The Chinese say that tea drinking is good for longevity - and I may have found proof of it in Cheng Ching-yun, whose given name translates as "Clear Cloud." I met him high on the hill above Shih Chao Valley in the mountainous tea country of northern Taiwan.
I made the trip with four Chinese friends, guided by Chung Chen-i, 38, a fourth generation tea grower in Shih Chao Valley. With his wife, Chung also operates a tea shop in Taipei. As in all tea shops, they are prepared to offer prospective customers samples of their wares, brewed quickly in boiling water and served in tiny pre-heated cups. Each cup holds about two tablespoonfuls but enough to convey the flavor of the tea. Chung says that the brew of the second water poured onto the tea leaves is the best. His shop stocks perhaps three dozen different kinds of tea, each kept in bulk in a large numbered can. Prices range from modest to quite expensive for some rare varieties. Tea connoisseurs are quick to note the difference and consider the expensive teas worth the prices.
Shih Chao Valley lies between steep hills, about a mile below the nearest highway and along the Pei Shih River. This small, swift tributary of the Tamsui is popular with week-end campers and fishermen. About 200 families live in the valley - in a small village at the bottom and in houses dotting the surrounding hillsides. They cultivate about 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) devoted to tea plantings on the hillsides and rice paddies on the valley floor. Sweet potatoes, taro and various other vegetables are grown for their own consumption.
Some of the tea plantings are shaded by small native trees, but most are in the open sun. The more sunshine the tea bushes get, said Chung Chen-i, the better. Most tea plantations are surrounded by rows of orange and tangerine trees.
Chung is very proud of several awards he has won for his tea. These are displayed on the walls of his Taipei shop - including one for his Pouchung (also spelled Paochung) "plum fragrance" tea that was judged the best produced in Taiwan. He indicated that the secret of his success is in the processing, and said the exact process will remain a secret to be passed on to the fifth generation of his family. It does not include flavoring with dried flowers used in some Pouchung tea. Most of the tea grown in the Shih Chao Valley area is processed as green tea.
The little valley is located in Ping-ling Town ship, Taipei County, near the town of Ping-ling, about halfway along the mountain road from Taipei to Ilan. Taipei is about 40 miles distant.
We left the car parked beside the highway and descended into the valley over a trail that is steep and narrow, and in places very rough, following the water that had cascaded down it during the recent typhoon Vera. For a time we were close to the precipitous bank of the river far below. We walked in the shade of pine, fir and cypress trees intermingled with bamboo, giant tree ferns and other growth.
The trail was lined with a variety of vegetation unfamiliar to me, .some bearing flowers. At one point I was shown a plant with long sword-shaped leaves, some bent in sharp creases. This, I was told, was a "typhoon plant" said to forecast the big tropical wind and rain storms from such markings. My companions thought that the leaf creases probably were there before typhoon Vera and referred to it, rather than predicting a sequel to Vera.
We passed a stout woman villager carrying a quite-heavy piece of tea-drying equipment, and understandably stopping to rest from time to time. This impressed me with the fact that everything going into and out of the valley - including a good many million NT dollars worth of processed tea ready for market - is carried over that trail.
Tea prices have been good lately, and so have this year's crops. Valley residents have no vehicles and no draft animals. They do have mechanized cultivators and other small equipment. Although the valley lacks a road, a feeder line carries power down the hill from one of the high voltage transmission lines that serve more than 99 per cent of the people of Taiwan. Almost every Shih Chao family has a refrigerator and a TV set - and of course an electric rice cooker. There is a small store, with signs advertising brands of soft drinks sold around the world and cases of empty bottles stacked outside.
The valley has a Buddhist temple and a Catholic church but no school. School-age children walk up the hill to the highway, where a bus takes them into Ping-ling.
We turned off the trail at an adobe and brick farmhouse, where we were served tea in tiny cups and found we were expected for lunch. Like most typical Taiwan farmhouses, this one had been built onto several times. When a son marries, under a custom still followed, though less commonly than in former days, an addition is built on the house for him and his bride. When a daughter marries, she goes to the home of her in-laws.
The older farmhouses are open inside to the pole rafters and tile roofs, which aids ventilation and provides cooling in hot weather. Like most of the houses we saw in Shih Chao Valley, the one a. which we stopped had a smooth cement yard extending out to the edge of the paddy with its green rows of second-crop rice and small channels of water in between. This patio, as it might be called in the United States, is for setting out the large trays woven from bamboo leaves for the sun-drying phase of tea processing. The larger trays were all of 6 feet in diameter. For the first stage of wilting and drying in the shade, somewhat smaller trays were racked up in a corner of the living and dining room.
