British Tea People in Denmark

Wenzhuo Liu

Alexis Kaae is from the UK and currently resides in Denmark. She used to be a mechanical technician and now runs a physical and online tea shop, Simply Tea, providing educational services. She is also developing a tea plantation. In 2007, Alexis traveled to tea regions in China to study tea. In 2014, she co founded the Danish Tea Association with several outstanding ladies from the Danish tea industry. In 2017, she became the Vice President of the European Specialty Tea Association, and in recent years, she has also joined the European Tea Association and other organizations. Alexis is active in the European tea industry, frequently invited to participate in tea events in China.

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Berlin Shared Space C*Space – POP-UP Tea House

Wenzhuo Liu

Katja Hellkötter and Jan Siefke, the Germans who have lived in Hong Kong and Shanghai for many years, are international cooperation expert and photographer respectively. Katja won the Shanghai City Silver Magnolia Award in 2012. In 2015, they opened a co-working creative project workspace C*Space in Berlin, Germany. Freelancers, artists, companies or associations can rent this space to organize corresponding activities. It is worth noting that C*Space have been always setting tea stations in the activities, encourage guests to drink more tea. From 2020, a POP-UP teahouse has been built in the space at a fixed time every Friday, mainly managed by Jan and Lavia Lin, a Shanghai girl. How can this space be inextricably bound up with China, establish more folk cultural exchanges between Germany and China, and promote Chinese tea and tea culture in activities?

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Tea Hiker on the Ancient Tea Horse Road

Wenzhuo Liu

Good news for Chinese readers: related article has been published in Wenzhuo‘s column Tea Perspectives of January 2022 <Tea Times 茶博览> tea magazine in Chinese, 观茶者专栏-Jeff Fuchs:行走于茶马古道上的徒步者”.


Jeff Fuchs, who has lived in Shangri La, Yunnan for ten years, has 17 years of experience in recording and exploring trade routes in the Himalayas and visiting trade participants. He always takes tea and teapots when traveling. His photographic documentary book <Ancient Tea Horse Road> has recorded that he and his team walked along the ancient tea horse road on the Yunnan Tibet line. Based on his book, the documentary of the same name made by Canadian director Andrew Gregg won the documentary award. Jeff has organized and participated in more than 30 Himalayan expeditions, and he has won many Explorer awards such as recently as one of the “100 greatest explorers in Canada” by the Royal Geographical Society of Canada.

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Tea History Podcast – Teacup Media

Wenzhuo Liu

Good news for Chinese readers: related article has been published in Wenzhuo‘s column Tea Perspectives of November 2021 <Tea Times 茶博览> tea magazine in Chinese, 观茶者专栏-Laszlo Montgomery: 洛杉矶的中国茶史博客”.


Modern people read less and listen more. Podcasts in the form of audio on demand may be the future development direction of we media. The podcast has low production cost and simple operation, as long as the audience has an Internet connection, it can be shared with anyone anywhere in the world. Laszlo Montgomery, who lived in Los Angeles after retirement, started to build China’s history podcast Teacup Media in 2010 out of his personal interest in Chinese history. Laszlo had many contacts with Wang Xufeng, a tea novel writer who won the Mao Dun Literature Award and a columnist of China national tea journal <Tea Times>…, and was invited to give a speech at Zhejiang agriculture and Forestry University where she taught. Inspired by this, Laszlo added the tea history series to the podcast in 2014. The celadon teacup given by Mr. Wang at that time has been used so far.

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Tea and Qin Music

Wenzhuo Liu

Good news for English and Chinese readers: the related article has been published, the “Tea’s Smoke and Qin’s Rhyme 茶烟琴韵” <Coffee Tea & I> Vol. 82 in English and Chinese.


Tea’s bitterness can clear the heart, Qin’s low and deep sounds can calm the mind down “茶苦可清心,古琴低沉可静心“, playing Qin (Guqin), tasting tea… several tea friends listen to the dialogue between Qin and tea, tuning Qin, boiling water and infusing tea. In a certain sense, there are many similarities between these two kinds of treasures with profound cultural heritage. Tea has a very long history, even before the beginning of human civilization, Qin, one of the oldest plucked string instruments in China, it has been popular since the time of Confucius with a history of more than 4000 years. Because Qin music style belongs to the quiet, virtual quiet, deep quiet, and so on static beauty. This is why Guqin is most suitable for playing in the dead of night, because such an environment can match the style of Qin music and the artistic conception it pursues. Tea and Guqin have very similar temperament, so in a tea ceremony performance, Guqin is generally chosen. When we clean our hearts, we do not simply drive away the external fatigue, but use Qin, emotion, tea, and Tao to drive away the turbid Qi in our hearts, and then cultivate our body and mind, so as to achieve a truly transcendent spiritual enjoyment. Ancient Chinese literati loved Qin and tea, playing Qin and drinking tea became a vivid portrayal of the life of literati and scholars, both of them can cultivate people’s character, temperament and sentiment, and meditate on Buddhism and Taoism, so as to achieve spiritual enjoyment and personality’s transcendence.

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