Just a little more than a month after opening the doors of her Beijing tea room, Tea Master Gong Xiangtao conducted a tasting for the press. WTN Contributor Barbara Dufrene was fortunate to be among those invited, and she filed this report.

After many months of cutting through red tape, Gong Xiangtao (aka Taozi, aka Ms. Peach) finally got the formal permit to open her tea house to the public by end of September 2009. Descended from a Fujian tea farming family, and a licensed Tea Master, Taozi carefully refurbished a building next to the East