Our Story
a journey of love, discovery, and connection through tea
Hi, I’m Charlene and I created Tranquil Tuesdays.
As a lifelong tea person who always appreciated that special feeling of calm that emanates from a freshly brewed cup of tea.
I wanted to share that uniquely revelatory tranquil moment with others with this online library of resources.
I’m forever grateful to tea for the gift of connection and that we are able to meet here.
I started Tranquil Tuesdays in 2010 as an expression of my passion for tea and belief that tea is so much more than a beverage.
Eleven years later Tranquil Tuesdays has grown, shrunk, moved, and evolved.
The journey of tea discovery continues and I’m delighted to share what I’ve learned in our library of online resources to help you go deeper with tea.
Tranquil Tuesdays is no longer selling
teas or teaware.
Today Tranquil Tuesdays is an online resource to help you go deeper with tea and a place for us to connect over our shared love for tea.
How did I get into tea?
I’m a 4th generation Chinese-American who grew up in a family that lived to eat.
Even though tea was never a focal part of our family culture and more of a background thing, my family taught me everything about learning through taste and being curious through food and drink.
Tea was a cozy drink, a refined moment of connecting historically to other cultures, and something my grandma always had in a thermos on her kitchen table.
When I grew older I found myself traveling to tea producing areas in Sri Lanka or Bangladesh for fun with friends.
Spending whole mornings tracking down specific teas in the streets of Bangkok or finding historic tea shops in the winding alleys in the heart of old Delhi or the in the old imperial part of Beijing.
A friend suggested I turn this personal passion into a business and then…
You can learn more about my personal journey with tea by:
Our beginning in Beijing’s hutongs
Tranquil Tuesdays started in 2010 as a social enterprise based in Beijing’s Fangjia Hutong selling a collection of personally sourced teas and handmade teaware sold in premier gift and gourmet stores around the world.
View photos of the Tranquil Tuesdays Team and our old showroom and office in Beijing.
I made it my job to travel around China learning everything I could about tea.
Working together with small family farms to personally source teas from historical tea growing regions around China I created a tea collection.
Watch as I take CBS Sunday Morning along for the fall tea harvest of Tieguanyin Oolong tea in Fujian, China.
speaking with tea pickers during a fall tea harvest. click on the photo to see all the photos from this fall harvest.
learning about how tea makers evaluate the moisture content of freshly picked tea leaves withering during the spring tea harvest. click on the photo to see all the photos from this spring tea harvest.
A small preview of the photo galleries and articles written about my tea travels around the world on the Tea Adventures page:
Designing Teaware
Inspired by the history of porcelain craft in China, I collaboratively designed teaware collections handmade by artisans in China’s ancient porcelain capital of Jingdezhen that were then sold in premiere museum gift shops and design stores.
Tranquil Tuesdays’ former teaware collection
Showcasing the historically distinctive Chinese porcelain traditions of celadon and blue and white ware as well as showcasing new modern designs of crystalline glaze we created handmade teaware specially for brewing Chinese tea in the Chinese tea aesthetic tradition of smaller gong fu tea sizes and made the most beautiful and functional gaiwans we could find.
What does “Tranquil Tuesdays” mean?
The name Tranquil Tuesdays was inspired by my own experiences of friendship, love, optimism, and creating rituals of sanctuary and quiet relaxation.
Tuesdays have always been my favorite day of the week.
One of my best friends Phaedra and I had a friend ritual to observe “Tranquil Tuesdays” and do something relaxing together.
Phaedra introduced me to Tony in Beijing on a “Tranquil Tuesday” we created for ourselves when she was visiting me.
A name that embodies the spirit of what I like best about tea and with a great overlap with my Chinese name.
Phaedra and me at the Tranquil Tuesday we created for ourselves in Beijing and at the dinner where she introduced me to Tony (who took this photo of us).
Tony and I even got engaged in a tea field in rural Anhui province
I created Tranquil Tuesdays as a place for my enthusiasm for rituals of intentional quiet and rest, tasting new flavors and sipping beverages; curiosity about history, culture, food systems, and politics; and desire to create a more feminist and decolonized world.
I hope Tranquil Tuesdays continues to become where we can gather around tea and these shared interests.