Walk into a tea shop or browse an online tea store and you may find two teas that look almost identical, yet one costs three times as much as the other. Is the expensive tea genuinely better? Or are you paying for a prettier tin, a famous name and a…
Buying loose leaf tea online can feel strangely difficult. Before choosing a vendor, read our Chinese tea guide for beginners to understand the main tea types and what suits you. In a shop, you can look at the leaves, smell the tea and ask someone what it tastes like. Online,…
Once you've gotten comfortable brewing tea in a gaiwan — without burning your fingers — a natural next question shows up: should you upgrade to a Yixing teapot? It has a reputation as the "serious" tea drinker's vessel, and it's easy to assume that moving up to one is the…
If you've ever received a tin of tea as a gift from a Chinese friend, colleague, or relative, you may have taken it at face value — a nice, thoughtful present, the same category as a bottle of wine or a box of chocolates. It's worth knowing that in Chinese…
A common assumption when people start shopping for a gaiwan is that price maps directly to quality — that a $15 gaiwan must be a compromise compared to a $60 one. For a beginner, that's mostly backwards. At the budget end of the market, the differences that actually matter aren't…