I was told that our hosts were proud of the fact that except for the mild Taiwan beer, they themselves produced everything served us for lunch. The fare included rice, dishes based on chicken and pork, various vegetables, bamboo shoots from nearby thickets and small fish caught in the nearby Pei Shih River. The fish resembled trout and were called "fragrant fish." Most valley farmers keep chickens, ducks and pigs.
Night hunting of frogs in the paddy fields with battery-powered spotlights is a popular sport that yields a food much liked in Taiwan. Large eels are sometimes caught in the small ditches carrying water to the rice fields.
Someone loaned me a broad-brimmed bamboo-leaf hat for protection from the sun, and cut me a stout bamboo staff, as we set out across the valley after lunch. I much appreciated both before the day was over. Past the cluster of houses of the village and across the river on the narrow concrete "Clear Cloud" bridge, another trail, quite steep in places, led up the opposite hillside. Chung Chen-i led the way. At times we were in the shade of evergreen and other trees, and at times in the open sun along the edges of tea plantings. Tea pickers were at work. Tea bushes are evergreen plants. Most of them around the Shih Chao Valley are 2 to 3 feet tall and spread ou t to form hedges. They grow close together in rows about 2 feet apart.
The bushes are picked five or six times a year - twice in summer, once or twice in autumn, once in each of the other two seasons. We saw the pickers pinch off the two or three tender new leaves at the tip of each twig, taking care not to injure the buds of the new leaves to follow. April and October pickings are considered by tea experts to be the best.
It is said that in ancient times the Chinese believed that the more inaccessible the tea plantings, the better the quality of the leaves. Some bushes grew on the faces of sheer, unclimbable cliffs. The Chinese are said to have trained monkeys in tea picking, then lowered them by ropes to pluck the leaves and drop them in baskets. This harvest was, of course, much more highly valued than tea coming from easier-to-reach places.
Tea bushes will grow to 30 feet if not pruned. They commonly are kept trimmed to less than 5 feet. The blossoms are white, somewhat resembling roses. The flowers are followed by small, green fruit containing nut-like seeds. The fruit is picked separately for producing tea-oil, a high-priced commodity used in Chinese medicines.
Tea plants are propagated in seed beds or by the layering of twigs to form roots in earth covering. When about six months old and 6 to 8 inches tall, the plants are set in rows from 3 to 6 feet apart. Bushes are 5 to 6 feet tall at the end of two years. They are cut back to about a foot, then spread out to form the dark green hedgerows. By the end of the third year they are ready for plucking. A tea bush reaches full production at about 10 years and has a life span of half a century or longer.
Overlooking the Shih Chao Valley, we paused at the edge of Chung's tea plantation, certainly one of the best-looking of those we saw. A number of pickers were at work. The women were protected against the sun by bamboo hats, long sleeves and often by scarves covering most of their faces. Chung said they were paid by the day rather than the weight of the tea leaves. A good worker can pick about 20 kilograms (44 pounds) in a day. The weight of tea leaves doesn't add up very fast.
The pickers are usually at work by 6 a.m. Many sing as they work. This "Song of Picking Tea" is from Fukien province on the mainland opposite Taiwan:
Flowers bloom. It is a nice springtime.
The hills are full of girls picking tea.
They carry baskets and pick from the east side to the west.
They are laughing.
They pick fine tea to sell.
They are free from the cares of living.
The tea buds are greener. A bud has a heart.
The girls pick lightly. Every bud is fresh.
They fill a basket and another.
Everywhere in the hills they sing folksongs.
This year they have a good harvest.
Every family is joyful.
Small battery-powered clipping machines are used to harvest tea leaves in some of the larger plantings of Taiwan. Chung pointed out that machines also harvest stems and are not selective in the leaves they gather. He doesn't think tea picked mechanically can attain the quality of that brought in by the girl pickers, although he admits many non-connoisseurs of tea might not know the difference. So far the tea-picking machines apparently have not been commemorated in song.
Chung told me that the tea bushes are cultivated and fertilized periodically. In hotter months, they often are sprinkled from power pumps and hoses before picking but they are not otherwise irrigated.
At the end of the trail overlooking the valley is the home of Cheng Yuen-chin, the patriarch of Shih Chao. He was born in this valley in 1872 and has lived here, his life centered in tea growing and processing, for all of his 105 years. He was 23 when the Japanese took over Taiwan in 1895 and 73 when they left in 1945.
