Fresh explainers, culture news, practical guides, and evergreen stories for readers who want to understand China with context.
Walk through any Chinese city and you will pass pharmacies selling dried roots and bark, clinics offering acupuncture, and older people doing slow exercises in parks at dawn. All of it …
All tea comes from one plant: Camellia sinensis. The six categories recognized in the classical Chinese system — green, yellow, white, oolong, black …
Walk through almost any Chinese city after 7 PM and you will see them: foot massage parlors with neon signs, their doors open to reveal rows of …
If you have ever watched someone brew tea in a Chinese tea house, you have seen gong fu cha (功夫茶) in action. Small teapots, tiny cups, quick …
Chinese tea culture runs deep, but few practices capture its spirit as fully as Gong Fu Cha (功夫茶, gōng fu chá). Translating to “making tea with …
Chinese herbal tea — known as liáng chá (凉茶, literally “cooling tea”) — is a category of medicinal infusions that has nothing to do with …
The Chinese tea ceremony that most foreigners first hear about is gongfu cha (功夫茶, gōng fū chá), the small-vessel, multiple-steeping method from …
You arrive at Ritan Park in Beijing at 6:30 a.m. About forty people are already moving in a slow circle to soft zither music. A woman in her seventies …
You are walking through a Beijing hutong at 8 a.m. A delivery driver has parked his scooter, unclipped his insulated bag, and is now in a full deep …
You walk into a small noodle shop in Chengdu in July. Outside it is 35°C and humid. You finish the meal, push your bowl aside, and ask the auntie …