Chuan Huang is a yellow tea from white2tea’s August tea club.

 

I have never had a yellow tea before. I didn’t even knew that yellow tea existed. But it arrived in white2tea’s monthly tea club with this explanation: “Yellow Tea is one of the lesser-known categories of tea and also has a somewhat fluctuating definition, depending on who is making the tea. Basically, yellow tea is green tea with an additional step called men huang… During this step, the tea is bundled up and allowed to slowly oxidize a bit, taking the edge off of the sharp green and yielding a more smooth brew.”

For some reason, my brain thinks this tastes like yellow. I don’t mean lemon, which is what fake yellow often tastes like. I mean yellow, like the color of sunflowers or goldenrod. It’s not particularly sweet. It’s not particularly astringent. It tastes like the first rays of sunshine slanting over a hill in late summer, when the air is crisp but not uncomfortably cold, when the sun is warm but not oppressive.

 

All in all, a delightful tea experience to have as we head toward the end of summer and the beginning of autumn.

This last weekend was mid-autumn festival, a festival celebrated when the full moon coincides with harvest time. It’s a time for families to come together and celebrate, light lanterns, and eat mooncakes.

 

I went down to the festival in Denver. It had been a rainy, overcast day, with perpetual gloomy clouds that were still spitting a few droplets by the time I arrived.

 

They had a lion dance (picture, top right). Before the lion dance started, the woman who was leading the event pointed over our shoulders and said, “look, right there, the moon is rising. Can you see it?”

 

We looked. There was nothing but dark clouds. People made skeptical noises. She told us it was there, and to just wait. Then the lion dance started. There were two lions, each lion made up of two people (one the front half, one the back). They danced to a drum beat for good luck and fortune, and they passed out lanterns to the little kids and collected lucky money.

 

(The end result was kind of a mish-mash of a variety of East Asian cultures—which happens in a city like Denver where there’s a good number of East Asians but not enough for them each to celebrate separately.) At the end, the lions held up red banners commemorating the festival. We all turned around, and at that moment, the clouds cracked just enough for us to get our first sight of the full moon creeping through (top left).

We went back the next morning for the dragon dance—a 30 foot elaborate fabric dragon, held up by nine dancers, chasing a red ball held by another one. They all managed to move in a way where nobody tripped or tied the dragon in a knot, but kept looking fluid and realistic. They looked like they were getting quite the workout.

 

Yummy food was had by all.

 

Happy mid-autumn festival to you!

Sometimes it feels like the world is falling apart, or in some cases, being purposefully torn apart. But every time I see those centrifugal forces trying to rip things from center and fling them around, I remember how many people there are who are holding things together.

 

In this case, HEAs for trans kids is a collective of romance readers and authors who have come together to raise money for trans kids. In this particular instance, they’re raising money for Southern Equality’s emergency assistance program for families of trans kids in Texas who need help—legal, mental health, planning how to manage a hostile state administration, and so on.

 

There are some amazing books in this bundle, including The Duke Who Didn’t by me (I feel self-conscious saying this book is amazing but I do think so, I guess that’s the way it goes). There are 12 books in this bundle, though. I’ve just started reading, but so far I’m delighted.

 

I’ll leave you with this quote from The Opposite of Drowning by Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese: “Harry was already considering the possibility that not only was he wildly attracted to Elizabeth, but that he also hated her.”

 

My favorite. I can’t wait to see what happens.

There’s only one way to get this bundle: donate (at least) $25 to the HEA for Trans Kids fundraising page for the Campaign for Southern Equality. Volunteers have to manually send emails in response to donations, but you’ll get an email (usually within 24 hours at the latest) with a link to download the entire bundle.

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