How to make a nice cup of Chinese tea!

I found this wonderful article about how to make your cup of Chinese tea right and nice from TeaVivre's page.

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Good Water

A great cup of tea starts with the water you use, which is especially true for drinking our teas with a subtle taste, like our White and Green teas, where any residual taste in the water can easily overwhelm the tea's taste.  If you happen to live somewhere with access to natural, clean spring or stream water then that is definitely the best water to use.  However if you're not one of those lucky few, then fresh bottled spring water – not “mineral” water – or filtered tape water is best.  That is preferred over untreated tap water, unless you live in an area with particularly clean and fresh tap water.

The water you use should be fresh, and most importantly, it should not contain a lot of minerals, especially calcium or iron and have a neutral pH.  If you use “hard” water – water with a high mineral content – the minerals can react with the antioxidants and other chemicals in the tea to reduce their effectiveness, as well as masking the tea's taste and aroma with a metallic overtone.

It's best if the water also has a high oxygen content.  Filtered tap water will naturally have a lot of oxygen, but if you use bottled water you should shake it first for 10 or 20 seconds to “freshen” it up by dissolving oxygen from the air.  You should also stop boiling the water as soon as it boils.  If you boil it longer, the dissolved oxygen will quickly be removed.

Your Teapot

The teapot you use will also affect the taste, by changing how quickly the water cools in the pot.  If you have teas that need a longer steeping time, like black and green teas, you should try to use a teapot that resists cooling.  Cast iron is especially good, but expensive (and heavy!).  The more traditional ceramic and porcelain teapots are also very good, as they are good insulators – and of course can be very beautiful!

In China the material and appearance of a tea set is also something that is of importance, and  people will use tea sets made from different materials for different types of teas, that include “purple-sand” tea sets (a type of Chinese ceramic that has a distinctive purple color due to the use of a type of iron-rich sand), porcelain and glass tea sets.  People often use glass for green and white teas – and flower teas of course, purple-sand sets for Pu'Er and porcelain or purple-sand sets for Oolong and black teas.

Next, you want to check that your teapot is clean.  Over time, especially with black teas, a pot can develop a darkish film from the tannin in the tea.  This can alter the taste of the tea, again especially true if you drink subtle flavoured white and green teas.

...or brew in a glass!

Many Chinese teas, especially Green, White and – of course - Flower teas, are very attractive when they open up in the water as they steep.  Indeed, this is what initially gave rise to the idea of making Flower Teas.  In China, these teas are usually brewed directly in a clear glass, and not in a pot, so that you can not just enjoy the taste and aroma, but also watch the slowly changing shapes the tea takes as it infuses in the glass.

Water Temperature

OK, now that you're ready to make the tea, the most vital part in the whole process is the temperature of the water.  Different teas must be brewed at different temperatures.

Before brewing the tea, it is important that you pre-heat the teapot to avoid it cooling the water as soon as it is added, especially true for cast iron teapots.  Simply put some boiling water into the pot for a minute, then empty.

TeaVivre's tea descriptions all list the temperature each particular tea needs.  In particular, Green and White Teas must be steeped at a lower temperature, around 160°F-180°F (70°C-80°C) to avoid the tea taking on a bitter taste.  When we ship you your tea, we include detailed brewing instructions to make sure you enjoy your tea to the fullest.

One simple way to get the right temperature for Green and White teas, is to stop heating the water before it comes to a complete boil by listening for when the water first sounds like it is starting to boil.  When the noise from the kettle starts to take on a quieter, deeper sound, you know it is around the right temperature for these teas.

How much tea

You also want to check that you use the right amount of tea and water.  Again, all TeaVivre's tea's come with complete instructions that let you know how much tea to use with how much water.  This is more a matter of taste however, adding extra tea to the water will just result in a stronger, bolder flavour to the tea.  As a rule of thumb, about 1-2 teaspoons of tea per cup is usually in the right ballpark.

Now you're ready to steep the tea, you want to add the tea before the water.  If you add the water first, the tea will tend to float and stick to the top of the water, and so not properly steep in the water.

