SOME OF THE TEA IN CHINA By Andrew Jefford
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Perhaps the easiest of all tea
locations to visit is the city of Hangzhou in China's largest tea-producing province, Zhejiang.
This is the source of the irresistible Long Jing (Dragon Well) green tea, the best of which smells and tastes like an essence of chlorophyll and creamed hazelnuts. Hangzhou is within easy reach of Shanghai. Indeed, in many ways, it would make a more attractive base for a Chinese initiation than Shanghai, thanks to its long history (it is one of China's seven ancient capitals) and its watery attractions.
China's Grand Canal flows through Hangzhou, snaking north all the way to Beijing, and two hours down the largely empty Hang-Quian Expressway is the 580 sq km Quindao (Thousand Island) Lake, surely the world's prettiest reservoir and a Chinese centre for eco-tourism. Above all, though, it is Hangzhou's own 6 sq km West Lake that lures visitors with its pavilions, temples, bamboo forest paths, tea plantations and ten signposted “scenes”, such as Lingering Snow on the Broken Bridge, Orioles Singing In The Willows or Evening Bell Ringing at Nanpinghill.
The quality of the tea served at the Dragon Well itself (called “Tea Enquiry at Dragon Well” on tourist maps) is outstanding and local tea mania is such that even the water used to make it is prized, fetched from a source two miles away called “To Dream of the Tiger-Pawing Spring”. Tea, as you see, draws out the poetry in the pragmatic Chinese. An evening in a Hangzhou tea house such as Charenchun or one of the three He Cha Guan (“Peace Houses”) proves, to any European who had previously considered moderate alcohol intake essential to a good night out, not merely educative but positively enlightening. The kettle stands nearby, bubbling gently; the glasses are constantly refilled; the table is kept supplied with watermelon and lychees, with pumpkin seeds, with dried fish strips, with lotus-paste cake, with sesame wafers.
Sipping great green tea is like sipping springtime itself – it brings an entirely sober elation, and the sense of cultured elegance is heightened further by the traditional furniture, decorations and costumes of those serving and (if you're lucky) by the music, too. If you're not and it's gone schmaltzy, return to the lake, where traditional musicians play together on the warm evenings, for nothing but the fun of it, as the moon rises.
‘You point, they kill, you eat'
The greatest wall of China hides inside the human mouth: nothing is more insurmountable to travellers and residents alike than the hurdles of two vastly dissimilar languages. Dozens will call a cheery “Hello” to you as you walk past but any attempt at conversation in English swiftly dissolves into laughing incomprehension and even those who might be expected to have some English (such as hotel desk staff) are often still monoglot.
Guide books in English are rare and the heroic calamities of Chinglish will amuse even where they fail to inform. (Among my treasures is the airline towelette called Hygiene Wet Turban Needless Wash.)
Those Chinese who do have some English often find comprehension easier if words are written out carefully. Phrase books are very helpful on the same basis, in that the relevant Chinese characters can be shown. Not everything is difficult, though: dual language road signs are ubiquitous and China's airports and internal flight network is hugely impressive, as are its free-flowing toll roads. City travel is easiest via China's cheap taxis (whose drivers happily do not require tipping), though driving styles are cavalier.
Eating out in restaurants is low stress, too, since many of the largest work on the principle of a vast bank of fish tanks full of live fish and shellfish (as well as sea snakes), glass boxes full of doom-laden chickens and, on occasion, cages of miserable, jaw-clamped alligators, as well as simpler dishes whose raw ingredients are already assembled and then cling-filmed, or cold dim sum piled high ready for steaming. Menus are entirely unnecessary. You point; they kill; you eat.
On the tea trail
Andrew Jefford travelled to China as a guest of Virgin Atlantic, which flies daily from London to Shanghai, www.virgin-atlantic.com
Local tea travel for western tourists can be organised in Wuyi by Wuyi Mountain International Travel Agency, 3rd Floor, China Travel Building, Sangu Street, Wuyi, Fujian (tel: +86 599-5134 666); and in Hangzhou by Hangzhou Pacific Travel Company, Suite 705, Chengxin Building, 236 Jianguo North Road, Hangzhou (tel: +86 571-8729 6971) or Hangzhou Lai Lai Vacation Travel Agency, 86 Qingyin St, Hangzhou (tel: +86 571-8782 8533).
To taste the China teas mentioned in this article, contact Jing Tea, www.jingtea.com
Andrew Jefford is the author of ‘The New France', a guide to contemporary French wine, and ‘Peat Smoke and Spirit', about Islay's distilleries
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