A bit of tea...

Today I did something for the first time in my life: drinking Chinese Tea in a proper chinese-tea-ceremony way. It was fantastic!! Drinking traditional tea is actually not really my... well, cup of tea. Tea hasn't been my favourite so far (except Indonesian's (iced) sweetened tea and Teh Botol).

I do enjoy drinking Chinese Tea in Dim Sum place (normally Kuan Yin or Jasmine tea) and Japanese Green Tea in Japanese restaurants (not the instant one, please), but tea has never been my best option, if you know what I mean. For me coffee sits few ranks higher than tea. Never in my office I really stocked up heaps of tea bags. But I did for coffee. I am willing to spend few more dollars to get Bodum's coffee cup, but not for tea. Well, I guess now you've got what I mean.

But apparently, tea for someone is like painting for me. And that 'someone' is a very close relative of mine. She just luuuurrrvvveeesss traditional chinese tea. I am also curious. I also want to know. I am also interested to know more than mere drinking unsweetened tea from a tiny cup.

Hence, today off we (she, my younger sister and I) went to Tea Chapter. The ambience was nice, very peaceful and calm (and smells nice!!) although it wasn't really zen-like. It is just a proper place for drinking (I mean, sipping) hot chinese tea. They have different settings: Queen's setting, Korean setting and Japanese setting. FYI, Queen Elizabeth was indeed there sometime in 1989. You can see many of pictures portraying her watching the procedures and sipping the tea with full concentration. A nice place to just relax and have a chat with your dearest ones (like what we did!). They have some tea-infused snacks also. Let me recommend some: tea eggs, tea beancurd and the heart-shaped rose-tea biscuits. We chose a taiwanese oolong tea (some books say it has slimming effect *grin*), specifically the High Mountain Tea. Very nice aroma. And nice taste also. One very amicable lady gave us a comprehensive explanation about the whole steps, from beginning until it's ready for us to smell (from fragrance cup) and sip (must have three sips, with different significance each, from drinking cup).

I guess it's a very popular place to go for tourists visiting Singapore, as groups by groups of them kept on coming in. We didn't see any local consumers there today. They also have a shop downstairs, selling tea, tea-sets, tea pots, books about tea... It was just like a small tea-museum. It has an artistically-approved setting also. They also conduct a comprehensive course about chinese tea, so for those who are interested, just check it out from the website!

All in all, we've spent a very enjoyable three hours there (please note that during peak hours we can only stay for 2 hours - max). But hey, where's the slimming effect? I want to see proofs and not just some hypothesis... *just kidding!!!*