by Eric Brand

As I mentioned in a previous blog, the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou has been an important trading center for centuries. Although Guangzhou is not really a beautiful city, it is full of history and has been continually inhabited for approximately 2000 years. Guangzhou is the center of Cantonese culture, and it is a city that is famous for a wide variety of reasons (food being at the top of the list). Being far from the capital, Guangzhou has long been the site of political revolution. For example, the area near Guangzhou was home to the Chinese hero Sun Yat-Sen, who helped to bring down the final imperial dynasty in 1911. In terms of Chinese medicine, Guangzhou is famous for its integration of herbal medicine into daily life, as well as its markets and Chinese medical universities and hospitals.

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Much of the dietary integration of herbal medicine in Guangzhou can be seen in Hong Kong. For example, all of the 7-11 drinks that I mentioned in my Hong Kong food blog can be found in Guangzhou. In addition to American ginseng and other herbal beverages in 7-11s, Guangzhou also is famous for its small shops that sell turtle shell jelly and cooling teas. It could be argued that the Cantonese use more herbs and drink more tea than the people of most other regions in China, and they sell a comparatively large number of things like fresh bai mu er (tremella fungus) with lotus seeds in convenience stores and other shops.

For Chinese medical universities and hospitals, Guangzhou is regarded as one of the “big five” in China. The top five Chinese cities for TCM universities are Guangzhou, Shanghai, Chengdu, Beijing, and Nanjing. Each has its own distinctive strengths. Guangzhou has recently built a brand new campus and they produce many important publications and studies in the world of Chinese medicine. The proximity to Hong Kong allows many teachers to commute between the two communities, allowing a lot of academic exchange. Guangzhou also hosts several major TCM hospitals, one of which is directly across the street from a huge herbal market.

Guangzhou is built around the Pearl River delta, and its ancient history as a trading center has not diminished for millennia. In ancient times, the rivers were the highways of China’s semi-tropical south, and Guangzhou was perfectly situated to be the hub for all these ancient trade routes. Guangzhou was China’s first “special economic zone,” as it had unique laws governing trade for hundreds of years before modern special economic zones like Shanghai and Shenzhen came about. It was the only area open to foreign trade during the late Qing dynasty, and these trade roots can be felt in its vast herbal markets and tea wholesale markets today.

Tea Market

The tea market of Guangzhou is stunning. It hosts over 5000 tea wholesalers, and covers an entire neighborhood. Said to be China’s largest tea market, the amount of wholesale tea moving through this place boggles the mind. The tea market is difficult to explore because each stop requires one to sit down and drink a variety of teas, making it an all-day endeavor just to penetrate a single block of this huge district. There is a stunning variety of every type of tea and the prices are outstanding, but the vast scale of the market makes it slightly intimidating to the novice enthusiast.

I’ve never succeeding in penetrating beyond a few dozen shops, but I always try to visit the tea market when I pass through Guangzhou. Different teas can be visually similar, so it is important to taste and smell the tea. Thus, it is a time-consuming process to learn how to discern quality and value, and I always find myself walking away from the tea market completely lit up after putting back pots and pots of different teas while chatting with the different vendors. It is possible to learn a lot if one can rap with the vendors in Mandarin while asking progressively more informed questions, but the knowledge required to truly be an expert in tea is endless. Like many martial arts, medicine, or other classical Chinese arts, the art of tea is simple but staggeringly profound, virtually impossible to master.

While I am certainly no expert in tea, I do quite like it and I try to learn the basics. Tea is just one species but it has many different cultivars, like apples. There are many production regions and each has favored different characteristics over the ages. The drying leaves are traditionally fermented to specific degree based on the variety and the region.

Tea generally ranges from green to black, depending on the degree of its fermentation. At the light extreme of this scale is “white tea,” which is totally unfermented. However, despite the popularity of white tea in the US, most Chinese people have never heard of it. Green tea is the standard unfermented Chinese tea, and it is not impossible that white tea is largely a phenomenon of Western marketing. Black tea in Chinese culture is called red tea because of the color it makes the water, and is only famous from a few growing regions in China. Most black tea in China is imported from South Asia, particularly India. By contrast, the native Chinese teas are generally processed into green and oolong varieties.

China’s most famous green tea is arguably long jing (dragon well) tea, which is grown in the area around Hangzhou’s breathtaking West Lake. I was fortunate to hit Hangzhou right at the harvest season last year, and the long jing is truly fantastic when it is fresh. It requires very short steeps and makes a very mild, light, and delicate brew. Typically it is stored in a refrigerated vacuum-packed bag at the wholesale market to keep it fresh beyond that perfect season. Jasmine green tea is also very popular, especially in Northern cities like Beijing. Jasmine tea is made by drying tea and jasmine flower petals together. (Beyond Chinese green tea, Japanese green tea is a whole genre of its own, deserving of its own blog. I know little about Japanese tea but it can be quite fantastic, the best type that I tried actually had flecks of real gold in it, apparently it is consumed around New Year’s. )

Oolong refers to a type of tea that is partially fermented, in this sense it is an intermediate category between green and black tea. Taiwanese oolong tea is particularly famous, with the high mountain growing regions being preferred. Another tea cultivar called tie guan yin (Iron Kwanyin) is also partially fermented; tie guan yin is a distinctive and popular tea. Tie guan yin grown in Fujian province is comparatively unfermented (green) and floral, while tie guan yin grown in Taiwan is usually deeply fermented (more towards black). Teas with a mid-degree of fermentation are considered to be easier on the stomach than green tea.

Pu er is a distinctive type of aged tea that is popular in Guangzhou. The classic tea to accompany a meal of dim sum is “ju pu,” made with pu er tea and ju hua (chrysanthemum). This is particularly good because dim sum is oily, and pu er is thought to have pronounced efficacy in helping to digest heavy and oily foods. Modern research has shown that pu er has the ability to reduce cholesterol, and pu er appears to be unique among tea varieties in this action. Pu er is often made from wild tea trees in China’s southwestern Yunnan province. It makes a strong, slightly musty red tea, and it is deeply fermented (it is like black tea but it has its own unique category and is not considered to be a black tea).

According to Chinese medicine, tea is bitter, sweet, and cool. It enters the heart, lung, and stomach. It disinhibits urine, clears the head and eyes, and eliminates vexation and thirst. Tea is indicated for headache, clouded vision, excessive sleeping, and vexation and thirst. It is found in the classical formula chuān xiōng chá tiáo sǎn (Tea-Blended Chuanxiong Powder), which treats external contraction with headache. Tea (chá yè) may also be used for hangover. It additionally disperses food and transforms phlegm, and can be used for food accumulation and phlegm stagnation.

As Guangzhou hosts Southern China’s largest herbal marketplace, I will be devoting a separate blog to this fascinating market. Readers that enjoy the travel tales should check back with us in the next day or so to learn more about the sights and smells of this huge herbal trading hub.

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