If I'm not in the tea house, I'm on the road to the tea house.

Taiwan is a country rich with tea culture. It is a place where it is not difficult to find yourself surrounded by tea and tea paraphernalia. It is a world in of itself, and stepping into this world can be as vast as jumping into the ocean. This world is commonly known as “The Tea World,” and it’s made up of tea people. These are the people that eat, breathe, drink, and live tea. Sometimes they are tea vendors or they sell tea ware, maybe they are artists who have a tea room. Or they are involved in tea production such as growing tea or roasting tea. Nonetheless, tea is very important to them and it plays a major role in their lives.

I remember when I first got close to the precipice that is the divide of the tea world. I was warned...“Be careful.” Many people have thought it would be fun to play with tea, only to fall into the vastness of the tea world. Once you fall in, it is difficult to get out. As I've seen time and time again, people have invested most of their time, energy, and finances into tea. Once they get in deep, they truly are in for life. It is not a bad thing. It is just something that with will change one’s life. It is not something that happens at once, but it is the beginning of a new path. Often, this path leads to many unexpected adventures and opportunities to learn.

The depth of feeling that exists in the tea world of Taiwan is profound and it has been my luck to know it as I have. With this trip, the journey continues. 

A story of Mina in Taiwan...

Mina is from Japan. Every day she walks out of her flat into the alley. She sits down for her breakfast and the old women tell her how pretty she is.

“You look very pretty today!” Every day, they tell her. And she wonders why they tell her this. Tomorrow? She thinks, will they say I am pretty again tomorrow? In Japan no one ever told her how pretty she looks. Especially not every day. She wonders if it is because she is Japanese. She wonders if tomorrow they will still think she is pretty. Though she has doubts about their sincerity, she accepts what they say, and secretly, it makes her feel good.

Looking at this cup of tea, I think: “This cup of tea looks delicious.” Before long, I find myself telling each cup of tea that it looks delicious. Every day, I look at the tea and say to it, “You look very delicious. This tea is good. This tea is delicious."

When you look at your cup of tea, tell it how it is. Say, “You are a wonderful cup of tea.” We taste the tea every day, but the taste sometimes differs from what we say. The real flavor, differing from the perceived flavor, is more beautiful because it is real. This connection to reality is more important and resonates with us on a deeper level. So even though, sometimes after telling the tea how wonderful it is, upon tasting the tea we find it to be bitter, or strong, or light, this connection to the reality is more beautiful to us than any perception of tea.

Spring Harvest Taiwan 2014

This spring in Taiwan it was raining for the high mountain tea harvest in the highest elevations. Li Shan proper and Li Shan's Da Yu Ling had rain throughout most of the harvest season.

Rainy weather is not suitable for picking and processing tea. Not because people don't want to stand in the rain and pick tea, but because for the most part, the results are subpar; too bitter. Some farmers went ahead and picked tea anyway, but we haven't been able to find any that we are satisfied with. For the most part we will not be buying high mountain tea from Taiwan this spring.

At harvest time, rain is a constant threat, especially in the Spring. Spring tea starts growing in the coldest part of winter, thus it grows very slowly. Slow growing tea results in a thicker leaf. Conditions are ideal and the result is high quality tea. The main threat to spring tea is that at harvest time, there is more chance of rain.

Some of our farming friends that have more experience decided not to pick this spring, instead they will wait until the rains stop and use the leaf to make high mountain black tea. Many of you have tried our Li Shan black tea. It is exceptionally sweet, fragrant, and delicious. Sweeter than most black tea, people often do not believe that it is just tea with no sweetener added. If you want to try some amazing black tea, we wholeheartedly recommend our Li Shan Black 2008 and 2009.

A Short History of the Tea-bike

J-TEA’s vision, a bicycle built by CAT, and a cart transformation by GORM

What was the original vision for the tea bike cart? The vision for the bike came around the idea of having fun in the moment, or working in a way that allows us the most enjoyment of life. By being at the festivals, and street fairs, we are living our dream as a college student. The vision was really about being able to participate in the fun of working by working in the places that are fun to be. That way, at least if we want to have a good time, we are already at the party, and tea at a party is... well, a party. At J-TEA, we bring tea to the party.

