10 Chinese Teas You Have to Know

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

According to legend, in 2737 BC, the Chinese emperor Shen Nung was sitting beneath a tree while his servant boiled drinking water, when some leaves from the tree blew into the water. Shen Nung, a renowned herbalist, decided to try the infusion that his servant had accidentally created. The tree was a Camellia sinensis, and the resulting drink was what we now call tea.

—UK Tea and Infusions Association

 

They say you can drink tea your whole life and still not taste all the different kinds. For someone first getting into teas it can be hard to know where to start. RADII’s list of 10 Chinese Teas You Have to Know will introduce you to 10 teas you’ll find in any tea shop. These are historically popular, and tasting them all will give you an idea of the wide variety of flavors offered in nearly-five-thousand-year-old beverage.

1. Longjing

You can’t talk about Hangzhou without mentioning Longjing tea, the most famous tea in China, from the village of Longjing; across the world, it is recognized for its refinement. In fact, here’s Barack Obama drinking it with Xi Jinping:

Known for its refreshing quality and chestnut aroma, Longjing is recognizable by the flat shape its leaves take on from being stir-fried in a wok heated to 200 degrees Celsius.

In Hangzhou, this tea is most commonly enjoyed by simply adding the leaves to a cup of hot water and watching them slowly dance to the bottom.

2. Bi Luo Chun

Not far from Hangzhou is the city of Suzhou. Just as Hangzhou and Suzhou are neighbors, if Hangzhou’s Long Jing is No. 1, Suzhou’s Bi Luo Chun green tea is a close second. Picked when the bud is very young and rolled by hand into a small spiral shape, the physical leaf of this tea is one of the smallest. When the leaf hits water, it expands in size, giving off a flavor like no other. While it shares the same floral-nuttiness as Longjing, Bi Luo Chun is stronger and better for the days when you need a little more kick in your cup.

3. Yan Cha

When I’m asked what tea coffee drinkers would like, I always say Yan Cha, otherwise known as Wuyi Yan Cha. Translated as “rock tea,” Yan Cha is an oolong from the Wuyi Mountains. The rich texture and natural floral aroma of this tea has made it a gift to emperors for more than 1,000 years. The tea is finished by slowly simmering over coals for over 12 hours, imparting a perfect deep and full roast, and giving you the comfort of sitting in front of a fire with every sip. A perfect tea for cold weather days or when you need a little warmth.

4. Tieguanyin

A Chinese emperor is said to have remarked, “The leaf is heavy like iron, but the flavor is light like [the goddess] Guan Yin,” after tasting this beautiful oolong tea, thus giving it its name: Iron Goddess.

Tieguanyin comes from Anxi in Fujian province and is arguably the most floral of all oolongs. It comes in two styles: light, which is light green with a refreshing, freshly picked blueberry flavor; and dark, which has a soft roast giving a rice aroma; both styles are incredibly floral and are known for the beautiful flavor that lingers in your mouth long after you have finished.

5. Phoenix Oolong

In all my travels across China I have never seen people drink tea as much as people in Chaozhou in Guangdong province. Walk down any street in Chaozhou and everyone, from local grocer to bike mechanic, will have a small tea table and a pot of Phoenix tea. These oolongs are loved for their fragrant and fruity aromas. Be careful when you steep these though, Phoenixes become very bitter very easily, but to some, that’s just the way they like it.

6. Pu’er

In any world, there are trends; the most recent trend in the tea world is Pu’er, sometimes written in the West as “Pu-Erh.”

Hailing from Yunnan, this tea was basically unknown to most of the world until the ’90s, when a group of Taiwanese traders with a passion for the tea started a wave of popularity that would change the way people viewed Pu’er and its home region of Yunnan province in southwestern China.

There are two main styles of this tea: Shou Pu’er (or Shou Pu for short) has a bold earthy flavor balanced by smooth body and sweet notes. It is usually enjoyed during dim sum, its strong flavor able to stand up to the greasiness of the meal. Sheng Pu is the original version of Pu’er and boasts a larger range of flavor and varieties. Sheng Pu can be very bitter and strong, taking a little getting used to, but at its best, has thick, heavy body with notes of dried fruit and fresh mushroom.

