This day, 7 April, in 1938, China secured its first victory in the Second Sino-Japanese War, receiving a moral boost with the Battle of Taierzhuang, commanded by...
“It’s just like sending gifts to myself!”
It’s often said that the charm of Taobao is in the 4-day-long narrative it establishes. You order the products distractedly on your phone, return your full attention to work or family… and then, just when you have forgotten all about it, there’s a surprise knock at the door!
Well, I guess I’m too materialistic for any of that forgetting. The childish excitement of Christmas Eve still dances in me for all 4 days. There’s also the nagging awareness that I may need to send...
I’ve used this column in the past to vent my criticism of the tea sold in China’s supermarkets. Today’s Strainer marks no retreat.
There are usually two locations for tea in the supermarket. There’s the loose tea; often located next to the pickles, stored in a similar way. Those glass jars, containing leaves of indeterminate age, are not the fitting place for happy tea; light is every bit as ravaging for green tea as heat or oxygen. And those unimaginative selections of tea, usually Long Jing , invariably smell as...
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...
Of course it’s not reasonable to expect commemoration or contemplation.
The “Great War” was concluded more than a century ago. How can I expect “the eleventh day of the eleventh month” to resonate somewhere so far away from where the Armistice was signed?
Yes, China was the non-European nation which committed most men to that war, with real casualties and real costs. It’s a story that needs telling, one which may one day receive more airing. But those events are too far away to claim such as exclusive calendar slot in...
