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,...

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...

Take a trip to a tea plantation. Nanjing is surrounded by mountains where tea grows. You’ll bump into one soon enough if your eyes are open to it. If you already know one, go to that one. Steal a handful of leaves. Not many. Just a handful. The farmer won’t see you. Don’t worry.  If he does, just blame me. Now, if you put those leaves into your mouth, they will taste like “leaves”. And that’s pretty much all they will taste of. Infuse them in hot water and the liquor will...

Now the baking days are behind us, we can say it’s been another hot summer, with one tiny difference;  Things have heated up in the cold tea sector. For a long time, there was only Suntory (三得利) with its iconic pair of Oolong SKUs: WITH-sugar (red characters) and WITHOUT (blue). These black/brown bottles have a following (of fans and imitators) to rival Laoganma (老干召) sauce.  Traditionally, the remainder of the “tea” bottles on the c-store shelf were of the lemon-tea or the milk-tea type, all stashed with sugar, of course.  Actually, those teas...