aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaBy Sheila D'Souza

I was in Japan for 5 years before I came to Seoul , and having a cup of tea at any time, anywhere, was as natural as breathing. 7-11’s, Family Mart’s, Ministop’s were all fully stocked with an assortment of teas to boggle even the British. And I want to clarify here that I am not British; I am from the Canadian Westcoast, where coffee is god and tofu is the meat of choice. I have sacrificed countless nights to this demanding god, who punishes wrongdoings with heart palpitations, shaking hands and occasional dizzy spells (I am a touch sensitive to caffeine). Because of this cursed sensitivity, I often have to turn to the gentler hit that comes from a spot of tea. And I do love tea as well; I still retain enough tastebuds—despite kimchi and dokkpoggi---to appreciate its subtlety. But I have a question for you here in the land of diabetes-inducing canned coffee and pumpkin lattes; why, in the name of all that I hold sacred, is tea so shockingly expensive here? Have I fallen prey to a viciously misleading stereotype that Asians drink a lot of tea? Or does the Korean government place extra-high tariffs on all teas not containing pomegranate or ginseng? If I go out for tea, I am faced with the twin evils of paying almost 4000 won at Starbuck’s for an insipid ‘Tazo’ teabag or going to Insadong. Insadong is stuffed with charming little teahouses, cosily tucked away in kitschy little alleys. Inside one of these tourist traps, with birds fluttering freely about my head, I can order an intriguing tea for an appalling 6000 won. If I am lucky, the tea will be, well, tea-like. If I am unlucky (which is more often than not), I will be served something akin to a warm fruit soup, with enough cinnamon in it for it to qualify as medicinal. While I support culinary exploration, and I applaud those who unhesitatingly adapt to the ways of a new culture, what are those of us who want the reassurance of a regular tea to do? Make the tea at home, you say, skip the drivel of Starbuck’s, run fast and furious past Holly’s Coffee which offends even drinkers of Nescafe with its ‘sweet potato latte,’ and quickly scoop some lovely crunchy leaves of Ceylon into that sieve. The problem is that tea, even in the supermarket, is expensive enough to bring tears to my eyes. If it were a Fauchon tea, the status of owning the smooth gold container with the classy black print on it would assuage the guilt of the exorbitant price. But I am not paying that much for a no-name tea. So I become stingy with my tealeaves; rather than one spoon for the pot and one spoon for me, the pot and I share a spoon of leaves. The tea suffers for it, as do I. At Christmas, my mother sponsors a trip to a European country that shall remain nameless due to its current status as provocateur extraordinaire of non-Christians. This is the first time in dog’s years that the whole clan celebrates the joyous season together, and in between the pots of coffee and endless servings of butter and cream filled objects is tea. The people of this country are as addicted to coffee as any civilized people can legally be, but they also have a profound respect for tea. And tea in this nutty little country-- one of the most expensive countries in the world-- is cheaper than in Korea , which is to most extents and purposes, still a developing country. I buy enough tea to last a year there, but I am plagued by an insistent thought; one of the things that makes all the grease in Danish (there, I said it) and Chinese food more palatable is the tea that is served with it. Wouldn’t samgyepsal go down a little easier if it were tea in those little metal cups instead of water?

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