on the mantel of the arts on behalf the 1.4 billion Chinese in the mainland. My dad counts as one, though from afar in…
Mr. Cheng Goes to China
The one and only, renowned Fu-Tung Cheng is the creator of what many of you experience as Teance before you even get to the tea: the environment and context, the proper esthetic for tea. That soothing, beautiful timelessness, that alertness to detail that heightened senses. When you walk into Teance in Fourth St, you experience Mr. Cheng’s creation.
I accompanied him for a different purpose these…
San Lin She, Taiwan, for High Mountain Oolong
My life as teabuyer
Aside from buying tea for myself out of necessity, as the kind of tea I will drink were hard to find in the U.S., when the business began in 2002, I began to buy tea on a professional basis. No problem, as that was just an extension of what I was already doing. However, the selection had to extend to include teas that perhaps the public had heard of. Back in 2002, 40 year old Pu-Erh was plentiful…
My adventures in Tea
Each year I brave the elements to explore those great tea areas found only in those unknown little nooks in Asia. What elements? Typhoons, monsoons, hurricanes. Mosquitoes, geckos, centipedes, and giant spiders. Leeches or so. Sometimes the roosters crow at 3am and I had been up until 3am with the tea processing. Farm life is wonderful especially in a remote tea mountain.