I take the glass out of the fridge and sip on the dark, ice-cold liquid. The coldness is a comfort in this fast-tracked summer. And the flavour is transportational. It takes me back to Japan and my first brush with Asia; a school exchange aged 18. Specifically, it takes me to those affordable restaurants where this drink is default. At first, Japan’s ice cold oolong tea (乌龙茶) appealed to me only because it was wet and plentiful. The humid heat of Osaka was a shock to the system. Ice cold anything would...

Delicious, isn’t it? Remember the smell when you unpeeled your first credit card? If you have bought electronics, you will know the excitement of transparent sleeves and instruction booklets. Let us also mention polyethylene. If I write here about the smell of new bin liners, you will experience something quite specific in your “inner nose”. Polyethylene. It is the softer plastics that seem more generous to give off their scent. PVC raincoats and toy umbrellas. We all know the aromatic explosion from a roll of bubble wrap. Tiny seams of injected modernity. It...

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...

HRH E II R, Queen Elizabeth the Second. Her name has appeared in these pages twice before now.  And why would a Chinese tea column be concerned with the former monarch of the United Kingdom? Actually, Strainer first mentioned her as the name of a donkey ridden on a trip to Yunnan. .  And then there was the column about Chinese tea sellers seeking actively validation for their product through international celebrities. The story goes that Queen Elizabeth II, when introduced to a new variety of oolong tea from Taiwan, described it as...