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Tea and martial arts
“Try softer,” my martial arts master said, as I fumbled through learning new steps in my form. My mind was jumbled and confused, trying to remember the movements, my body stiff and tense. Trying...
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American Chinese teaware
The art of gong fu cha, the Chinese tea service, is generally practiced using a specialized tea set. Collectively called cha ju (or equipage by people who insist on using French), the instruments of...
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The alchemy of tea
A huge part of my job as a tea importer trying to establish Chinese tea service as a cultural practice in America is drawing analogies. This is quite easy when it comes to the tea itself – good tea,...
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The Transformative Powers of Tenmoku
When I was young, I used to love watching Chinese period dramas that involve an emperor drinking poisoned wine from a magic (usually sparkly) goblet and miraculously not die because of the mysterious...
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cleaning teaware: bathing the immortals
You can tell a lot about artisans by how they care for their tools. The same can be said of a musician and her instruments, or a chef and his knives. Just as a master of any skill or craft can be...
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Bowl 8: Grace and beauty; gong fu tea
Our tea life isn’t just about a greater connection to Nature through the Leaf, but an attunement with our self as well. We must therefore cultivate both inner and outer harmony, a flow from the...
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Mastery: why tea tastes different when they make it
As a boy, I spent a great amount of time in my grandmother’s kitchen. We would talk about life and she would do her best to teach me how to prepare meals. “As a host, you only need to know one or two...
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Why Tea?
Over the past dozen or so years, my life has become increasingly entangled with the world of Chinese tea, which seems like an obscure, quirky thing to be fixated on. The transition, however, has been...
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