Taining Lei Tea

Taining Lei Tea

　　Taining has three types of tea: Hakka Lei Tea, wild vine tea, and lake rock tea. Especially this Hakka Lei Tea — making it is lively, and drinking it is lively too.

　　The Hakka people sit on stools, straddle a clay mortar with their legs, scoop a handful of tea leaves into the mortar, and hold a half-meter-long pestle. They repeatedly pound and twist the ingredients. While pounding, they keep adding things like sesame seeds, peanuts, and medicinal herbs to the mortar. Once everything inside is pounded into a fine paste, the tea is ready. Then, they use a skimming ladle to filter the pounded tea into a copper pot, add water, and bring it to a boil — soon filling the room with its aroma. Taining’s rice-flower Lei Tea also includes glutinous rice that has been deep-fried until golden in oil tea, reminiscent of the fried rice added to Inner Mongolian pot tea. A bowl of this Lei Tea not only quenches thirst but also satisfies hunger.

　　Taining Hakka Lei Tea has a history of over 1,000 years. It is said that during their migrations, the Hakka ancestors worked hard under harsh conditions, which made them prone to “excessive internal heat.” To prevent illnesses caused by the “six excesses,” they often collected heat-clearing and detoxifying wild herbs to make medicinal drinks. Southern China offers many types of usable herbs, and “tea” was one of them. Later, people began adding food to these medicinal drinks, refining them into a highly rustic everyday beverage. Lei Tea welcomes any kind of “ingredient” — you can add almost anything. Pure herbal Lei Tea might include tea leaves, calamus, gynostemma, ligusticum, and sparrow’s foot grass. You can also add “meaty broth” — i.e., various types of meat soup. Ingredients like beans, rice, peanuts, vermicelli, and dried fruits should be cooked first, then poured in along with their cooking water. Mushrooms, bamboo shoots, spices, and meats should be stir-fried separately before adding. Sesame and rice-flower can simply be sprinkled directly into the tea.