The Miracle of Green Tea
If you were looking for an iconic symbol for Britain then you might well settle upon a steaming cup of tea.
Afternoon Tea is an old British tradition for which we are well known throughout the world. In his adventure, the comic hero Asterix the Gaul travels to the island across the Channel to help the British Celts in their fight against the invading Roman legions and is astounded when the local insist that hostilities cease at four o’clock in the afternoon for a ritual cup of hot water … to which he adds herbs to make tea.
To be honest, I now drink mainly coffee, but when I was growing up my mother was a real tea addict. She always seemed to have a pot “on the go”.
Tea is an aromatic drink made with leaves from the Tea plant – and is said to be the second most commonly drunk beverage in the world, after water. I was taught that the “proper” way to make tea was to boil a kettle. When the water was boiling, pour some into the pot and swill it around, thus warming the pot. After throwing this water away, put one teaspoon of tealeaves into the pot per person, and another for the pot … then take the pot to the boiling kettle and pour the boiling water over the tealeaves, put the top on the pot and let it stand for a minute before pouring the cups. If necessary, it is then possible to add further boiling water to “top-up” the pot, but always bring the pot to the kettle – never the other way around, because the water would then “go off the boil” – even if only for an instant – and that made all the difference in making a good cup of tea.
I always felt that this tea was too strong – so I would often skip the “one for the pot” … but I still follow the basic recipe whenever I make leaf-tea these days.
Unfortunately, I don’t make leaf-tea that often. One reason is the abundance of tea-bags … many different tastes and varieties, especially fruit teas most of which have distinctive tastes and an aromas. Another is that leaf-tea inevitably involves a pot full of soggy leaves that then have to be disposed of, and which appear most unappetising.
There is some controversy about the origins of Tea. It’s thought that tea originated somewhere in the region of northeast India, north Burma, southwest China and Tibet, and that the plant has been introduced to more than 52 countries, from this ‘centre of origin’, however, tradition also identifies the Chinese province of Yunnan as the home of the tea plan, and Yunnan Province is said to be home to the world’s oldest cultivated tea tree, which is supposedly some 3,200 years old. There is a legend that an ancient Chinese emperor was sipping a cup of hot water, (not boiling – maybe that’s a British innovation), when the wind blew some leaves into the cup and he found the result particularly pleasing. At any rate the curative values of tea, even as an antidote to some poisons, has been long known.
Tea was first introduced into Britain at the time of the Wedding of Charles II and soon it was an important commodity of the East India Company – one of their most important. Tea was basically a “return cargo” from the East Indies: ships would deliver British manufactured goods, especially fabrics, to India and China but would return empty or only partially full. There was plenty of room in the hold for additional cargoes and tea was one of them. Originally promoted as a medicinal beverage or tonic, by the end of the seventeenth century tea was taken as a drink, albeit mainly by the aristocracy. The East India Company began a vigorous public relations campaign to popularize the drink among the common people in Britain and in just sixty years tea would be the “national drink” and a symbol of “Britishness”, (or for some people a symbol of “British Colonialism” – especially as, in order to pay for the tea, the British imposed/introduced the Opium trade to China).
When I was young the tea we drank was either “Indian” or “Sri Lankan”, there were a few African varieties available, but if we tasted them it was normally as part of a blend. Some people drank “China tea”, but this always seemed to be a sign that someone was “better off” and had pretensions of grandeur and anyway, it always seemed weak and insipid to me, (remember the “one per person and one for the pot” rule on which I was brought up), and so it was never that popular with us. It was only later in life that I came to appreciate the finer points of Earl Grey, Lapsang Suchong and so forth.
Brits tend to take their tea sweet. As well as developing the tea trade, they also imported sugar from the West Indies. When I was young I also used to take sugar in my tea, two or three teaspoonfuls in every cup no matter whether it was a small cup or a half pint mug. Then, one year, there was a sugar shortage and I the price of sugar tripled. I cut out sugar as an economy drive and for many years I would drink both tea and coffee without sugar. Then I came to Central Asia and coffee is already served with sugar added, so I have gone back to drinking sweet coffee, but wherever possible I still drink tea without sugar. Once I was with a Kyrgyz friend and ordered a cup of Green Tea without sugar and was told that that was the correct way to drink green tea: “Sugar with Black Tea is OK, but only young people with a “sweet tooth” who know no-better drink green tea with sugar.”
We also used to add milk to tea, something which I no longer do. I used to dislike the film that seemed to accumulate on the top of a cup of tea without milk, now I don’t think twice about it. I remember being given “milky tea” on one of my travels and thinking how sickly it was – I’m not sure what milk they had used … sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, or what … but it didn’t seem like tea to me.
The rituals associated with making tea vary all over the world, and they can be very complicated. The classic is, I suppose, the Japanese tea ceremony. In the North of Kyrgyzstan, tea is usually made strong. A small amount of this strong concentrate is poured into a cup and then and then topped up, (or diluted), with hot water. (This seems to be a hang over of Russian influence where there is always a constant source of hot water boiling in a samovar.) In the South of the country, however, tea is poured direct from the pot as in Western tradition. The hostess will usually pour the first few cups back into the pot – this is normal and aids the tea in “mixing” and drawing out the flavour. It may well be served in a small bowl, (a pialka), rather than a cup. Usually the pialka is offered only half full and is constantly being refreshed. It is sometimes said that, in the South, if you are handed a full pialka, then it is time to go.
It was only when I came here to Kyrgyzstan that I really came across Black Tea and Green Tea. I had heard of them, and Orange Tea, and more recently I have also come across Red Tea, but the choice back in Britain was always “India or China”, here the choice is “Black or Green”. Each has their fans. There are lots of claims made for the therapeutic value of both – tealeaves apparently contain over 600 different chemical, vitamins, amino acids etc., each with their usefulness and value. Not all of these claims are supported by scientific research, but I can support one claim for green tea in particular.
A couple of days after I was attacked recently in an attempted burglary, I developed a couple of shiners – black eyes. To my amazement the doctor prescribed applying poultices of green tea. We bought packets of green tea leaves and poured boiling water over about 50 grams of tea leaves – enough to cover them. (When making green tea to drink, you don’t normally use boiling water as it “burns” the leaves – robbing them of their healing values.) It was then left to stand to go cold … we then put them in the fridge so they were cold not just cool before wrapping them into cotton lint and applying them to the eyes – just holding them on the eyes for twenty minutes. Apparently if they are applied within three hours then bruises will not develop at all, but because we were late in doing so, the bruises had already developed and it took two days for them to dissipate. But, they did go. After two days, it was hard to tell that there had been any bruising at all. One of my colleagues saw me on the Friday and thought how awful I looked, and even told his wife that he thought I would probably not even venture out of the house for at least a week because I looked so bad, but when he saw me on the Monday, he said that I looked better than ever!
Everyone I meet is amazed at the effect … and no-one seems to have been aware of this use of Green Tea before.
I am not sure what the effective ingredient is – whether it one of the six hundred odd chemicals in the tea leaf, or just the fact that it was a soft cold compress applied to the bruised area. I do know one thing, however, that I am a convert to this treatment.
I just hope that I never need it again.
Bishkek