It’s not yellow. Let’s get that out of the way first. The leaves are as green as Act One in Sonic. And the drink; well, green tea makes a pale yellow drink anyway, so there’s no room for differentiation there. It all reminds me of that ad for Canada’s Red Rock cider; “It’s not red and there are no rocks in it”. But, for Westerners like me, there’s perhaps always been a need for “Yellow Tea” to exist.  Fascinated by the variety of Camellia Sinensis; from oxidised to unoxidised, with additional parameters like...

Does tea itself contribute stress?The answer here is: surely, yes.If so, then what’s the remedy?Why, clearly, it’s a cup of tea. Hard-liquor drinkers sometimes make that face; the one that isn’t just pleasure. Children must see this wincing face when watching, say, Westerns, and wonder why grown men would voluntarily drink something so painful-tasting, again and again.  Perhaps children intuit the social aspect of the deal; the difficult drink must be imbibed because the situation demands it.  Perhaps children recognise the celluloid sour mash as a necessary medicine. Children surely know the...

If there’s one food that’s emblematic of everyday indulgence, that’s chocolate. Delicious for most of us yet inextricably connected with fat, sugar (and caffeine, if you’re worried about that).  When my 4-year old daughter went for her second tooth-filling last month, the obvious culprit was chocolate. Yes, we are raising her in Shanghai, the saccharine city. And, yes, I should have instilled and enforced better brushing. But, rightly or wrongly, it was her fondness for chocolate that received the headline blame. Dear readers, there may among you be some attempting to quit...

Of course it’s not reasonable to expect commemoration or contemplation. The “Great War” was concluded more than a century ago. How can I expect “the eleventh day of the eleventh month” to resonate somewhere so far away from where the Armistice was signed?  Yes, China was the non-European nation which committed most men to that war, with real casualties and real costs. It’s a story that needs telling, one which may one day receive more airing. But those events are too far away to claim such as exclusive calendar slot in...