Cheng now is mostly confined to his chair, but he takes an active interest in all that goes on at his place and apparently was very pleased to have company. A short distance down the slope is the family's sizable tea plantation, where a crew of women pickers was at work. Numerous additions have been built onto Cheng's house over the decades. It currently is home to 30 persons - including a daughter, a son, grandsons, in-laws and a horde of small great grandchildren, many busily involved at various games.
Three rooms of Cheng's house are devoted to tea processing - the racks of trays for the first step, after the baskets are brought in by the pickers. .. the transfer to larger trays for drying outside, with careful hand-rotation or "kneading" of the tea leaves and sniffing for the aroma at this stage ... and then the heat treatments. These
are the three stages in which the natural moisture of the tea leaves is reduced by about 75 per cent. The leaves are "fired" or roasted. They are put through a second treatment that heats and rolls the leaves, curling them into small twists to reduce their bulk. They are shuttled through a series of levels, in a third device, as the heat rises through them. Each stage lasts for only minutes. Before being packed into large plastic bags for the market the ideal final product is dry enough so that it will keep indefinitely and at the same time retain its natural aroma and flavor. There are frequent sniffing tests throughout the processing.
In general, any tea leaves can be processed into any kind of tea, though some varieties are usually considered more suitable for certain teas. There are in the world about 1,500 varieties of tea and about 1,000 possible blends. Some 40 different varieties of commercial value are grown in Taiwan.
The chief difference in the production of black, Oolong, Pouchung and green teas is that the first three are fermented. Like all of the steps in processing tea, fermentation is brief. The utmost skill and judgment are required in ending this step at the right moment. After the "withering," handkneading and "rolling" and "breaking" of the green tea leaves by machines, the leaves are spread out - usually on glass shelves - and covered with damp cloths. The fermenting of the leaf juices for black tea takes only 30 to 90 minutes.
As in all tea processes, the test is in the aroma. The expert's nose knows.
In the manufacture of Oolong tea, fermentation is stopped when about 70 per cent complete. Fermentation is only 30 per cent for Pouchung tea.
Dried flowers imparting their own flavors are added to some batches of Pouchung tea after all the usual fermenting, firing, sifting, sorting and winnowing are completed. The flowers remain for from four to six hours, then are winnowed out again. Jasmine and chrysanthemums are the most popular, although roses, gardenias, orchids, peppermint or almost any other fragrant flowers may be used. Exceptions are flowers with large amounts of pollen that could not be winnowed out and would remain in the tea. Chrysanthemum-flavored tea is said to be particularly healthful as a summer drink.
We were served some of the Cheng family tea in tiny cups by two of the grandsons. While we were there, one of the younger people brought Cheng Yuen-chin half a handful of freshly picked tea leaves. The centenarian head of the family looked at them, fingered them and sniffed the aroma. He appeared to be well-satisfied.
We were assured that he drinks tea from the family plantation several times every day and has done so for more than 100 years. It could be that tea is an aid to longevity. At least the climate of a tea grower's life should be.
On the way back down the hill we stopped at another farmhouse for samples of tea - and found that we again were expected to eat. This household, also, was proud of producing everything served us.
The word "tea" comes from the Amoy province dialect word tè, pronounced "deh." In Cantonese and Mandarin it is "ch'a," pronounced "chah." This name traveled to Japan, Persia, India and Russia with the first tea introduced into those countries.
The name "tea" was introduced into Europe by the Dutch.
The story of tea goes far back into legend and also involves some dramatic incidents of history.
One legend attributes the origin of tea drinking to the Emperor Shen Nung, who supposedly reigned over China from 2737 to 2697 B.C. He was sitting beside a cauldron of boiling water, according to this story, when some leaves fell into the pot. The emperor was about to fish out the leaves when he became aware of an inviting aroma and drank the first cup of tea.
Another tale about tea involves a Buddhist sage named Bodhidharma who came to China from India about 500 A.D. After he had fallen asleep during one of his periods of meditation at Shao-lin Temple in Loyang, in present day Honan province, Bodhidharma was so exasperated that he cut off his eyelids to be sure he would stay awake. The sage's eyelids took root, the legend says, and grew up as tea bushes, the symbol of eternal wakefulness.
It appears that tea first was drunk for possible medicinal value, both in China and after it was introduced to the Western world, but it was widely consumed in China as a beverage by about 350 B.C.
