Every tea region in China has seen good times and bad times. Lost decades are not unusual in this business. The tea fields of Xinyang City (信阳市) in Guangshan County (光山县), Henan, are no exception.
One dynasty was particularly unkind. Sadly for Xinyang, that dynasty was the Qing, the longest of them all, spanning 1644 to 1912. It’s not that the Qing Emperors didn’t drink tea; the Qian Long emperor specifically wrote about China’s “best” green teas. His omission of Xinyang tea was damning and lasting. Tea production flourished in...
This is the era of big data. There was more digital data created, stored and shared in the past 2 years than all of the digital data existing before that.
What used to be a computer thing is now a watch and fridge and spy-camera thing. Lots more ones and zeroes flying around.
Yes, but this 2-year rule has been true for far longer than 2 years. The “big data” term is 800 bytes, which has somehow survived that exponential data churn unharmed, used by humans for decades, most continually...
You don’t need to come to Asia to encounter bamboo; it’s there on the steering wheel of the E-Type Jaguar, on umbrella handles, there on that corporal punishment device once kept behind teachers’ desks.
Even edible bamboo was a concept familiar to me before I arrived here; bamboo shoots in tins were part of my English mother’s cooking in the 1980s. But, as with many things we already know about China, we’re not prepared for the abundance or the variety.
The bamboo shoots that appear in Chinese dishes in the real...
Our eldest daughter destroyed a whole kettle. I won’t be totally surprised if this daughter does, too.
It is always a busy device in any kitchen of ours. But it’s surely the first year of a new human life which kills a kettle. Nevermind the pre-boiling needed for the milk formula; it’s that sterilising of absolutely everything.
8 years ago, we had one fizzle out on us. Fair enough, we thought. And, for a short while, we made do with boiling water on the stove.
In the UK, with a measly supply...
