Articles

  • Xigui, the other side of Bangdong

    After talking about Mangfei, Yongde county, we travel along the G323 in a 2-hour journey through the pre-Western architecture of Heping village, passing Bangdong gardens, leaving Mangmai until we enter the wild forest to reach Xigui, the last village of the west bank of Lancangjiang. The roads are unpaved and where it meets the asphalt

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  • Where does a real Lao Tie come from?

    Anxi is where time dwells, where the artistic breath of Chinese classicism reverberates among the residues of the cultural revolution along the road that leads to Ganze, with the purplish sunset that adorns the skyscrapers of Quanzhou behind it. The landscape alternates the expressive intensity of nature with the works of human activity; where the

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  • Geography of Mengku, a bit of history of the Shuangjiang factory and an excellent pu’er

    Yunnan’s soil is complex, as is the climate in its multidimensionality. In a single region we find a tropical climate or a mountain one, in the chromatism that envelops the observer, the eyes find both rest and the neurasthenia of the course of nature in a landscape that seems to be the meeting place between

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  • Bingdao, its aura, its mysticism. Maybe it’s all undeserved?

    The price that Bingdao tea has reached has attracted much attention from Western countries, covering it with that mysticism reserved for the great names in Bordeaux or Burgundy winemaking, an aura that cannot guarantee that the taster’s opinion do not deform in front of it. But what makes Bingdao teas so? Where does the search

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  • All the fragrance of Naka

    Naka is one of those places whose tea manages to make the contemplative intent coexist with the liberation that accompanies a state of inebriation, of marked well-being. The teas from this mountain are often not famous for their complexity but rather enliven the experience with their persistent sweetness, an immediate sugary sensation that is almost

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  • Perhaps it’s time to ask what can be called Dancong

    Dancong tea is much more than an aromatic concentrate, it is not just a floral punch straight in the mouth capable of anesthetizing the taste buds with its fragrances.Fenghuang tea is often able to escape the intellect, but the leaves of those trees are able to bring the unintelligible into sensible form. Make a Dancong

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  • Another soliloquy about Laobanzhang with a 2018 sheng pu from Tianhong tea factory

    Laobanzhang has long been an example of ambivalence. Its bitterness contrasts with the sweetness that pervades you a moment later, the exaltation of its essence opposed to the condemnation of the upheaval caused by its own greatness. Its leaves can be as bitter and severe in youth as they are sweet and complex as they

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  • Reflections about the pu’er market and Laobanzhang

    Everything about tea is born from an initial effort and suffering, and through these it is consecrated in a sort of spiritual life that is strengthened over time, in its determined and individual character. Tea is not the immediate gift of nature. Immediacy in tea always comes at a high price. Laobanzhang is experimenting a

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  • When the predecessors will enjoy the sight of civilization the descendants will enjoy their blessings

    Everything has remained much as it was in many Sichuan villages along the Chama Gudao, or so it seems. The architecture changes radically from Chengdu to Kangming, from Yading along the Yangtze to Lushi where this image originates. In some areas everything seems unchanged, some seem to have survived the urban ravages of the Sino-Japanese

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  • Along the road to Lhasa: a break with Eastern Leaves’ Huangxiaocha 2022

    Mengdingshan is one of the areas of Sichuan best known to tea enthusiasts, a universe of its own, an almost oracular function of a system apparently disconnected from the world with gardens immersed in the clouds that cover them creating an intense environmental and philosophical contrast, a metaphor for the history of this region which

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