Let me state that The Nanjinger has not paid for me to be here. Nanjing is far too far away and the expenses for such a glamorous patch could easily spiral beyond control. I write from Juan Les Pines on the French Riviera. You can almost skip a stone to Cannes in the west and Monaco to the East. Every town along here has significance to the grand tour, the lost generation or the jet set, but also to a contented local populace. This is still more French than...

there were some TV commercials for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. Various respectable-looking adults found themselves restricted for choice at breakfast time, while camping or abroad, perhaps... Anyway, they were forced by circumstance to eat Corn Flakes. “I’d forgotten how good they taste”, they each said. And that was the tagline of the series. The implication was not that these adults had grown out of breakfast cereals; it was merely that they had spent years pursuing different kinds of breakfast cereal, neglecting the one that started it all. Rather than getting sick of...

This frisbee-full of dried packed leaves cost me ¥260 . Buying a whole cake of tea (茶饼) is a bigger commitment than some buyers are willing to make. But, in the case of some varieties of tea, it’s the form factor which makers and sellers prefer to work with.  I’ve owned cakes before, of course. But this one is different, because it’s our first white tea cake.  That makes a difference because it can be consumed guilt free, with no sense of wrecking destiny; unlike pu er, there is no pretense about...

I’m going to stop doing it. And not only because the law has changed. I’m going to put this filthy habit to bed… if I can.  Like that petty criminal in that O. Henry story, I will reform. My vice is tea-leaf chucking.  I’ve long thought of myself as better than other litterers. I would never have thrown the contents of an ashtray out of the window, nor plastic yoghurt pots. I’ve thought of the tea leaves I chuck as “like the leaves of Autumn”; fresh from nature and eager to return to nature. Indeed, the...