It's a strange idea, writing an index post about other posts. I'm the admin for the International Tea Talk group and seeing people join from countries I've written about has me considering telling them about such local-specific posts, but I almost never do. It's hard enough keeping up with moderation tasks, filtering out ads and such.
But why not? I'll keep this simple, and include a link to the main posts I take to be about tea culture or themes in a different area. Related to a country like China I've written countless posts, but not really about tea culture there in particular. Oddly that's something of a blind spot for me, even though some of my closest friends here in Bangkok have been from China, and some work contacts. We've visited China a few times (twice for vacation, and once for business, and Hong Kong a few more times, and Taiwan, if you count that), but you only see shops on visits (if you don't visit producers), versus interacting with locals about tea culture.
Here are those post links.
Making tea in Wuyishan; sharing pictures and video from Cindy Chen: not exactly about local tea culture, except related to tea production as a part of that. By tea culture I usually mean tea history, preference for types, locally produced styles, or related to enthusiast groups and ceremonial practices and such. I last visited China two years ago, and wrote about that visit and going to a tea market there in this post: Tea shopping in a market in Shenzhen, China, with this trip summary on what the rest of the visit was like.
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my favorite picture of Cindy |
Russian Tea Culture: that sentence about typical themes covering history and interest groups and such works as a summary of this post. We visited Russia on vacation three years ago and that started an ongoing interest in Russian tea culture, and just related to the country. It's a fantastic place to visit, discussed in more detail here: Travel in Russia, to Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Murmansk
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a very nice guy who helped me translate in this Moscow shop |
Indonesian grower profile with Galung Atri; on Indonesian teas: this is mostly focused on production over consumption themes, with some perspective on tea history mixed in. Indonesia is amazing to visit too. I might say that over and over in talking about different places. Russia, China, and Indonesia were all personal favorites, but lots of other places were really cool. Here's more on the visit details: Tea in Indonesia; one vacation's worth of experiences
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we visited a tea plantation in Java but two volcanoes really stole the show there |
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Wonosari plantation in Eastern Java |
Searching for tea in Seoul: ok, Seoul is amazing to visit, and I'm going to stop saying that. Tea themes didn't get so far compared to in other places but I least I found and tried some. I tend to focus on themes like seeing amusement parks and cultural heritage sites on my family vacations, which is appropriate enough. An old-style spice market there was absolutely amazing but I didn't buy much.
Travel and tea in Japan, versus Korea: this is really more about travel in Japan than tea in Japan; I didn't get far with the tea themes there. Again that tied to doing more sightseeing than related cultural investigation.
Tea culture in Poland, Tea culture in Poland (2), informed by a local tea blogger: this was a bit random, reviewing tea in a place I had no connection to, experimenting with that theme. I've never been to Poland. It was nice that a local tea blogger saw the post and offered a lot of input as an addition, which worked for a nice second post. I tend to see more about tea culture in places like Latvia and Georgia online; I should follow up about those countries sometime too.
Tea culture in Sweden: kind of a similar theme, looking into local tea culture in a somewhat random place based on talking to someone living in Sweden (originally from Spain, for what that's worth). It's interesting how the progression of uptake of awareness and preference works out in different places, typically following a similar pattern, but with some local variations.
Tea shopping in New York City: even a short visit can work well for a post, just checking in with a few local shops, and passing on what got missed in reviewing leads and later suggestions. We stayed in Chinatown on this visit, which made for a good starting point. One of the most promising shops I only heard about later, but I adjusted the post content to mention it.
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frantically stomping around NYC in a snowstorm looking for tea was really cool |
Searching for tea in Taipei, Taiwan: kind of similar to the last post mentioned; this is mostly about looking around over one day there. I found two fantastic shops there (Lin Mao Sen and Lin Hua Tai), so the part about hunting for teas went well as a result.
