University of Colorado Partnership brings scholars, artists to Ku Cha for public lectures and events, and Ku Cha House of Tea provides tea and tea-infused snacks
It’s easy to think of Ku Cha House of Tea as just a shop to pick up bags of loose-leaf oolong, Earl Grey and chai.
But we are much more. Tea is marvelously complex, touching on history, culture, geology, climate and health. Many of our teas are rooted in ancient cultures and traditions from around the world. Most offer different wellness benefits. Flavors swing from grassy to dense with spices to sweet and floral.
As a result, we spend a lot of our time working as educators, rather than salespeople.
So we are thrilled to announce a new partnership with the University of Colorado’s Center for Humanities & the Arts (CHA).
Beginning in January, Ku Cha will host a variety of events sponsored by the CHA. Historians, philosophers, artists and other people devoted to the life of the mind will offer lectures, presentations and more at our Pearl Street shop. And we will offer delicious tea and tea-infused pastries to guests.
The Center is near to Ku Cha’s heart. We even crafted two blends — CHA Awake and CHA Relax — for the Center. It works out well that the Cha in our name (which means “tea” in Chinese) and the Center’s acronym, CHA, are sisters.
The partnership came about thanks to Professor Jennifer Ho, an Ethnic Studies professor who recently became the director of CHA.
The author of three books about Asian-American literature and culture, Jennifer brings enormous energy, passion and smarts to the CHA. We chatted with Jennifer about the CHA’s mission, and her plans for it.
The Ku Cha Q&A with Professor Jennifer Ho
Ku Cha: Jennifer, tell us about the CHA.
Jennifer Ho: I view the Center as both a hub and a bridge. As a hub, it serves to connect people across the CU community who work within arts and humanities, as well as people who are simply interested in the university’s breadth of research. The hub is vital. It fosters collaboration. Incubates fresh ideas. Develops groundbreaking work. And importantly, builds university community.
The bridge is just as critical. The University of Colorado arts and humanities community engages in spectacular work. It is critical that people up and down the Front Range encounter it, and engage with it. It’s the Center’s job to make sure those connections take place.
Ku Cha: What are your immediate priorities for CHA?
Jennifer: Strengthening the hub, and building more bridges. Too often when people hear the word “research” they think of sciences. But every professor on campus is deeply committed to research. The dancer working on her new routine, and turning to research to push boundaries. The English professor reading widely, synthesizing ideas, and offering fresh perspectives on Toni Morrison, Susan Sontag and Haruki Murukami. I want the Center to bring our many scholars together with more ease and regularity. And I want the Center to be more public-facing, too. We need to find innovative ways to broadcast our research to the broader community. The goal — to powerfully connect the university with people from Boulder, Denver and the many communities that make up our booming metropolis.
Ku Cha: Why did you select Ku Cha House of Tea for your events?
Jennifer: The Ku Cha tearoom is really what led me to think about a collaboration. The space is so lovely — open and spacious and sunny. It seems like an ideal space to gather people together.
Ku Cha’s Custom Teas for Center for Humanities & the Arts
We so treasure CU’s Center for Humanities & the Arts that we developed custom blends for the Center.
Scholars and artists perform strenuous mental work. Most of it needs to be simultaneously rigorous, steeped in research and creative. We can’t help them with the books or the application of paint brush to canvas. But we do have at least one offering: tea.
Given the abundance of outstanding scholarship radiating from the beautiful campus up the hill from Ku Cha, we honor it with a pair of custom blends designed to help in different ways.
CHA Awake For Stimulating the Mind (And Staying Awake!)
It is for good reason that Chinese and Japanese scholars have relied upon tea for centuries. It stimulates creative and scholarly work.
We developed CHA Awake to take advantage of tea’s invigorating properties for scholars and artists needing extra boosts.
This unique blend combines ripe puerh and premium black teas, both of which are from China’s Yunnan Province. The province, the birthplace of tea, grows some of the finest teas in the world. We felt that given its historical importance in the development of tea and tea culture, it simply had to be included in CHA Awake.
This tea is rich and tastes sweet, even though it doesn’t contain sugar. The punch of caffeine combined with the deep flavors is perfect for jumpstarting a day of intellectual work.
Fermented ripe puerh is famous for its myriad health benefits, including lowering cholesterol, reducing blood lipids, detoxing and aiding with weight loss.
It contains Yunnan black, organic ripe puerh, organic orange peel and organic cinnamon.
CHA Relax for Much Needed Tranquility and Stress-Relief
Just as difficult intellectual work is essential for scholars and artists, so is relaxation and sleep. Hours upon hours of challenging mental activity creates stress. It stimulates the mind in such a way that tranquility doesn’t always come easy.
In addition, stress is unhealthy. More and more physicians and medical researchers point towards stress as the source of many common health problems.
We designed CHA Relax to help.
The custom blend leverages rooibos, a native herbal tea from South Africa, for vitamins and electrolytes. Gingko and elder flower aid with blood circulation and fight allergies. And chamomile and spearmint calm the mind and body.
The blend includes organic green rooibos, organic gingko leaf, organic elder flower, organic chamomile and organic spearmint.
