This day, 13 March, in 1972, China and the United Kingdom signed a joint communique in Beijing, announcing that both countries had decided to upgrade their diplomatic...
I wrote last month about glossy teas; teas with a polished appearance, mostly from Japan. I also mentioned a pea-green variety from Sichuan’s Emei mountain range called Bamboo Leaf Tea .
Now, let’s be honest. Sichuan is less famous for growing tea than it is for pandas, bamboo and spicy snacks. Were Sichuan and tea are ever connected in people’s minds, it is the tea houses and the tea-drinking culture that stand out rather than native varieties of leaf.
Possibly that is just how Sichuan people like it. Local tea...
Some 2 years ago, with the passing of Elizabeth II, I speculated in these pages that the late Queen would become, principally, the woman crowned in 1953, young and beautiful. I suspect that was an image she herself was comfortable with. Certainly, she was slow in commissioning coins and stamps updating her profile, happy to issue retro instead.
Just recently, we lost another “National Treasure”. Even if you don’t know her from Downton Abbey, or The West End, you’ll know her as Professor McGonagall, Housemistress of Gryffindor. The actress Dame...
there were some TV commercials for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. Various respectable-looking adults found themselves restricted for choice at breakfast time, while camping or abroad, perhaps... Anyway, they were forced by circumstance to eat Corn Flakes.
“I’d forgotten how good they taste”, they each said. And that was the tagline of the series.
The implication was not that these adults had grown out of breakfast cereals; it was merely that they had spent years pursuing different kinds of breakfast cereal, neglecting the one that started it all. Rather than getting sick of...
It’s pomelo season in Jiangnan. That pleases me.
Even if you don’t know its (obscure) English name, you know the fruit. It hangs, moon-like, from trees in parks and campuses everywhere. You can eat the windfalls, but they’re a little too sour. Thankfully, bigger, more-user-friendly versions of these yellow globes appear in stores. Open them up to find segments each as big and tactile as a Nokia phone. These segments are red (slightly more expensive) or “yellow” (cheaper and just as good), partitioned by a tough white pith. Unlike, say,...