7. Baihao Yinzhen (White Hair Silver Needle)

My white tea farmer friend from Fuding on the eastern coastal province of Fujian likes to repeat a phrase:

“White tea is the most natural tea. The oldest tea. The healthiest tea. The best tea.”

Baihao Yinzhen, or just Yinzhen for short, is a white tea made only of the buds of the tea plants. As the bud of the plant is the most potent part, this tea has a complexity that outranks most other teas. This tea is made very simply by being dried in the sun for 55 hours, making it the most natural tea. You can taste the warmth of the sun in a well made Yinzhen, but the flavor is sometimes a mere whisper, so you have to slow down and really listen.

8. Hou Kui

A tea drinker’s first experience with Hou Kui leaves the mouth gaping, just by its look alone. Standing at 7 cm long, each leaf is individually hand-folded to achieve this neat, flat shape. Hou Kui’s home village of Hou Keng was the most beautiful place I visited in my travels. Nestled in the mountains of Anhui province, the land sits next to Taiping Lake, creating a picture-perfect scenery for drinking green tea. A pan-fried green tea, this tea has a soft vegetal backdrop with a chestnut flavor to compliment.

9. Lu’an Guapian

Every now and then you have a tea that breaks all the rules. For most green teas the bud is the most sought after part and is essential to the flavor, Lu’an Guapian (also called “melon seed tea”), on the other hand, does not use the bud at all. A tea made from only leaves, Guapian is recognizable by its dried raisin look and its memorable flavor. Bold and vegetal with a remarkable sugary sweetness, this tea has no secrets to hide and gives you everything it has. Easy to brew and hard to ruin, this tea is perfect for beginners just getting into green teas.

10. Huangshan Maofeng

“Maofeng doesn’t care about beauty, it’s all about flavor,” my tea farming friend in Huangshan (a mountain range in southern Anhui province) explained to me. While other teas go through a shape-making step that makes the finished leaf visually beautiful, Maofeng takes on its natural shape during the drying process. Extremely refreshing, this tea fills your mouth with a sweet savoriness. On days when it is super hot but you still want to have some tea, nothing beats Huangshan Maofeng.

| Column Archive |[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

What Can Donald Trump Learn from China’s Great Wall?

Why did they build it? Did it work? Is it true the Chinese tried to get the Mongolians to pay for it?

Donald Trump’s efforts to build a border wall – not a fence, he wants us to know, but a wall – have sparked a resurgence of interest in the original prototype. The result has been a steady rehashing of tired old tropes and hoary Great Wall myths that have little to do with China. The Great Wall as metaphor has become Great Wall as cipher. Opinions and understanding of China’s wall depend largely on what one thinks of Donald Trump, your feelings on border fences in general, and, possibly, your level of racism toward Mexicans.

There was never one Great Wall. In the over 2,000-year history of Wall building in China, there have been many structures which together have been lumped together in the feverish imaginations of Western writers as “The Great Wall of China.”

There have been many states and empires which have risen and fallen within the borders of what is today China. Many of these states built barriers, earthen berms, and, yes walls, between themselves and whoever they were afraid of that day.

Dynasties in historical China were often also expansive empires, and when they pushed the limits of their territory into new frontiers, they would encounter people not always on board with the empire expansion project. When some of those people pushed back or took advantage of the proximity of the relatively wealthy and settled Chinese to enrich themselves through raids and pillaging, the Chinese would often respond by building defensive structures, including walls, creating a semipermeable barrier between civilization and the steppe.

With so many walls being built by so many different states against such a wide variety of foes, one could look at the history of Chinese walls and cherrypick just about any situation which fits your particular contemporary political argument. Did it work? Many of the walls worked some of the time, and some of the walls worked better than others.

Certainly, Chinese history is full of examples of invaders coming into China, particularly along the northern frontier. Some of these invaders were interested in little more than loot and pillage, others conquered vast areas of China and established their states south of the Wall. Perhaps the best-known example of the latter were the Mongolians, led by Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan and their descendants, who conquered China in the 13th century and made what what is today Beijing the capital of their great empire, known in Chinese history as the Yuan Dynasty.

