Panda Poop Tea. Just what we've been waiting for!

{ Pandas make the best tea }  

For the last several years, coffee drinkers would rub our noses in their supposed superiority by throwing their Kopi Luwak coffee at us, by saying, "Ha! We Coffea arabica connoisseurs are willing to drink something a civet cat pooped out, just to prove our dedication to coffee, glorious coffee! You tea poseurs, just keep drinking those Camellia sinensis leaves. You are nothing to us."

Well, tea drinkers, do not despair. We can now drink tea pooped out of an endangered species. An endangered species, I tell you! Stew on that, coffee jerks! Nobody tries to one-up a tea drinker, you espresso-stained morons. Until civet cats are an endangered species, or until you can train white rhinos to eat coffee beans, consider yourselves pwn3d. We're connoisseurs of an entirely higher order than you are. In your face!

Mr. Yanshi, who has begun marketing his product, says the following:

"Pandas have a very poor digestive system and only absorb about 30 per cent of everything they eat. That means their excrement is rich in fibres and nutrients." 

Yanshi - seem here wearing a panda costume - plans to sell his most expensive blend for nearly £50,000 per kilo and aims to secure the Guinness World Record for the planet's priciest cuppa. 

"It has a mature, nutty taste and a very distinctive aroma while it's brewing," he explained.

{ Mr. Yanshi marketing a nice, steaming load of panda tea }  

There. Nearly $80 grand for a kilo (that's European for a pound, or something) of Panda Poop Tea. Now, the discerning (and pedantic) among us might say, "But that's not really a tea, is it. I mean, it's not made of Camellia sinensis, but probably some combination of the leaves, stems, and shoots of the bamboo plant. Thus, more properly, it should be called a Panda Poop tisane." To this I reply, "But it's panda-poop tisane, so stop whining unless you want those coffee-swilling weasels to civet-cat us out of the top spot in the connoisseur food chain. Plus, it's good for you, and it keeps you regular, which is more than one can say about civet cat poop. I can only assume your complaints come from a diet lacking sufficient bamboo nutrition, and I pity your ignorance and despise you." For your edification:

[Bamboo] is low in Saturated Fat, and very low in Cholesterol. It is also a good source of Dietary Fiber, Protein, Riboflavin and Zinc, and a very good source of Vitamin B6, Potassium, Copper and Manganese.

{ Bamboo Yixing tea pot would be perfect for panda poop tea  }  

I only wonder which of my treasured Yixing pots I shall use for my first taste. Perhaps this offering from Primatea, which is like unto a stack of bamboo shoots? I shall post further once my shipment of hot, steaming panda poop tea arrives on my doorstep. You won't want to miss that review, I assure you. "A mature, nutty taste and a distinctive aroma," indeed.

(This post is reposted content. Apparently, people love reading about Pandas, poop, tea, and coffee-drinker trash talk at the same time.)

New Find: Red Circle Tea blog

Red Circle Tea

Today I discovered something new: a blog entitled, Red Circle Tea: Tea aficianados who travel through Asia.


New to me, anyway. I wish I were a tea aficianado who traveled Asia (and the Himalayas, and, well, anywhere, really). So I have found another source through which to live vicariously. [Edit out self-pitying nonsense here.]

The article that caught my eye is entitled, "The dish not made," about traveling to China and being unable to find bamboo sticks in which a traditional Chinese dish is cooked. The writer (I haven't delved deeply enough into the blog yet to figure out who is who) was told by her Chinese teacher that the Chinese diaspora, when they return home, will often find that their favorite dishes are now difficult or impossible to find, because the cuisine is changing so rapidly. But no bamboo sticks?! I'll let the author tell her story.

“Yes! This is a Chinese dish,very traditional and they serve it all over China, of course, and it’s delicious!”  “You know,” she continued,“ my country changes so fast, from one year to the next.  We don’t have the underground metro, then one day, all of a sudden, we do! And food changes too. Steamed Bamaboo is a common dish, but the Chinese here ,if they were born in China, have been “out”- they have not been back in 10, 20, 30 years, they don’t remember their country’s cuisine. Many were born here. They only know what they learn and eat here, even if they speak Chinese. It doesn’t surprise me you can’t find bamboo. Most people don’t know about it.”

I sipped my tea and reflected on this.  It redefined Chinese American life for me all over again. I imagined American-born Chinese learning about their cultural roots from a distance and how one stays connected to that from across an ocean. Well, I surmised, you do the best you can with what you’ve got.

“Anyhow,” she finished “It’s out of season. Try the spring next year.” And with a start, I realized, so they DO have bamboo sticks! It’s just the wrong season! Haha!