Zhou Xiang

Zhou Xiang grew up in Hunan’s Dongting Lake basin, within sight of Junshan Island — the birthplace of Jūnshān Yínzhēn (君山银针), China’s most esteemed yellow tea. After a decade steeping himself in the province’s tea culture, he now brings that intimacy to restaurant floors, helping sommeliers and waitstaff translate the quiet rituals of tea into confident, welcoming service.

His expertise is built on persistent fieldwork. In 2018 he spent a full picking season in Hangzhou’s Longjing village, mastering the nuances of pan-firing that define Lóngjǐng (龙井). Later residencies in Anhua and Yiyang deepened his command of Hunan’s dark teas and the delicate hóng chá that anchors the region’s black tea fame. That hands-on base informs every programme he designs.

At tea.restaurant, Zhou shapes the training curriculum seen in his thread ‘Training floor staff on Chinese tea — without overwhelming them’. He advocates a three-tier approach: first, a sensory anchor (one tea, tasted daily); second, a single geographic story; third, a pairing rule that sticks. This sequence is the backbone of the courses he hosts on tea.school — micro-modules that fit between service preps and post-shift debriefs.

His roundtables are similarly pragmatic. The ‘Regional restaurant roundtable — Saint Petersburg’, scheduled for 8–22 April 2026, brings together head chefs and tea masters to build seasonal menus around fixed tea flights. At the London restaurant team training day, he walked floor staff through a five‑tea quick‑service drill, using teaware profiled on tea.equipment to keep every brew precise under pressure.

Zhou’s second major thread, ‘Kombucha and tea pairing — not confusing guests’, tackles the rising tide of fermented beverages. He maps out clear demarcations — when to present kombucha as a standalone, when to bridge it with a first‑infusion dāncōng, and how glassware choices from tea.equipment can visually separate the two without extra words.

He returns to Hunan every spring to source fresh yínzhēn and to walk the young plantations with local growers, feeding that direct knowledge back into the community’s resource library. Whether designing a restaurant’s tea list or coaching a new hire through their first gōngfū service, Zhou Xiang treats tea not as an inventory item, but as a story that every team member can tell.