Tea culture in China

One of the reasons we are house sitting at the moment is that we came back from teaching in China and still had itchy feet. Not wanting to get into a rut just yet, we thought that house sitting would keep us on the move, give us the opportunity to travel around Australia more, and generally keep us young.

However, you might find that because of our time in China, I am inclined to go down memory lane, and down a few side roads. I have done that in this post. It starts off with the intention of telling you about our lunchtime cuppa and then I head off back to China for a bit. But I'm sure you'll excuse me for that.

Tea and coffee are our usual hot drinks. Milo occasionally  but we both like a nice coffee. However, if you want a decent cuppa, have you tried the real Chinese tea?

I am no expert on this, but the one I like best is oolong tea, partly fermented, grown around Southern China. I went to a rather dirty little city called An xi once.( It is said Arn she).  It is called the Tea Capital of the World. They are sort of tea middle men and supply much of the world with Chinese tea.

Now, I had no intention of getting carried away but I have. So here are a couple of pics from that trip.

Above is the entrance to what is called the Tea Capital of the world. Note the motor bike? There were hardly any taxis in this place, but they used lots of motor bike taxis, common in China. They always carried a spare helmet, which was pretty useless anyway. But I went on the back of one motor bike taxi. The driver was tooting and yelling all the way down the road to all and sundry. I have no idea what he was saying, but probably something like..."Look I have got the foreigner. The fat one!" It was all good fun.

Once sorted the tea goes into big bags to go to Chinese shops. Tea culture in China is massive, and tea shops are everywhere.

 Above, there are the most beautiful tins that they pack the tea in. I actually brought a whole lot of empty ones with me when I came home and I use them on the kitchen bench for my tea, coffee, sugar etc.

The tea is packed into little packets, then into these tins, about 12 or 15 to a tin. Each packet is used for one lot of tea, but can have water added 10 times as the flavor lasts that long. Below is a single packet. This is probably very expensive tea, it was sent to me by a special friend in China.

In the picture below we went to a garden and they had a huge tree in the shape of a teapot dragon with all the little cups around. Very clever. To compare, the next picture underneath is one of my Chinese tea sets that I have out in the dining room. It was a gift from another teacher in Longyan.

You can see the little cups on the tray similar to the cups around the dragon tea pot below. The little hedges are set out to look like a tray. In China the formal gardens are just beautiful.

 The women below were sorting the tea which comes in all sorts of varieties and grades.

Anyway, now that I have been sidetracked, and down memory lane for a few minutes I will come back to today. We have Chinese tea often at lunchtime. You don't need milk or sugar, it is green tea, so, good for you, and easy to make. However, I cheat a bit by using a little old tea pot I've had for ages with a strainer thing in the middle and two little coffee cups I've had for years. The real ones don't have any handles and they are hot to use, so these are much better with the handles.

When we left China we were given tea by many of our students and friends. It lasts for ages in these packets and tins.And not just one or two tins, we got them in sixes and nine tins at a time! I still have a couple of unopened tins in the pantry to be used.

Ah well, time for a cuppa and then off to bed.