Capsules, beers, an app – that old drink, tea, seen as ‘a gateway to Chinese culture’, evolves to draw Gen Z in Hong Kong

When Ip Wing-chi, the owner of Hong Kong tea retailer and teahouse LockCha, was asked to serve something with oomph for the June 2018 opening of heritage and cultural centre Tai Kwun – in which one of his Chinese tea-houses resides – he went with something totally off-menu. Filling 5,000 reusable bottles with water, beneath each lid he hid a clip for holding a tea bag. The bottle would be turned upside down when it came time for steeping, and right-side up to avoid prolonged soaking. Ip says he chose to create cold-brew teas because there was no way his team could boil water fast enough to serve the swathes of visitors; they were also a means to build a rapport with younger customers, who were likely to prefer a chilled drink on a sweltering summer day. Since then, LockCha has undertaken other projects not normally associated with traditional tea-houses. Ip, for instance, has collaborated with local brewery Heroes to roll out four types of beer, made with rose red tea, phoenix oolong, jasmine green tea and even the acclaimed pu’er – a prized commodity that, as of December 2021, has landed on Sotheby’s’ prestigious auction podiums. Originating from the plant Camellia sinensis, tea has enjoyed countless evolutions in China. Advancement has traded the once elaborate tea ceremony – during which poets and academics might while away the day discussing ideas and politics as they admired each other’s ceramics collections – for convenience. “Tea is a historical product, and time has changed the way we appreciate it, giving it many interpretations,” says Ip. “Add milk and you have English tea; while the invention of bubble tea targets those with a preference for on-the-go, sugared drinks. “However, tea’s purpose in improving our physical and mental well-being remains. This also explains why tea has prevailed for centuries, and why, in the long run, unhealthy variations like bubble tea won’t stay around.” Said to have been a fortuitous invention back in the Neolithic age, when a tea leaf fell into an emperor’s cup of hot water, tea was extensively traded and consumed around China as early as the Han dynasty (206BC-AD220). How Hong Kong-style milk tea in the UK is giving émigrés a taste of home Its first shift came around AD760, when Lu Yu, a Tang dynasty poet, wrote the first recorded monograph for tea titled Cha Jing – meaning The Classic of Tea – depicting its horticulture, tools, production and more. Following the process described by Lu, tea cakes were ground, cooked in a brazier and consumed from a tea bowl, this method requiring a total of 28 utensils. Like Lu, Buddhists of the time ascribed mystical properties to the brew and it became understood as a pathway to wisdom and enlightenment. This cha dao – “the way of tea” – mesmerised scholars and nobles alike. How do you take your tea? For ancient Chinese, with salt or as soup A few decades later, the wealthy Song dynasty introduced the meticulous practice of whisking powdered tea – a technique that remains prominent in Japan and is often complemented with games and competitions. This fascination with tea appreciation lasted for more than three centuries but fell out of favour with subsequent rulers, who preferred simpler methods such as pouring hot water directly onto loose tea leaves – an easy approach that soon gained ubiquity. Diversity in tea appreciation has trickled down to modern Hong Kong, where it is most commonly drunk as a companion to dim sum, using tea bags of varying quality, but might also be found in gimmicky fusions in cocktails and chilled, sugared drinks sometimes frothing with cheesy foam. Tea Château, a tea capsule brand under health company Vita Green Health Products, has been spreading the gospel of conventional tea appreciation by cutting down its lengthy process to a mere 30 seconds. Since 2019, it has offered blends for weight loss and skin health as well as single-origin teas ranging from the common jasmine to the prestigious monkey-picked tieguanyin. Ryan Tse, founder of Tea Château, says the brand is all about mass appeal. “Since the dawn of tea bags more than a century ago, there haven’t been any significant breakthroughs. We want to find a middle ground between poor-quality tea bags and high-end loose-leaf teas,” Tse says, adding that the difficulty of getting a good cuppa limits its audience. In addition, unlike coffee shops, tea-houses in the city are few and far between. “It also hasn’t gained popularity because whenever you want to sit down and appreciate a cup of tea, you must listen to the whole story of the plant, where it’s from, the seasonality, before you even get to try it. We want to reverse that: drink it, like it and then come and discover more.” Hong Kong start-up Lify Wellness (pronounced “life-ey”), meanwhile, has paired the convenience of capsules with data-backed algorithms to accentuate tea’s myriad health benefits. Via its app, users receive a flavour recommendation after completing a questionnaire covering their gender, age, tendency to catch colds, quality of sleep and more. Founded in 2017, Lify Wellness offers functional blends as well as longer programmes – similar to juice cleanses – such as the Long Covid Relief Pack that tackles symptoms including fatigue, insomnia and irregular menstrual cycles. Currently, the company is working on an artificial intelligence facial scan that detects the heart rate and vitals to better hone its recommendations and track health progress. “We don’t compare ourselves with traditional Chinese tea; instead, we are a supplement to your wellness routine,” says Lify Wellness co-founder and CEO Mazing Lee Ming-sum. “When tea becomes such an everyday product, customers can use it to maintain their health without the need to seek a Chinese medical practitioner every time a problem arises.” Neither Lee nor Tse believe their products go against tradition. Rather, they say they are appropriating the best historical practices into modern life. May Chan Xiao-wei, certified tea master, instructor, appraiser and founder of Homeland Tea Garden, a teahouse and academy in Hong Kong’s Wan Chai district, says these convenient modifications are necessary for newcomers to appreciate the true cha dao. “It’s a stepping stone,” Chan says, adding that she’s seen a steady rise in students seeking out tea’s traditional forms for their health properties. She attributes this to the growing number of partnerships between mainland China – home to abundant tea farms – and Hong Kong, where designers are coming up with more attractive packaging and marketing, whether for international or local markets. As demand for quality and variety rises, Chan says research and development in China is also catching up, with stricter regulations in agriculture, institutional guidelines for tea-related professions, and more studies in tea’s benefits across medicine and skincare. The current challenge, she says, is a lack of education and qualified educators in Hong Kong to take mass interest to a new level. “Right now, there’s no tea institution in the city, meaning most practitioners in Hong Kong don’t have the knowledge to make blends or even differentiate them. That’s why we still see a lot of single-origin teas,” says Chan. The great tea robbery: how the British stole China’s secrets and seeds “Tea is a gateway to Chinese culture, history, etiquette, our values. It’s so much more than just a drink.” LockCha’s Ip agrees, adding that a complex, historical subject such as tea can only attract new enthusiasts by appealing to, as it has so many times in the past, the zeitgeist, even if that means toppings of foamy cheese or rainbow-coloured hundreds and thousands. “We can’t be so stubborn and fixated on something just for the sake of it,” Ip says. “Look at the journey of coffee: it went from something very complicated to instant mixes and, eventually, Nespresso capsules. Now people want to go back to basics and dive deeper. “The same goes for tea: we expect nothing less.”