Just wondering here.

Personally, although I was aware of tea as a pleasant tasting beverage
most of my life, I only really got INTERESTED in tea about 4/5 years
ago. I do qigong (basic qigong, tai chi and zahn zuang) daily, and one
day I picked up a book on this subject written by Ken Cohen. He is
quite a tea enthusiast himself, & had devoted a chapter in his book to
tea and how it fit into a meditative, qigong framework.

I became intrigued by what he had written and soon found that he had
very much understated the case. Never looked back from there. Tea is
an ongoing interest, a hobby, a help to higher mind states, a healthier
body and just plain delicious too. Not to mention that the quest for
good teas take me into oriental markets and interesting shops as
well... I definately look forward to these "tea safaris" although they
result in sometimes mixed sucessgrin.

I don't know many "real" people in my daily life who are tea fanciers,
although I can't say that I have gone out of my way to find any. I am
content enough to pursue this area as a private thing... much like my
qigong practice. Still, having found this group, I am curious about
what sparked the tea interest in others.

How about you?

Whytebyrd

whytebyrd wrote:
....
Still, having found this group, I am curious about
what sparked the tea interest in others.

How about you?

I became a fan of Douglas Adams when I read "Hitchhiker's Guide to The
Galaxy" a few years ago. I later read an essay he wrote about tea,
where he writes that most americans don't like tea, because they've
never experienced good tea. So, I went out and bought a box of black
tea bags, followed his recommendations in the essay, and made tea, and
have been hooked ever since.

I was thirsty.
I drank tea.
I liked it.

That's the short story.

I was thirsty again.
I drank another tea.
Wasn't as good as the first time.

I tried many other teas.
Some were very good,
Some were very bad.
I wondered why.

Never stopped sampling teas.
Never got a definitive answer.
And... I still get thirsty.

That's the long explanation.

It's that simple.

My father's family was from Russia, and he drank tea all the time. (Not
just every morning, but all day long.) But he didn't much care what
kind of tea it was, as long as it was hot and wet and brownish. (His
tea of choice was Swee-Touch-Nee, with lemon.) I recognized it as an
option, but not a favorite.

In college, I spent a summer in the UK, and discovered English tea. It
was nice, but way too much trouble to make a regular habit, when coffee
was easily available.

I got up to two or three pots of coffee a day. I stopped sleeping.
Eventually I made the connection, and on another trip to England stopped
at Harrod's and got some tea. Then I read House of Mirth (Edith
Wharton), which mentions in passing the superior tea of one of the
characters (a Russian caravan), and started recognizing that there was a
lot more to tea than just hot wet brownish stuff.

dmh

It was at a time in my life when I hired call girl after call girl every
night to pleasure me. Couldn't get enough. Then one very pretty young girl
afterward made me a cup of tea and it calmed me down and I was hooked.

English grandfather, Tea drinking family (Liptons), Tea partys with
granddaughters and friends, search for tea begins.

Kitty

A few years back I just had to do something to get rid of my coffee
flavored creamer and aspertame addiction. I started drinking plain
teas and complicated tisanes daily. Of couse, I've had the occasional
cup of Lipton's all my life. Toci
whytebyrd wrote:
Just wondering here.

Personally, although I was aware of tea as a pleasant tasting beverage
most of my life, I only really got INTERESTED in tea about 4/5 years
ago. I do qigong (basic qigong, tai chi and zahn zuang) daily, and one
day I picked up a book on this subject written by Ken Cohen. He is
quite a tea enthusiast himself, & had devoted a chapter in his book to
tea and how it fit into a meditative, qigong framework.

I became intrigued by what he had written and soon found that he had
very much understated the case. Never looked back from there. Tea is
an ongoing interest, a hobby, a help to higher mind states, a healthier
body and just plain delicious too. Not to mention that the quest for
good teas take me into oriental markets and interesting shops as
well... I definately look forward to these "tea safaris" although they
result in sometimes mixed sucessgrin.

