Tea in Literature header

Over 160 articles to celebrate tea in classic and contemporary literature

Sansenke and Sen no Rikyū’s Descendants

Sansenke and Sen no Rikyū’s Descendants

The most talked-about period drama of recent years has to be the British series, Downton Abbey, co-produced by Carnival Films and Masterpiece. However, lavish historical productions are certainly not novel elsewhere…

Tea Is An Experience

Tea Is An Experience

Sitting down to drink a cup of tea grants us permission to slow down. Slowing down is a powerful…

Green Tea: A Short Story

Green Tea: A Short Story

“Green Tea” is a short story written by Irish writer J. Sheridan Le Fanu (1814 – 1873) who specialized in horror fiction, including the familiar...

A Tea Trading Company’s Daughter

A Tea Trading Company’s Daughter

A Tea Trading Company’s Daughter (茶行的女兒), first published in 2014 then a new edition in 2019, is a book written in Traditional Chinese by Taiwanese...

In Three Cups of Tea

In Three Cups of Tea

April is National Poetry Month – January is National Hot Tea Month – for those of us that do not wait for these months to celebrate either of our...

The Teapot

The Teapot

In lieu of an article, Dharlene sent us this tale by Hans Christian Andersen this month. Enjoy! "HERE was once a proud teapot; it was proud of being...

Darjeeling Tea Hills

Darjeeling Tea Hills

Darjeeling Tea Hills   The Kanchenjunga Mountains so close – Everest looms in the remote distance. The mist covered tea hills of Darjeeling even...

10 Best English Lit Books To Read While Drinking Tea

10 Best English Lit Books To Read While Drinking Tea

Everyone’s done it at least once. Make themselves their comfort tea (masala chai on my end or a really deep oolong), grab a blanket, and curl up with a good book. But what to read? Never fear: this nerdy girl has got the answer! Here is a list of great pieces of English Literature you should check out next time you need something to pair with your Earl or Lady Grey.

A Christmas Eve Poem

A Christmas Eve Poem

NATIVI-TEA At the moment of my birth there was a celebration, too. The angels sang and God was all I knew. God was all I remembered – for on earth...

Gong fu tea tips

Gong fu tea tips

Do you remember the very first gong fu experiment we ever did? It is an important one, and as we have mentioned many times it is important to repeat all these experiments several times. In our first experiment, we poured tea into a cup and then poured half of that into an identical cup, and half of that into a third.

Tea story continued

Tea story continued

This is Part 2 of Michael’s tea story. You can click the first link in the first sentence, or the link at the end of this post to read the first installment.

The rest was history, after drinking my first cup of Jasmine I was hooked on loose leaf tea. I would drink my cheap Jasmine tea every day, experimenting with different steeping times to find what I liked best. The next step for me was ordering loose

Flashback Friday: tea and breakfast!

Flashback Friday: tea and breakfast!

Many of us love to start our day with tea. Just tea! The variety of choices here is as wide as the world of tea! Many people like to start their day with a green or an oolong tea, but there are others of us who prefer to hit the morning hours with a nice strong pot of Pu’erh, Assam, or Breakfast Blend. Some of this choice has to do with flavor preferences,

One book = many books

One book = many books

Do you have a tea story you’d love to see published? Have you ever thought about publishing your own book? 81% of Americans say they want to write a book! Isn’t that a startling statistic? Is 81% of the population actually doing it? NO!

Transcendence

Transcendence

Living here in Miaoli and serving at the Center every day, the only opportunity I have for any interactions with people who aren’t into tea or spiritual work is in the workplace. I’ve been at my current job for one year now, and although I don’t talk much with anyone, over time they’ve reached the obvious conclusion that I’m a weirdo with mixed-up priorities.

Going to tea

Going to tea

You’re going out to tea today,
Be careful what you do;
Let all accounts that I shall hear,
Be pleasant ones, of you.

Mastery: why tea tastes different when they make it

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 recipes really well and learn how to make them delicious.”

Transcendence

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 absolute into the relative. We learn this flow through the practice

The Huntington Revisited

The Huntington Revisited

The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, or simply the Huntington, has been featured in several T Ching posts. Even poems in the style of the seventeen-syllable haiku were composed to commemorate its Japanese Garden’s 2012 reopening.

Transcendence

Bowl 7: Connection to the great nature, bowl tea

The Leaf is the highest of scriptures. In tea we read sutras written not in the language of man, but that of the mountain and forest, earth and air, brook, stream, sunshine and moonshine. These leaves contain vast tomes, if we but learn to speak their language.

Youth choose TEA

Youth choose TEA

When I started T Ching back in 2006, it was a direct result of my growing awareness about the health benefits of tea. Those of you who ever clicked on “about us,” are aware of this mission: “T Ching was born out of a concern for the declining state of health in the United States and abroad and the recognition that drinking tea was a simple and effective

Flashback Friday:  grow your own!

Flashback Friday: grow your own!

Curious enough – or serious enough – about Camellia sinensis to try growing your own? Even the thought of such a venture brings back fond memories of my father’s culinary adventures. The homemade root beer phase was a real hit with the neighborhood kids, especially since Dad bottled the brew in “stubbies,” or eleven ounce glass beer bottles.

Bowl Six: healing and community; work and service

Bowl Six: healing and community; work and service

The only reason to seek mastery of this tea is in service of our world. Furthermore, it is perhaps paradoxical that the road to mastery itself essentially contains service, for without it mastery can never be achieved. Having cultivated inner awareness

Tea at sea?

Tea at sea?

During my most recent weekend getaway, while having breakfast at Crown Princess’s Horizon Court on Deck 15, I noticed the self-serve beverage station’s teabag teas. I asked a server if there were other tea services on board. My low expectation was met of course

Bowl Six: healing and community; work and service

Bowl Five: Physical well-being, diet and movement

t is unfortunate that much of the world has taken to compartmentalizing life: body for the doctors, mind for the psychiatrists and spirit for religion. True healing is a unification of these false barriers. A life of tea is a life, and applies equally to all aspects of truth.

Bowl Six: healing and community; work and service

Bowl Four: Cleanliness and Purity

Reverence and purity facilitate a life of tea, and the communication of peace and wisdom through tea. Purity functions on all levels, from the body to the tea room, the spirit and the mind. We must respect the space and being-ness all around us, keeping our homes,

Unflavourable conditions

Unflavourable conditions

I would like to say here that I have no significant problems with flavored teas. I’ll drink whatever chocolate-rasberry-mocha rooibus you offer me, if I’m in the mood. What is Earl Grey if not just a very common flavored tea? Smokey Lapsang Souchong? Jasmine green tea? Flavoured tea is delicious, especially when paired with light, cafe-fare foods such as macaroons or little delicate cakes

Bowl Six: healing and community; work and service

Bowl Three: humility and gratitude, study, contemplation, prayer

All liturgies are in truth consummation and proclamation of a state of being—making the invisible become visible on the physical level. We make altars to our own inner truths. Bowing to the Buddha, I bow to awakening and stillness in me. I learn humility before the Divinity in me, and then begin to learn from the wisdom of those people, places and things