Our Life Story, Part I
A numbered diary of encounters, dreams, work, friendships and tea journeys from Changshou’s early years in Shaxi.
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Stories from the tea room, the mountains, and the road
Tea journeys, village lives, pottery, animals, and the people and ordinary days that have shaped Changshou.
Our Life Story, Part II
The numbered diary continues through meditation, tea mountains, pottery, animals, village life, illness, grief and friendship.
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Tea as a Path
An essay on the beginnings of the tea room, learning Yunnan tea in the mountains, and the way tea became part of a larger search for how to live.
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The Truth of Life Is Life Itself
On direct perception, impermanence, art, and why a walk without a phone can return the real world to us.
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Master Yang Builds a House
Five years after he rebuilt Changshou, carpenter Master Yang raises his own house with the help of his village.
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Xingxing and Us
The story of Xingxing, one of three kittens found by the roadside: her life with Changshou, her illness, and the family’s farewell.
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Craft Notes: Why Tea Tastes Better in Certain Teaware
Notes from Jingdezhen and Yixing on shape, glaze, clay, firing, and the practical work of matching a vessel to a tea.
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Changshou: A Longing for Enclosure
The earliest account of Changshou: a dark twelve-square-metre shop, an inward-looking dream, and the patient work that made it a tea room.
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Foraging for Mushrooms
A summer in Yunnan’s forests and markets, learning wild mushrooms by sight, smell and season—and what can happen when you get them wrong.
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My University Years
Gu Rui looks back on leaving China for university in New Zealand: an escape from exams and home that gradually became another kind of enclosure.
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Sadness Has No Reason
After his father’s death, Gu Rui leaves school to teach in a remote Miao village—and remembers the girl whose life stayed with him.
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The Birds Outside My Door
A withdrawn student follows his birdwatching teacher beyond the classroom, towards a lake, a peregrine and an altered way of seeing.
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Soon Everyone Will Know You Are Turning into a Bat
At a forest meditation retreat where practitioners turn into birds, one woman begins becoming the creature no one wants to name.
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Watching Boats by the Lake with My Father
A child remembers a volatile father, a reservoir, a lakeside camp and the fragile hope carried by an old wooden boat.
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Love Only Surfaces Now and Then
A call to a long-lost school friend opens a story of adolescence, distance and the rare moments when love breaks the surface.
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It Turned Out She Had a Boyfriend on the Island
A wandering woodworker builds a tree house on an island; friendship, desire and a coming typhoon unsettle the life around him.
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The Mountains Begin to Wake
A difficult journey folds memory, friendship, illness and hallucination into the waking mountain landscape around Shaxi.
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Get in touch.
Ask us about our tea, pottery, or visiting the tea house in Shaxi.
- 273418348@qq.com
- lv016958
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- Changshou Tea House, No. 49 Sideng Street, Shaxi Old Town, Jianchuan County, Dali, Yunnan, China
云南省大理州剑川县沙溪古镇寺登街49号 长守茶室
Please contact us before visiting.