Following the seven-cup narrative in "Songs of Seven Cups," I created seven additional podcast clips in Part II. I decided to expand my tea project through the lens of cross-cultural communication and globalization. As a global citizen traveling across different continents, I made a series of tea podcasts as an introspection on identity conflicts, immigration, and cultural assimilation after talking to friends and strangers surround me. The tea podcasts collect individual tea leaves, each represents a distinctive story. The podcast’s narrative form allows me to capture an authentic glimpse of how people navigate their identities in the globalized world. To explore the complexity of translation, I blended the dialogue in Chinese and English together and used different mediums to cross the language barrier.

The naming of each “Leaf” episode is inspired by The Classic of Tea (茶经), the earliest and most famous documentation of tea written by Lu Yu. According to Chinese-English Tea Studies Terminology, there are three scrolls and ten chapters about tea:
“一之源 Origin, 二之具 Tools, 三之造 Making, 四之器 Utensil, 五之煮Boiling, 六之飲 Drinking, 七之事 History, 八之出 Growing Regions, 九之略 Simplify, and 十之图 Pictorialize” (Lu-Yu Tea Culture Institute).

Sound + Visual Design: Haotian Wang
Mentor: Roy Nathanson
Artistic Support: Xinyi (Claire) Zhang
Credits to All Tea PotCast Interviewee
Dialogue Transcription & Translation available in track description

Special Thanks to: Afterlife Teahouse (Video Game)
rok1006.itch.io/afterlife-teahouse