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In March, the weather starts to shift in Taiwan. We find ourselves reaching more for red teas, which are good all-year-round teas. Red teas wake us up in the morning, making the shift from the Yin of night to the Yang of day more fluid and comfortable. In the same way, they seem to mark the change in seasons well, especially from the cold winter months into the warmth and sun of a Lunar New Year.
Red tea is amongst our favorite kinds of tea because it is one of the simplest to produce and prepare, which makes it the perfect topic to start the new lunar year of Global Tea Hut. We must remember to return to the basics, as they are the foundation of our tea practice. If I had to choose from amongst the many benefits that Tea has brought to my life, learning to celebrate simplicity would be the brightest and most influential lessons that I have learned. Tea has taught me to adore the ordinary, to rest in the simplest moment and to celebrate the way the sun highlights a pot, the warmth of a bowl or the glance of a dear friend. And red tea, as well as this month of Global Tea Hut devoted to it, will help remind us all to do the same.
This whole issue is the first in a series devoted to the seven genres of tea. Over the next year or so, we plan to find rare and interesting green, yellow, white, black and puerh teas and fill an issue with articles on the history, processing, lore and spirit of each of these kinds of tea. This month, we are starting with the second of these (we covered puerh in September, 2014). But first, let's discuss some Global Tea Hut updates.
As I mentioned last month, don't shake your envelope up and down for a gift this month. You won't find it. We are using the budget we ordinarily spend on gifts to build an amazing website that will connect all of you to each other. We know that many of you love these small gifts, and we very much love discussing, planning, finding and wrapping them with love to send to you. But we needed a way to fund the new website, and thought that making this new site your three-month gift was the perfect idea. What do you think? Are you happy with that? My guess is that you'll want to know more about the site before deciding.
We are still mapping out everything that will go into this, and the ideas are amazing. Some of the features we are hoping to include are: a profile you can update, including your pictures, a way to meet other members or have Global Tea Hut travelers stay with you, an ability to post events and invite people (even from outside the community), private messages, a global event feed, and much more. If you have any ideas or things you'd like to see the site do, please feel free to contact us through our website. We would love to include you in the creation process, as it will be much more your website than ours.
Unbelievable to reach fifty issues together! Fifty teas and fifty months of sharing love and light around the world! Watch the special video recounting the changes in Global Tea Hut over time on the video webpage.
