Recently Clicked: June 12, 2005

Summer Reading 2005, a blogger links to about 40 summer (and other) reading lists. It's a bit silly to start my own list with a link to another list, especially one that's not about tea. However, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only tea-sipping book lover out there, and this is a great resource for those of us who love the smell of a library or used bookstore. :) These lists range from best spy fiction to syllabi from college literature courses.

An Oolong Quest in Taiwan, a travel essay with some nice photos. Here’s a quote, to give you an idea of the content:

“Two-thirds of Taiwan is mountain-covered. With fifty peaks over 3000 meters, this wet green island sitting off China’s coast provided the perfect home for the fabled tea. My destination was a teahouse run by a family that had grown specialty Oolongs for 200 years, after emigrating from the Wuyi region of Fujian province in China (the ‘birthplace’ of tea).”

Emagein Tea has a couple of fun pages for tea lovers. If you like word games, give the Tea Word Search puzzle a try. If you’d like to keep your own tea-tasting notes, you can print (or cut & paste into a document) their Tea Tasting Form.

Traditional Chinese tea ceremony from Wuyi - the art of tea in 27 moves, on the Jing Tea Shop web site. My favorite description is #15, “three dragons guard the vessel.” This was how I naturally held the cup, but I like the way the metaphor gets at controlling the fragile cups (at least they’re fragile to me, since I have this tendency toward clutziness). By the way, I recently received my first order from Jing Tea and am quite pleased. I’ll be posting more about the puerh soon.

Adagio Tea Timer, which looks really cool but (alas!) I can’t use because there is no mac version. :(

A Canadian Folk-song that features tea -- “While on the hob the kettle sings | Margery, Margery, make the tea”