Friday, March 07, 2008
Posted by Miss Neddy at 08:55 AM | Comments (3) | Permalink
Categories: Tea Related

In Singapore, there is a kind of lingo that locals use to order beverages from the more traditional types of coffee shops and drink stalls. A cup of Milo (a chocolate flavoured beverage) is called “踢球“ (in Hokkien, “tat kiu”) - the common picture on a can of Milo powder is that of a young footballer (European, not American) kicking a ball. Tea or coffee without milk are known as “茶黑乌” and “咖啡黑乌“*(in Hokkien, “teh or” and “kopi or” where the “r” sound is relatively silent); if you want evaporated milk, you ask for “teh C” or “kopi C” - the “C” stands for Carnation, a popular brand of canned evaporated milk.  Chinese tea, the kind that comes in teabags, is called “钓鱼”（in Hokkien, “diao hur”, again the “r” is almost silent). The teabag is dunked and pulled within the cup of water, much like an angler would vary the position of his bait or fly.

Teabags are snubbed by some tea gourmets, and I still cannot entirely conceal my look of mild horror whenever my father orders a “diao hur”. The quality of tea from teabags is usually less than that of an equivalently priced loose tea. But one cannot beat the convenience of tea bags, and I admit to times of weakness when I use one for my afternoon tea, usually with quite a lot of evaporated or condensed milk. I suppose teabags are the comfort food of teas.

However, a great deal of work can go into stuffing those tea bags. For loose teas, especially the more expensive kinds, the emphasis is on quality, which can vary a great deal from plantation to plantation, locale to locale and year to year. For teabags, what is required is consistency. This year’s PG Tips or Twinings or Dilmah’s must taste as much like last year’s as possible. This means that a lot of blending takes place after the leaves are purchased. If the dominant batch of tea is too good, it must be adulterated with slightly worse leaves to get the same taste as the previous batches. In terms of strength, fragrance and colour, every year’s tea from the large commercial tea producers is consistent to a high level to every other year. That is the great strength of teabags - you always know what you are getting.

Or possibly not always. Imagine my surprise one time when trying a teabag of Tie Kuanyin (from a famous brand I shall not name here), and tasted Shuixian instead! It was as if someone had given me orange juice, but it turned out to be lemon juice instead. Superficially, they may be very similar, being both dark wulongs, but in terms of taste and fragrance were worlds apart. I can only imagine that with smoky Tie Kuanyin becoming more scarce, the supply of cheap enough tea leaves might have dried up, and so the tea company used an alternative tea, which, they perhaps thought was close enough to Tie Kuanyin not to matter. Who knows?

*[Edit: As my good friend 醉茶仕 reminded me, many of the southern Chinese dialects use the word 乌(wū in hanyu pinyin) instead of 黑 (hēi in hanyu pinyin) for the colour black.]

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