I Suck At Drinking Tea

in addition to having my hamstring tighten this week and shut down my high intensity interval training, i developed what has become a slight cough. i don't know what it is... my constitution just hasn't been the same lately. i never used to get sick. now, in what seems to be a complete role reversal, i have developed the constitution of my friend (hot amy) who used to be always sick.

naturally, when my father heard that i was sick, he came up with this idea that i should drink some concoction of tea that would cure my body. ancient chinese secret! my father has a habit of proposing eastern medicinal remedies to cure things. he's definitely a big believer of these "ancient chinese secrets". he also believes those "as seen on tv" gadgets are amazing too, which is probably why i tend to dismiss a lot of the things my father says about the ancient chinese secrets.

needless to say, when my father told me that he would make some special tea for me, i shook my head and said "here we go again". but, as the dutiful son, i humored him and agreed. yes, i suck at drinking tea. (pictured below is the tea.)



anyway, my father made what is known as "wong lo kat" herbal tea. not that i read the asia times online or anything (because i don't)... it seems that this type of tea is actually quite well known.

"According to traditional Chinese medical theory, this kind of herbal tea, or liangcha, is known for being able to remove the 'spiritual heat and dampness' from one's body to retain a healthy balance of the 'basic elements and fluids' in the body.

As more and more young people became fond of drinking liangcha, sales of the herbal tea hit 4 million tons last year, overtaking Coca-Cola as No 1 soft drink in China by sales volume. Industry insiders are confident that annual sales could even grow to 25 million tons by 2010, beating Coca-Cola's global sales...

Liangcha's history can be traced back to 1813 when Guangzhou was hit hard by an epidemic. To get away from the city, a man named Wang Zebang took his family to a mountain, where he met a Taoist priest who gave him a special recipe to cure the disease. Wang then searched the herbal ingredients and prepared the tea, which proved effective for illnesses.

Wang then opened the first liangcha shop called Wanglaoji (Wong Lo Kat in Cantonese) in Guangzhou, and he also made the recipe public.

Over time, the receipt for liangcha has been altered with the emergence of various herbal-tea brands that have been passed down from one generation to another...

The popularity of traditional herbal teas was partly prompted by the 2003 SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak, which pushed health matters into people's consciousness."

anyway, i drank the tea. it wasn't bad. it doesn't taste like a traditional tea as it has more of a bitter taste to it, but it was still drinkable. we'll see how much of the spiritual heat and dampness it removes from my body.