News & Blog

Finally, after months of dry weather, it has begun to rain in Xishuangbanna. Last night we woke up to the sound of a thunderstorm and rain, and again tonight there’s thunder, lightning and heavy rain. This is good news for tea farmers – the buds will fatten up and the harvests will grow. Hopefully there’s […]

It’s dry here, really dry. We first enountered it upon arriving in Kunming – the streets were more dusty than normal, our noses filled with black dusty dirt & our skin constantly felt dry. Yunnan is experiencing the worst drought they’ve had in the last 50/100 years (depending upon which news sources you listen to). […]

After spending the last couple of months engaged in negotiations for our Tea House it feels like we’ve finally made some progress. The lease is signed and waiting with our solicitor for the landlady to do some work and repair a storm drain which can leak from time to time in the basement during heavy […]

I’ve been engaged in legal negotiations for the last month or so. I’m trying to take on a lease for a property which I hope could become a tea house. It has been quite good practice for me to have gone through this, I’ve been able to see my mind has reacted towards obstacles thrown […]

I thought I’d post this – apologies for the poor sound quality and short length, but you get the idea. A Traditional Ai-Ni (the minority living in Nannuo) tea picking song…

I thought I’d post some pictures of a visit I had to Chen Qi Nan’s studio last week. This man makes some really beautiful teaware. In past years he was an engineer, then gave it up to devote his time to making pottery and throughout he drank tea and practiced Qi Gong. These different aspects […]

I thought I’d post some photos of some of the trees I made tea from this year. First up… Naka, a relatively unfamous mountain about 1 hour drive from Menghai, known for its abundance of old trees with characteristically small leaves & home to the La Hu minority. These trees are apparently ~400 years old. […]

I felt a little disappointed upon leaving Yiwu this year, despite learning a lot. I guess this year, being able to speak the language a bit better and with the novelty of a new place wearing off, I began to see the cracks of commercialism that had gone mostly unnoticed last year. This year I […]

One of the first facts I was told upon arriving at Lao Banzhang yesterday was that there are around 500 people in Lao Banzhang and over 1000 dogs! They’re everywhere. Apparently people don’t take care of a lot of them, they just scavenge and somehow survive off meagre scraps. Having arrived in comfort this time […]

Finally back to somewhere with a good internet connection I thought I’d upload some photos from my time in Nannuo. It’s been a great week staying in Nannuoshan. Spending time living with the family was amazing and very touching. Also having time to go tea picking most days and try some different options with the […]

After a long wait for the tea season to begin, on Sunday I made my way south with a friend from Kunming to begin a month in the mountains, staying with tea farmers in Xishuangbanna. The farmers we’d met last year had turned out to be really nice, honest and down to earth people, and […]

I’ve been experimenting a bit recently with a few attempts at DIY oolong roasting (more on this later). One consequence of this is that I had some oolong which needed bagged up and sealed. Having looked around at bag sealers of different degrees of professionalism and noting the general high price, I decided another approach […]