About

I find it bothersome, maybe unreasonably so, when I come across a new, interesting site, and they don’t have an About page. So, here’s one for Chá Sù. : )

Firstly, 茶溯 comprises two characters. 茶 (chá) is, of course, “tea.” 溯 (sù) is slightly harder to capture. While it refers to tracing something to the source, it can also be used to imply “going against the current.” (As, when tracing a river to its source, one must move counter to the river’s flow.) It also has shades of remembering, recollecting, even recurring.

Similarly, this project is about tracing the teas and tea practices I love to their source. As well, it’s about recalling my own source, which — occasionally — involves going against the current. (Often that current is my own.)

You’ll find information here about the teas and tea cultures of Taiwan and China, and you’ll find I’ve also traced the outlines of my own feelings and thoughts. By taking the latter into account, I hope you’ll see the former more clearly.

I hope, also, all this might help you find an interesting path or two to your own source — maybe even one you hadn’t noticed before — or at least help you recall one you’d forgotten.

Lastly, in the name 茶溯, I’ve created a “Chinese” phrase that would probably strike a native speaker as slightly odd. You know those t-shirts, produced in non-English-speaking places, emblazoned with an “English” phrase? This phrase is a bit like that. I leave it as such as a reminder to myself, and to you, that my translations — either of words, or of cultural practices — are not perfect. Yet, like those t-shirts, they sometimes have a refreshing element of poetry.