In the Eighth Century A.D., tea was so popular and such a well-established business that a group of merchants commissioned a writer named Lu Yu to produce a book on tea. Lu Yu is described as a scholarly former circus clown, but he took his assignment so seriously that his "Ch'a China", published in 780, is considered the classic work on the subject. In translation it is variously titled "The Tea Classic" and "The Tea Bible." Lu Yu ruled three volumes with just about everything known at the time about tea, its customs, uses and proclaimed benefits.
The best tea leaves, said Lu, "must have creases like the leather boot of a Tartar horseman, curl like the dewlap of a mighty bullock, unfold like a mist rising out of a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by a zephyr and be wet and soft like fine earth swept by rain."
Modern day connoisseurs would still agree with Lu, though few could put the criterion for superior tea into such poetic language.
Cultivation of tea spread from China to Japan in the Ninth Century. Tea was introduced from Japan to Java, the most populous island of Indonesia, by a German doctor and naturalist named Andreas Cleyer in 1684.
Native tea was found growing in Assam, India, in 1823. India's tea industry dates from 1834, when a committee was formed to develop the crop commercially.
The island of Ceylon, south of India and now known as Sri Lanka, became one of the world's leading producers of tea only after the late 1870s - planters turned to tea because a rust disease had ruined the coffee industry. Some tea is grown in several countries of Africa and Latin America. Some has been grown in southern Russia. Tea culture was tried in the United States, in Texas and South Carolina, but was abandoned as not practicable.
Tea thrives best in tropical or subtropical mountain regions subject to frequent heavy rains - and most of the world's production still comes from China, Japan, India and Sri Lanka.
Tea reached the Arab peoples, who generally shun alcohol and still consider tea a favorite drink, about 850 A.D. The Venetians introduced tea to Italy in 1559, and it reached England and Portugal about 1600. The Dutch introduced tea to Northern Europe in the early 1600s, and it reached Russia about the same time. The early British colonists took tea to America in the mid-1600s.
When tea first was sold in London, the price was as high as 10 British pounds for one pound of tea. London then had about 2,000 coffee houses. Coffee remained the favorite British beverage for some years - until tea supplanted it due to lower prices and the propaganda of the British East India Company. Another literary man helped along this line, a poet named Edward Waller, who produced a eulogy to tea in verse and hailed England's first tea-drinking Queen, Catherine of Braganza. (Waller apparently wasn't much noted for anything else).
Samuel Pepys (1632-1703) referred in his Diary to drinking a cup of tea for the first time in 1660. The poet William Cowper (1731 -1800) praised tea drinking as "the cups that cheer but do not inebriate."
A Duchess of Bedford named Anna gave the beverage a major boost by starting the custom of afternoon tea. A cup of tea and cakes at 4 or 5 p.m., said the duchess, relieved her of a "sinking feeling." And a lot of other people reached the same conclusion, as the British became, after the Chinese, the world's greatest tea drinkers. British dock workers once went on strike until given time off for an afternoon tea break.
Tea was at least as popular in the American colonies as it was in the mother country up until the late 1700s, when a sharp change developed for reasons well known to students of American history.
The English tea tax of 1773 had as its purpose perpetuating a monopoly on the tea trade by the British East India Company. It aroused considerable resentment among tea drinkers on both sides of the Atlantic, and particularly in America, where the colonists did not have direct representation in Parliament. Even when the tax was reduced to a point where tea was cheaper in America than in England, a boycott movement spread and "tea" was compounded from many kinds of inferior substitutes.
The "Boston Tea Party," during which 342 chests of Amoy province tea was thrown overboard into the harbor from three British East India Company ships, started a rebellion that led to the American Revolution and the independence of the United States. (There also were five less publicized "tea parties" in other colonial ports).
Tea never did make a full comeback in the United States - or hasn't so far. Not too long ago Americans were drinking 40 cups of coffee for every cup of tea. Skyrocketing coffee prices have recently brought some Changes in the proportion.
The American clipper ships, perhaps the most famous of sailing craft, played a major part in the tea trade of the 19th Century. In 1866, a "Great Tea Race" of the windjammers cut the seas from Foochow, China, to London, 16,000 miles away. The first two of 11 clippers laden with tea finished the race more than halfway around the world only 10 minutes apart.
Tea bushes have been found growing wild in the mountains of northern Taiwan. The aborigines apparently did 1I0t discover the possibilities of tea as a beverage. The planting of tea bushes brought from the mainland by Chinese settlers and the manufacture of tea in Taiwan dates to 1697.