About Thai teas and tea in Thailand: I live in Thailand; strange I let this go this far down the list. A search for Bangkok Chinatown in that blog would turn up more than a dozen posts about meeting people there; I visit a favorite shop there all the time. I'm not that well integrated into a local tea culture here but of course some of that is around. I wrote about Tea as the hottest latest trend in Bangkok back in 2017 but that was more about bubble tea and matcha catching on.
Vietnamese teas! Green and Black!, Huyen's family's trials in making Vietnamese teas: it's strange how my awareness and context shifted so much between this 2014 and 2020 post. I was so happy to find two basic types of tea on a trip to Hanoi way back when, and then really obscure or novel versions seemed more familiar in the latter post.
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my friend Huyen, in one of my favorite tea party photos |
Narendra Kumar Gurung on developing local tea production in Nepal: this is the first Asian country on this list I've never visited (although I hadn't been to Poland or Sweden either). This is more on production themes, co-op initiatives, local preferences, and transitions in their tea industry than on local tea culture in terms of interest groups and such.
Tea in Kazakhstan: the first random pick-a-country themed post, reviewing tea culture in a place I'd never been, or had never heard much about.
Assam Teahaus orthodox black tea review: this review post included a section that's a grower and producer profile based on input from Maddhurjya Gogoi, a contact I consider a friend. Those issues came up in relation to Assam in a lot of posts, but no single article covered that theme explicitly. I think one will pretty soon, related to Jaba Borgohain passing on more on that theme. This post on Trying Assam falap, a variation of bamboo sheng covered some on a local type, and a few others talked about co-op initiatives and more direct sourcing ventures, and changes related to orthodox tea production. I've written a lot about Darjeeling too, just not background posts, on status there beyond reviewing individual teas.
Kinnari Tea sheng comparison (Nyot Ou district in Phongsaly, Laos): this covers some development issues related to Northern Laos tea production, about NGO activities and expanding use of feral / native local "wild" tea plants. It's odd that Laos appears so far down this list, since it has long been one of my favorite sources for interesting and pleasant teas. Anna of Kinnari is also one of my absolute favorite tea contacts. Laos tea contact helped get me into tea; about 10 years ago I visited a Laos farm and bought fresh coffee and tea there, before starting this blog.
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a wild part of Laos (photo credit and thanks to CCL) |
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mixing national themes, a Laos Tea tasting in a Moscow bookstore |
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visiting a Laos / Bolaven plateau tea farm with baby Keo, in 2011 |
Mission Impossible: reviewing teas from North Korea: this isn't about local tea culture in terms of interest groups, but it does cross over from production considerations into discussing how national isolation led to it being very challenging to obtain this tea. The same Chinese guide who brought Dennis Rodman there picked it up for me, so it probably really is from North Korea, but you just never know for sure.
That's probably plenty to mention, and most of the interesting places we've made it to. I've been to Hong Kong a few times (3, and passing through once?), but didn't focus enough on tea there for it to warrant a post about cool shops or unique tea experiences. The first two visits were a long time ago, before my tea interest ramped up, and the third was part of that trip to Shenzhen that I did mention, and we were in mainland China for longer that time.
We've visited other places in South-East Asia, and limited tea themes have came up, but nothing on the same order of these other ventures I just covered. Singapore's Chinatown is definitely unique but we cycled through a number of Singapore visits before I was as into tea too, in the first half of my 13 year stay here in Thailand. The same is true for one short trip to Malaysia, and I actually found tea from Cambodia in a trip there but it wasn't much to get excited about, low-grade stuff. It's nice that I was doing direct comparison posts that made no sense that early on, six years ago. I still do that.
Thanks for reading along with me, and related discussion, or the positive comments, if any apply. If you've made it this far at least the first scope did. If you've got an interesting story you would like to talk about, or see covered here, look me up, probably best at this blog related FB page. Even if it's not about tea I'm not that touchy about random contacts, and definitely not overwhelmed by the demands of fame just yet.
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