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So I went out with some of my friends last night.  I expected it to be just any regular night out with friends.  You know, talking, eating, then more talking and even more eating.

Highlight of the night?  We went to a tea house and I ordered Chrysanthemum tea.

To tell you the truth, I’ve never had chrysanthemum tea.  I’ve never ventured beyond green, black, and orange pekoe.  I’ve always been a coffee drinker, and every time I get the chance I make it a point to demonstrate that tea is not as strong as coffee enough to keep me awake.  I drink coffee in the morning, in the afternoon, and sometimes decaf at night.  My teeth have started to turn pale yellow a decade ago, and now they are almost the colour of an egg yolk.  I started substituting coffee for water a couple of months after I started university, around that time my pee started to smell like caffeine.  Yes, I’m a coffee addict!  And whenever people would tell me to lay off the coffee, or stay away from Tims or Starbucks and Second Cup, or retire my coffee maker at home, I would hiss at them and say “Nevahhh!” and exhale my very potent coffee breath in their nostrils.

Okay, I’ve didn’t do that last part to anyone.  I’m not that mean.  And my teeth are not really the colour of egg yolks.  But back to tea.

So, we went to a tea house after dinner, and I thought that since we’re going to a tea house, I might as well forego the usual bubble teaand go for a hardcore, exotic, bitter-as-a-tree bark, specialty tea that they have.  Then I chickened out and decided to go for the mildest-tasting of their least bitter variety.  I asked the waitress for advice.

Me: I don’t know a lot about specialty teas, which one of these is not that bitter?

Waitress:  *pointing at the pictures on the menu* Oh, this one is better than this one.

I stared at her blankly and said, “Ah.  I see.  Ok.”  I looked at the kinds of tea on the menu: Osmanthus Oolong Tea, Jin-San Oolong Tea, Jin Xing Lv Mu Dan Tea, Qian Xi Hong Tea, Bai Hua Qi Fang Tea, Jin Shang Tian Hua Tea, Hot Rose Tea, Hot Lavender Tea, and many others.I chose Jin Xing Lv Mu Dan Tea, under which, inside parentheses, is the word Chrysanthemum.  I asked for honey on the side (just in case this tea really is “better” than the rest), handed the menu to back to her, and gave her my utmost thanks.  She came back a few minutes later with my friends’ bubble teas, and a few more minutes after that, someone came with a wooden tray holding a freshly dug, two-thousand-year-old Chinese artifact.

And I loved it.  It was like spring in a cup.  It had this delicate aroma that tempted me to keep on sniffing it for hours and hours, but alas, my friends were looking at me, and I knew I couldn’t risk showing them my weird self.  So I took the little shot of honey and was going to put all of it in my tea, hesitated a bit, and then finally stopped.  I searched in the depths of my soul for courage, found some, and proceeded to taste my tea unsweetened.  I found that it did taste a little bit bitter, but it also had a sweet after taste, which I liked.  So I inhaled all the chrysanthemum aroma, took another sip, decided that although I could handle its slight bitterness, a little bit of honey wouldn’t hurt.  I mixed in the honey, I took another sip, and then I was in heaven.  Thirty seconds later, I rejoined my friends in their conversation about everything and nothing and the totally mundane.

Links:Chrysanthemum Tea

BenefitsThe Tea Guide Book