The commercial production of Taiwan Oolong tea began in 1821. Production of Pouchung tea for export was started in 1881. The commercial production of black tea began in 1924, when the Japanese held Taiwan. The manufacture of green tea for export was started in 1940, also in the Japanese days.
Tea production in Taiwan dwindled during World War II. Because of labor shortages and other troubles, many plantations were not picked. Production has gained steadily since Taiwan's return to the Republic of China in 1945. It has been stimulated by a rise in tea prices paralleling the sharp increase in coffee prices.
There now are about 33,000 hectares (nearly 85,000 acres) of tea plantations in Taiwan, mostly scattered through mountain areas of the northern part of the island province. The tea leaves are processed at 240 different factories, most of them small.
As for prices, the Taiwan Department of Agriculture and Forestry reports they are up 60 to 100 per cent over 1976 due to increased demand on world markets. Taiwan is expected to produce around 26,000 tons of processed tea this year, of which some 20,000 tons will be exported.
During the first half of 1977, the Republic of China sold overseas 4,256,613 kilograms of the black tea best liked in Western countries. This was an increase of 2,516,109 kilograms over the same period last year.
Green tea exports totaled 5,187,125 kilograms, down 1,311,672 from the first half of last year.
Exports of Pouchung tea totaled 664,406 kilograms, down 56,197; while the 353,762 kilograms of Oolong tea exported from Taiwan topped 1976 sales for the same period by 153,437 kgs.
The North African country of Morocco was the largest purchaser of Taiwan tea in 1977, followed in order by the United States, Japan, Britain and Thailand.
Before it is exported, Taiwan tea must pass the tests of the connoisseurs. This is an organization in charge of seeing that no tea is sold to foreign lands that would not be a credit to Chinese tradition and to the Republic of China. The experts check samples for color, aroma and taste in accordance with international standards.
Tea tasting is such a special and demanding skill that it is said a person needs 10 to 20 years of experience to become a real connoisseur.
One of the most famous of Oolong teas, Tung Ding comes from Luku (Deer Valley) in the mountains of Nantou county, central Taiwan, not far from the forest resort of Hsitou.
Lin Pei-tsen, who has grown and processed Tung Ding tea in Deer Valley for more than 30 years, explains his own brewing method for getting the best out of his famous product:
"The tea reaches its best at the instant when one opens the teapot, after the tea has steeped for three to five minutes. The quality of water, teapot and teacup all contribute to the making of good tea. Pure mountain springs supply the best quality water for tea. Teapot and cups made of clay or Chinese porcelain of high quality will be better than ordinary glass cups."
There are other sometimes conflicting traditions and ideas on the making and serving of good tea. They include:
Rain water actually is the best of all for brewing tea.
The first water from the tea is the best.
The second water is the best.
True connoisseurs never drink tea at big gatherings, since many guests will make the affair noisy and noise takes away tea drinking's cultural charm. An ancient Chinese saying has it that wine, not tea, was invented for noisy parties.
Some say tea drinkers should be dressed in dignified fashion.
The teacups and pot should be rinsed in boiling water before and after use, and never dried with a cloth.
Even the slightest contamination of oily hands in the process of picking, drying, handling or brewing tea will detract from quality.
Even the fire that heats the water for tea is considered by connoisseurs to be important. Some say olive pits make the best fuel, with sugar cane dust second and charcoal of acacia wood third.
Wealthy Chinese families (at least those still observing the rituals of tea) keep several different tea sets. The prestige or social status of a guest will determine which one is used. The more important the guest, the smaller the set. A Meng Chen set dating back to the Ch'ing dynasty, the last of the empire, may have a teapot scarcely larger than a golf ball and cups hardly bigger than a thumbnail. The set may look like a plaything for small girls, but is perhaps an heirloom kept in the family for generations, worth a small fortune, and used only on occasions of great importance.
Lin Fuh-chuan, senior specialist of the Taiwan Tea Manufacturers' Association, attributes the popularity of Oolong tea to "an appearance as beautiful as flowers, liquor in orange-red color, and endowed with a flavor of mellow fruit and ambrosial taste."
Lin has spent just short of half a century in the study of tea, and frequently writes and lectures on his favorite subject. In 1929 he went to Bohar Mountain of Fukien province for study in the area he said produced the best Chinese tea, or did when the mainland was free. Lin spent six years there. He came to Taiwan to take charge of the rehabilitation of the tea industry when the province was returned to the Republic of China in 1945.