How long to Steep

You also need to steep each tea for the appropriate amount of time.  Too short a time and the tea's flavour, aroma and beneficial chemicals will not have enough time to diffuse out into the water.  Too long and the tea's taste will change, usually becoming more bitter or astringent.  For the first infusion, white tea's typically steep for around 30 seconds, green teas for around 2 minutes, and black teas for anything up to 5 minutes.

Unlike common “bagged” tea, Chinese loose leaf tea can be used – or “infused” - several times.  When you infuse the tea several times, you typically want to increase the steeping time by about 15-30 seconds each time.   The number of times you can infuse a tea is down to personal taste and the type of tea.  Generally tea's made from tea buds – like white and green teas – can only be infused 2-3 times, black and oolong tea's 3-5 times, while Pu'er tea can be happily infused up to 10 times.

One important thing to note is that you should not try to steep the tea for a longer time to get a stronger taste.  Instead just add more tea leaves – a longer brewing time will usually result in the tea taking on a more bitter, astringent taste.

Our instructions will include the typical number of times each tea can be infused, before it starts to loose its taste.

Finally, before you drink the tea, you should pre-heat the cups.  Pre-heating the cup helps ensure that the tea doesn't cool too much after it is poured, so preserving it's taste and aroma.

That's it!  

Thank you credit to : http://www.teavivre.com/info/how-to-make-tea/

Dianhong - high end gourmet tea from Yunnan

I just love this tea!
I grown up in a Thai-Chinese family, where tea is ordinary everyday's meal like a dish of rice. I have tried so many good Chinese tea and various types as well. But I have to say that when I tried this one, it beats every other things else.

Dian Hong is the tea type. I found its strange-looking dry leafs in a big glass container in a tea shop in Jianshui (Yunnan). Pu'er is actually the most famous one that the owner tried to sell me, but that wasn't my taste. I looked around the shop intending to get at least something back home for my family. I know that they are not big fans of Pu'er, as they loved only Tia Guan Yin from the Southwest (Fujian/ Chaozhou). I spotted this golden long leaves and asked for a taste. The owner was so nice and eager to help me. The taste was sweet and aromatic, similar to having gentle caramel malty sweets in your mouth (with a hint of sweet fruits).

So, I copied these below information about my favourite tea here (from wikipedia). Next time in Yunnan, I will definitely get the best one :)

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Dianhong tea 滇紅茶 is a type of relatively high end gourmet Chinese black tea sometimes used in various tea blends and grown in Yunnan Province, China. The main difference between Dianhong and other Chinese black teas is the amount of fine leaf buds, or "golden tips," present in the dried tea. Fermented with lychee, roseand longan, Dianhong teas produces a brew that is brassy golden orange in colour with a sweet, gentle aroma and no astringency. Cheaper varieties of Dianhong produce a darker brownish brew that can be very bitter.

Teas grown in Yunnan prior to the Han dynasty (206 bce – 220 ce) were typically produced in a compressed form similar to modern pu-erh tea. Dian hong is a relatively new product from Yunnan that began production in the early 20th century. The word "diān" (滇) is the short name for the Yunnan region while "hóng" (紅) means "red (tea)"; as such, these teas are sometimes simply referred to as Yunnan red or Yunnan black. However, such references are often confusing due to the other varieties of teas produced in Yunnan as well as the ambiguous nature of the color classifications.

Dianhong teas are best brewed with porcelain gaiwan or yixing teaware using freshly boiled water at 90°C (194°F) to 100°C (212°F), and are suitable for multiple infusions. It is important not to overbrew the teas as they will easily go bitter or exhibit astringency, especially the cheaper varieties.

