Taipei: My Patience Rewarded!

One of the reasons I came to Taiwan to begin with was because of my love of tea and my knowledge that Taiwan is to tea-lovers what Amsterdam is to pot-heads. The last thing I wanted however was to walk into a tea shop and be mistaken for a tourist looking for a novelty tea set to pay way too much for in order to have something to put on a shelf and never use. So I waited. Wait for my Chinese to improve was my intention, and that has happened, but on top of that, my path just happened to cross ways with other people who love tea as much as I do and who have so much to teach me and genuine interest in my American Gung-Fu Cha experiences. I have developed my relationship with them and steeped enough pots of tea from tea sets available in local tea houses with them that I finally decided to have a set of my own, and that my friend decided to help me assemble it. I am in hog heaven. I love Taiwan.