Fashion influences tea just as it does anything else. The Wenshan District (文山區) of Taipei City used to be famous in the West for its Oriental Beauty tea (東方美人茶), dubbed at the time the champagne of teas despite being an oolong that was almost red in color. And 50 years ago the area around Sun Moon Lake developed an imitation of Indian tea to satisfy international preferences. Both eventually became priced out of the market.
China and Vietnam are producing fake Taiwanese oolongs, we read, hoping to cash in on the prestige and price-tag of the originals. I enjoyed Hinsch’s balanced comment here: “Counterfeit tea is not necessarily bad, but, of course, consumers deserve to get what they are paying for.”
Until recently, Western tastes have differed strongly from the Chinese norm. After the 19th-century British had engineered a move away from Chinese green teas to the heavily oxidized reds they were busy developing in India and Sri Lanka, the only China-produced tea left in fashion was the smoked Lapsang Souchong, something from which any well-bred Chinese could be guaranteed to shrink away from in horror. It nonetheless gained an international cachet as James Bond’s preferred tipple, laced in his case with Scotch whisky (Hinsch recommends Laphroaig).
However, Chinese green tea — far and away the most common kind, with too many varieties for our author to list — is back in fashion as a bringer, not only of good cheer, but of health. This, it’s hard not to think, is a harbinger of what’s to come — a China-dominated world where things Chinese are eagerly sought after as fashion accessories. Under the emperors, teas were long given to the court as tribute — notably the celebrated pu-er (普洱茶) teas from Yunnan Province, but also Fujian’s oolongs — and it can’t be long before what’s being drunk in Beijing’s corridors of power will be eagerly sought after in the supermarkets of the West, marketed of course in exactly these terms.
When that time arrives, The Ultimate Guide to Chinese Tea will be an estimable book to have at your side, to help ensure you aren’t bamboozled by the advertising if nothing else.
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