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...
I’ve spent more money than necessary, wasted too many grumpy gulps than necessary on a tea which usually fails to reward. I’ve thought altogether too much about it.
And, as well as trying to understand my problem, there’s another reason to chase the mercurial charm of “biluochun” (碧螺).
Back in the winter of 2015, I drank a cup which stunned me. It came at the end of a long tour featuring some great teas. But it somehow capped the whole experience. Like fresh peas and gooseberries was the biluochun that day.
https://www.thenanjinger.com/magazine/strainer/meat-is-murder-im-going-to-need-a-toothpick-with-that/
It’s...
Let me tell you about this green tea I’m drinking. Laoshan tea (崂山茶), from Qingdao. It’s all a bit of a mystery. But, as these leaves unravel (slowly), I’m building up more of a picture.
Let’s be honest; Baidu is helping out as well.
This tea was a gift from a friend, who, like the tea, hails from Shandong,that peninsula jutting out from the east of China. It’s not North China. But Shandong is distinctly “northern” in tea terms; further north than Henan, home of the previous, most-northerly tea plantation mentioned...
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...
It’s pomelo season in Jiangnan. That pleases me.
Even if you don’t know its (obscure) English name, you know the fruit. It hangs, moon-like, from trees in parks and campuses everywhere. You can eat the windfalls, but they’re a little too sour. Thankfully, bigger, more-user-friendly versions of these yellow globes appear in stores. Open them up to find segments each as big and tactile as a Nokia phone. These segments are red (slightly more expensive) or “yellow” (cheaper and just as good), partitioned by a tough white pith. Unlike, say,...