• Broken Yunnan (滇紅碎茶; pinyin:diānhóng suì chá): A cheap tea used for blending which contains very few golden buds and is generally bitter on its own.This tea is easily identified by the largely black dried leaves with only a few bursts of golden tips. The brew is dark and not brassy but reddish-brown. The taste can sometimes be as strong as cooked pu-erh tea. Classified in Orange pekoe grading as BOP.
• Yunnan Gold (滇紅工夫茶 or 滇紅; pinyin: diānhóng gōngfū chá): A dianhong with fewer golden buds and more dark tea leaves. It is on par with the pure gold, and is priced similarly, but makes teas with slightly different characteristics. The brew a brassy red color different from other black teas and a vivid sweetness not quite as intense as "Yunnan pure gold". Classified in Orange pekoe grading from OP to TGFOP.
• Yunnan Pure Gold (金芽滇紅茶; pinyin: jīnyá diānhóng chá): Considered the best type of Dian hong tea. It contains only golden tips, which are usually covered in fine hairs. When viewed from a distance, the dried tea appears bright orange in colour. The tea liquor is bright red in colour and exhibits a gentle aroma and a sweet taste. The leaves are reddish brown after being brewed. Classified in Orange pekoe grading from TGFOP to SFTGFOP.
• Golden needle (金针茶; pinyin: jīnzhēn chá) is a pure black variety of dianhong. The leaves are golden in color and yield an amberish infusion.

Thank you credit to : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianhong

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How to brew the best Dian Hong tea

Thank you credit to  : http://www.teavivre.com/yunnan-black-tea/

Travel quotes that can make you stop dreaming about travel, but just do it!

I browsed through travel articles online and found this interesting article by F.Daniel Harbecke on Matador's. He gathered some funny and so true quotes about travel, which I believe will both inspire you and be a good shout beside your ear, "hey! do not just dream, go out, and explore!" :)

And remember that...
"Quotes are best considered as guides rather than rules. Sometimes quotes contradict one another, which suggests a greater truth -  a range of choice, existing between the markers." (F.Daniel Harbecke, August 2008)

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The 50 and (next) 50 Most Inspiring Travel Quotes Of All Time (F.Daniel Harbecke)

1. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain

2. “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – St. Augustine

3. “There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

4. “The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.” – Samuel Johnson

5. “All the pathos and irony of leaving one’s youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveler learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.” – Paul Fussell

6. “Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” – Jack Kerouac

7. “He who does not travel does not know the value of men.” – Moorish proverb

8. “People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.” – Dagobert D. Runes

9. “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” – John Steinbeck

10. “No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” – Lin Yutang

11. “Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty-his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.” – Aldous Huxley

12. “All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.” – Samuel Johnson

13. “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller

14. “Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese

15. “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller

16″A traveler without observation is a bird without wings.” – Moslih Eddin Saadi

17. “When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.” – D. H. Lawrence

18. “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” – Freya Stark

19. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

20. “Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard

21. “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” – Martin Buber

22. “We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.” –Jawaharial Nehru

23. “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” – Paul Theroux

24. “To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” – Bill Bryson

25. “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

26. “Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by.” – Robert Frost

27. “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tzu

28. “There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it.” – Charles Dudley Warner

29. “A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” – Lao Tzu

30. “If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” – James Michener

31. “The journey not the arrival matters.” – T. S. Eliot

32. “A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” – Tim Cahill

33. “I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” – Mark Twain

34. “Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quiestest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.” – Pat Conroy

“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tzu

35. “Not all those who wander are lost.” – J. R. R. Tolkien

36. “Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.” – Benjamin Disraeli

37. “Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” –Maya Angelou

38. “Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversation.” – Elizabeth Drew

39. “Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe”……Anatole France

40. “Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” – Seneca

41. “What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do – especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.” – William Least Heat Moon

42. “I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.” – Lillian Smith

43. “To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” – Aldous Huxley

44. “Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.” – Freya Stark

45. “The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.” – Rudyard Kipling

46. “Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.” – Paul Theroux

47. “The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” – G. K. Chesterton

48. “When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.” – Clifton Fadiman

49. “A wise traveler never despises his own country.” – Carlo Goldoni

50. “Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” – Mark Jenkins


51. Kilometers are shorter than miles. Save gas, take your next trip in kilometers.” – George Carlin

52. “Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels.” – Nikos Kazantzakis

53. “Our Nature lies in movement; complete calm is death.” – Blaise Pascal

54. “It is a strange thing to come home. While yet on the journey, you cannot at all realize how strange it will be.” – Selma Lagerlöf

55. “Remember that happiness is a way of travel – not a destination.” – Roy M. Goodman

