From tea mountains to Liuzhou’s glass lanes
Michael Zhan came to tea ware procurement through the leaf itself. Before he ever handled a gaiwan, he was walking the slopes of Yunnan’s Daxueshan range, learning to evaluate the mouthfeel of sheng pu-erh from village processors who had never written anything down. Those early years taught him that every detail — from pick date to kill‑green timing — matters; the vessel you brew in is no different.
His transition to teaware sourcing began when a Fujian potter handed him a paper‑thin porcelain cup and said, “You cannot judge the steam if the cup hides it.” That sentence lodged itself in his mind and eventually led him to Liuzhou, where a small community of glass blowers had been quietly adapting laboratory‑glass techniques to tea service. In Gao Lihua’s solo workshop, Michael found the fusion of precision and imperfection he had been searching for — gaiwans with exactly 1.2 mm walls, pitchers that never dribble, and an amber tint achieved by adding a whisper of iron oxide to the melt.
Today, every piece in the tea.glass Liuzhou series bears the stamp of Michael’s field procurement: he visits the workshop no fewer than four times a year, personally inspecting each production lot. He tests the weight distribution of every new gaiwan prototype by brewing a heavily rolled Tiě Guān Yīn seven times in succession — only if the lid doesn’t stick and the rim stays cool to the touch does the design pass. His vendor visits are never rushed; he believes a good sourcing relationship, like a good glass pitcher, needs annealing. That means sharing meals with Gao Lihua’s family, discussing the cost of silica sand, and occasionally helping to pack kiln shelves.
Michael’s specialty is lot selection: he understands that even within the same kiln run, tiny variations in temperature produce subtly different light refraction. He personally segregates the most brilliant pieces for tea.glass customers, while the “seconds” are sold elsewhere. His work doesn’t stop when the glass leaves Liuzhou — he has written technical guides for the tea.glass site and contributed video walkthroughs to courses on visual brewing at tea.school. For Michael, a transparent vessel is not a design trend; it is the most direct way to honour the tea inside it.
Liuzhou: a glassmaking lineage recast for tea
Liuzhou, in northern Guangxi, is better known for karst peaks and river‑snail noodles than for teaware. Yet within its industrial outskirts, a small lane of workshops has been blowing borosilicate glass since the 1980s — originally for scientific apparatus. In the early 2010s, master blower Gao Lihua began diverting her kiln time toward tea‑specific forms, drawn by the challenge of creating heat‑resistant vessels thin enough to feel weightless yet strong enough to survive daily gongfu use.
The workshop sits on a narrow alley lined with stacks of silica sand and broken cullet. Inside, three glory holes roar at 1100 °C, and the only light beyond the flame is the grey Guangxi sky filtering through a frosted glass roof. Gao and her two assistants work without moulds, gathering molten glass on blowpipes and shaping each piece by eye — a method that ensures no two gaiwans are identical, yet all fall within the 10‑gram weight tolerance that Michael Zhan demands.
The local glassmaking tradition owes its origin to a now‑defunct thermometer factory that once supplied laboratories across China. When that factory closed, its skilled workers scattered, seeding a dozen family workshops that now form a fragile artisanal ecosystem. Michael sources exclusively from Gao Lihua because her shop alone still uses the old lithium‑aluminosilicate glass formula developed for thermal shock resistance — a critical advantage when you pour 95 °C water directly from a kettle. The Guangxi humidity, which rusts metal equipment within months, paradoxically helps the glass cool slowly after annealing, reducing internal stress and boosting durability. This terroir of industry and climate, often overlooked, is what makes the Liuzhou series so suited to visual brewing — transparent, resilient, and quietly extraordinary.
