Dear Friends and Teh-Ais or Teh-Tarik Fans,
Thanks for visiting this site and downloading the map kits. Do share with us photos of you assembling the tea bags, and most importantly, your journeys and experiences to get your glass of Teh Ais in Manhattan.
E-mail your contributions to kayzac22[at]gmail[dot]com. We’d be delighted to hear from you!
CRAFT THESE TEA-BAG MAPS FOR FRIENDS AND FAMILY …
AND THE TEA-BAG MAPS WILL TAKE YOU TO THE TEA …
IT’S A MAP OF MALAYSIAN ICE TEA AROUND MANHATTAN !
SO WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?
1. DOWNLOAD THE TEMPLATES BELOW
2. CRAFT YOUR TEA-BAG MAPS (WITH THE INFORMATIVE TEA LEAVES TOO)
3. START YOUR WALK (YOU CAN DO THIS ANYTIME AND WITH ANYONE)
4. REMEMBER TO TAKE PHOTOS OF YOUR ADVENTURE!
5. TELL US WHAT YOU THINK BY DROPPING US YOUR COMMENTS AT THIS BLOG AND SEND US PICTURES OF YOUR “TEH AIS DAY” TO kayzac22[at]gmail[dot]com
THANKS! AND HAVE FUN!!!
Download your Tea Bag Maps Kit through these links. There’s 5 tea-bags for 5 different Teh Ais places. Choose any one randomly, or choose all!
To reach greater audience and foster individual creativity, the Teh Ais Manhattan team has decided to give out FREE downloadable tea-bag map templates. You will soon be able to download the templates of the tea-bag maps, informative tea-leaves and instruction pack to construct and create the tea-bag maps yourselves. And to allow more people to join in the experience, wouldn’t it be more fun to share some of the tea-bag maps with your friends and families? Yes, we think so too! So start listing those names that you’ll be crafting the tea-bags for, while we continue finishing the templates you.
TEH AIS, MANHATTAN AND URBAN EXPERIENCE
Localness is often perceived as having singular identity and at times treating itself with exclusiveness from the others. But localness is rarely singular. It is comprised of trajectories of various characters from different places, diverse groups of people, at different times and with different stories, and essentially has relationship with the global.
Teh Ais Manhattan tea-bag-maps propose that different layers of localness can be extracted from the city, which suspend the boundary of identities of that city. Teh Ais (pronounced ‘tayh-ice’) is a milk tea, a typical drink originating from multi-cultural Malaysia. Manhattan is similarly a multi-cultural city located in a different continent. Teh Ais or Teh Tarik for Malaysians is the reciprocal of coffee for New Yorkers. What these two have in common is the cultural assimilation that Malaysians have towards Manhattan and vice-versa as the by-products of migration and globalization.
This map invites people of all roles - whether locals, visitors, migrants, students, those of other cultures or similar cultures, and anyone - to experience another layer of Manhattan through a glass of Malaysian ice tea, rather than a cup of coffee, at places which may be familiar to some and new to others.
TEA-BAG MAPS DESIGN RATIONALE
The maps take the shape of tea-bags. Tea-bags are chosen as inspiration for this map not only because they physically relate to the materiality of this project, but also to respresent the mass production of a globally known product (which is the tea, that could be found mostly anywhere in the world) that has been assimilated to become a great part of the Malaysian tea culture - which is the popular ‘teh tarik’ (hot milk-tea with froth) and ‘teh ais’ (iced milk-tea).
Participants will unfold the tea bags as part of unfolding their Manhattan experience. Inside, they will find leaves of information and images. On the leaves are guides to get to their Teh Ais destination, images of the place and a recipe. An instruction leaflet will be provided together with the tea bags on how to use it and how it can be used after their trip. Participants are encouraged to collect their own momentos and pictures during their tea excursion to be added inside the tea bags as keepsakes of the festival experiences.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN THE TEH AIS MANHATTAN PROJECT?
This project is open to all. The objective of the project is to discover new parts of the city and to re-map Manhattan through the search for a culturally-related beverage, and in this case, the Malaysian Teh Ais.
Here’s how you can join the Teh Ais walk:
1. Download the tea-bags map and informative tea-leaves from this site (links will be provided soon!)
2. Construct the tea-bags map using using ordinary items such as plain paper, string and paper clip. (We will give you the step-by-step manual on how to make your tea bag)
3. Give it as a gift to a friend or family. Of course, you can make it for yourself as well :)
4. Accompany your friend/family on their Teh Ais Manhattan walk.
5. After you’re done enjoying your Teh Ais, submit your own beverage maps of the city (non-alcoholic beverages only). You can submit your map into our Manhattan Beverage Maps at Google Map (more details will be informed soon).
Imagine, from mapping beverages that we like to drink or remind us of other places such as distant homeland, how we have opened up other layers of Manhattan for ourselves and others to experience…
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