Winter Cherry Blossoms

Winter Cherry Blossoms

Curiousity got the better of me. I mean, any flower tea by the name of "la mei hua" or winter cherry blossoms (rough translation) is too bitchy to give a miss. I've done my routine of chrysanthemum, rose, and other types of flower teas. What I have not tried, however, is this winter cherry blossom tea.

Fully formed yellow flowers are packed in a clear package. I could even feel the flowers shiver on the branches in the snowy winters, when they are brutally taken off their willowy stems and dried to become flavouring agents for hot water. Such awfully brutal beauty! Such an abrupt end to existence - at the peak of life.

So, I bought a whole packet of flowers for about RMB 6 (S$ 1.20, USD 0.70).

When I reached the hotel room, I opening the package and inhaled what I had expected to be a nice, sweet, tingling, fragrance that my mind has come to associate beautiful flowers with. Alas, as usual, the biologists are dead right again!

The flowers stink of wax. Wax! Yes, that very thing that you make candles with.

So I took out some flowers and steeped them in a glass of hot water.

The flowers floated and most eventually sank to the bottom of the cup. The rest are suspended in the water, floating as though they have just fallen their branches in the harsh winter.

Looks not too bad. Tastes...?

Like wax. The tea tastes like WAX! Yucks!

And so, my misery with that large pack of flowers (well, now I know why they say even absolute size is relative!) began.

While I must say that the flowers were great for the eyes and kept my eyes clear and moist in Tibet (those who didn't drink the tea ended up with a layer of thick, sticky discharge over their eye somehow), I hated the taste of it. Once I got used to the climate in Tibet, I stopped drinking the tea.

Many of my group members were surprised how my mother and I could keep our eyes clear. So when I introduced them to the tea, they started drinking too and their eyes got better.

So I guess it works. But I still don't like drinking wax-smelling stuff.

And my bitchy adventure with flower teas ended with this packet of Winter Cherry Blossoms. Thank you. No more... I'll just stick to what the tea joints have to offer. And perhaps jasmine tea...