Over 160 articles to celebrate tea in classic and contemporary literature
Tea in Literature: Polly put the kettle on, We’ll all have tea.
On the occasion of Charles Dickens’ 200th birthday, tea lovers around the world echoed this famous quote from the familiar Mother Goose rhyme…
TeaBookClub: A Book Club for Tea Lovers
TeaBookClub is a virtual space for sharing knowledge, discussing industry topics, and to simply make friends.
Sage of Tea Lu Yu
In tea history, it is impossible not to come across mention of Lu Yu, the Sage of Tea or Patron Saint of Tea.
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
Sitting down to drink a cup of tea grants us permission to slow down. Slowing down is a powerful…
Tea Erasure Poetry from Dynastic Verse
Erasure poetry is a subgenre of found poetry which eliminates pre-existing text to compose a poem.
Tea and Mystery by Ms. Agatha Christie
Everyone knows that reading and a cup of tea go hand in hand, and no one knew this better than Agatha Christie.
Creative Writing Tea Prompt
Creative writing centered in tea has a tradition spanning over a millennium.
Tea Cartoons; Need a chuckle with your tea?
Do Tea Cartoons Attract New Tea Drinkers? The World Tea Expo once scheduled a speaker that discussed how the popularity of tea drinking in Japanese...
The Big & Heavy Books About Tea
Heavy Books About Tea You may never have considered that the focus of a book review might be inspired by weight. But it suddenly occurred to me as I...
Tea in Newspaper Headlines
An article titled “Care for a Cup of Satanic Chamomile?” appeared in the New York Times…
Modern and Contemporary Poetry About Tea
This article is a compilation of excerpts from Chinese poets in translation, who steep emotions through various vessels in connection to tea.
The Magic Tea Kettle; A Japanese Legend
Bunbuku Chagama, literally “Bunbuku tea-kettle,” is a Japanese folktale or fairy tale.
Six Chinese Idioms About Tea: Understanding Culture via Language
The following six idioms demonstrate how tea is steeped within Mandarin.
A Dream of Red Mansions
The Chinese character for tea appears only once in “A Dream of Red Mansions.”
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...
Falling Into Tea With Books, a Tea-Tinged Reflection
With the turning of the season, does your tea habit change? Cooler nights lead me to drink more of our favorite beverage.
Tea Poetry: Rohini Exotic Emperor White
Captured quarters, remnants of tulips, the butchering of spring merging to monsoons, imperfect buds, fractured leaves, wrinkled potential. We...
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
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
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...
Brought Together by Tea: A Tea Poem
Return to: T Ching Classics: Tea Bringing People Together Travellers – strangers – travelling a foreign land. Find themselves connected –...
No Desire for Tea – A Tea Poem
I just don't like tea! No, I have no interest in tea. None for me, thanks just the same. Grandma made it for me when I was little, stuck at home and...
The Camaraderie of Tea: A Poem
The Camaraderie of Tea An instant bond. A stranger from a distant land. Offers a cup of tea. Expresses a love of tea. Confesses an obsession with...
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
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
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...
The Bridge – A Tea Poem
The gap, the space, the generations, the ways, the beliefs. The traditions, the culture, the clothing, the food. Geographically, religiously,...
Haiku for the Small Tea Grower
Hawaii, Vegas
Mississippi, Oregon
Is this a tea race?
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
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!
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
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
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
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
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.”
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 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.
Flashback Friday: doing business with tea
I have learned the perfect way to conduct business with other people. I believe this discovery should become an adopted practice for everyone doing business today.
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
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!
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
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?
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 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.
Finding Chinese tea in the Latin Quarter
I recently found myself traveling Europe for two weeks with a small school group, where and when I discovered that you never know when or where you’ll find good tea.
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
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 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
Throw Back Friday: no need for armor
You and I are great souls.
And we come together for a time.
We meet over a cup of tea here on earth.
Shall we leave our shell and join with each other?