New Friends and Thunder Tea
While staying in my hotel I met a lovely woman who didn’t really speak English and I spoke even less Chinese. I was able to say xie xie meaning thank you and ni hao which is hello and of course cha for tea and that was the extent of my vocabulary. She spoke more English than that but not a whole lot. This lead to quiet an adventure between a woman with great hospitality and love for helping people and another woman with such a love for tea she’d follow you anywhere if there was a promise for experiencing something new about tea.
As we attempted to communicate in the hotel she understood I was in Taiwan to learn about tea. She said ‘me my family….miaoli (a city in Taiwan)....powder tea…my family miaoli …you come?” She said tea so I followed. I immediately thought well, I ‘ve never heard that they powder tea in Taiwan only in Japan, maybe they powder it for cooking or something and I can at least see the concept of powdering tea.
So off we went on a drive to miaoli. A nice but taxing drive with two people trying to talk and not really being able to.
After arriving in miaoli, meeting the family and seeing their house (just lots of warm smilies between human strangers communicating through their eyes) we arrived at what I understood to be her sisters daughters shop. It looked like a tea shop one would come to drink tea. She took me over to a table with a ceramic bowl that had indentations in the bottom and a stick. This was my first indication that I wasn’t really going to see powdered tea processing but I remained excited to see what was next.
She brought out tea leaves, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, and peanuts. We put the tea leaves in the bowl and “powdered” them with the stick. After the leaves became broken up we put in the sesame seeds and ground them until they started to become more like a paste or dough. We did this with the rest of the ingredients and then she brought a powder mix (which I learned later through extensive translating efforts that the mixture was all kinds of nuts, rice, beans and herbs). After about 20 minutes we added hot water and drank. It was good.
I think because of my love for tea and the adventure and the whole process of making it I loved it. I’ve brought all the utensils and ingredients home to determine its worth. She said that on the weekends lots of local young people come and enjoy time together and making tea. Turns out it is called le cha or Thunder tea. It was a recipe from the Hakka people (the original Taiwanese people). They used this method more as a meal than anything.
My new found friend Ms. Lee and I beamed with smiles and talked with our eyes on the trip back to Taipei.