The most famous incarnation of the Great Wall, the one with the towers and faced with brick that you see in photographs, is a product of the Ming Dynasty, which ruled China from 1368 to 1644. Like Donald Trump, Ming emperors thought of themselves as great builders, but in fact were far better at spending their ancestors’ money. The Ming Dynasty came to power after a rebellion kicked the Mongolians out of China and back into the steppe. But they didn’t kick the Mongolians very far, and there was always an imperative to protect the northern boundaries of the Ming state. The Chinese government oversaw the construction and rebuilding of towers and walls along this boundary in a process which continued throughout the duration of the Ming era. It was not one single contiguous wall; there were many spur walls, side walls, and unconnected defensive barriers. Many parts of the structure can be seen today, although not, as the old myth – what we politely call “fake news” — suggests: from the moon.

The Wall wasn’t perfect, but it did work… for a while. Both the Mongolians and the Manchus, a people from what is today Northeast China (who would later invade China), found the Wall to be a serious strategic barrier to be overcome. But a wall is only as strong as the people who are guarding it, and when the Manchus came through the wall on their way to conquer China in 1644, they did so at the request of the Ming Dynasty general guarding the pass.

Having heard that Beijing had been sacked by a Chinese rebel army, this general decided to ally with the Manchus against the rebels. This alliance succeeded in the short-term, as the combined armies expelled the rebels from Beijing, but once the Manchus were through the Wall, they took advantage of the situation to move the capital of their state, known as the Great Qing, to Beijing. The Manchus would rule China for the next 268 years.

Once ensconced in Beijing, the Manchus then unified the great forests of Manchuria and the steppes of Mongolia with the settled agricultural heartland of China. As a result, the Wall was no longer needed as a fortification, and for the most part fell into disuse and disrepair. Today China there are efforts underway to study and catalog all the walls of China and to protect what is left from over-eager tourists, commercial developers hoping to cash in, local residents who see what’s left as a quarry for building materials, and the ravages of time.

China has had walls for millennia. These walls have served different purposes at different times. But they were not boondoggles, vanity projects, or an attempt by different governments to keep China from modernizing or to shut Chinese civilization off from the world. Those are interpretations made to score points in arguments often having little to do with Chinese history.

Donald Trump may get his wall, but there will be little Great about it.

Illustration by Marjorie Wang | Column Archive |

China’s Flourishing Mobile Economy is its Greatest Innovation

This article first appeared on the website of the World Economic Forum and is republished here with the author’s permission.

What is the most celebrated Chinese holiday globally, by the Chinese and by everyone else? Here’s a hint: It’s not the Spring Festival, also known as Chinese New Year. It is November 11, known as Singles’ Day.

Every November 11th, billions of Chinese, at home or abroad, passionately participate in the 24-hour online shopping extravaganza. It is also a global festival, as international buyers and sellers from more than 200 countries and regions get involved.

In 2016, at the speed of the Internet, $1 billion dollar worth of orders was placed in the first five minutes. The total trade volume of the day was more than $17 billion. By far, the November 11 festival is the world’s largest online shopping day, beating Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.

For sure, the annual online shopping festival is a vivid example of the rise of the digitally connected middle class in China. However, if you look beyond the Singles’ Day party, China’s mobile economy means a lot more for the society, the economy and the future of innovation.

First of all, the mobile Internet has improved people’s lifestyle, not only in large cities, but also in remote areas. For example, mobile payment is more popular – to the surprise of many – in China’s underdeveloped western regions. Among all the provinces, Tibet led the country in mobile payment adoption. Obviously, for less populated areas without much commercial infrastructure, mobile e-commerce is a good solution.

Furthermore, the mobile Internet creates jobs in rural areas, turning farmers into online vendors. One rural entrepreneur only needs to have a 20-square-meter space, buy a secondhand computer, and find a basic Internet connection to become a retailer start-up. There are even villages with a majority of farmers working on Alibaba’s shopping site, Taobao – earning them the name of “Taobao villages.”

A “Taobao Village” is defined by Alibaba as “a village in which over 10% of households run online stores and village e-commerce revenues exceed 10 million RMB (roughly $1.6 million) per year.” According to Alibaba’s data, there are more than 1,000 Taobao villages in China.

Also, the mobile economy creates new industries. For example, the Internet and mobile devices have changed the way people read novels. Online novels in China are posted by installments, typically a few thousand words every day. People can do the reading whenever they have a few minutes – such as waiting in line or standing in a subway. As a result, a whole new industry has emerged, as many online novels are turned into gaming, videos and movies.

