Drinking poo

I thought I’d make a short post on a tea I’d read about, but never had the chance to sample before… well, I say ‘tea’ but its days of being tea are long over – it was once tea – aged puerh to be precise, about 20 years ago, before some little insects munched down […]
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Yi Tiao Long

At some point during my recent trip to Taiwan my tea karma seemed to take a big leap forward. I think it was at the point where I was offered the chance to buy a few grams of 1920’s Song Pin at a price that was so low that it was pretty much a gift […]
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Staying in HK

Well, having been in Asia for at least a month now, I have to be the first to admit that I’ve been a bit slack on the blog front. Most of this was due to a quite high concentration of buying teas & teaware for the online shop & I didn’t want this blog to […]
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teacraft

I quite enjoy making things with my hands, and having my tools around me gave me some impetus to make some tea things.Below are some pictures of a cha he I made, perfectly sized for funnelling leaves into the small entrance of a teapot.
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Leaving Taiwan & Wisteria

I’ve spent the last week or so in Taipei, staying with some friends in the city. On the whole, I’ve enjoyed it here although the city doesn’t really compare my the time spent staying in MiaoLi (an hour’s drive to the south). MiaoLi was surrounded by mountains and felt much closer to nature, but Taipei […]
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Some thoughts on approaches to tea

I haven’t posted in a while, mainly because I wanted to wait, observe and digest the change and evolution of my relationship with tea. I originally came to appreciate tea whilst living in a hut in a forest in Scotland. At that time I had a few fairly standard Kunming tea market bings, some reasonable […]
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Transit

As I stopped off in Hong Kong enroute to Taiwan, I called by my friend’s house to take some things from the bags I’d left there on my way to Kunming and leave some things I don’t require for my next few weeks in Taiwan. My friends weren’t answering their phone, so I called around […]
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Dali

A few photos from a non-tea-related weekend trip to the mountains a few hours away from Kunming.
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Banzhang

It is commonly remarked that Yiwu is like the queen of puerh tea, while Banzhang is the king. The soft rounded character of Yiwu is contrasted by the intensely strong, bitter flavour and powerful chaqi of Banzhang. Due to the high demand and subsequent sky high prices (up to 1800RMB/US$260 per kg) of Banzhang tea […]
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Nannuoshan (2)

It’s with a feeling of relief that I write this post. I’d been holding off on this, while I waited for our tea from Nannuoshan to arrive in Kunming. With usual haphazard inefficiency somehow our package of tea took 1 week to make the 10 hour journey from Menghai to Kunming. Following warnings about unscrupulous […]
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Nannuoshan

We spent a fairly uneventful day making the journey from Yiwu to Menghai and settling into our basic accommodation which we hoped to be able to use as a base for the next few days while we explored surrounding tea mountains. Next morning, we arose early and boarded a bus headed back towards Jinghong, backtracking […]
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Yiwu (3)

Day 3 – Yiwu Following a leisurely lunch, we set about preparing for the afternoon’s activities. Our hosts had an order for 84 taidicha bings which they were due to press. To this we added our request for a few bings of their Dha Shu Cha [big tree tea] and Yesheng Chiao Mu [Wild Arbour] […]
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