Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Posted by Miss Neddy at 12:13 PM | Comments (1) | Permalink
Categories: Tea Black

The teahouse I frequent brings in red tea* dust for making bubble tea. Usually it is quite fragrant, smelling faintly of vanilla and honey. But this particular batch is superbly fragrant, so much so that the scent permeated the entire store-room and then half the shop before the manager sealed the dust into individual bags. The tea it makes is also strongly fragrant, and very rich. I brought a few 1/2 kilogram (a bit more than a pound) bags to my office and they were eagerly snapped up. I brought more and they too disappeared, until I put my foot down on the very last pack, which was to be left for office functions.

Being tea dust, the red tea can only be used once before it loses almost all of its fragrance and taste. Price-wise, it costs twice as much as the usual red tea dust I see in supermarkets. But in terms of taste, fragrance and strength, it is far better. I need less than half of the tea dust to make the same amount of tea, so it is very economical too. I am definitely buying another tin when next the teahouse re-stocks.

Being humble tea dust, there is no name attached to it. If packaged nicely though, I think it would be fairly popular, although not appropriate for the teahouse, which prides itself on offering only high-grade tea leaves.

红尘 (hóng chén Red Dust) is a metaphorical term for the physical or corporeal world. For something that is 俗 (sú which can mean corporeal but also low-class or tacky), and yet yields such lovely fragrance, I think that would be a most appropriate name.

*In English parlance, what we in Chinese call “red tea” should be “black tea” and I usually defer to that term. However, in this situation, the tea dust is really a deep maroon; moreoever, calling it black tea dust would ruin the significance of the name I picked

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