Hakka tea making custom

In the profound tea art of the motherland, tea is a unique wonder. This custom generally exists only among the Hakka. When making tea, the wrestler sits down, clamps a ceramic bowl between his legs, grabs a handful of green tea and puts it into the bowl, holds a half-meter-long stick, and frequently pounds and rotates. While beating, he constantly added sesame seeds, peanut kernels, and herbs (vanilla, yellow flowers, incense leaves, phylloscopus, etc.) to the bowl. When the contents of the bowl are pounded into a shredded paste, the tea is beaten.

　　The Hakka family in Meizhou is warm and welcomes guests with tea. Hospitality tea is divided into two kinds of meat and vegetarian. Serve vegetarian guests to drink, add peanuts, cowpeas or soybeans, glutinous rice, kelp, sweet potato noodles, dried japonica rice flour, cold dishes, etc.; for meat eaters, add fried shredded meat or small intestines, sweet shoots, shredded shiitake mushrooms, fried tofu, vermicelli, chives and other ingredients.

　　Jiexi and Puning guest areas are also popular in the custom of drinking tea. In the summer, this is even used instead of lunch. The tea is made of peanuts, oil and hemp, fragrant tea leaves, garden incense, gold does not change, bitter and spicy cores, etc., placed in a threaded clay bowl, and made with wooden sticks.

Hakka tea (Image source: Jiexi Travel WeChat, photo by Li Weizhao)

　　Jiexi Tea is a traditional famous point in the Jiexi area of Guangdong Province, which belongs to the Cantonese cuisine family. The Hakka people in Jiexi are known for the custom of boiling tea, in summer and autumn, the weather is extremely hot, people often do not want to eat after work, often take tea as lunch. At noon, the guests come to visit, and the host's family must cook dishes to entertain. Before the girl gets married, all the neighbors who accept the candy must also cook a bowl of fragrant tea for the bride to eat to express congratulations, and in addition, the newly cured patients in the family should also cook some tea to invite the neighbors who have taken care of the patient to eat to express their gratitude.

　　The main ingredient for the production of Jiexi Tea is rice or popcorn, but the ingredients are complicated. First, put peanuts, sesame seeds, tea leaves, gold or bitter spicy cores in a bowl, beat them into a paste with a tea stick, rinse them with boiling water, and then sauté some dried radish, cabbage, green onions, shallots, soybeans, tree vegetables and so on in a casserole dish. Or mix it with lean shredded meat, dried shrimp, squid, etc., and finally mix the cooked white rice (or popcorn). Especially on the seventh day of the first lunar month of each year, every household eats tea, because it is the first seven kinds of seven dishes, so it is called "seven kinds of vegetable tea", and there are also fifteen kinds of dishes, which are called "fifteen kinds of vegetable tea".

　　Jiexi tea has salty, fragrant, sweet, bitter, sweet and other flavors, drinking it feels that the throat is refreshing, swinging intestines, has a different charm, and is still a "reserved program" for Hakka hospitality. There are hundreds of thousands of Hakka compatriots living in Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and they still retain the custom of making tea, communicate the feelings between people through tea, and stimulate people's patriotic enthusiasm and homesickness.

Source: Guangdong Provincial People's Government Local History Office Published:2020-09-03 18:38:05 Author:Guangdong Provincial People's Government Local History Office