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Tea Book

A collection of 18 issues

Where Heaven is Close and the Emperor is far Away: Tea Technique Research Trip 2025 – Yiwu, Yunnan

Yunnan was the south western frontier of imperial China, populated by sinofied tribes, the gateway to Southeast Asia and India, the nexus of the southern silk road and tea horse trail. Yunnan is still a tribal land, far from the imperial heartland of China, where heaven is close and the

I Barely Wuyi (武夷) - Tea Technique Research Trip 2024

Listen to the Tea Technique Podcast on the 2024 Research Trip to Wuyi: Intro Wuyi may be the most mythical of China's tea origins, unique in history, environment, natural preservation, production process, and flavor profiles. It may also be the most hyper-real, a place of collective modern myth-making,

Announcing BOOK 2: Yixing Teapots – Knowledge, Connoisseurship, and Technique

I am overjoyed to announce that my 2nd book, on Yixing Teapots, has begun publication on Tea Technique. While the last chapter of Book 1 was published in December of last year, I was already about a year into writing Book 2 with research, notes, outlines, and experiments ready to

Quarantine Fever Dreams and Grandiose Delusions

TL;DR: I have a new website and book! Please join me at teatechnique.org Way back in 2012, I mentioned on this blog that I was writing a book… (see post HERE). With COVID-19 and the resulting quarantine, that book expanded into a series – and I have completed the

The Practice of Tea Ceremony

This is a draft section of my upcoming book “An introduction to the art and Science of Chinese Tea Ceremony”. Please help improve it with your comments, suggestions, and hate mail! How to practice tea ceremony is a difficult question, as it depends on what you consider to be the

Kilns for Firing a Yixing Teapot

NOTE: this post is out of date. Those Interested in Yixing Teapots are suggested to read An Introduction to the Art & Science of Chinese Tea Ceremony: Yixing Teapots – Knowledge, Connoisseurship, and Technique There were two types of kilns historically used in Yixing: Snake Kilns and “Modern Tunnel” Kilns. Later,

Basic Verification of Yixing Teapots

NOTE: this post is out of date. Those Interested in Yixing Teapots are suggested to read An Introduction to the Art & Science of Chinese Tea Ceremony: Yixing Teapots – Knowledge, Connoisseurship, and Technique Yixing teapots have been in nearly continuous production (wars being the primary cause of discontinuity) since the

Processing of Yixing Clay

NOTE: this post is out of date. Those Interested in Yixing Teapots are suggested to read An Introduction to the Art & Science of Chinese Tea Ceremony: Yixing Teapots – Knowledge, Connoisseurship, and Technique The raw yixing dirt needs to be processed and refined before it can be fired into a

The 19 Areas of Yixing & The 3 Types of Yixing Clay

NOTE: this post is out of date. Those Interested in Yixing Teapots are suggested to read An Introduction to the Art & Science of Chinese Tea Ceremony: Yixing Teapots – Knowledge, Connoisseurship, and Technique It has been known as late as the Ming Dynasty that tea was most suitably brewed in

The Telos of Teaware

This is a draft section of my upcoming book “An introduction to the art and Science of Chinese Tea Ceremony”. Please help improve it with your comments, suggestions, and hate mail! What is the goal of teaware? To what end does it exist for? Was that decided by the maker