Happy Birthday Little C!

Today is my darling daughter's 4th Birthday! She is a sweet, sensitive and brilliant girl who fills my heart with love and pride.

She loves to brew tea with me and I think this wonderful quote perfectly illustrates why:
"What the adult does, feels, and thinks are all imitated by the child under seven years, so complete attention to the task in hand, with a care, love, and joy in the doing, actually helps in the formation of the child's physical body." - Rudolf Steiner

Old School Tea Additives

Did you know that many European and American tea drinkers in the 1700's and 1800's were drinking dyed teas? I recently learned this peculiar factoid while doing a bit of tea research and I came across the following quote:

"There is now no doubt that all these faced teas are dyed with Prussian blue and gypsum, or plumbago, to suit the taste of the foreign 'barbarians.' The process may be seen any day, by those who give themselves the trouble to seek after it. Black teas are coated with gypsum to give weight and a sticky nature to the leaf, plumbago and lampblack to cover the white of the gypsum, and ferruginous earth to deepen the red of the liquor. The Chinese never use these dyed teas themselves." - Robert Fortune

Yuck! Can you imagine? I wonder how long this ghastly practice continued? I started to poke around the Internet for some more information and stumbled across a scary chapter on tea adulteration in an 1873 journal called: Cyclopædia of India and of eastern and southern Asia, commercial and scientific products of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, useful arts and manufactures, edited by Edward Balfour. This publication, along with Baron Ernst Von Bibra's fascinating 1855 work: Plant Intoxicants: A Classic Text on the use of Mind-Altering Plants, have revealed to me a vast conspiracy of old school tea icky-ness! Not only were Western tea drinkers once subjected to different, unnecessary, and sometimes dangerous, crap in their tea... but at times dishonest tea merchants were even known to "restore" and resell previously steeped tea leaves.

Sadly there are still a lot of potentially dangerous additives being used in foods and beverages all around the world and as long as people can find buyers for all that junk it's likely to continue.

Thank goodness things are now much better as far as premium tea is concerned. I have no doubt that the leaves I enjoy daily are safe and pure. I believe we're currently in an age where tea people of all nationalities are working together to build a healthy and prosperous international tea culture.

To Collect or To Simplify?

I have always had an inclination to collect things. As a young kid it was action figures (especially Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), as a teen it was rock albums, and throughout my life I've been known as "a penguin collector" by my friends and family. So... as many of my readers can totally relate, my growing tea obsession triggered a major teapot and puer tea cake collecting phase of my life. I now share my home with around 40 teapots and approximately 20 kilos of puer tea. Some of you might think that's a lot, while others will think that it's "barely anything."

I'm proud of my teapots and my puer. Even the puer cakes that I know are not very good have a place on my tea shelf. I'm sure every puer collector must, for one reason or another, purchase bad tea. I've even heard the venerable MarshalN refer to this concept as the collector's "tuition." Looking at, and organizing, my teapots and my puer brings me pleasure and I feel they are worth every penny.

That being said, I've really put on the breaks lately when it comes to collecting tea and teaware. Inspired in part by books such as Radical Homemakers, The Urban Homestead, and Simplicity Parenting, my wife and I have been on our own journey towards self reliance, simplification, and community building. Mainly we are doing little things like getting to know our neighbors, producing more of our own food, and limiting (sometimes easier said than done) our own and our children's screen time. We're not interested in living entirely "off the grid," instead we're just trying to be more conscious of where our money is going and focus most of our efforts on building a happy and fulfilling home life. Buying "stuff," especially when we can make it ourselves, barter for it, or simply "do without," no longer seems to fit with our lifestyle.

This doesn't mean I'll ever stop buying new tea and teaware. I'll still occasionally treat myself to small quantities of seasonal tea when money allows. It just means that I won't be impulsive (also easier said than done), and I'll only buy new or used things when I need to replace something else and I can't figure out a free way to acquire them.

My tea friend J. (first mentioned in my 2009 Gratitude post) once told me, "You know you've made it when you don't have to buy your own tea anymore." He alluded to his father in Taiwan whose friends and family give him more than enough great tea. He can drink all he wishes and re-gift any surplus. I want to be more like J's father in that respect. I hope that the more I write about tea, share homegrown produce, and help out my friends and neighbors the more great tea and teaware will come my way.

Gravity

"I pour boiling water from my kettle into my teapot, then I pour the freshly brewed tea into my little teacup. In both cases, the liquid flows smoothly and predictably. Thank goodness... or should I say... thank gravity!" - Anonymous Tea Blogger

I've always been a big fan of gravity. I really love seasons, and tides, and not floating off into the sky whenever I go outside (or anywhere, actually). As you might imagine, I've never wanted to be an astronaut. Just thinking about all the problems those intrepid star-folk must face when they brew their tea gives me a big headache.

It seems to me that physicists and astronomers are always talking about gravity. Perhaps we tea lovers can learn something from these studious sages? Maybe gravity and tea hold the entire universe together?

In the past, I have written short pieces in praise of bubbles and steam. These ephemeral pleasures are certainly important to mindful tea appreciation, but I doubt they rival gravity.

Happy Birthday Black Dragon Tea Bar Blog

Hi (你好).

My name is Brett. Here is a photo of me sharing a cup of tea with Luyu (陆羽) in Pinglin, Taiwan (坪林台灣).

I'm a student of Chinese tea culture living in Seattle (西雅圖). I have a beautiful wife and sweet baby girl.

Thank you (謝謝你) for checking out my blog! I plan to post mainly about tea but please be warned that I easily get sidetracked and may end up posting lots of other random stuff too. Also, all of the photos in this entire blog will have only been taken by me, my wife or a close friend.

To myself and many other people, tea represents an internationally conscious and harmonious lifestyle. Every time we drink tea we are doing something good for our physical body, but just as importantly tea creates peace and cultivates balance.

Here is one of my favorite tea quotes that will help illuminate my profound love of the leaf:

"Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing towards the future. Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life." -Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese monk, peace activist, and writer)