holding my gift tea hostage

I should really be quiet about this. I got my package from the Deutsche Post and it'd likely be in my best interest to be grateful. And shut up. Right?

Wrong.

As a teablogger, I feel it's my responsibility to talk about the good, the bad and the surreal when it comes to tea. So here goes.

Last week, a letter from the Deutsche Post arrived and I was simultaneously pleased and perplexed by news of an unexpected package from China. I get plenty of tea and tea writing to try (and potentially review), so that part didn't surprise me. But as far as I could tell this package was unannounced. I couldn't remember anyone telling me this one was on its way.

Well, anytime I receive anything in Beamtendeutsch (bureaucratic German), I get nervous. But for a document of this sort, this one was actually rather straightforward.

'We're holding your undeclared package for you,' they assure me. 'In  order to get through customs, the value of the package has to be displayed on the outside of the package.' They provide their hours and location...it's in Garching! Garching? That's nowhere near where I live. Not remotely.

That's quite a trek for me to be able to tell them, 'It's an unsolicited gift of tea and I have no idea the value.'


But I digress.

They inform me that they'll hold my package for 14 days, and then it's back to wherever it came from. When you read a warning like this from a German office, you take it seriously. 15 days? It'll almost definitely be gone.

Later in the document, it says that they charge €.50 per day for holding my tea. Holding my gift tea (that I hadn't asked for) hostage, I might add. And I have the honour of paying for it. Did I mention surreal? Oh wait...if it's less than €5, they'll waive the charge. That's what I call incentive to resolve this immediately. Well, that and there's gift tea involved.

They provide a checklist for what I need when I trudge all the way out to godforsaken Garching, and I don't like the looks of this at all.

a. invoice/proof of payment (it's a gift-that's why it's called gift tea. How on earth will I manage this?)
b. any pertinent documents (what's pertinent in this case? shall I list all the fictional people who might've sent me tea?)
c. cold hard cash for Customs (like you didn't see that coming)
d. any additional documents as a result of this process (they think of everything...these bureaucrats)

I'm told I can send a Vertreter (someone in my stead), which is all well and good. Can you imagine that conversation?

me: 'Hey! I want you to go to Garching and pick up a package of gift tea for me, ok?'

my imaginary Vertreter: 'Uh, ok. That sounds a bit suspect...are you sure this is all legal?' 

So I guess you can see why I'm not sending someone there for me.

Then the document continues: 'In the event you can't/we can't verify all of this info, we offer the following services...' My ears perk up. Here it comes...'Send us the necessary documents or an explanation and we'll take care of everything.'

Pay dirt. This is what I wanted to hear. They'll take care of everything. Then they say something indecipherable about how far the Deutsche Post office is from the Customs office, but by this time I'm not even paying attention.

They're going to take care of everything. No worrying over here.

I send in my 'It's gift tea that I didn't know about and I don't know how much it's worth...please send it to me soon, though' explanation. That's all that was necessary. Yesterday, the package arrived at my front door.

Turns out I did know of this shipment of tea, but had forgotten about it entirely. It's from Teavivre and I can assure you I'm going to talk much more about this company. Here's how attractive their very practical packages are:

The last thing on the form is really the most practical thing I learned from this whole experience. The document states in bold!:

Please inform anyone outside of the EU that anything sent here should prominently display an invoice on the outside of the package. In most cases when this is done correctly, such packages can be delivered more easily directly to your door.

That's good to know, isn't it? Don't ever let it be said that this very whimsical teablog doesn't sometimes provide a bit of useful knowledge. There's your knowledge for the next little while.

But then I turned the package to the side, and what did I see? Here's what I saw:

That, my friends and fellow teabloggers, is exactly what it looks like. An invoice stating very clearly the value of the contents of the package. Did they truly fail to simply look on the side of the package that they'd been holding hostage? Yes. Indeed they did.

Jerks.

third cup of tea means it's time for you to go

tea hospitality

Got into an intriguing discussion with some fellow tea obsessives and something made me stumble over to my bookshelf and pull The World of Caffeine down.  It's a book by Bennett Alan Weinberg and Bonnie K. Bealer that I sometimes turn to for reference.

We were specifically talking about the first mention of tea in Europe, and whether there was anything worth noting before the Dutch started bringing back by ship.  Other than Marco Polo mentioning it in relation to its use being taxed (1285), one particular Venetian wrote about tea while describing his travels to China.

