The Herb and Tea Market

Saturday morning I slept in, for me, and then met Andrea and Deborah at North Gate at 9:15am to make our way to the Chinese Herb Market. The Chinese Herb Market is located on the north side of town and it took more than an hour of navigating though crazy Chinese traffic to get there. But it was worth it. The market was huge and amazing. It is the largest Chinese Herb Market in Southwestern China, and given this is the center of herbal medicine in China, possibly the biggest Chinese herb market in the world. It was about twice the size of the Farmer's Market in St. Paul and had another "everything market" just as big right next door. Inside each stall was about 10ft by 10ft and in it people had huge burlap sacks filled with different dried plants and animals. The wares ranged from the ordinary to the extraordinary. I saw little dried berries, plums, and orange peels which I use in my tea. I also saw deer penis, scorpions, snakes, turtle shells, locus skins, ants, and worms, all also dried of course. The most common things looked like deflated potatoes or wood chips. I also got to see most of the things that were in my formula, all of which are leaves, berries, or roots of some kind. After talking to Andrea about it more, I have also decided not to continue with the medicine. I didn't really feel like I had a problem before, so I feel no need to correct it, although it was a fun experience.
After leaving the Herb Market we rode a little ways back and stopped at the biggest tea market in Chengdu. After the herb market, the tea market seemed quiet, clean, and civilized. The tea market was more a bunch of separate little shops and was much less crowded. We walked into one tea shop that Andrea had been to before with her friend and got to taste two different kinds of teas. Tea tastings are actually kind of elaborate affairs. They have a special board and all these special serving dishes and cups and there is a whole ceremony that goes along with it. First they boil the water and pour the hot water into a little cup with the tea in it and put a little tea lid on top. The first brew they pour on all the serving cups and always make an offering to a little animal, usually a frog, that sits on the board by pouring the first tea over him. After that they brew again and pour it into a little serving pot to pour it into our little cups. We got to try two kinds of tea, both of which were Pu'er. Pu'er tea is a kind of tea that is sold fresh (not dried) in compressed brick or disc form. There are two kinds of Pu'er, sheng and shou. Sheng is freshly pressed where as shou has something added to it I think to aid fermentation. We got to try both. Pu'er tea is like wine or cheese, where the older it is the better. We tried 2 year old samples of both, which were very good. There was a man and his wife who owned the shop and they both sat and chatted with us with there new little baby while we drank tea. The man said that the oldest tea he had was 19 year old. Sheng tea tastes alot like green tea, I think, but it very good. Shou tea, however, is like no other tea I have had before and had a much rounder, fuller, more savory taste. I liked it alot. It was very fun to test the teas and learn about tea culture. The discs you see in the picture are Pu'er teas from the shop. They also like to imprint them with different pictures or designs, often coins.
Today I didn't do anything special, just homework, made bread and watched Firefly. I went over to Matt's house and we made Challah, a Jewish sweet bread. Matt for some reason is obsessed with this bread and bought an oven explicitly for the purpose of making it. Now I see why, because it was delicious. Maybe I have just been having bread withdrawal, but I definitely made up for it today. The bread turned out really well, considering the circumstances. Chinese kitchens usually do not have ovens, so Matt's "oven" is like a toaster oven on steroids but worked pretty well, except for burning the outside a little bit.