What started as the intention to Blog a Tea Sipper way through China has become a retrospective. Since returning, I’ve been happily sorting through the pictures and memories of our three weeks, trying to distill the best tidbits. The group itself was interesting – tea professionals from Australia, Canada, Lithuania, Poland and the U.S. – a World Tea Tour under the guidance of Dan Robertson.
To date, I’ve been recounting our group’s meandering through Beijing. These few articles barely do it justice to the great city of history, culture and the world of tea but I’m anxious to move on. We’re still a long way from the most famous tea provinces. While I’m committed to keeping the tour on schedule, I’m chomping at the bit to tell some more tea-specific stories.
The upcoming post will have our group boarding the train to Inner Mongolia. Some of the highlights will include the overnight train trip, teatime on the train and the capital city of Hohhot. From here we went by bus to a music festival on the high grasslands – the steppes. The tea aspect here is a milk tea made from compressed bricks. One is the traditional tea served with our meals and the other was the tea prepared at a more remote site. Mode of transportation for this adventure was horseback.
Following the adventures in Mongolia we fly down to the Yunnan Province. Think Puerh tea and some amazing experiences. We made our own teacakes and hiked into the jungle to pay our homage to the King of Tea Trees. We may not have uncovered the secret ingredient but we all learned more as we experienced the process first-hand. Bamboo Tea? Stayed tuned.
So, I invite you to stay tuned and live vicariously through my experiences. Feel free to comment, ask questions or press delete if I go on a bit too much.
