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 as long as such colours existed, you just experienced a twinge in your buttocks, before remembering that, no, printed paper cannot transmit pathogens from some guy in Shanghai, and nor can an LCD screen. Mindful of the two negative results after my near-exposure and before my colour-slander, it’s not concerning me...

Strainer is a Nanjing column. It is no accident that a tea enthusiast would choose the southern part of Jiangsu as a place to drink tea. Ours is a fine tea-growing and tea-consuming region, to say nothing of the tea-pot-making tradition in Jiangsu. But this month finds Strainerʼs author back in Wales, the smallest of the nations in Great Britain. We all have to go home occasionally. Iʼm trying to fight jet lag by drinking from some appalling tea bag with a slice of fresh lemon. The best (Chinese,...

The English language wouldn’t be as careless as this. Sure, 汤 (tang) is “soup” but this character also gets used for fruit juices, as in 酸梅汤 (suan mei tang); sour plum juice.  There’s also 茶 (cha); tea, which means “processed-Camellia-Sinensis-leaves” and “drinks-infused-with-those-leaves”, right?  Well, not quite, because there are other roles for this character, too.  There are those Chinese drinks using the leaves (and flowers) of other plants. In Beijing’s impromptu Temple Fairs, I have drunk a 茶汤 (cha tang); tea soup, which is a glutinous, sugary, sesame-flavoured thing much better than it...

In last month’s Strainer, I wrote to you from Wales. Well, I’m back from Wales. But I’m not quite done with the Welsh theme yet. That’s because, you see, this is the month of St. David’s Day; 1 March, precisely. When St. David’s Day comes around, children in Wales hold a talent show called an Eisteddfod. And every child has to dress themselves as Welsh for the day. In most cases, that means wearing either a daffodil or a leek in the pocket of a blazer. Sometimes it’s just a daffodil, or a...