He was called Giambatista Ramusio, and he reported about tea in 1559 in Chai Catai (tea of China) which is part of his posthumously published Navigatione et Viaggi (Voyages and Travels), after he heard about it from a Persian caravan merchant Hajji Mahommed (Chaggi Memet).  So that's the first time tea was officially referred to in Europe.

But while the Venetians were going the overland route, the Portuguese discovered the quickest way to China was around the Cape of Good Hope.  Rather than get more specific about the general history, I'll include an entire paragraph about the Portuguese Jesuit priests and their relation to tea.

'The Portuguese traders and the Portuguese Jesuit priests, who like Jesuits of every nation busied themselves with the affairs of caffeine, wrote frequently and favorably to compatriots in Europe about tea.  Strangely enough, there is no record of their sending tea shipments from the East for the enjoyment of their countrymen.  In 1556, Father Gasper Da Cruz, a missionary, became the first to preach Catholicism in China; when he returned home in 1560, he wrote and mentioned the first mention of tea in Portuguese, "a drink called ch'a, which is somewhat bitter, red, and medicinall."  Another Portuguese cleric, Father Alvaro Semedo, in 1633 wrote an early account of the tea plant and the preparation of the beverage in his book about China, Relatione della Grande Monarchia della Cina (1643).  He mentions the custom, initiated at the Hann Pass by Yin Hsi, of offering tea to guests, and explains that when it is offered for the third time, it is time for the guest to move along.'

(source: The World of Caffeine pp. 61-63)

There are two things I like about this.  Firstly, did Jesuits of every nation really busy themselves with caffeine?  Isn't that a weird turn of phrase?  I must admit it's the first time I've found myself daydreaming of being just such a Jesuit priest.  Purely for caffeine reasons, I assure you.

And the other thing?  Well, of course it's the three-cups-and-you're-out-of-here part.  Isn't that curious?  One of the above-mentioned tea people, I think it was Michael J Coffey, pointed out that this was a funny spin on Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea. 

The first cup-you were a stranger. By the second you were a friend, and simultaneously while I serve you that third cup, you're both family and I'm going to give you The Bum's Rush.  Here's your hat-what's your hurry?

Drinking very masculine Java tea

Have had a lot of tea grown on the Pasir Nangka tea estate in Java lately.

Wrote about Java Santosa last year (Startles me awake), and I still like tea from this region. This one might even be better than the earlier one. Maybe.

This one is strong like a good Assam, but not a lot of tannic acid. So it's not at all bitter. That's why I like to use Java tea in blends of black teas. There's something fruity and spicy in the taste as well.

Did a bit of research about tea from this region, and what I learned is that they started out planting tea plants from China here in Indonesia. For some reason, they switched to tea plants from Assam at some point.

Am rather curious why tea grown from the same plant, but grown in an entirely different region, has such a dramatic difference in taste. Any thoughts on that one?

History of tea coming to Russia

The largest tea consuming nation in Europe? Russia. I know the Irish drink more per capita. And the Russians aren’t really Europe, right? Well, sure they are. What’s wrong with you. All day, they swill from the samovar. Because it keeps the tea near a constant boil, this might be the perfect way to drink black tea. When in Moscow, drink it like the Moscovites. They take their muddy, dark tea strong and with a bit of lemon and a lot of sugar. A lot. No…more. Keep pouring the sugar. Or honey. Or jam. Jam? That’s right. Look what I found:

Russian Tea Traditions: The Russian interest in tea began as early as 1618 when the Chinese embassy in Moscow presented several chests of tea to Czar Alexis. The samovar, adopted from the Tibetan ‘hot pot’, is a combination bubbling hot water and teapot.

Placed in the centre of the Russian home, it could (run) all day and serve up to forty cups of tea at a time. Again showing the Asian influence in the Russian Culture, guests sipped their tea from glasses in silver holders very similar to Turkish coffee cups. The Russians have always favoured strong tea highly sweetened with sugar, honey, or jam.

Source: iPhone app Tea Timer

Compared to other European countries, Russia was a late adaptor to tea. The Russians were even resistant to it initially. Two Russian Marco Polos came back from China in the late sixteenth century talking of the tea plant, but had no samples. As mentioned above, the year that we know tea first made it’s way to Imperial Russia is 1618. It was brought to the czar, and not very well received. The Russians just weren’t that impressed.

