Strainer

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.

Strainer

Give Us Our Daily Bread; The Bare Essentials Baked to Perfection

Matthew Stedman -
You are reading this in English. I can therefore assume that, unless you have some aversion to carbs, you have found your solution to the problem of bread.Personally, I have a bread maker from Midea which cost less than...
Strainer

The Canny Leaf Steeped in Tradition; Or… Tea for 12 Hour Shifts

Matthew Stedman -
Let’s say that it halves with each cycle. Each consecutive steeping produces half the flavour of the last. With each pouring, the drink more closely resembles water. Eventually, water is all that this drink will have become. The exponential...
Strainer

Anxi Tea Tours; And Abbés 4 Anxiety

Matthew Stedman -
When I lived in Beijing, students hoping to study abroad would travel half a day to a certain shrine, praying to receive an “offer”. They were practicing hieroglossia. That’s because they deemed the shrine’s name; 卧佛寺 similar enough to...
Strainer

Teenage Kicks for a Rotten Old [Green] Fart

Matthew Stedman -
It’s teenagers who enjoy it the most. It’s there in so many of the snacks they eat. It is a horrifying rottenness. They love it. They are wrong to love it. Of course, many of these snacks of rottenness contain...
Strainer

Strainer Aging Gracefully; Don’t Chuck it Out Without Trying

Matthew Stedman -
Some 2 years ago, with the passing of Elizabeth II, I speculated in these pages that the late Queen would become, principally, the woman crowned in 1953, young and beautiful. I suspect that was an image she herself was...
Strainer

It Takes Tea to Tango; The Sweet Potato Time Bomb

Matthew Stedman -
I couldn’t quite believe my eyes. There they both were. And it was my wife who’d put them there. Strewth. It wasn’t even that one of these dishes was left-overs from the previous day; no, she had consciously cooked both...
Strainer

Some Sun, Few Tories; Saying Goodbye to a Teenager

Matthew Stedman -
Suntory’s bottled “Black Oolong Tea” is an institution, as well loved in China as in its native Japan. And here it is, refrigerated and available for purchase, in the UK. Always the stingy skinflint, I resent paying three times the...
Strainer

Belt-Tightening Beckons; Before the Penny Pinching

Matthew Stedman -
I need to cut back. We’ve overspent this month. When I look back, I don’t know whether it’s the newly-printed poster board on my wall which I’ll point to as “peak-splurge”. Maybe it will be the sailing sun-hat from the French...

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Frank Hossack -

“China 911” brings Low Altitude Flights into Question Nationwide

This week’s Suzhou cancellation brought the Beijing crash much closer to home. A helicopter ride I won in a...
Frank Hossack -

Summer Traffic at Airports Across the Yangtze River Delta Explodes in 2026

June did what June always does in the Yangtze River Delta; it pulled everyone towards the gates, the airport...
Frank Hossack -

Russian Arrivals Rise as China’s Old Expat Map Thins Out

Moscow accents are being heard more in China’s airports, hotel lobbies and trade fairs. Some belong to tourists with...

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