Tea

[khiemtran]

So, you want to buy tea in Xiamen? Well, you've come to the right place...



Xiamen was once the major tea exporting port for all of China, known by its Hokkien name of Amoy. Even the word "tea" comes to English from Hokkien, the local dialect, as opposed to the cha/char/chai forms that spread around the round from more southern Chinese roots.

With such a history, it's only fitting that modern Xiamen is bursting with tea shops. The first problem is choosing between them...











The next trick is that you don't just go in and pick something off the shelf. Choosing tea in Xiamen is a social event.



First, they'll sit you down at one of the tables and start offering you samples. They'll talk you through all the different types of tea on offer and demonstrate how to make them, including showing how the flavours change from one infusion to the next. You don't need to speak Chinese, but I found that my Chinese and the attendants' English met somewhere around the middle. Plus, it's a good excuse for a chat.



Chances are, you'll be bombarded by a seemingless endless stream of samples. It might help to bring a notepad if you're serious about buying - I had almost lost track by the time we were halfway through. It will help if you know the names of the different styles of tea, and famous regions, so you can ask to try them.



The salespeople seemed just as keen to relax and talk over tea as they were to make a sale. I didn't have my camera with me the first time I went to this store, so I ducked back the next day to take a photo - and ended up chatting with the staff for a good twenty minutes and, of course, being offered more free samples.

Here's some of the tea I bought. These ones form giant "flowers" in the pot as they steep.





Continuing the tea theme, I saw a tea exhibit at Hong Kong International Airport on my way home.

This is a 12th century tea bowl, from the Northern Song or Jin dynasties.



And Lu Yu's Classic of Tea, a Tang dynasty treatise on tea and tea-making.



Update: After I got home this morning, we tried the first of the flower tea balls when one of our neighbours popped over for a cuppa. This one was called Nong Qing Hua Yu. I'm not sure how to translate it, but the characters in sequence read "Strong-flavoured Green Flower Speech"



Here's a ball shown to scale. As you can see, it's very tightly wound.



But after steeping ... a flower blooms!

Comments

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

That tea bowl is exquisite. This is all amazing. Despite being British I'm not a great tea drinker, though I do (mostly) like the Jasmine tea that's served in Chinese restaurants. Very refreshing. Trying all these different kinds would be very cool, though.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's quite amazing how much variation there is even within the one style of tea, or from one infusion to the next. There's a huge variation in price. The pressed discs in the first picture ((pu erh tea from Yunnan) cost about $200 each. There's over a $1000 of tea just in that frame.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I think I'll just admore from a distance. (The photos are fabulous.)
:-)
I don't think I'd like to pay $200 for a breakfast cuppa. Besides knowing me, I'd get down half the cup, get distracted and find I'd wasted the rest.(My worst trick is going to the microwave to warm up the half cup of tea I've let go cold, only to find the one I put in there yesterday is still festering.)

At $200 a pop I wonder if it's something that should be drunk or preserved on display. It's like those bottles of vintage wine that are auctioned and passed from one owner/collector to another. They become currency in themselves. Surely no one is ever going to open one and actually try and drink it.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

A $200 brick would last quite some time (you only need a small amount of tea for a pot and you would get several infusions out of each pot), but I'm sure you could find examples that are even more expensive.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Despite being British I'm not a great tea drinker

Being British, foreigners seem to assume I'm a great tea connoisseur. When I met my (German) girlfriend's Romanian parents, her father went to great lengths to show me his collection of different teas, leaving me rather nonplussed: I drink tea everyday, but just cheap English breakfast tea. I think he was rather disappointed. I later found out the same thing had happened with my girlfriend's previous, also British, boyfriend.

A Chinese person at work once brought us in some "quality Longjing tea." I tried it, but think it was wasted on me, to be honest.

At any rate, the post was interesting, expecially the flowering tea ball.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I saw a funny article in a paper in Malaysia about a British expat there who was always given tea with milk ("teh") even when she ordered it black ("teh o"), but everyone knew British people drank tea with milk and they assumed she must have just made a mistake.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Heh. I had the opposite experience on my year off, in Israel: I had to ask again and again to get tea with milk and no sugar; and when I finally got it, it was with a look of disgust. I said "Can I have it like this in future, please?", but next time it was straight back to lots of sugar and no milk.

Eventually I picked up the taste for it that way...

[rymrytr.livejournal.com]

If you have never tried imported tea from China, he need to do so just once in your life.

you'll discover just as I did that The does not have to be bitter! And you don't have to spend $200 or $300 either. You can order online from Silk Road Teas.

you can get the green tea sampler for $22. Two or 3 ounces of tea may not seem like a lot, but when you take a pinch between thumb and finger to make 1 cup, it'll last you quite a while.

I've tried other online Tea companies, but the fellow who runs this one knows his stuff. PBS or the Discovery Channel, or one of those (I can't remember which), had a special on him and showed the struggle that he had in purchasing tea from small farmers, when the Chinese government wanted to force him to buy their tea from the government tea warehouse.

So, if you go there and buy a quarter pound of Tea, you're in for a real treat.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I like the photos on that website! When I drank green tea at work, I used to just put one or two strands in a tall cup and refill it with hot water all day.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

I love that 12th century tea bowl... And the flowering tea ball is amazing!!

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Yes, we can't wait to try the other types of "flowers". And the tea bowl... it's quite amazingly to see something like that in a modern airport and to think how much has changed since it was first fired.