I really should have listened to ol' C.S. Lewis that one day back in 1955 when he sat down beside me and told me, "tea should be taken in solitude." Since childhood, I've been straining, tricking and lying to myself that tea is a waste if not taken socially. Unfortunately, tea for two is as awkward to me as wearing heels three times my foot size while holding a plush cat and having an adult conversation with my cousin at ten years old.
Camellia sinensis and her fellow herbal friends (rooibos and yerba mate to name a few) have been a magical addition to my body's diet. I crave tea. I love it so much I want to marry it. But until recently, I had the wrong perception of tea drinking. I wanted to share my love of tea with others in a misty plantation somewhere far away in China, or in a fancy tea room with a side of tea cakes. I wanted worldly music to be playing while pouring countless, teeny cups of tea and having a sophisticated conversation with a clean-shaven man with a thick, sexy accent and a thick, black scarf wrapped tightly around his neck. I wanted a perfect setting with the perfect company to add to my perfect cup of tea. Little did I know, this dramatic cliché of a setting led to forgetting the most important part of the scene; the tea. 
Let's backtrack to one failed attempt to create a magical tea setting in Long Beach, California, in a little tea house, Vintage Tea Leaf. I dragged my little brother by the hair and threw him into this quaint place, where we chose a tea cup with a matching saucer from a shelf of a plethora of choices, and I dressed us up in feather scarves and fancy old lady hats from the back closet. And as we sipped our milky tea, Chopin was playing and I was chatting to my brother about how delightful the tea was. He didn't look very pleased. Not with the tea talk and not with the flowery hat on his head. And when we left, I found he was even less satisfied with the curdled milk they gave him along with the tea.
Maybe bringing my young brother to a tea house wasn't the best idea...
But I pressed on to find that perfect someone to have a spot with, inside that perfect tea house. I joined an online Meetup site and took a two hour bus ride to Seal Beach to spend an afternoon with the Orange County Tea Meetup Group at Fairy Tea Cottage. Here, a twenty-something year old girl sat around a table of fifty-something year old ladies. While listening to Chopin. Although we shared some commonalities of being females, loving tea and, well, loving the tea cups, truth be told the tea was the best part of the afternoon.
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| Fairy Tea Cottage at Seal Beach |
I decided to try my luck outside California and outside the USA. I headed to China to have a cup of tea! Well, I actually went to Beijing primarily to teach English, but the tea field adventure was a major plus...er...major hit. I lured my friend into a six hour high speed train ride, 1,012 miles (1,630 km) out of Beijing and into the Hangzhou countryside, the heart of Dragon Well (Longjing, 龙井茶) tea. Misty were the hilltops! Green were the tea fields! Where tea tasting was magical and free, and fresh leaves were abundant. I would buy a bazillion pounds to take home with me! I would drink tea all day at the edge of a tea plantation!
But I came to a realization that this was all but a façade. Smog hovered over the hilltops, not mist. Due to visiting during summertime, when Dragon Well tea isn't grown, any leaves they carried in the village were as old as half a year or older. Once picked, green Dragon Well tea stays fresh for maybe a week's time.
I was still intent on having my tea, fresh or not fresh. I entered a lady's "tea shop" to have a taste and possibly buy a bit. The beautiful sound of Peking Opera was playing from a tiny radio. The old lady sat down to pour us a tiny cup each. The scent was nice, the music was nice, but unfortunately my friend found the tea foul, and I sensed something odd brewing in the air...and it wasn't the tea! In the end, she tried charging us an outrageous amount for what was supposed to be a free taste, locked us in her "shop" and yelled at us in Chinese with her fists in the air after busting ourselves out. This village looked at foreigners as idiots with money. Fortunately for me, I had no money, and I wasn't about to claim the dumb tourist stamp! I drank warm, 20 cent bottled beer on the side of the road, bought a little sample of cheap and dry Dragon Well tea in the city, and called it a day. |
| Vital Tea Leaf, San Francisco, CA |
These days, tea drinking with others is okay. I'll do it if I must.
Although, I've found that drinking tea on a cool, quiet morning on my backyard porch makes my cup of tea taste perfect, and it makes my heart beat to a Chopin tune.
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