Yes, It’s another one of my original headlines! Anyway, call me a counter-revolutionary hooligan if you like, or even an old f**t (lot’s do), but I really can’t get on with Chinese tea.
I send loads of the finest Tei Guan Yin, excuse my pinyin, é“观音 to my Dad (86), who consumes it after lunch with considerable vigour and Anglican appreciative noises. The Chinese even drink Chinese tea. Quite a lot. I’ve noticed them doing it everywhere. Up the mountain, on the river, on a bike.
Even that brave Chinese astronaut, Yang Liwei, probably had a brew or two to fortify himself as he undertook what must have been the most terrifying journey of all time. I mean, would you go to space in a machine that was built by the same people who invented the provincial Chinese hotel bathroom?
Yes, I’ll sip at it in the restaurant, as the stuff becomes weaker and weaker due to the attention of waitresses who seem to have a pathological fear of anywhere near empty glasses. Some kind of reverse hydrophobia? If you really want to wind one up, just indicate that you don’t want any more water in your glass. They’re gibbering heaps by the end of the meal.
The British, who after all invented tea in a civilised form, like it hot. By that we mean strip the skin off the inside of the mouth hot. Hospitalisation hot. Hot hot! The efforts of Chinese eateries to boil water make me want to charge into the kitchen with a kettle and show them how it’s done. It’s usually tepid at best. Yes, you shouldn’t actually pour boiling water over green and semi-green tea, bit it should be just a little warmer than blood heat.
My mother, a descendant of the Earls of Orkney (Nordic thugs employed by the Normans to keep the Welsh in check), once introduced the family to “Earl Grey†Tea. It met with considerable disapproval from her three male offspring. Tea shouldn’t smell of flowers. It should smell of tea! Harrumphs and guffaws all round.
The only really enjoyable variation to good black loose leaf tea, made with freshly draw boiling water brought to the warmed pot and poured over quickly so that the tea receives a good dose of oxygen, is the spiced stuff they sell from urns in India. I have even been known to make it myself, as opposed to flying to Delhi, where you can get a reasonable brew for about 5 rupees.
(That’s enough tea. Ed.)
