It's All About Tea

You've probably heard of GABA tea and its benefits. Picking up some GABA tea from the shelf, we see claims of stress relief, pain relief, and happiness promotion. While GABA does all those things, taking GABA in the form of tea or supplements doesn't allow it to get absorbed by the body in the same way as when it's naturally produced within our bodies. (Read more)

When thinking of Japanese culture, many of us have come across the term wabi-sabi. Although hard to define literally, wabi-sabi is a concept centered around the appreciation of imperfection. It is carried throughout many aspects of Japanese culture. From art to architecture, literature, poetry, nature, design, and one of the places it’s seen the most… tea ceremony. (Read more)

Whenever we are faced with the harsh reality of our favorite teapot that we painstakingly brought back from Japan breaking, we must ask ourselves the following question:

"Out with the old" or do I try repairing it?

For many merely throwing it away is not an option. Especially if the piece of teaware has a lot of meaning to us or if we just recently acquired it.

A quick search online and you will see kintsugi as the number one suggested method of repairing pottery. But is it really worth it? (Read more)

Have you ever wondered what time of year your favorite teas are harvested?
Since tea bushes aren’t grown in greenhouses but are naturally grown in tea farms outside or sometimes even wildly, timing the harvest is of utter importance. With certain teas a crop can only be limited to a few days out of the whole year — if missed, the farmers would have to wait for the next season to produce this type of tea. (Read more)

Similarly with Cha Qi, as many gongfu-ers that exist, the many definitions of Yan Yun you may hear.

In Chinese, Yan means rock, which is also where the name Yan Cha comes from — Rock Tea.

Yun, on the other hand, is much more abstract and is more of a feeling, or a knowing, than it is anything of the physical realm. (Read more)