Most importantly, the mobile economy turned China into an innovation hub for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In the case of Uber in China, what is really interesting is the fact that Uber’s service took off much faster there than it did in the US. Uber’s top three most popular cities worldwide — Guangzhou, Hangzhou and Chengdu — were all in China. The important reason is that Chinese users are ready adopters of mobile devices and social network technologies. This underpins the growth of home-grown ride-sharing giant Didi Chuxing, which bought Uber China last year.

The implication is profound: China is not only the largest market for mobile applications, but probably also the best lab to test them, because new mobile applications can receive market feedback and achieve meaningful scale more quickly in China than in developed markets. Therefore, the China market (with 700 million Internet users, more than the population of Europe) is poised to be a trendsetter, rather than a trend-follower, in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The same opportunity is also available to other emerging markets when they embrace the new technology waves. For example, in India’s smartphone market, many homegrown entrepreneurs have been inspired by the success story of Chinese brands. They started ventures themselves to compete with Apple, Samsung and Chinese brands like Xiaomi for market share. Similarly in the Philippines, local brands “think and behave like Filipinos” to incorporate special features, and they have already grabbed more than half of the market share.

In the near future, more emerging markets will become innovation hubs like China, generating new features, products and business models for the world’s growth. If fifteen years ago “the world was flat” for information, now in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, “the world is flat” for innovation.

11 Mouth-Watering “Real” Chinese Foods

Chinese food’s popularity worldwide is at an all-time high. Even so, a lot of people probably can’t name a Chinese dish. We’re about to hook you up, so that when you sit down for a traditional dinner with your friend’s family, you won’t be asking for the orange chicken. Here’s your intro course in 11 “real” Chinese foods to know, out of approximately one hundred thousand.

1. Jian Bing

Let’s kick things off with the humble jian bing. Fondly referred to as a “Chinese breakfast burrito” by confused foreigners everywhere (or is it a Chinese galette?), the jian bing and its bing (variously translated as “cake,” “pancake,” and “round flat cake”) family variations can be found on sizzling street skillets in every city in China. (And New York.) The classic jian bing consists of a fried, crepe-like pastry wrapping, a fried egg, sauces, cilantro or other herbs, and a crispy baocui (crispy fried) cracker. One of these bad boys will generally run you about 4 RMB (less than a dollar), plus some extra if you want to add chicken or other meat.

2. Hongshao Niurou Mian

Hongshao means red-braised, and generally refers to meat specially cooked with soy sauce. Niurou is “beef,” and mian is noodle, so hongshao niu rou mian is red-braised beef noodle soup, and it’s delicious. Served at Chinese Muslim specialty restaurants that steer clear of the normal Chinese affinity for pork, it also gives us the opportunity to introduce lamian – hand-pulled noodles. In America, a lot of us view the process of pulling noodles by hand from a lump of dough as a carefully learned skill and a byproduct of intensive culinary study. Meanwhile, in China, these guys are out in every tiny street shop or cafeteria, pulling noodles and smoking a cigarette like it’s nobody’s business:

The hand-pulling gives the noodles a special kind of “bouncy” texture, and when they join forces with the red-braised beef, broth, and herbs/spices in a bowl of hongshao niurou mian, it’s game over for hunger (and hangovers).

3. Xiaolongbao

A worldwide favorite and specialty of Shanghai, and with good reason. It’s no surprise everyone from Anthony Bourdain to Andrew Zimmern is raving about xiaolongbao soup dumplings, the perfectly steamed, twisted pockets of soupy, meaty goodness. You might even have seen Time Out London get eviscerated on social media for their sloppy handling of the dumplings’ inner treasures. Specialty restaurants overseas do their best with $8.25 imitations (we’re looking at you, Joe’s Shanghai of NYC), but they’ll never match the mastery you’ll experience at any given corner restaurant in Shanghai, where they cost the equivalent of $1.

4. Gongbao Jiding Fan

Oh yeah, something we recognize. Jiding is diced chicken, and fan is rice. Gongbao is a word that might be more familiar when spelled in its old school anglicized form: Kung Pao. That’s right, we’re looking at the original dish that became the Kung Pao Chicken you know and love. Diced chicken, peanuts, and chili peppers are mandatory ingredients, mixed with other elements and served in a sauce over rice. It’s one dish that made the transition to Western palettes relatively intact.

