Today I\u2019m putting together notes for a talk I\u2019m giving this week. I\u2019m giving it from my desk, but most of the people at the other end of my computer will be in China. A talk on tea to China.<\/p>\n
This is when I feel like a fraud, but it\u2019s not that at all. I\u2019m talking about tea history and how to prepare for time travel through understanding how tea was brought into Europe and North America. I have Russian silver and a reproduction Dutch cup and a bunch of other things to show and tell.<\/p>\n
I used to teach these things and now I\u2019m nervous because I\u2019m giving a talk. Tea to China, I tell myself, is not chutzpah. Tea history includes what Linnaeus knew about the plant, and why there are no teapots prior to a certain date and where beef tea fits in. I intend to detour via portable soup when I talk about beef tea, because they\u2019re related and I have some portable soup right now. I won\u2019t make beef tea, I\u2019m afraid because I have no love for it.<\/p>\n
What else shall I talk about? Medieval herbals (briefly) and popular tea literature in the 17th<\/sup> century. What Marco Polo said (or didn\u2019t say) about tea and my guess as to why. Tea substitutes, including during the US Revolutionary War and in the early Australian colonies.<\/p>\n Lots of things.<\/p>\n My aim is to finish most of it today, along with most of my Patreon material. I have 2 other talks to prepare this week, too. This is on top of my regular research, but it\u2019s fun stuff on top of my regular research. As long as I get it done and all ready for the world SF convention, things are good. October is busy, but delightfully so.<\/p>\n I think that this post calls for a cup of tea. I have a rather nice oolong to drink this afternoon. Which reminds me, I haven\u2019t included even a mention of British Malaya and its relationship with oolong into my talk yet. Nor how coffee and tea identity-switched in British at a certain moment. Nor\u2026 I should write.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today I\u2019m putting together notes for a talk I\u2019m giving this week. I\u2019m giving it from my desk, but most of the people at the other end of my computer will be in China. A talk on tea to China. This is when I feel like a fraud, but it\u2019s not that at all. I\u2019m […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,406],"tags":[70,782,176,781],"class_list":["post-2988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","category-food","tag-history","tag-lecture","tag-tea","tag-world-science-fiction-convention"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2988"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2989,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2988\/revisions\/2989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}