Why the Chinese Don't Count Calories (28 page)

The Chinese adherence to the lunar calendar, which fixes dates according to natural phenomena, perpetuates people’s connection with the natural world. There is a pattern to life in China, and this transmits itself into daily life, even to something as simple as eating regular meals.

Making it work for you

Like the other changes I have recommended for your diet, the incorporation of three real meals into your daily routine is not something you need to accomplish overnight, or stick to rigidly. Nor is it likely that you will be able to make an occasion of every one. But with your new awareness of Chinese food culture you may find you are already moving towards this pattern. And as you grow in confidence you will be able to invite others to share it with you.

thirteen
Drink green and herbal teas

‘[Green tea] opens up the avenues of the body, promotes digestion, removes flatulence and regulates body temperature. ’

LI SHIZHEN (1518. 1593)

On one of my early visits to China I had the good fortune to be taken on a visit to a factory that made rubber car parts on the outskirts of Beijing. Heralded as a ‘foreign expert’ I had to sit through a two-hour meeting in a drafty room without the foggiest notion of what was going on. The only diversion, apart from a glossy photo of a sandy beach with an emerald-green sea, was a chipped, lidded mug full of a pale yellow liquid, with a few floating leaves that was topped up as quickly as I could down it. Such was my introduction to Chinese tea, and I was immediately impressed with its powers. Despite being badly jet-lagged and three months pregnant, I managed to see the meeting through to its conclusion without falling asleep.

Chinese tea is green tea. It originates from the same plant as the black tea (
Camellia sinensis
) that is generally enjoyed in the West as a milky brew, but its leaves undergo less processing. Legend has it that Chinese tea (
cha
) was discovered by Shen Nong, ‘the Father of Agriculture’, who spent his life tasting wild plants to see their effect on the human body. One day, having eaten some poisonous plants, he picked some tea-leaves, brewed them in a pottery tripod and drank the liquid. The toxins disappeared from his body.

Originally viewed as amedicine,tea gradually became popular as a drink among Chinese scholars, who found that it cleared the mind and gave them inspiration. Unlike Chinese food culture, which has its origins in the habits of ordinary people, tea drinking first found favour among the educated, the powerful and even the wealthy. In an environment at risk from dissension, corruption and extravagance, tea represented tenacity, purity and simplicity, the
yin
to counterbalance the
yang
. There is no doubt that it has a role to play in modern society.

In the famous
Classic of Tea
, written by Lu Yu in the Tang Dynasty (eighth century), tea is claimed to be an important elixir of immortality. Lu Yu’s book contains ten chapters and covers everything from the origin of tea and where best to grow it to how to make it and appreciate it. But more than this, it makes tea-drinking into an art form, creating the concept of the tea ceremony and a tea culture. Most importantly of all, it attributes a moral aspect to the art of tea-drinking, using it as a manifestation of the Taoist belief that man is an integral part of nature.

During the Tang dynasty the ten main benefits of Chinese tea were thus summarized:

1. Improves health and relieves headaches and fatigue

2. Helps dispel the effects of alcohol

3. Allays hunger

4. Keeps the body cool in summer

5. Prevents drowsiness

6. Can purify the mind and dispel worries

7. Helps digest greasy food

8. Eliminates toxins from the body

10. Aids self-knowledge.

If I haven’t convinced you to put the kettle on, perhaps the findings of modern scientists will. Two thousand years ago the Chinese people found out what modern research is just beginning to unveil: our bodies need protection from the ravages of nature, and one of the best forms of protection is provided by nature itself. It is now known that a by-product of the metabolic process, free radicals or ‘highly reactive molecules’, are involved in the progression of many modern killers,including heart disease and cancer, and are responsible for much of the ageing process. Plants contain substances called antioxidants, which allow them to mop up the excess free radicals that are produced when they absorb energy from the sunlight. Animals don’t produce antioxidants in the same way, so they need to eat plants – which is why the Chinese soon worked out that ‘vegetables are the dishes’. But it is simply not possible to consume sufficient volumes of plant material to obtain all the antioxidants we need – and in any case, some of the best sources of antioxidants are not particularly palatable.