And in the name of “Party!” we are now parking the tea-bike in The Healthy Pet parking lot, former home to Party Cart. However, we will not have the same geographic footprint as the iconic and legendary food cart that was the best thing that happened to the neighborhood since it was named after the iconic and brilliant Sam H. Friendly, Eugene's 12^th mayor (1893-1895). A little bit close to home, you might gripe. Well I tell you, loading and riding that tea-bike all over town is no joke. Talk about ultimate fitness! You work the legs and cardio on the way to and from the selling location, and you get an upper arm workout from shaking iced tea. It's basically the entrepreneur’s workout plan. No time to leave the office and take care of your general level of fitness... thank you tea bike! Problem solved.

“CAT” stands for Center for Appropriate Transport and their method of transport is appropriate. CAT is known for their hand-built Tri-hauler cargo bikes that you will see from time to time blocking the streets as you are innocently stuck behind a slow moving bike as it works its way from point A to point B. CAT is world famous and a great place to learn everything there is to know about bikes. They offer a unique membership which allows you full reign over their bicycle work stations, providing access to enough tools to build an entire bicycle from the ground up. When it comes to specialized cargo bikes, CAT builds each bike by order. For J-Tea, they built a yellow Tri-hauler. Once I had the bike, I knew I had a start, but to get to the tea-bike, there was a long way to go.

Enter GORM, the husband and wife design team established in 2007. Jon Arndt and Won Hee came up with the name for their company as part of an inside joke. Won Hee had a copy of Matilda from Rauld Dahl. Won Hee asked John about the meaning of a word used by Rauld. "What is gormless?" John didn't know, so they turned to Won Hee's electronic Korean / English translator. It meant slow; dim witted; not bright. And so to them gorm was incorporated into their lexicon as the opposite of gormless. They started to use the word to describe things that they saw which were sharp. Their style is minimal and their focus is utilitarian, and so we got a custom made dream tea-bike. More of Studio Gorm's objects can be found here: Studio Gorm's Object Page.

So far, the bike has sold its frosty frothy iced tea at the Bite of Eugene, Whiteaker Block Party, UO Street Faire, and Eugene Sunday Streets. As we mentioned, we will soon act as a beacon to the parched as they follow the flow of West 28^th Avenue as it curves around Healthy Pet's parking lot in the foothills of South Eugene.

Tea Caddy

Today was a cool day at J-Tea! We'd recently received a request for some detailed photos of the older well made tea caddies in the tea shop. The first caddy, a modern approach, was made for the Japanese market but manufactured in China in the 1950s.

This second piece, more traditional, was reportedly manufactured in Japan with high grade pewter in the 1940's. 

But the best part of the day was that we needed some amazing photos of this beautiful tea ware. Andrew took these photos while I was enjoying a conversation with an interesting customer. I love it when the tea house works well. 

Year of the Horse is almost here!

Jayme Allen says that most of his time is spent waiting. He works with the raw earth. More specifically, he transforms Willamette Valley clay in process that involves several steps. Each of these steps demands time, hence the waiting. But Jayme fills his waiting time by moving the clay from one stage of the process to another. And because there is so much waiting, he has several batches processing at one time so that he can work on one thing while he is waiting for another. Ultimately this results in a workable piece of clay. This local clay is one of the things that made me scratch my head when I first met Jayme. His clothes were covered in mud and he looked exhausted. He had just returned from mining a batch of local clay. You know the stuff that makes it impossible to have any type of workable garden? Most local gardeners replace this stuff with compost blends and topsoil. But Jayme works with it to make a high-grade local clay. It’s hard work, but for Jayme, it’s also a source of inspiration.  Pictures of his process can be seen here: Firebug Pottery Facebook Page.

Jayme is fully involved with the pottery he makes. He digs the clay, processes it, wedges it, throws it, and when he is able to use a wood-fired kiln, he splits the wood for the fire then loads and unloads the kiln. He is involved in every part of the process and that’s the way he likes it. Ultimately, he is developing his kung fu through his work.

