Well, I'm back from India with some stories to tell. I would've posted from there, but found it hard to muster the time, concentration, and comfortable keyboard.
My wife and I had been intending to go to West Bengal for years. Her sister lives in Calcutta. I'd maintained an electronic friendship for years with S. M. Changoiwala, the tea planter whose name will ring a bell with some people reading this, and SMC and I had wanted to get together in the physical world for quite a while. So my wife and I set off for Calcutta February 18.
But there were preparations beforehand. SMC, whose interest in the tea world beyond the borders of India, I would bet, is a lot greater than that of the average Indian tea exec, was interested in trying Chinese tea varieties and preparation techniques he was unfamiliar with. So, along with a bunch of teas, I was faced with the question of what equipment to bring. I wanted it to be easily luggable and sturdy.
The answer was inspired by Michael Plant's dreadnought hard case, the one that protects everything I've ever seen used for Chinese tea preparation. I wasn't aiming that high. I figured my four-ounce porcelain gaiwan with four matching tasting cups would support multiple steep brewing of greens, yellows, oolongs, and Puerhs. I took a cylindrical plastic reusable food container with a screw top, and used lots of scraps of foam rubber packing material to separate the porcelain components from each other. Voila my kit. It took a lot of abuse without chipping the pottery.
When I first unpacked the kit for SMC, it immediately received its official name: the tiffin. For those who don't recognize the word, see for example
/Lew