Welcome to a Lunar New Year Tea

Happy Year of the Rat!

Lunar New Year was yesterday and is celebrated all over the world, but primarily in Southeast Asia. Along with China, I know that Korea, Mongolia, and Vietnam all celebrate Lunar New Years. Japan used to celebrate Lunar New Year as well, but changed to celebrating on January 1st in the 1870s. 

For those of you unfamiliar with the calendar cycle, there are twelve years with corresponding animals. The rat is the leader of the animals - starting off the twelve year cycle - and ends with the pig (last year’s year). Each year has its own energy with positive and negative traits. I am not able to go into detail on each year and animal here, but if you’re curious I do recommend looking it up.

There’s also a lot of mythology around how and why each animal was chosen for its year. The story I was taught had an emperor invite all the animals to a party. The clever and tricky rat told its rival the cat that the party was on a different day, thus the cat was excluded from the calendar. The rat then tricked the ox into allowing it to ride on the ox’s snout and this arrived first to the party. This is why the clever rat is the first animal in the calendar.

The anime/manga Fruits Basket goes into this a little more.

This year, my friend invited to a Chinese tea ceremony and then have Dim Sum after. A Chinese tea ceremony is very different from any other tea experience I have had. Tea is treated more like wine or whisky in how you sample it. 

Our tea master would show us the tea before we tried it. It came in big blocks wrapped in dried bamboo. Each tea had its own tiny clay pot that it was steeped in. You don’t drink the first time the tea is steeped. You need to let it open up and “breathe”. It’s the second time steeping that the flavors begin to blossom. Before taking a tiny sip, you’ll want to smell the tea - each time the tea is poured it may smell different. Then you take a small sip out of tiny porcelain cups and massage it around your tongue. Every cup of tea, even from the same pot, could taste slightly different. Everything depended on how hot the water was, where the water came from (filtered is better than bottled), which tea pot you use, and even how many times you steep the tea.

Packed raw dark tea

It took us a little over two hours to try five different types of tea.

A dark tea

And there are a lot of types of tea. It’s not just black or green tea. There’s also oolong tea, white tea, yellow tea, and dark tea. We mostly tried dark teas which have a very different flavor from teas you’ll find in a US supermarket shelf. We also tried a black tea and white tea. All were very different in taste and smell. My favorite was a dark tea that had some crossing with rice plants. It tastes sweet and resembled sticky rice. The other I loved was the white peony tea, which was light and delicate - my friend liked it to being the white riesling wine.

White tea

These were some of the most amazing teas I had ever tasted. The teas were never bitter and always had unique flavors. You won’t get the same experience from drinking tea from a bag.

I have a place I go to to buy my teas. I’m lucky that the guy who sells my teas knows how to properly prepare them and gives a lot of advice as to how much to use and how to drink the tea. The tea I make at home is pretty good. Still the experience of trying tea during a Chinese tea ceremony is one I don’t think I could replicate.

I hope that tea ceremonies or tasting become more popular in America. I think there’s a market out there similar to how people try whiskies, wine, and beer. Your focus is entirely on what you’re drinking that you can taste all of the different notes and flavors.

So, Happy Year of the Rat! May it bring you a new beginning and good fortune throughout the year. And if you have a mind for it, try a Chinese tea ceremony. 

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me. 

Welcome to Self Reflection

My last post was, though I hate to admit it, pretty much all angst. I have been a bit stressed out and am for some reason a naturally high strung person. I know I am not perfect, no matter how much I pretend to be in my own mind. I fear failure, though I tend to learn best from it. I have several ways to combat the stress. Here are my five ways to calm myself down. 

5) I work out after work. I almost always feel better after I have burned a few calories. When I was in college, rugby was my way of beating the stress out of me.  Currently I cannot afford a gym membership not is it convenient to join the rugby club in the nearest city, but I do have a few good workout DVDs. I enjoy the high intensity workouts that are between ten and twenty minutes long. I can replay them for however long I have, which is not always very long. 

4) I eat healthy “comfort” food. I cannot eat a lot of milk products, so instead of ice cream I eat frozen fruit or smoothies. On a hot day (or even a cold one wrapped in a blanket), I love munching on frozen strawberries or peaches. I also love making my own chili and soups. I’m not saying to stress eat or over eat, but food is comforting and having something that reminds me of when I was a little kid just makes everything seem better in the morning. 

3) I go to church. I know many of my friends are either not religious or are a different religion than I am.  I do not like fanatics. In fact the way fanatics act is the exact opposite of how we are told to act in the Bible. I also do not always agree with things that are said and taught. That being said: I do find comfort in the belief that there is a higher power that is not out to get me. I do not feel that a higher power that has so many other people to watch out for would come strike me down just because he needs an entertainment source. The pastor at the new church I started to attend also pointed out in his sermon today that the Bible is full of imperfect people. If a higher being could put up with Jonah or (ugh) Saint Paul, I think he can put up with me. 

2) I drink a cup of calming herbal tea. I love tea. My personal favorite is oolong (not herbal), which is sometimes hard to find in the US. Luckily international food and drinks have become more popular, so it is now easier for me to get my hands on.  However I would not use oolong tea to calm down, instead I like ginger (helps with stomach problems), peppermint (stomach and head), and chamomile (head) for calming effects. They are great for the days I have trouble getting to sleep. 

1) I call a friend, family member or my significant other. The best thing for me to do when I am stressed out is call someone and talk it out. I do not always like to annoy them with what I am going through, but hearing another person’s opinion is always helpful. Sometimes I cannot calm myself down and need someone to remind me to take a deep breath. This is why roommates can either be your best friend or your worst enemy. 

I am currently trying other methods to keep me calm throughout the day. I have started meditation and would like to pick up Tai Chi. Keeping sane and healthy (both physically and mentally) is a high priority.