Not until near the end of that century (1689), was Russia intrigued enough by tea to bother importing any of it. It took a full year at the time for the camel caravan to make its way from China to Russia by way of Manchuria and Mongolia, and the Chinese accepted furs in exchange for the huge chests of tea. Four chests carrying nearly six hundred pounds of tea could be carried by each camel, and by the turn of the century (1700) there were as many as six hundred camels per year. It was pricey. And took forever to get each shipment. When I think of UPS delivering my tea from Hamburg or London, I’m immensely grateful. Immensely.

It was only the Trans-Siberian Railway (1880) that relieved the caravan from their heavy burden. Until then, any tea one drank in Moscow came overland. The yearlong wait by way of camel was cut to seven weeks on the train. Not too shabby.

I always credit my sources here, and as smart as I like to think myself, this information wasn’t just swimming round my brain. I needed to do a bit of research, and the treasure trove about tea history that seems to never fail me is a book recommended to me by Indonique called The World of Caffeine by Bennet Alan Weinberg and Bonnie K. Bealer.

Floating above the Japanese clouds

If you haven’t noticed already, I’m a bit of an Orientalist. Well, to be more specific, I’m crazy about Japan. Nuts. If I acted on every thought, it’d be an obsession. I think when I was moaning about the winter several weeks ago and daydreaming about going to the Nuwara hills in Sri Lanka, my real thoughts were of going to pre-modern Nippon.

Maybe it’s because I went there when I was young and impressionable. Maybe it’s my fascination with Japanese history and custom. It’s very fashionable to be into China right now. I have absolutely nothing against China. Nothing.

But it just doesn’t do it for me. Maybe if I went there and met the people and saw the tea plantations and drank tea and ate Chinese shish-ka-bob (a la Kevin Rose) out of a rickshaw bar-b-que cooker…maybe then I could become more interested in China.

But as of now, I’m on the way to Japan in my thoughts. I’m above the clouds and flying through the air. It’s not enough to go to modern Japan. In my mind I’m floating back in time as well. To the time when tea ceremony wasn’t yet an institution. If we go back that long ago, this is the thirteenth century and we are Japanese monks.

Our brother monk, Dai-o, has been on a long journey to the Chinese monasteries where he observed and learned about the way the Zen monks in China prepare their tea. It’s so much more than the practical aspect of dunking leaves in heated water. He has shown us that the harmony between the people drinking the tea and the tools or implements that we use to make the tea is very crucial.

There are three things he referenced about the tea ceremony that were true back then and are still true today. Respect, cleanliness and tranquility. There’s no way that I can cover everything about this this in one simple blogpost. Am doing quite a bit of research about tea ceremony and might write an article on the topic soon. Stay tuned. Am enjoying this immensely.

China alchemy

Was asked recently what china is made of. I glibly answered ‘Chinese’, but I knew what he was asking. I had no idea. Could you only get china from the Orient? No clue. Wait…I know that there’s famous porcelain from Saxon and even Bavaria. So what’s the story on china? You’re about to find out.

Since the 15th Century, Europeans wanted to find out how to make china. A charlatan/chemist’s assistant called Böttger met an alchemist in Berlin who gave him two ounces of a powder that could make the coveted material. He passed off as his own invention and immediately the powers that were attempted to corral him and obtain his alleged invention. By escaping them and going to Dresden, he thought he was safe. Little did he know that Augustus “the strong” only wanted him for his china as well. Once the small amount of powder was gone, he was imprisoned by the body-building monarch. Little Böttger convinced a jailer to let him use his jail cell as a laboratory.

Luckily for him, and for us Westerners, the Saxon countryside around Dresden is chock full of the two most important ingredients for making china ( china clay or kaolin & what’s called china stone). After experimenting with different amounts of these and other ingredients as well as firing time in the kiln, he was able to come upon a formula that recreated the thin, delicate, translucent variation that the West had not yet been able to produce. Eureka. And the rest was history? Not quite.

Although Saxon porcelain is known for it’s beauty, it’s not the only European sort. There’s no way the British would continue to drink out of German china if they could make their own. So they did. As did the French with their famous Sevre porcelain, as well as many others. But that’s for another post. How did this German discovery make its way across the channel. Without paying duties and tariffs? You’ll have to hold your horses to find that one out.