To be sung to the tune of “My Favorite Things” from the musical “The Sound of Music.”
On-line tea tastings
And Tuesdays with Norwood
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For tea that always tastes good!
Health news and research and many more things
That’s what you get when you log on T Ching!
Poetry Fridays
And loads of tea how-to
News, commentary
And even tea hiaku!
Beautiful teapots, [...]

I saw an interesting article from the Voice of America blog.
The post examines the interest among the youth of Hong Kong and their preferences for tea. Lam Kie Yuen, a man who has been in the tea business for five decades, is interviewed. His company began in Hong Kong in 1955 and recently expanded [...]

Wordstock - a writing conference in workshop format - was held at Portland’s beautiful convention center on Martin Luther King Boulevard. The first day, Friday, was planned with teachers in mind, offering small group sessions aimed specifically at teaching writing in the classroom setting. Sponsored by Borders Books and Starbucks Coffee, presenting workshops [...]

If the “foreign devils” were taxed, so were the merchants. By the late 1700’s, according to J.M. Scott,
Their minimum yearly payments for the privilege of being thus employed were calculated by Dr. Morrison, the East India Company’s interpreter, to be as follows: presents for the Emperor on his birthday and on other occasions–£56,000; presents direct [...]

Here’s another great article picked up through the New York Times but posted in the Taipai Times. Writer Carolyn Poirot was fortunate to get an interview with Dr. Jeffrey Blumberg who co -chaired the Fourth International Scientific Symposium on Tea and Human Health this fall. The interview starts off with a bang.
“As [...]

On Tea
Venus her myrtle, Phoebus has her bays;
Tea both excels, which she vouchsafes to praise.
The best of Queens, and best of herbs, we owe
To that bold nation, which the way did show
To the fair region where the sun doth rise,
Whose rich productions we so justly prize.
The Muse’s friend, tea does our fancy aid,
Repress those vapors [...]

The first Thanksgiving in 1621, a perfect union of thankfulness and cooperation, was celebrated after the second harvest season. The first settlers, those Pilgrims at Jamestown, were ill-equipped for survival: fully half of the original group who landed at Plymouth Rock did not live to see the celebration, succumbing to disease, starvation and [...]

I came across an interesting blog at the Times Union.We are often getting requests about cooking with tea. My favorite is the most simple. . .I use tea instead of water when making rice. Our jasmine tea, royal jade snail, offers such a delightful flavor to organic basmati, which is a staple at [...]

K’ang-hsi was after the maximum profit and the minimum trouble from the “foreign devils” and made it imperial policy to control all dealings with them. Considering the imperial objectives, it’s hard to imagine a more logical system than the one established. The emperor appointed an official to remit to his treasury a sum computed upon [...]

In the past weeks, I have found myself at three Saturday speech events. Each was different: one was actually a workshop; the second was a novice event; and the last was a full-scale competition involving twenty-six schools, over three hundred well-dressed teenagers, and over a hundred judges.
What they had in common was no tea.
You see, [...]