why an English index exists
THE TEA constellation is built China-first — most of its research, sourcing, and editorial voice runs through Mandarin-speaking regions and Mandarin-speaking experts. tea.us.com exists so that an English-speaking reader in the United States does not have to guess which of the thirty-six houses to open first, or translate a Wuyi rock-tea vocabulary before placing an order.
This site is deliberately narrow. It does not hold its own tea inventory, run its own tea rooms, or take its own bookings. What it holds is orientation: a map of the six tea families and eight kinds of house, a set of US-specific practical guides — customs and import basics, tap water by city, pu-erh storage across US climates, pricing in USD — and a directory of city and regional starting points. Every path on this site ends at a working sibling: a course on tea.school, an aged-cake archive on puerh.app, a shelf on shop.thetea.app, a case order on wholesale.teamotea.com, or a booked session with one of the constellation’s resident experts through tea.services.
how the map is drawn
Chinese tea itself provides the map’s structure, not marketing categories. Every tea in the constellation belongs to one of six families defined by processing, not brand: green (lǜchá, 绿茶), white (báichá, 白茶), yellow (huángchá, 黄茶), oolong (wūlóngchá, 乌龙茶), black (hóngchá, 红茶), and the post-fermented dark teas (hēichá, 黑茶) that include pu-erh. Each resident expert who appears across the constellation’s pages specialises in one or two of these families and a home region — Fujian rock tea, Guangdong dancong, Yunnan sheng pu-erh, Hunan yellow tea — so a recommendation on any given page traces back to someone who has actually worked that leaf, not a general-purpose tasting note.
For a reader new to Chinese tea, the practical starting point is usually one of three questions: what should I drink first, where do I buy it reliably in the US, and what do I need to know before it ships. This site is built to answer those three questions plainly, then hand off to the constellation house that can take the conversation further.