This day, 6 April, 1963, the first Chinese medical team departed by train for Algeria, fulfilling international humanitarian obligations. Since then, batches of Chinese medical teams have...
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 decay curve. Pretty normal.
In fact, this is rather a pessimistic outlook for green tea. There’s drop off, but each infusion surely matches more than 70 percent of the previous infusion. And the observation of today’s Strainer is that, although the taste profile of each infusion worsens as well as the...
The first thing that hits is how inefficient this whole game is. It isn’t quite May as we climb the mountain. Picking only began on 31st March. And already the season is over. Not a basket or wicker hat to be seen.
And it isn’t that these tea bushes have stopped producing; glossy, thick leaves are growing abundantly. If fact, what work we see is the two-man job of sawing off the top 40% or so of the bush along each terrace. Baseball bats are worn for the less-romantic (but...
We’d bought quite a nice one, actually.
It had made sense because we were only the second people ever to have lived in that apartment. Everything was very modern and sleek in there, though it was also restrictively small.
We’d previously satisfied ourselves with cheap water dispensers, usually in the ghastly blue and white of those tracksuit high school uniforms (when will these trends end?).
This time, we’d plumped for something black and dark gold, something like real furniture. Tall, free-standing. Space for paper cups down there.
When we moved again, it came...
There are those who love dogs and those who love cats. It’s common to meet fans of either, rarer to find people fond of both. With drinks, there’s a similar polarization; few people enjoy coffee and tea equally.
I’ve written about coffee in this tea column. For me, the enjoyment is real, but still a disappointment after that tantalising aroma. As with cigar smoking, my mouth experience pales against my nose experience. As with cigars; something of coffee, something ashen, clings to the inside of my mouth long beyond its...
