Last week, I thought I had purchased a can of tea from China. It was sitting on the store shelf with all of the other teas. The can was green with writing that looked Chinese to me.
When I got home, I boiled some water, and after fifteen minutes of steeping the leaves, I poured myself a cup. The tea was colorless, and tasted like extremely weak chicken soup.
Maybe authentic Chinese tea is supposed to taste like chicken soup. Or, maybe, the long strand of human hair, which was part of the treat, came from the head of a Chinese chicken farmer. Or, maybe it wasn’t Chinese tea after all. Maybe it was tea from Korea. They drink tea in Korea, and I don’t read Korean either.
The choices we make in life can be so difficult. You might ask, “How could you drink a cup of anything that contained a human hair?” I had boiled the water, and didn’t find the hair until it had wrapped itself around my tongue.
No! I did not panic. The water had been boiled. And, No! I did not die from sipping on an oriental hair. Who knows? Maybe Chinese or Koreans use hair in their tea-soup instead of noodles.
However, from now on, I will stick to English Breakfast Tea. Maybe, next time I will find a crumpet.
Esther Blumenfeld (finger sandwiches…if you dare!)