This day, 16 February, in 1949, the CCCP stated, “Due to the liberation of Tianjin and other important seaports, many foreign commercial institutions and those in the...
"After drinking my local tea, you won’t be able to walk in a straight line.”
That’s how I was introduced to this tea. It was a generous, proud young friend that set the challenge.
By “local”, she meant Guizhou. I was surprised; Guizhou is not known as a tea place.
The province is infinitely more famous for its hard liquor, tobacco and coal. On paper, it sounds like a dirty, hard-living kind of place. But it also enjoys its share of beautiful scenic attractions and ethnic communities. The capital, Guiyang, has been...
Suntory’s bottled “Black Oolong Tea” is an institution, as well loved in China as in its native Japan. And here it is, refrigerated and available for purchase, in the UK.
Always the stingy skinflint, I resent paying three times the price when the main ingredient, water, is on tap and essentially free. But here it is. Nice to know.
I buy a packet of oolong leaves instead. This is an Asian supermarket in Cardiff. These stores are easier to find than ever, thanks to the steady stream of Chinese students...
We can never borrow each other’s mouths. I will never know what it means to taste the way you do, nor you me.
Then again, perhaps if we could try that, we would no longer be the sufficiently the same people we originally were to make the new observation meaningful...
Anyway, that imperfect empathy is part of the tragedy of writing and reading about food and drink. I also often wonder if my speculations on taste may be even less meaningful to someone who has a Y chromosome.
In Classical legend, there...
The tea was oolong, with just a hint of Formosa-perfume-tanginess. Or was it a hint of detergent? Anyway, this was a nice restaurant, too nice for pouring spilt water onto the floor.
This was a rare lunch with my teenage daughter, waiting for dumplings to arrive, cheekily spying on her friends’ QQ Music playlists.
To her cup I poured expertly. Now, trying to fill mine, arms slightly retracted, I… over-tilted… liquid seeping from the teapot’s lid. It wasn’t a big puddle, so I swept it off the table edge, hoping to...
