A Chinese Green Tea

The large bag of Chinese green tea stayed unopened on a shelf dedicated to tea in our kitchen cabinet. The tea was a gift from one of E's graduate students who had declared that it was an example of a typical Chinese green. I removed the tea from its resting place and examined the unopened bag: all Chinese characters, save for several words which I hoped would shed light on the tea's provenance. A quick Google search of the few words I could read revealed the tea to be one from Anhui Province. Supplied thus with this scant knowledge of the tea, I brewed it for 3 minutes, a typical brewing duration for non-Japanese greens, and in water around 170F.

The tea brewed up a liquor that tasted steamed and faintly briny, reminiscent of a Chun Mee, and indeed typical of what you would expect a Chinese green to be.

As I drank my tea, I enjoyed the nuances that continued to surface with each sip. This was one of the rare times drinking tea when I was not armed with descriptions, often fanciful, of the tea's nature, its scents and flavors. There were no passages on the bag -at least, in a language that I could read- extolling the riots of flavors, from steamed artichokes to ripe honeydew melons, that would tickle my palate. I felt unencumbered as I sipped my tea, free to form my own impressions, my appreciation unsullied by preconceptions.

I thought about the reliance that we place on the "liner notes" that often accompany potentially enriching experiences. How many times have I gone to a new exhibit at our art museum and launched forthwith into reading the curator's notes accompanying a work of art before I would feel properly equipped to appreciate the artistic piece? Did I not trust my sensibilities enough to stand before a painting without possessing any prior knowledge of it? I have felt then that my appreciation of the painting would somehow be richer if it were informed by the impressions of an "expert". I was fettered by a desire to make my own impressions congruent with someone else's, and in the end, I found this burdensome.

Now, I brewed a second infusion of this Chinese green tea and detected, without a doubt, a note of overripe honeysuckle.