5. Xihongshi Chao Jidan

This dish is straight up tomatoes and eggs. It sounds weird at first, but it’s at every table in every home or restaurant 100% of the time (you can fact check that). And who’s complaining – it’s simple, tasty, and pretty healthy. Do you like eggs? Do you like tomatoes? Good, you’re set. Fry the eggs first, then stew them up with some tomatoes. This one’s actually not too complicated.

6. Yangrou Chuanr

These grilled lamb skewers are everywhere. They’re a specialty of China’s Muslim minority group in Xinjiang province, and they will give you what you need. Thin cuts of meat are spiced with cumin and red pepper, and rotated to perfection over a charcoal roast. You’re gonna want to grab several.

7. Jiachang Doufu

Sichuan province is responsible for a lot of the deliciousness all over China, and jiachang doufu (homestyle tofu) is another great win. In China, tofu is more than just the tasteless meat alternative that all your vegan friends keep trying to convince you is cool. People here just love tofu for tofu’s sake, and it’s common for tofu dishes to also have meat in them, playing back up for the soy bean curd. Jiachang doufu is pan-fried, with Sichuanese chili bean paste, wood ear mushroom, and other vegetables.

8. Zhajiangmian

Zhajiangmian means fried sauce noodles, in reference to the dish’s defining sauce, which is made by simmering stir-fried ground pork or beef with salty fermented soybean paste. It’s very thick. In most noodle dishes, the sauce’s job is to add flavor to the noodles, but in zhajiangmian, it’s more like the noodles are a vehicle to deliver the hearty sauce.

9. Beijing Kaoya

Another dish that might be more familiar is Peking duck. People take it very seriously. Ducks bred for Beijing kaoya restaurants are slaughtered after 65 days, seasoned and roasted until the skin becomes a dark, flaky brown. Authentic versions of the dish are normally more skin than meat. To eat it, you roll the duck in a spring pancake bun with cucumber, spring onion and sweet bean sauce. To get good Peking duck, you have to go to a restaurant that specializes in it.

10. Chao Fan

You didn’t think we were gonna forget fried rice did you? One thing people are always surprised to learn is that China doesn’t use soy sauce in its fried rice. In fact, if you try to put soy sauce on or around rice of any kind, people are going to look at you like you have three heads. Basic Chinese fried rice is fried in a wok, with spring onions, spices/oils, and maybe an egg. From that starting point, there are endless variations all over China and the rest of Asia.

11. Huo Guo

Huo guo is hot pot, and it’s also a laborious, multi-hour experience if you’re eating with locals. In the center of the table you have a boiling pot of soup stock, inside which you cook vegetables, meat, or whatever else. People here will comment on the size of your appetite if you order, say, a double hamburger, but will suddenly become machines of mass consumption at even the passing mention of hot pot. Especially in the wintertime. There’s nothing folks here like more than to sit at a hot pot table for an entire evening, stewing vegetables and watching foreign guests squirm when they have to try pork brain.

 

Klay Thompson Rejected by a Chinese Rim

Klay Thompson, fresh off an NBA title with the Golden State Warriors, is touring China with Anta to promote his sneaker series, the Anta KT 2. He ran — or jumped — into some difficulty in Chengdu in the form of a rim:

Here’s another angle:

(He actually missed two dunks, as this full video shows.)

Looks like he’s having fun otherwise, though. One more week to go!

Picture of the Day: Puddle

Reminder: this is the final week to submit for the Radii Photo Contest: The Place We Live.

Submit up to three photos — individually or as a series — before June 30 to participate. China-based pictures only, please.

You can post your photos on Instagram or Twitter with the hashtag #RadiiPhoto, or email [email protected].

Prizes

The Grand Prize winner will get a chance to meet award-winning photographer Chen Man — the “Annie Leibovitz of China,” who has shot celebrities from Rihanna to Victoria Beckham to Benedict Cumberbatch, and just about every A-list Chinese star — in her studio in either Beijing or Shanghai. Also, 800 RMB.

First Prize is an Olloclip Core Lens and Pivot Grip, plus a one-on-one mobile photography workshop with Singaporean photographer and documentary filmmaker Siok Siok Tan.

Five Second Prize winners will receive an autographed copy of Tan’s most recent photo book, Citybook, from which the pictures on this post are taken.