We invite you to come to our Year of the Horse Tea Sealing Celebration on February 1, 2014. We'll be sealing tea in clay vessels made by Jayme and Elkton-based potter and ceramic artist, Hiroshi Ogawa. This year’s seal was designed by local artist Dave Snider. More of his work can be found on his blog: Sniderland

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Revamping JteaInternational.com for improved results

For years or at least weeks now, I've been collecting information on how to best improve my web presence. I can't believe I just used “web presence” in a sentence. We've recently invested a lot of time, energy, and a bit of money in our website to improve its SEO, or search engine optimization. What is all of this talk of SEO? Pretend you are trying to date a hot person named Google (Goo). Well, if you want to have a chance with Goo, and since you can't really take Goo out and get Goo drunk to improve your chances, it's time to get to work to improving yourself. If you improve yourself, Goo notices. Goo wants a match that cares about how they present themselves, so you've got to improve some personal grooming habits, at the very least, make an effort to look good. Google will notice. Goo is fare, because everyone has a chance. Goo's likes and dislikes can be found online. And web designers can help you hook up with Goo, online of course.

First on our list was to get some products onto the home page. We achieved this goal and now have nine products perched ever-so-pleasantly there on J-Tea's homepage. They are nine products that are awesome: our top sellers. My only warning to you is that you will get hooked on the stuff. Then you might try something better, and you will want that, and eventually you become spoiled. Yes, I am your pusher, and no, the first one is never free.

The idea is that the nine featured teas can rotate. The nine products currently listed on J-TEA's homepage are Charcoal Dawn (a green oolong roasted over charcoal of the Dragon Eye fruit tree), Cooked Beauty Puer, Eugene Breakfast (Yunnan Dian Hong), Green Oolong (four seasons like spring varietal of oolong), Roast Pear (Fall Harvest from “Li Shan” = Pear Mountain), Rou Gui (an amazing variation on the wu yi classic cinnabar varietal), Tai He Sun, Top Bao Zhong, and Yunnan Gold Tips. This group is a strong representation of what J-Tea has to offer. Something strange, something solid, something exciting, something enticing, and something smooth.

Another innovation on the site, and what I consider to be a huge step forward, was the creation of individual product pages. So now you can see each product in its product category page as shown here: Green Oolong Tea. When hovering over the photo on the card there is a rollover effect and the photo will switch to a picture of that tea’s extraction. We have used the translation of the Chinese term used to describe the liquid tea, “tea soup.” And a note about the tea soup pictures: the tea soup picture tends to be a bit light. It's okay because it makes some of the darker teas a little bit translucent, but generally the tea is brewed slightly lighter than how I'm used to seeing it.

As Horse Sayings Go!

When we seal tea, we are making history. Looking forward, we are creating aged tea. The tea, as it ages, becomes something else. This is not unlike our own experience as so often the beginning, middle, and end of one’s life are three connected, yet separate adventures.

This year's seal features some made up Chinese word play. Because Chinese can be read left to right and right to left, we've intentionally created a saying that has meaning when read either way. It's safe to say, that this saying cannot be understood by either native speakers of English and Chinese. So as one customer put it, I'm two for two.

馬上茶老

“Ma3 Shang4 Cha2 Lao3”

From this can be inferred, 馬上茶變老 “Ma3 Shang4 Cha2 Bian4 Lao3”

Tea immediately becomes old.

For Year of the Horse, we chose the word “immediately” because pictographically translated from Chinese into English it means “by way of horse, or horse driven,” which is so fast that it might as well be immediate. It’s another way of saying time goes by so fast, with the blink of an eye. The act of sealing tea is most enjoyable when there is some special purpose of commemoration. Sealing tea at such a time confers the sense that the ever-changing future is at hand, and our hope is that we will be here to enjoy this tea in 20 years. In this way, we create antiquity at the moment the seal is adhered. Thus, tea immediately becomes old.

老茶上馬

“Lao3 Cha2 Shang4 Ma3”

Aged tea is placed upon the horse.

