KyaraZen

“古人说: 要积了三辈子的阴德，才能闻得奇楠香, 要八辈子修来的福气，才可品或饮用奇楠香。”

2088Tea is now the Official Kyarazen retail page

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Hello all, another sincere apology for the slowness in writing... it's hard to balance doing so many things at one go now. But good news! KyaraZen is now expanding a little, and soon we will have one or two other writers whom will be sharing knowledge on Chinese cultural arts, which may include brush painting, incense, calligraphy, guqin music, etc! But I thought I would write this post because there had been several concerned enquiries about a certain 2088Tea page that had its soft launch a couple of months ago. Friends were wondering if that was really an official page of mine and yes indeed it is! I've now stopped using ETSY but instead will be using my own e-commerce site at 2088Tea.com where we will be sharing with you a myriad of treasures and experiences! For this month, the KZ team had been very hardworking in making incenses and here are some of the examples of the handmade incenses available for the month, all made from selected and excellent raw materials, and if ... [Read More...]

Wuyi Cliff Tea Part 3 – A Tea Maker that cannot be helped

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This is Part 3 of the Wuyi Cliff Tea Series. Read Wuyi Cliff Tea Part 1 and Wuyi Cliff Tea Part 2 - Complexities here. It all started with a canister of tea (containing 75 grams) in a hand-beatened/hammered tin container. Tea leaves enclosed in calligraphy rice paper, sealed with a sticker with an image of a handsome, scholarly chinese man. It was a tea brought back by my student, the price tag was hefty, and always, such prices always hit my "skepticism" nerve, and also made me worry that my student might have been ripped off. Carefully weighing out six grams, into a thin walled Jingdezhen egg shell porcelain gaiwan, fresh water off the boil, intense and hurried steeps, and as the first gust of the tea's aromatics hit everyone........ It was the first Cliff Tea I had ever had, that had an intense siberian musk note, leading on complex florals and heavy mineral notes. For the "qigong" practitioners and others whom had greater sensitivity present at the tasting, the tea was a ... [Read More...]

Wuyi Cliff Tea Part 1

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This is Part 1 of a series on Wuyi Cliff Tea. Read about Wuyi Cliff Tea Part 2 - Complexities and Wuyi Cliff Tea Part 3 - A Tea Maker that cannot be helped.   There are 36 peaks at the Wuyi Mountains, and 99 valleys are formed by these ... [Read More...]

KZ ventures into oils

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We at the KZ team had been deliberating this for a very very long time. Every time we meet a trader, a merchant, a supplier, a distiller, a farmer, we see a diverse range of wares to which we are incredibly selective and meticulous. Part to why ... [Read More...]

  • The vendor was right about her turqoise being non “stabilized” i.e. non resin injected. The down side is the brittleness from the natural cracks 😝 #turquoise
  • Always running out of space 😰 two of the fifteen display shelves i have.. dedicated to small pots. #tea #teapot #茶 #茶壶 #紫砂壶
  • Its the end of the month.. and a flurry of enquiries on the webstore.. still waiting for a student’s work to arrive.. but if it doesnt arrive in time the webstore will reload on the 30th Aug 11pm gmt+8 with five incenses, an almost sinking Pontianak aloeswood stick which naturally has a bitter cooling myrrh-ish hint and deep sweetness, an Indonesian Tigerwood oud stick, two incense variations inspired by Minorien, a Jinkoh Ryugen and a “Five notes” variant, and a simple frankincense stick. #incense #oud #aloeswood #agarwood
  • 《淡如水》- 君子之交淡如水 小人之交甘若醴 - 庄子·山木。 Bland like water - Zhuangzi
  • I’m back to drinking my daily tea from a borosillicate glass beaker after a recent lead testing of some cups show that some of them leach lead. Its pretty easy, just incubate a teaware in 0.5M acetic acid for 24 hours and then test the liquid with sodium sulfite. Get the colorimetric responses readout in a spectrophotometer with some standards for quick quantitation. Tea is a metal ion scavenger, the polyphenols bind all sorts of metals which result in tea’s taste, flavour and aroma easily changed by different tea wares that can leach, such as reduction fired wares, tenmokus etc. Iron’s still a fav ion if mine sometimes, not so much silver, lead, and others. #tea #teacup #茶
  • 奇怪，有人问，您篆刻有接受订单吗？我说不可能，因为本人不是篆刻家，也没有适当的功底背景，大多胡乱的玩，刀工不规整，工艺粗糙，布局低俗。但是本人可以说是....篆刻刀收藏家！这把京都手打。#篆刻 #书法 #sealcarving #calligraphy