The Way of Tea: The Sublime Art of Oriental Tea Drinking

"Apart from Master Lam questioning the merits of organic tea production, I can't really fault this book as an excellent introduction to "tea". From the history of its discovery and commercial cultivation to details of the art of tea making, little is excluded.

Yes, of course there will be something missing, but as a starting point for those who are interested in a more refined cup of tea without milk (i.e. progressing beyond PG Tips - a "red" tea, by the way! - or Earl Grey) it is superb."
~ Written on 2006-09-19

"A good, easy read and intro to the subject, but disapointing. The Master in question is a Taichi Master, and not a Tea Master and seems to have a take on Chinese cooking, Feng Shui, and will probably publish something on the Shanghai car industry next. As he is from Hong Kong the teas have the Cantonese names and not the pinyin names used on the mainlaind, e.g. Long Jin is Lung Chin. I would have prefered less of the stories and more of the facts, e.g. matching the tea set to the tea surely merits more than a paragraph? Lung Chin/Long Jin has 18 words describing the tea and two paragraphs on the tale of the old women. Perhaps I am too Western, but more of the facts would have been appreciated from the Master. This reads like a book written by a man who has gone to the library and read about tea, drinks tea, and has more knowledge than the average tea drinker in Hong Kong, but I am not certain if he should have the title 'Master' on the cover. A bit like a PhD in social planning writing a book on health. Still for a gentle intro you could do worse, but I should think there would be better."
~ Written on 2005-08-16

"From the size and design of this book, you may think it is a nice "coffee table" book, but in fact, it is an important reference for some very vital information about tea process from A to Z. (mainly Chinese tea)

The design and photography are excellent, the text is as good, but my only concern is regarding the amount and type of information presented in it. The book is not suitable for beginners, and yet leaves the serious tea person wanting more. Nevertheless, I highly recommend this for any tea enthusiast.

It also has some nice corrections for several misconceptions."
~ Written on 2005-01-10

"This book gives excruciating details of the delicate art of tea preparation. It shows you in beautiful full colour photos step by step how to properly perform tea preparation and serving procedures. It is really quite a sight when witnessed in real life although it is rather difficult to perform without a lot of practice.
The rest of the book sort of builds upto this, giving yet more fine detail on things as minimal as how to tell what stage you should boil water to by looking at the bubbles, type of tea, the various tea bowls and tea pots and even the interesting storys behind tea and its origins.
The only thing I was hoping would be in the book was more details on individual varieties of teas, but as the range of teas available is so large it would be a bit impractical to list them all! Apart from that this is very well presented book and excellent quality overall."
~ Written on 2003-10-21