As for Pouchung tea, with or without the flower scenting, Lin says: "It will generate a sweet after-taste in the mouth." With the added flavors, says Lin, Pouchung tea "distinguishes itself in a pleasant combination of the aroma of flowers and its own peculiar flavor, thus giving drinkers a great pleasure of double enjoyment."
Lin notes that black tea is divided into two main types, that from small-leafed tea varieties and that from the broad-leafed Assam tea. The small-leaf tea is noted for its aroma and the Assam tea for its stronger taste.
There are many kinds of Taiwan green tea, and at least as many favorite ways of preparation.
Around the world, by far more tea is consumed than any other beverage - more than 2 billion pounds a year. This spreads pretty far, as a pound of tea will make around 250 cups, compared to about 50 cups from a pound of coffee.
There are few worries about addiction or after-effects from drinking tea. Most people bothered by too much coffee or cocoa can drink tea without limit.
China once consumed about half the world's supply of tea. There are no figures available on consumption on the Chinese mainland under Communist control, but tea drinking there is reported now beyond the means of many people.
In Taiwan, tea consumption has never been higher. Tea drinking takes place at all hours. It is served when one enters an office, visits a home or boards a train traveling for any distance.
The teahouse of old China was for centuries a traditional institution. Even the smallest village had one and even the poorest people could afford to meet there to drink and talk. It was said that in a teahouse, you were a friend of anyone whose name you knew.
Merchants transacted business in teahouses.
Fortunetellers and professional letter writers plied their trades. Players of Chinese chess engaged in endless games beside their teacups, surrounded by kibitzers. Peddlers selling such items as cigarettes, peanuts, fruit and dried watermelon seeds traveled from table to table, along with newsboys and bootblacks. Storytellers, jugglers and other entertainers often performed in the teahouses of old China, and afterward passed around rice bowls for contributions.
Modern day connoisseurs of tea are generally scornful of such innovations as the addition of sugar, lemon juice, milk or ice, and of powdered tea and tea bags. The bags, however, are offered free to passengers on Republic of China trains, with the choice of black or green. Glasses in racks beside each seat are frequently refilled with hot water by a boy assigned to that duty.
Chinese reaction is unknown so far to an automatic tea maker invented in England and new on the market in the United States. This device combines a tea pot, heating element and time clock. If provided with water, tea and the right setting, it has a hot cup of tea waiting for the owner's refreshment when he wakes up.
It appears that there can be many hazards in getting a really good cup of tea.
A poet of the Sung dynasty, Lee Chih-kaw, wrote: "There are three most deplorable things in the world: the spoiling of fine youths through false education, the degradation of fine paintings through vulgar admiration and the utter waste of fine tea through incompetent manipulation!"
A Tang dynasty poet, Lo Tung, described his reaction to tea this way:
"The first cup moistens my lips and throat, the second cup breaks my loneliness... at the fifth cup I'm purified; the sixth cup calls me to the realms of the immortals, and I feel only the breath of cool wind that rises in my sleeves."
The late Dr. Lin Yu-tang, described tea as a product of leisure. Only in the spirit of the old Chinese culture, he said in his book The Importance of Living, do people have the leisure to drink tea and chat over the tea cups." From such meeting and talking, said Lin Yu-tang, they boil life down to its essence.
Chemical analyses show that tea contains coffeine, the same ingredient that gives coffee its stimulating properties. Tea also contains, among other things, several kinds of vitamins, flourine, tannic acid, sugar, starch, theine and protein - though none in large proportions.
Although the idea that tea is primarily a medicine vanished centuries ago, tea still is hailed as counteractive to alcohol and the nicotine of tobacco. It is said to be helpful in strengthening muscles, preventing high blood pressure, increasing the resilience of blood vessels, combatting obesity and excess acid in the body and preventing tooth decay.
An old Chinese summary of the benefits of the national beverage declared:
"1. One cup of tea in the morning will set the spirit stirring, refreshed, and bring the opening of untapped thoughts.
"2. One cup of tea after a meal will clear mouth odors (halitosis) and drive worries away.
"3. One cup of tea when you are busy will quench your thirst, drive cares away and render a feeling of tranquillity.
"4. One cup of tea after your day is done will make your bones and muscles feel lighter and dissolve your fatigue.
"Tea will drive the doctor away, and make you feel strong. Tea will add to your years, and the enjoyment of your longevity."
To all of which Cheng Chin-yuan, lifelong tea grower and tea drinker of Shih Chao Valley, now aged 105, wholeheartedly agrees.