REQUIRED READING: "Tea and the Internet"

If you have a couple minutes today over your cup of tea, please do yourself a favor and head over to Cha Dao Web site, where you can read about "Tea and the Internet." The writer's nom de plume is Corax, and s/he is scary brilliant. Cha Dao is a great resource for anyone interested in learning more about tea culture, and some of the great teas that you can immerse yourself in.

A taste:

How many Americans (or French, or Latvians) could have known what (say) Bi Luo Chun tea is like before the internet? And unless you lived in San Francisco, and had access to Roy Fong's Imperial Tea Court, where you could go in 1993 to find out what such an 'exotic' tea tasted like? Chances were good, back then, that if you knew the names of such teas, you had read about them in James Norwood Pratt's Tea Lover's Treasury (first edition 1982) or John Blofeld's Chinese Art of Tea (1985), and that their names would remain no more than mere phrases in your mind.

Today, on the other hand, without getting up from your chair (in Peoria or Avignon or Riga), you can pay a virtual visit to the Imperial Tea Court, via their Facebook page, and then go shopping for tea on their commercial website. Moreover, if you are not satisfied with their selection or their prices or their customer service, you can choose other North American vendors who have easy-to-use commercial websites (in addition to Facebook or Twitter accounts), such as Aura Teas, Harney & Sons, Hou De Asian Art, Rishi Tea, and probably five more since I last checked.

As they say: Read it all yourself.

http://chadao.blogspot.com/2009/04/tea-and-internet.html



( Cross-posted on Facebook.)