Tea Mail – March 2006
Dear Seven Cups Tea Club Members,
Spring has arrived in Tucson and Southern China
Here in Tucson the weather is stunning. We get asked a lot why we would choose Tucson as a place to have a tea business. Southern Arizona seems counter-intuitive as a choice. The community is so great here and we get so much support from our customers. We are so lucky and grateful even if our business is small. If we are ever feeling down, hanging out in the tea house for a couple of hours and talking to people coming and going makes it impossible to stay that way. Tucson has an easy lifestyle and a slow pace that fits well with tea drinking. We also appreciate all of the emails that we get from our internet customers from all over the world. It is such a thrill for us when one of you shows up here in Tucson.
I’m gearing up for a trip to China and am starting to get pretty excited about it. The harvest has already started in Sichuan and should be in full swing all over the country by the time I get there. My trips are always a lot to survive because I go to so many places and I am overwhelmed by the experience right from the beginning. I am either spending time running up and down some mountain, or sitting around a table with group of tea producers and government diners, or trying to get some sleep in a very wide range of accommodations, or stuffed in a small car with a bunch of folks, or a much bigger bus with a lot more folks. What could be more fun, from one side of China to the other?
I know a lot of you took advantage last month of our sale on WuYiShan Rock Oolong. I was sad to hear that Master Yao Yue Ming passed away a few weeks ago. He was the person most responsible for us having those teas. I will deeply miss seeing him this year. There was an interesting but slanted article this month in a Japanese business publication about a Japanese company improving the production in WuYiShan. I think it was greatly exaggerated.
There was also a report from the University of Toronto about the dangers of mice consuming green tea supplements. I will just keep brewing mine in the traditional way.
Zhuping and I did our first video pod cast in February. You can watch it by finding it on our blog by clicking here and scrolling down to the blog entry. You can also subscribe through iTunes. We hope to do a lot more and I am planning to do some while I am in China.
We hope spring will be coming to you soon!
Best wishes from all of us at Sevencups/Green Dragon Enterprises, Zhuping, Keiko, Josh & Julian (our kids), Ellen, Bob, Tim, (in America) and Lina and Leo (in China).
- Austin
