What I Mean by "Underappreciated"

When I write that Chinese tea is underappreciated, I mean that many people who like tea don't seem to be fully aware of the range, both in kind and in quality, of teas from China.
There are some obvious reasons for this. China has only recently emerged from the rubble of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward, and into the international marketplace. In the time before then, English tea culture had cemented itself in the western psyche, to the extent where English style teaware is still the what most people think of when they think of tea.
Ever convenience-minded Americans invented the tea bag, and something as relatively labor intensive as traditional Chinese tea preparation must be fairly daunting. The wonderful intertwining of practicality and aesthetics in Chinese tea preparation remains essentially foreign.
China is the origin or tea and tea culture, and yet in the west it is the outsider. One reason for starting this blog is to depict Chinese tea as something everyday and accessible, yet also sublimely complex, and worthy of the same reverence as fine wines.
I should state I am not Chinese nor of Chinese descent. The west, to the extent that it adopts Chinese tea, will inevitably make it its own on its terms. Yet we can still explore what this unique and rich culture has to offer, and learn new ways to enjoy life. That's what it's about for me.