Rosie & Java – Keemun Peony
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Today is Kai Nian (开年), the second day of Lunar New Year. Traditionally – according to visitbeijing.com – shops and businesses offer sacrifices to the God of Fortune. The five main sacrifices being “a whole pig, a whole lamp, a whole cock, a whole duck or a live red carp”.
It’s nice that ‘lamp’ is an option there if – like me – you need a vegetarian alternative to the whole animal sacrifice thing. Unless, of course, it’s a typo and one is supposed to use a lamb rather than a lamp, in which case us vegetarians are out of options.
Today is also Ying Xu Ri, which is the day to welcome sons-in-law to the family and it is also the birthday of the Chinese god, Che Kung, so there’s plenty to celebrate.
I’m celebrating with Rosie & Java’s Keemun Peony. This is a delightfully robust black tea from Qimen in China’s Anhui Province. The ‘peony’ part of this tea’s name is a reference to its flowery bouquet.
And yes, I can confirm that this tea is very, very flowery. Outstandingly so. Normally a teamonger would need to slip some actual flowers into a blend to get something this flowery, but here it comes entirely from the tea cultivar. Tea is magic stuff, isn’t it?
The result is a really satisfying black blend that I enjoyed immensely. It’s fragrant, flavoursome and not so delicate that you can’t add a splash of milk to it. (Although I appreciate that I’m quite the philistine for doing this.)
I’m not sure if the God of Fortune accepts tea offerings instead of farm animals. But if he does, I’m sure he’d be very happy with this one.
Today’s featured book is Chinese Fairy Tales And Legends by Richard Wilhelm and Frederick H Martens.