Many people are still not aware that J-TEA is a great place for aged tea. Currently, we still have great aged tea available, though the availability of old tea is never certain. Aged tea placed upon the horse indicates that tea is on a journey. This tea travels over oceans, across continents, and around the world – and as soon as you order aged tea from J-TEA, we send it via horse directly to you. Actually, we send it with the next best thing, the U.S. Postal Service. In other words, when you order aged tea from us, it will be arriving shortly.

Pumpkin House, Tea House

Before J-TEA occupied this house on Friendly Street, it was the Pumpkin House, owned by Cindy and Ron Rutledge. The Pumpkin House was a kind of neighborhood gathering with a large following. The Rutledges would provide hundreds of pumpkins and the tools to carve them with, and ask the entire neighborhood over to their house for carving.
From their stories recounting the events from years past, they evidently had to carve a lot of the pumpkins themselves and it was always a push for them to get it done. Apparently, and I'm name dropping here, but Toshi from Toshi's Ramen was an integral part of the carving team.

The carvers, armed with knives and spoons, surrounded themselves with pumpkins and had to carve themselves out as if escaping from a scene in the Walking Dead, but pumpkin guts flying instead of brains.

The pumpkins needed scaffolding to hold their growing numbers and cars would come full of curious onlookers to see the impressive collection of jack 'o lanterns.

We tried for a bit to resurrect the pumpkin tradition, until a couple years ago when I had the chance to ask Cindy how they did it. Essentially, she said, it was a whole lot of work. Unfortunately I've already signed myself up for too much of that so I let that one go. But what we did do is offer some great Halloween themed teas and we will be serving them again this year. Mummy's Dust Puer, B+ Hibiscus for Vampires, and Ghost's Cry Wooooo-long. Rumour has it, we will have French style hot chocolate infused with tea rather than water...a Dia de los Muertos Chocolate Fest.  

A party, a TEA party, a tea BEER party

From left to right: Top Earl, Eugene Breakfast, Chai, Charcoal Dawn, Hairy Monkey White Tea lined up for a tea beer pairing at Viking Braggot Company

Disclaimer: in no way does J-TEA condone drinking in excess. When drinking beer or tea, know when you've had enough.

We've got to hand it to our friends at 16 Tons for creating this unique and exciting event, the Tea Beer Fest. Kudos to 16 Tons founder and visionary, Mike Coplin.

I wonder if Mike knew that he'd soon be opening a cafe, or if it was just a prophetic move created as the 2011 first anniversary beer for the opening of 16 Tons tap house, the synergistic movement that came to be known as “Fredric's Lost Arm,” aka “The Lost Arm,” and known affectionately by me as “The Tea Beer,” a Belgian style Farmhouse Saison infused with Four Seasons Green Oolong tea from Ming Jian, Taiwan.

For those of you who were lucky enough to try "The Lost Arm,” a collaboration between 16 Tons, Oakshire, and J-TEA, I don't need to tell you that it was the ultimate tea infused beer. That stuff was great.

I like beer, so I was super excited to hear that Oakshire was doing the teabeer again... One of the best beers of all time, I think this one will go fast. I am looking forward to reuniting with this beer. It is like my long lost best friend and for that reason, I like the name “The Lost Arm.”

One of the reasons this teabeer is awesome is because they are using an awesome oolong tea. As many already know, using high quality ingredients improves the quality of your food. Oakshire decided on the Green Spring/Green Oolong tea, the same green tea that is featured in many of Eugene's best restaurants and cafés.

How did Mike put it? “When this beer came out, Josh lost his mind for about 24 hours.” And that was pretty much the truth of it. When it came out, I sipped on that beer for what seemed to be about 36 hours straight. The euphoric l-theanine/alcohol ethereal bliss went on and on, which ultimately in retrospect didn't feel healthy and that's what hangovers are for.

This event promises to be amazing. Great guests, caffeine, L-theanine, beer, food writers, bloggers, tea-heads, beer geeks, U of O professors, UO students and alumni, Oregonians and those from out of state, food scientists, drink enthusiasts, fans of punk music, members of the Monkey Wrench Gang. A party, a Tea Party of Epic Proportions.

So, if you are reading this, and if you can get a ticket to Eugene, Oregon, come to 16 Tons on Wednesday the 23^rd from 5-10 PM to try out a combination of two worlds, the Tea Beer.