China rediscovering the quintessential drink — tea



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By MARTIN FACKLER

PANTUO, China — In a remote valley between steep, rocky peaks in the
southeastern province of Fujian sits one of China's newest
attractions — an amusement park dedicated entirely to tea.
Smiling attendants dressed as Song dynasty noblewomen and Tibetan
nomads greet visitors to a Disney-like collection of fake imperial
pavilions, man-made hills and ponds decorated by stone lanterns and
even full-size plaster models of tea trees.
Tenfu Tea Museum, deep in the region that grows China's famous
Oolong tea, is hours from the nearest airport. Yet thousands of
Chinese tourists have made the journey since it opened a year ago.
"I brought my 11-year-old son here because I felt he needed to learn
more about China's cultural heritage," said Guo Zuchun, 36, an
engineer who drove six hours from neighbouring Guangdong
province. "No one taught me about this when I was growing up."
Chinese are rediscovering tea, that most quintessential of their
culture's drinks.
Legend has it that tea was first discovered by a Chinese emperor
5,000 years ago when some leaves accidentally fell into his cup.
From there, the drink spread around the globe. The Chinese
word "cha" became "chai" in Arabic, "chay" in Russian and "tea" in
English.
The bitter blend of cured leaves and hot water is one of the
bedrocks of China's identity, as typical of the ancient culture as
chopsticks and Chinese characters. It was once a staple of imperial
courtiers and poets, who practiced elaborate preparation rituals and
wrote volumes on the drink.
But tea seemed to fall out of favour in modern times. In the 1960s,
fervent communists smashed priceless teapots as symbols of an
unwanted past. More recently, urban youth embraced a Western-style
latte culture.
In the last few years, however, tea consumption has begun to
skyrocket, and to appeal to increasingly up-market tastes.
In Shanghai, China's largest and richest city, average annual
consumption has more than quadrupled since 1992 to 900 grams per
person, said Liu Qigui, head of the Shanghai Tea Institute, a
government group that promotes tea.
During the same decade, the number of cafes in the city specializing
in tea jumped from three to 3,000, he said. That compares with 25
Starbucks coffee stores.
Most of those gains have come since 1998, as rising wealth has
brought a newfound sense of self-confidence in China's past, Liu
said.
"People are turning to tea again as they grow more enthusiastic
about Chinese tradition," he said.
Many new tea shops draw younger crowds by playing pop music and
offering cold teas flavoured with chocolate and strawberry. Sweet,
chewy "pearls" the size of cherries float in the tall glasses, to be
sucked out by special, fat straws.
Other shops cater to more traditional palates.
Along one of Shanghai's most chic streets, the Tangyun Tea House is
marked by paper lanterns and an entrance lined with thickets of
young bamboo. Behind the door stands a wooden statue of Lu Yu, a
Tang dynasty poet revered as the "saint of tea."
Inside, in rooms filled with elegant wood furniture and traditional
music playing in the background, customers pay up to 11 dollars per
cup for brews with names like "Pearl over Seashell" and "Plum and
Bamboo."
"Chinese now drink coffee and tea," said Tao Yuan, a 39-year-old
president of a computer company who sipped a tiny brown cup of
Oolong tea poured from an equally tiny brown pot. "Coffee is fine
for the office, but when we want to chat and brainstorm, tea is
best."
Another appeal of tea lies in its association with traditional
Chinese medicine.
Tao favours Oolong, a brown, mildly bitter tea prized for its
reputed ability to burn away fat and reduce weight. It's one of more
than 1,000 types of tea in China, ranging from the delicate green
Longjing favoured by Chinese President Jiang Zemin to sweet, hardy
Babaocha, or "eight treasures tea" — a mixture of herbs, nuts, sugar
and dried fruit nuggets.
Tea shops display the leaves in rows of glass jars, charging as much
as 250 dollars per 500 grams. Buyers judge aroma, texture and color.
Visitors at the Tenfu museum in Pantuo show a keen interest in tea's
painstaking production process and ancient history, curators said.
"We want to learn more about what we once had," said Li Shuzhen,
head of research at the museum, which is partly owned by a Taiwanese
tea company.
In a corner of the park, near a fountain shaped as an enormous
teapot spewing water into a cup, sits a tile-roofed hall billed as
the largest tea museum in China.
Inside, exhibits show how newly picked leaves are sun-dried,
fermented on bamboo trays and baked in ovens in more than a dozen
steps to become top-grade tea.
Employees in silk robes and ornately braided hair demonstrate
imperial China's intricate ceremonies for measuring, boiling and
serving tea. The rituals date to the 7th century Tang dynasty, when
emperors favoured gold tea-making utensils and leaves were accepted
as currency for tribute from the provinces.
Tea has never ceased being a fixture of life in China, with farmers
in even the poorest regions enjoying steaming cups. But the complete
rejection of China's past in the first decades of communist rule
wiped away the higher cultural accomplishments that once surrounded
the drink.
Today, the new upscale tea cafes complain they can't find employees
with an adequate knowledge of preparing different teas and
traditional ways to serve them.
Three years ago, the Shanghai Tea Institute began offering courses
in preparation and etiquette, with three levels of certification.
Students study the history of tea, how to distinguish grades of tea
leaves and the best kinds of water to use.
So far, no one has earned the highest certificate, which requires an
ability to distinguish all 1,000 tea types in China, perform a
perfectly executed tea-serving ceremony, play the traditional
guzheng stringed instrument — and speak a foreign language to
entertain overseas guests.
But in a sign of rising interest among young people, more than 200
people applied for 50 spots in a new six-month course to earn the
senior certificate, said Liu, the institute head.
"The 20th century was America's century, the century of coffee," Liu
said. "If the 21st century becomes China's century, it will be the
century of tea."
(AP)