56. “Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover / Breath’s aware that will not keep. / Up, lad: when the journey’s over there’ll be time enough to sleep.” – A. E. Housman

57. “As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.” – Margaret Mead

58. “Too often. . .I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.” – Louis L’Amour

59. “Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and celebrate the journey.” – Fitzhugh Mullan

60. “One main factor in the upward trend of animal life has been the power of wandering.” –Alfred North Whitehead

61. “The open road is a beckoning, a strangeness, a place where a man can lose himself.” –William Least Heat Moon

62. “Travel only with thy equals or thy betters; if there are none, travel alone.” – The Dhammapada

63. “Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.” – George Eliot

64. “Worth seeing, yes; but not worth going to see.” – Samuel Johnson, on the Giant’s Causeway

65. “An involuntary return to the point of departure is, without doubt, the most disturbing of all journeys.” – Iain Sinclair

66. “Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, ‘I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.’” – Lisa St. Aubin de Teran

67. “Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.” – Alan Keightley

68. “Half the fun of the travel is the aesthetic of lostness.” – Ray Bradbury

69. “Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God.” – Kurt Vonnegut

70. “We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.” – Hilaire Belloc

71. “I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” – Susan Sontag

72. “I should like to spend the whole of my life in traveling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend afterwards at home.” – William Hazlitt

73. “A child on a farm sees a plane fly overhead and dreams of a faraway place. A traveler on the plane sees the farmhouse… and thinks of home.” – Carl Burns.

74. “I love to travel, but hate to arrive.” – Albert Einstein

75. “Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you traveled.” – Mohammed

76. “One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind.” – Charles Dickens

77. “When one realizes that his life is worthless he either commits suicide or travels.” –Edward Dahlberg

78. “Without new experiences, something inside of us sleeps. The sleeper must awaken.” –Frank Herbert

79. “Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did now know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.” – Italo Calvino

80. “He who has seen one cathedral ten times has seen something; he who has seen ten cathedrals once has seen but little; and he who has spent half an hour in each of a hundred cathedrals has seen nothing at all.” – Sinclair Lewis, on sightseeing.

81. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.” – Bumper sticker

82. “Travel at its truest is thus an ironic experience, and the best travelers… seem to be those able to hold two or three inconsistent ideas in their minds at the same time, or able to regard themselves as at once serious persons and clowns.” – Paul Fussell

83. “Most of my treasured memories of travel are recollections of sitting.” – Robert Thomas Allen

84. “I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.” – Mary Anne Radmacher Hershey

85. “Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.” – John Muir

86. “When you’re traveling, ask the traveler for advice / not someone whose lameness keeps him in one place.” – Rumi

87. “There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror.” – Orson Welles

88. “To be on a quest is nothing more or less than to become an asker of questions.” – Sam Keen

89. “The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.” – G. K. Chesterton

90. “When you are everywhere, you are nowhere / When you are somewhere, you are everywhere.” – Rumi

91. “When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money.” – Susan Heller

92. “The autumn leaves are falling like rain / Although my neighbors are all barbarians / And you, you are a thousand miles away / There are always two cups at my table.” – T’ang dynasty poem

93. “It is not down in any map; true places never are.” – Herman Melville

94. “People don’t take trips – trips take people.” – John Steinbeck

95. “We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

96. “It’s a battered old suitcase and a hotel someplace and a wound that will never heal.” –Tom Waits

97. “The map is not the territory.” – Alfred Korzybski

98. “It is solved by walking.” – Algerian proverb

99. “He who would travel happily must travel light.” – Antoine de Saint Exupéry

100. “What am I doing here?” – Arthur Rimbaud, writing home from Ethiopia

About the Author: 

F. Daniel Harbecke (just call him Daniel, the F's a family thing) is currently working on "A Philosophy of Travel" which envisions travel as a metaphor for the meaningful experience of life. Daniel has lived in Europe, South America and Asia and is trying to fund his tony lifestyle in Sweet Home Chicago.


source: 
http://matadornetwork.com/bnt/50-most-inspiring-travel-quotes-of-all-time/
http://matadornetwork.com/bnt/the-next-50-most-inspiring-travel-quotes-of-all-time/