I don't know many "real" people in my daily life who are tea fanciers,
although I can't say that I have gone out of my way to find any. I am
content enough to pursue this area as a private thing... much like my
qigong practice. Still, having found this group, I am curious about
what sparked the tea interest in others.

How about you?

Whytebyrd

Thanks, all... After reading these replys it just goes to show how
broad the appeal of tea is.

Besides the great tastes & aromas of tea, I'm getting quite interested
in tea in oriental literature and history/philosophy/culture. It's an
amazing area.

On 30 Apr 2006 11:07:39 -0700, "whytebyrd" wrote:

Thanks, all... After reading these replys it just goes to show how
broad the appeal of tea is.

I like the fact that people interested in teas usually has several
quite different teas, for different occasions. While most coffee
drinkers have only one brand, and don't relly want to try others.

Tea seems to encourage cultivation of ones enjoying it.


Lars
Stockholm

I forgot.

Jim

whytebyrd wrote:
Just wondering here.

Lars writes:

On 30 Apr 2006 11:07:39 -0700, "whytebyrd" wrote:

Thanks, all... After reading these replys it just goes to show how
broad the appeal of tea is.

I like the fact that people interested in teas usually has several
quite different teas, for different occasions. While most coffee
drinkers have only one brand, and don't relly want to try others.

It's so much easier to get a wide range of flavors and aromas from
different teas than it is with coffees.

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html

Still, having found this group, I am curious about
what sparked the tea interest in others.

My interest started back in the late 60s early 70s when drinking
Celestial Seasonings tea was the "hip" thing to do in the wannabe hippy
crowd. I remember one blend called "Morning Thunder" where the box
said "This blend has the power of a thousand charging buffalos, so
when your get'em up won't, Morning Thunder will). After my hippy
phase, I joined the Navy and traveled to Italy where I migrated to
coffee concoctions (usually black espresso variants) for 2 decades. My
love for tea was rekindled when I made a trip to Holland one year, I
was traveling a lot back then installing factory automation software,
and I found good tea was easier to prepare than good coffee when doing
the Road Warrior thing. Then back in the mid 90s some eccentric
academic types in Chapel Hill recommended a cooked Pu'er mini-tuocha
and the rest is history......

Mike
http:/www.pu-erh.net

LOL. When I was a preteen in the mid-seventies, I wanted to be part of
the Asian tea culture, thanks to the sixth grade social studies unit on
Japan and the "Kung Fu" TV series. No, I did not steal this from Mark
Salzman's autobiography "Lost in Place," although I was surprised to
find someone with such similar experiences.

Anyway, I knew I needed something more exotic than Lipton, so I made my
mom buy me a package of Swee Touch Nee, the "aristocrat of teas." When
I was growing up, tea meant instant tea, and tea in tea bags was a *big
deal.* I still wasn't old enough to boil water on my own so it didn't
go very far... At this same time, my homeroom teacher was a big time
tea fancier and had bags of Twinings in such varieties as Lapsang
Souchong, Oolong, and darjeeling. I would occasionally filch these and
use the water from her electric kettle. She must have known; I was the
only student bizarre enough to do it, and this stuff was expensive and
simply didn't appear in mainstream supermarkets. So I'd like to give
her a shout out...

I still buy Swee Touch Nee when it's on sale and nothing better is
available.


David M. Harris wrote:
My father's family was from Russia, and he drank tea all the time. (Not
just every morning, but all day long.) But he didn't much care what
kind of tea it was, as long as it was hot and wet and brownish. (His
tea of choice was Swee-Touch-Nee, with lemon.) I recognized it as an
option, but not a favorite.

On 2006-04-29, Nath Krismaratala wrote:
I was thirsty again.
I drank another tea.
Wasn't as good as the first time.

I'm still trying to figure out what I had in my first good tea. I'll
keep sampling until I find it again.

--
Lance Orner

On 1 May 2006 07:47:27 -0700, "Mike Petro" wrote:

I remember one blend called "Morning Thunder"

Aah, Morning Thunder! That is the tea that Jerry Seinfeld was
drinking, without knowing that it had caffein in it.

High octane stuff, I gather.


Lars
Stockholm