What is your cup of ‘TEA’?

When I first had dinner with my host family, Cathy (my host mum) kindly asked, ‘Summer, what do you want for drinks?’ ‘Tea, please’, I replied immediately. What I then drank was:

Then I realised that English ordinary tea meant ‘tea with milk’, while Hongkongers named it ‘milk tea’. If I want to have a cup of ‘pure’ tea here, I will have to say ‘tea without milk’.

(UK: tea = tea with milk; HK: tea = pure tea)

Hong Kong is well-known for its Hong Kong-style restaurants. People will generally have their meals accompanied by a cup of milk tea. Besides, Hong Kong has a unique milk tea called ‘Silk stockings milk tea’ which is famous for its smoothness, thickness and smell.

Talking about tea, I found that there was a considerably big difference between the tea cultures of English and Chinese. The former emphasises ‘quality’ like ‘slow eating’ and daintiness, while the latter greatly demands for ‘efficiency’.

An English afternoon tea is a light meal typically eaten between 3pm and 5pm. Traditionally, loose tea is brewed in a teapot and served in teacups with milk and sugar. This is accompanied by sandwiches, scones or muffins (with clotted cream, margarine and optional jam), cakes and pastries. The food is often cold-served on a tiered stand. In everyday life, many British take a much simpler refreshment consisting of tea and biscuits at teatime.

Having an afternoon tea (‘high tea’ has recently become a term for elaborate afternoon tea in Hong Kong, though this is an American usage and mainly unrecognised in Britain) in Hong Kong is a very posh activity. While most of the people are still burying themselves in their work, only those affluent can spare time to have an afternoon tea. Furthermore, a formal afternoon tea is nowadays taken as a treat in a hotel, cafe or tea shop where these are places considered as upper-class.

On the contrary, having tea in a Chinese restaurant is very common and popular in Hong Kong. People will customarily do that during weekends (normally in the mornings and afternoons). This is quite often regarded as a family gathering activity. Imagine if the restaurant is fully-seated, it will be very noisy everywhere with people chatting, TV programmes being broadcasted, waiters and waitresses dashing here and there, etc. In addition, we have various kinds of Chinese tea, such as Jasmine tea, Oolong tea, etc. Unlike the English afternoon tea, all the food (i.e. dim sum) is steamed in a bamboo container. Cooks and waiters have to be very quick in order to ensure the food served is hot enough.

        

I love drinking Chinese tea not only because there is a wide diversity of tea, but it can also be mixed with herbs and served naturally as medicine. For instance, chrysanthemum tea added with several particular herbs can cure sore throat. Tea is not merely something thirst-quenching, but something good for health as well.

P.S. Dawn, please remember to try the ‘Silk stockings milk tea’ when you come to Hong Kong!