Infuser Special Christmas Issue
December 2005
www.mingcha.com.hk

© 2005 Lee Kwan Tea Trade Limited. All Rights Reserved.

Product News

Special Feature

Recent issues of Infuser:

Peace and Happiness

Wishing You a Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2006!

Leo Kwan & Friends at MingCha

Exclusively MingCha: The Loft Gallery


Guest tables in the Loft Gallery

Serious tea drinkers wanting to focus in studying and comparing quality amongst different tea selections demand a placid environment. Some want to share views and experiences with others over a brewing pot; while others may simply want to enjoy the tranquillity brought about by the process and the chemistry of premium tea.

Quick Retreat

That's why we have created the Loft Gallery at Star Shop. A small wooden staircase leads from the merchandise area on the street level to the retreat, otherwise connected to the outside only over a balcony. Opposite a 15-meter wall of recessed display cases are 9 hardwood tables of a simple and modern, but unmistakably Chinese, design. Each table has a built-in infusion tray and a high efficiency electric kettle. The 2.5-meter workbench at the end is also furnished with a built-in long infusion tray that flushes with the polished black granite top. The shiny stainless steel of the faucet for boiled water stands out in the neutral colour scheme, composed basically of the textured white walls and dark colour furniture, with the warm and cosy overtone cast by the timber flooring, wood-finished beams, and the plush, cream colour carpet. The workbench doubles as a demonstration table during tea-classes and presentations.


Loft Gallery general view

The whole range of MingCha, including even the Private Reserve Collections, is open for access. Exclusively at the Loft Gallery.

There is another intention. The small exhibition space provided by the display cases, however small it is even by the scale of the space-precious city of Hong Kong, can be the crucible for the discourse of art and craft developments through simply displaying such art here. Or beyond. As of now, we are open to ideas, suggestions and volunteers as to how to utilise that space.

Please submit your ideas, or biography if you want to volunteer.

(click to submit ideas)

MingCha on Star

7 Star Street, Wan Chai
Phone: (852) 2520 2116
Fax: (852) 2520 2339
Opening hours: 12:00 nn- 9:00 pm

(enquiry)

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Candy and Colourful Clouds:
A Tale of Two Artists


Pomelo Chicken Popper, Star Shop

The casual smile and light-heartedness would easily disguise the unusual experience of Candy Lee. Before she joined MingCha as the chef at Star Shop, Candy had run her own specialty catering business in Toronto, worked in a couple of small restaurants, and toured around the world for local eateries and food specialties.

Childhood Dreams

After she completed her honours degree in Hotel and Food Administration in the 90’s, the talented young lady went on to one of the best culinary schools to fulfil her dream. “I have always wanted to be a chef. When I wrote about that in ‘my ambition’ in primary school essay writing homework, my parents laughed at it so hard for so long, thinking it's so funny because one didn’t really need to be properly educated to cook in restaurants.” As the Canadian educated Hong Kong born Chinese told her story, there was a smile in her face that's actually hiding some regrets. “Kitchen positions have always been despised in our culture.”

Notwithstanding the small number of movies and comics mystifying the role of the chef, in Chinese cultures, cooking jobs are generally considered lower class and meant for people who cannot really finish normal schooling.


Festive Fruit Cake

Taste with Style

Candy has an unusual sense in taste and has been directing her cooking alongside this strength, rather than on ornamentalism or sensationalism. She has her own style. Take her Festive Fruit Cake as an example. The stunningly simple and straightforward appearance actually hides in it an artful concert of different traditional materials each specially treated for their own individual characters and effects, before they are compiled and transformed into the moist, dense, chewy, highly aromatic, and yet humble looking baked piece.

The beautifully balanced taste, mouth-watering texture and heart-warming experience are, after-all, the ultimate benchmark for good, old-fashion cooking. Except that the moment is now, and the place is Hong Kong, where the talents, experiences and materials from the East and West come together in the making of a potential trend we have yet to see. We are pretty sure, however, that Candy will be both enjoying and contributing to this change.

Dishes and Tea Bowls

If cooking should worth a lot more social status in Chinese societies, then the situation of porcelain art is even more under-rated.

I am illustrating this with the case of Caiyun (transliterates as: colourful clouds) Yue.


