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Tea travel diary

Chinese tea · stamped, routed, annotated

From the garden to the cup in five stops

Thirty-four Chinese teas reported as journal spreads: navy and red on cream, region stamps, coordinate rails, a dashed route and a brew guide in the margin.

A round heap of toasted buckwheat granules on cream paper surrounded by navy and red rubber stamps, a dashed numbered route, a small province map and a boxed brew guide

Seven categories, seven itineraries

34 teas · 7 categories

Green teaGreen tea5 teasOolongOolong14 teasRed tea (hongcha)Red tea (hongcha)6 teasPu-erhPu-erh4 teasWhite teaWhite tea2 teasTea paste (chagao)Tea paste (chagao)2 teasBuckwheat (not a tea)Buckwheat (not a tea)1 tea

Wear the diary page

All tees and hoodies →

Wear — Ālǐshān Zhū Lù CháĀlǐshān Zhū Lù CháWear — Bái JiānBái JiānWear — Passion-Fruit OolongPassion-Fruit OolongWear — Raw Pu-erh PasteRaw Pu-erh PasteWear — Ripe Pu-erh PasteRipe Pu-erh PasteWear — Dà Hóng PáoDà Hóng Páo

Why this shop is laid out as a journal

A journal spread can hold more information than a poster and still be read in order, which is why the whole shop is set as one. The route is the spine of every page: garden, leaf, process, press or roast, cup, numbered and joined by a dashed line so the sequence is visible before a word is read. Stamps and coordinate rails carry the geography, and the brew guide is kept as a small boxed table because grammes, temperature, time and infusion count are the part a reader will come back for. Navy and red on cream is the palette of a passport and a ledger rather than a campaign, and it leaves the photograph as the warmest thing on the page. Chinese tea suits this format because the story really is a route: a mountain, a picking window, a process that takes days or decades, then five minutes at a table. Everything stated on these pages is checkable, and where a number is not known it is left out rather than invented. The tone is reporting, not brochure.