After class today we went to a tea house (茶馆). Authentic "Tea Performance" and all that. Our assistant/chaperone/TA Wang Laoshi told us a ton about real Chinese tea, where to get it, preparation, aging, (only for one kind) etc... We tried three kinds, Kungfu Tea, Green Tea, ans Jasmine Tea. The Kungfu aka Wulan tea was the best, it almost had a sort of sweet kick to it. It's also apparently the most expensive. In the picture above, the little brown cups have Wulan tea in it that you're supposed to drink in three sips, no more and no less. The tall clear glasses are for the green tea and the squat cups are for Jasmine tea. Apparently, guys are supposed to only use one hand to grip the saucer, cup, and lid all together and drink it. If you use two hands, Confucius' spirit comes down and gives you cancer and irritable bowel syndrome.
After that, we went to a dumpling place. It had the standards, with shrimp, chicken, mushrooms, all on the menu. One curious member of our party asked if they had dog. They did. So I had a couple dog (狗) dumplings, all the while thinking of Mattie. They were actually not that great. The spices in them were nice but the meat itself was nothing special at all. 不好吃
PS I hope these images are posting and formatting correctly. I can edit the blog but have no way of actually reading it since the blogger.com domain isn't banned but apparently blogspot.com is. I also can't see comments.
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