Caiyun Yue, Ivy, Gaiwan in Undergalze Blue

Yue is a well-collected porcelain artist for her exceptional and precise control of the material. The fact that she was born into a porcelain family in the porcelain capital of the world: Jingde was not the only reason why she achieves what she does today. She paid her dues: she graduated in both the Jingde University of Porcelain Vocations and the Central Institute of Art and Crafts and submitted her works to all respectable competitions and publications. She also shares her experiences and insights in the use of underglaze blue through thesis publications.

In Search of a Fuller Self

Having gone through the decorative stages in her artistic development, Yue is in search of the soul of Chinese literati painting, which is considered as the highest achievements in traditional Chinese visual arts. In three of her recent gaiwan sets, the brushwork reflects that of the renowned Ming Dynasty painter, Xu Wei. Yue's work is a lot more sober and contained, however, reflecting a personality that is different from that of the legendary painter, whose artistic achievement was so high that it is said that his work influenced later important artists such as Bada Shan Ren and Qi Bai Shi.

Playful Children

Mastery of underglaze blue on porcelain, however, is entirely a different matter than ink on ‘rice’ paper. Yue’s seemingly casual brushwork, therefore, is entirely an achievement on its own. Her playful use of repeating motifs, such as that in the ‘Playful Children’ series, is a humorous mockery of porcelain pieces produced through the mass production process. It is not unlike the repeating silkscreen prints of Andy Warhol, but with a lot more respect for the art of the medium itself, which spirit is a continuation of the soul of Chinese art.


Caiyun Yue, Playful Children, Cups of Gaiwan Set in Underglaze Blue

Having said that, these one-of-a-kind sets sell for a mere seventy-two hundred Hong Kong at our shop. This is totally disproportional to art works of similar achievement under the painting or sculpture categories.

While Candy Lee strives with her cooking art in MingCha, Yue continues to raise the status of the porcelain art to new levels in the porcelain capital, leaving behind in our shop these gastronomically, artistically and visually beautiful pieces. We all believe in this: when something is so good, eventually people would just wake up to recognize it.

It’s just a matter of who sees it first.


Salsa Chino, Candy Lee’s creation at the Star Shop

(enquiry)

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More Space, More Products, More Quiet (Slightly)
MingCha at Great Re-launches


MingCha Tea Evangelist listening to customer’s needs at Great Food Hall

In Hong Kong, it is not unusual to redecorate a small shop in two weeks in a mall, but that’s awfully short when one needs to design and construct it as well.

That was how much time we had when we launched the MingCha Tea Bar in Christmas 2003 at Great Food Hall. Although we managed to create a bit of profile through the operation, the operating environment had been less than ideal.

Space & Alignment

Exactly two years later, MingCha Tea Bar at Great reopens, having been closed down for almost half a year. We are finally in an environment more like what we had discussed years ago: with reasonable viewing and traffic space, and room for bar-sitting without other customers squeezing behind to pay for their sandwich takeouts. Notwithstanding the less than ideal construction quality, we feel that this time around there is much better conceptual alignment with Great for a partnership to create a better tea shopping experience for the customers.

What Gets Around Comes Around

Stephen Wright, who has come to Hong Kong to run Great as well as a couple of other international gourmet food shops under the same management, has been a key to rectify the issues. Miraculously, the person who introduced MingCha tea bar to Selfridges in London two years ago was Wright himself. In the small world of food and beverages, what gets around really comes around. MingCha now takes up a good portion of the tea section in the food hall of the biggest department store in UK and constantly gets queries from customers of all backgrounds.

The Original Intent

Now in Hong Kong, customers are more privileged to be able to indulge themselves to just browsing the range of packaged products, or sipping a cup of densely infused First Flush Longjin at the tea bar. We are happy to tell the world that MingCha as it has originally intended to be is now accessible conveniently in the hub of Pacific Place at Great Food Hall.

MingCha Tea Bar at Great Food Hall
Basement of Seibu Department Store
Pacific Place (Admiralty Station)
Hong Kong
Store Hours: 10:00 am to 10:00 pm daily

(enquiry)

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Fresh and Chilled:
Green, Green Tea of Spring for the Season of Food Overdose

Throughout the East and West, festivals in winter are almost always characterised with loads of greasy but tempting dishes shared amongst friends and family. In Hong Kong, we are blessed with the traditions from both worlds and therefore, quite a few festivals loaded with enough fatty acids and protein reserves to last till we stuff ourselves with roast pigs in Ching Ming Festival (April) and glutinous rice dumplings in Dragon Boat Festival (June) again, and again.

