spot_img

Strainer

Matthew Stedman has spent years living and working in China. He has sold Chinese tea in the UK, and loves discussing the miraculous leaf with new (and suspicious) audiences. He however never feels happier than when researching the product here in beautiful South China.

Strainer

The Canny Leaf Steeped in Tradition; Or… Tea for 12 Hour Shifts

Matthew Stedman -
Let’s say that it halves with each cycle. Each consecutive steeping produces half the flavour of the last. With each pouring, the drink more closely resembles water. Eventually, water is all that this drink will have become. The exponential...
Strainer

Anxi Tea Tours; And Abbés 4 Anxiety

Matthew Stedman -
When I lived in Beijing, students hoping to study abroad would travel half a day to a certain shrine, praying to receive an “offer”. They were practicing hieroglossia. That’s because they deemed the shrine’s name; 卧佛寺 similar enough to...
Strainer

Teenage Kicks for a Rotten Old [Green] Fart

Matthew Stedman -
It’s teenagers who enjoy it the most. It’s there in so many of the snacks they eat. It is a horrifying rottenness. They love it. They are wrong to love it. Of course, many of these snacks of rottenness contain...
Strainer

Strainer Aging Gracefully; Don’t Chuck it Out Without Trying

Matthew Stedman -
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...
Strainer

It Takes Tea to Tango; The Sweet Potato Time Bomb

Matthew Stedman -
I couldn’t quite believe my eyes. There they both were. And it was my wife who’d put them there. Strewth. It wasn’t even that one of these dishes was left-overs from the previous day; no, she had consciously cooked both...
Strainer

Some Sun, Few Tories; Saying Goodbye to a Teenager

Matthew Stedman -
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...
Strainer

Belt-Tightening Beckons; Before the Penny Pinching

Matthew Stedman -
I need to cut back. We’ve overspent this month. When I look back, I don’t know whether it’s the newly-printed poster board on my wall which I’ll point to as “peak-splurge”. Maybe it will be the sailing sun-hat from the French...
Strainer

T4 Homework; The Human Stain (Coaxing with Peaches)

Matthew Stedman -
Dressing up schoolwork as a toy. It’s such a hoary old cliché it might just work. I’m hoping to coax out some actual written words from my students by inviting them to play with the paper itself; dirty it up...

Latest News

Frank Hossack -

Tasty Solutions on the Menu at Shanghai Climate Week

Shanghai Climate Week coincides with Earth Day and highlights China's dual-carbon commitments. And while its object as also a...
Frank Hossack -

Why is the Shanghai Government Sniffing around Our Back Yard? 

Shanghai-Nanjing Innovation Belt emerges, with Putuo District driving cross-regional collaboration to boost economic growth for 50+ million people Putuo officials...
Frank Hossack -

Nanjing’s International Flights; All Change for Summer Schedule

April is rolling around, and with it comes a new schedule for flights in and out of Nanjing Lukou...

News Snippets from Jiangsu