I wanted to try some new teas so I bought a kettle with a variable temperature setting and a keep warm function which is great for when my ADHD makes me forget my mug exists when it's out of my sight

sometimes its

First time buying this brand and 4 months into drinking their loose leaf tea I found this… animal bone?
Pretty disturbing

Edit: Oh wow, guess I can’t be surprised at the amount of people who think this is fake since this is a pretty bizarre find. I genuinely couldn’t be bothered to fake this by putting a bone in a tin of loose leaf tea.
Just thought others should know since Harney & Sons is a very popular brand of tea.

Each tea wrap has a unique image and some days ago I thought why I put them in trash? I put them in photo frame and want to place on the wall. What do you think is it a brilliant idea or am I just collecting trash?

For the record, no, I don't think they pre-cold brewed it and stuck the teabag in, or hot brewed it and poured it over ice. The flavor is way too weak for either of those. This shit cost $6 😭

First of all, I am not an AI. My English just isn't good enough to support deep conversations about tea culture, so I am using AI to help me translate.

Secondly, I want to explain why I came here to talk about tea.

Like most Chinese people, I grew up around tea. But when I was young, my only impression of tea was that it was bitter and astringent. As I grew older, I discovered teas that weren't so bitter, like black tea and white tea. I learned about a variety called Lapsang Souchong (Zhengshan Xiaozhong) and how it can have a sweet, honey-like aroma.

My deep connection with tea culture really began in college. I went to university in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. We had opportunities to join various volunteer programs—some students went to the Silk Museum, others to the Hangzhou Cuisine Museum. I thought the tea museum sounded more interesting and prestigious, as it carries the "National" title.

That was when I was exposed to the entire history and development of tea: from the tall, ancient tea trees in the tropical forests of Xishuangbanna, to the gold and silver tea sets found in the underground palace of Famen Temple from the Tang Dynasty, to the street-side teahouses in Sichuan.

During that time, I learned so much about Chinese tea. I also finally solved the mystery of my childhood: why the green tea I drank back then was so bitter, and why certain black teas tasted noticeably sweet.

After that, I started studying tea more systematically. Zhejiang University has a very famous Tea Science course, and I studied it from beginning to end to understand tea from a scientific perspective. Even though I didn't end up working in the tea industry, drinking, loving, and researching tea has stayed with me to this day as a passion.

I rarely post on Reddit; I usually just lurk and read. When I stumbled upon this subreddit, before clicking in, I assumed everyone here would be drinking English breakfast tea, Indian black tea, or Japanese matcha.

Instead, I found that many of you are brewing Chinese loose-leaf tea using traditional Chinese teaware. I was absolutely shocked. I always thought traditional Chinese tea drinking was a very tiny niche overseas.

Seeing what you guys are discussing and the teas you are buying feels incredibly fresh and exciting to me. It made me want to share more about how Chinese tea is developing in modern society today.

For example, how modern Chinese brewing now emphasizes controlling the thickness of the water flow. Or how some avant-garde young tea makers want to abandon the traditional "Six Types of Tea" classification and invent a completely new system for Chinese loose-leaf tea. I also see friends here worrying about the quality of the Chinese tea they buy.

I want to answer these questions and share my thoughts. However, the aesthetics of Chinese tea are very Eastern, and many expressions are hard to translate directly into English. For example, "Yanyun" (岩韵) translates literally to "Rock Rhyme," which leaves people confused about what kind of taste experience that actually is.

What I want to do is pass on my years of personal experience and the latest technical developments in Chinese tea to you all, so that every overseas fan of Chinese tea can have a better brewing experience.

By the way, the China National Tea Museum is truly beautiful. If you ever have the chance to visit West Lake in Hangzhou, I highly recommend you go check it out!

So my last order of the year for Japanese tea has arrived, 5 pouches of different senchas, it should get me through until February. One package was open for inspection. Yes we don't want to kids to take drugs but why cut a hole in the bottom of the bag? The top is resealable. Fortunately they only checked one and didn't bust the seal on all the tea. Hope they used a clean knife.

The original post is here.
https://x.com/SORA_KAERU/status/2063633168683737590

Why is it 2? Because there is 1.
https://www.reddit.com/r/tea/comments/1otd10x/the_worst_teapot/

I just won this crazy gilded dragon tea set in a raffle. I drink a lot of tea but I have never used anything like this. Feeling a bit out of my depth.