Indulgence in food has been a luxury that developed economies like ours have been lucky to enjoy, but is also a vice that we have to watch out for.

Saviour: Tea Polyphenols

Tea polyphenols are found to be an effective agent in lowering bad cholesterol levels and ridding the body of excessive energy intakes. Experiments have been conducted in Europe, US, China and Japan with consistent conclusions in these health aspects. Whereas the “average” cup of tea may contain half the flavanols (the same category of substances as tea polyphenols) found in red wine, the latter can be consumed in the litres a day without any side effects, but not wine.

What is most important, however, would be the understanding of the word “average”. According to a United States Department of Agriculture survey in 2003, the average in tea is pretty low; they have included mass market products such as tea bags or instant tea mixes, which to us is bad taste; but in the findings, flavanol-wise worthless.


Green tea series on display in the fridge in the Star Shop

The better tea, according to the survey, actually contains hundreds of times more of these health-contributing substances than “average” tea, or poorer teas.

To us, it is just better taste.

Keeping It Fresh

Green teas, amongst the most potent of all drinks, are best when consumed fresh (for the taste and for the health benefits), but how do we have fresh green tea — which is harvested in Spring — during Winter seasons, when we need it most?

Well, there is the MingCha airtight packing and the refrigerator. Our range of green teas, such as the Longjin series, Taimu Silver Snow, Green Spring Classic, and yearly small batches of special quality from various origins, are now presented in the display fridge all year long.

It is time to get a few packs to lower those extra bites while enjoying the relaxing and cleansing sensation together with the fine taste of supreme green teas.

(enquiry)

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Call for Comments

As long-term partners, customers, supporters, or observers of MingCha, there must be ideas, insights, and feelings that you would like to share with others or with us. We are in the middle of reviewing the feasibility of a forum section for the re-design of our website.

It would mean very much to us if you could write a few words or lines to us to tell us what you think of MingCha and how you'd like to see our website.

Amongst the submissions, we’d also like to choose a few which we’d like to highlight as positive representations of customers’ views and present them in our shops and/or website. To present the chosen comments properly, the commentator's portrait and a one-line background would be needed. If you’d like to see how we present such representations, you may click on to this link:
</quality/quality_expert.html>

Token of Gratitude

If your comments are chosen for presentation, we’d like to compensate your trouble in submitting these materials by sending you a small token of gratitude:

Two packs from our Private Reserve Collections, one each from the Longjin series and from the Teguanyin series; delivery costs included.

Please make your submission as early as possible and before January 10, 2006. I look forward to seeing what you think of us.

(click to submit comments)

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Grace and Praises

2005 has been a challenging and exciting year for the world. In our own small world of MingCha, there has been much to deal with as well.

At this time of celebration, we really need to be thankful about all the blessings in this passing year:

  • new team members who share so instantly our mission and direction;
  • the invincible spirit that has been supporting us all through the long and exciting hours of work in conditions smooth or adverse;
  • more outlets, more products and more positively supportive producers;
  • a great many batches of great quality teas, some the finest in years, that we manage to provide even with the general adverse weather conditions during harvests;
  • the smiling faces and encouraging words from friends, customers and trade partners that continue to demonstrate to us that we are doing “something good”

Praises to Heaven and thanks to you all. Wishing you a Peaceful Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Leo Kwan and the Team at MingCha

Investment Opportunities

MingCha is undergoing rigorous early stages of development and many good things are happening. This also means opportunities to invest in MingCha for its cause and mission. A good size production chain and distribution network including warehouses and shops are in the plan for the immediate future. It is good opportunities to invest in us at this point of time.

Please take a minute to write to us about your background and motives if you are interested*:
Click to enquire about Investment Opportunities

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*Disclaimer: This is a private offering for supporters of MingCha. MingCha reserves the rights to choose the recipients to receive its investment materials at its own discretion and is not obliged to give any explanation for its choice.

Yearend Shop Irregular Hours

MingCha on Star

7 Star Street, Wan Chai
Phone: (852) 2520 2116
Fax: (852) 2520 2339
Regular opening hours: 12:00 nn- 9:00 pm

December 26 14:00 to 21:00
December 31 12:00 to 19:00

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We hope you have enjoyed this issue. We hope to bring you even more exciting news in the next issues. We thank you for your long time supports and interest.

Please let us know what you think by writing to us.

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