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Matthew Stedman

Red Code to a Bull; I’m All out of Green I’m So Lost without You

So I’m a red risk all of a sudden. It’s a shock for someone who’s conjured only green codes from so many apps this past quarter-of-a-decade. My red code will be a shock for some reading this, too.  Perhaps, blissfully green for...

Queen of Oolong; The Royal Tea She Maybe Never Even Tried

HRH E II R, Queen Elizabeth the Second. Her name has appeared in these pages twice before now.  And why would a Chinese tea column be concerned with the former monarch of the United Kingdom? Actually, Strainer first mentioned her as...

Foaming at the Mouth; Message in a Bottle

The Stroop Test is a psychological test designed to demonstrate how closely human attention is attracted to the written word. For adult readers, textual information trumps other forms of visual information, including colour information, in provoking the brain. We could...

Thousand Island Picking; “Not Worth Waking the Tea Master”

We had just 1 hour minutes to fill four baskets. Any less, we were told, and the local tea master would reject the batch as a waste of effort. So off we went to work on a hillside overlooking a...

Hotline to Yunnan; Like Drinking Sweet Potato Skin

By coincidence, I was recently drinking Yunnan Green tea anyway. My favourite market-stall had been selling some. Yeah, it was cheap. And, despite the unpromising smell and ashen grey appearance, I was curious. I had not bought any of this stuff...

From Bush to Cup; So White it’s Green

Well, I just don’t think it happened like that. It relies on too many coincidences. It can’t be the true origin of tea-drinking, surely. For the emperor, Shen Nong (神農), to have received a stray, falling leaf of camellia sinensis in...

Ronald Dahl, Willy Wonka & Cheap Strumpets; The Longevity Game

The everlasting gobstopper is of course the invention of Roald Dahl. It’s his hero, Willy Wonka, who manufactures the boiled sweet that keeps on giving. Well, everlasting flavour is something that appeals to anyone who’s been stuck with flavour-faded chewing...

Legal High (with Free Tea); Simply Nuts about the Nut

Especially here in Asia, it’s common to hear how smoking is good for stress. Men, particularly, face stress in their lives which needs a remedy. Tobacco, though not intrinsically healthy, at least helps to assuage that greater health threat;...

About Me

Matthew Stedman has spent years living and working in China. He has sold Chinese tea in the UK, and loves discussing the miraculous leaf with new (and suspicious) audiences. He however never feels happier than when researching the product here in beautiful South China. Email him via matthew@thenanjinger.com Matthew Stedman在中国生活工作了多年。多年在 中英两国从事茶叶贸易的他,喜欢和新读者讨论神 奇的东方树叶(虽然有时他的读者保持怀疑态度)。 没什么比在美丽的江南走访品尝各种茶叶更让他开 心的事了。
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