Green tea is made from the young buds of the leafy bush, which are carefully picked and dried immediately by a light steaming or firing process. Natural enzymes present in the freshly plucked leaves cause them to auto-oxidize, but this process is checked by the gentle heat so that the antioxidants in the leaves are preserved. In black tea, on the other hand, the auto-oxidation process goes unchecked, producing a darker colour and stronger flavour but also destroying some of the antioxidants.

Millions of Chinese people start the day by putting a pinch of dried tea-leaves in an old jam jar and adding hot water. They keep it with them, confident in the knowledge that, wherever they go, they only have to ask and someone will dig out a flask and top it up with boiling water.

I had first enjoyed Chinese tea with my young teacher, Hong Yun. When the confines of her small apartment became too restricting we would take our books to a small teahouse overlooking the lake in Tuan Jie Hu (Union Lake) park. Like all true Chinese teahouses, our retreat did not serve food, apart from the odd dish of melon seeds, dried figs or boiled peanuts; the tea experience needs no complement.

Hong Yun was young and trendy and she was a fan of plain green tea,
lu cha
. Older Chinese people often favour the flower or jasmine tea called
hua cha
, which has flowers added to the leaf before drying. It was many years before I ceased to be daunted by the amazing array of varieties and grades of tea or to appreciate the differences. I was fortunate in my time in Beijing in that tea is probably the most regularly given gift by Chinese visitors, and as we held an open house our shelves were stocked with some of the top grade teas in China.

China’s finest green tea is from the hills beside the West Lake in the eastern city of Hangzhou. I visited this scenic area when my children were aged ten, eight, four and eighteen months. As our bus wound its way up the hazardous road I occasionally relaxed enough to marvel at the endless terraces with their neatly pruned bushes.

During the evening entertainment of karaoke and ballroom dancing that is an essential part of such expeditions, I nursed my tall glass of fine green leaves, noticing how they stood upright on the bottom. The distinctive characteristic of Hangzhou’s
Long Jing
(Dragon’s Well) tea is that the leaves are flat, rather than rolled, which leads to this unusual presentation of the drink itself.

It is unlikely that you will be able to adopt the Chinese tea habit overnight. I didn’t really take more than the occasional cup until I started to use up my supplies by serving green tea in my cooking school. A few diehards would demand coffee instead, but I made many a convert, myself included.

Unlike tea and coffee, which provide a quick fix often followed by a let down, green tea is refreshing, thirst quenching and gently stimulating. As well as being worthy of the most special occasion, and even its own ceremony, Chinese tea can be an anytime drink. I too adopted the jam-jar habit until the day that I turned up with it at a parent–teacher conference and the children started a list of ‘embarrassing things that my mother has done’. The jam-jar, it appeared, was even worse than giving lectures on Chinese vegetables to fellow parents or putting Shitake mushrooms in their lunch-boxes.

There are hundreds of varieties of green tea, but it is not the only health-giving infusion in China. A Chinese tea-shop is a true Aladdin’s cave. Colourful flower teas promise subtle and delicate flavours: rose buds are believed to sooth menstruation and cure stomach pains; chrysanthemum (to be used in moderation) cools the body. Grain teas are an economical option: barley helps digestion and recovery from heat exhaustion; corn promotes urination.

Nutritional supplements are big business in the twenty-first century. With their extensive knowledge of the curative powers of natural ingredients, Chinese herbalists had the same idea centuries ago, but instead of packaging therapeutic ingredients in silica capsules they served them in teas. I have already discussed how nutrients in liquid form are particularly effective, and a cup of herbal tea also serves as a tasty drink. Understanding that nature never intended micronutrients to work in isolation, and that different types of people have different tastes and needs, the Chinese herbalists, over the years, devised a number of combinations based on the Chinese concept of eight treasures, or
ba bao
. The various flavours and properties of the ‘eight treasures’ in
ba bao cha
(eight treasures tea) are harmonized by a few lumps of rock-sugar. (Unlike refined white sugar, rock-sugar is believed to have many benefits to health and not contribute to weight gain. ) If you are fortunate to have access to a good Asian supermarket or Chinese medicine store you can try
ba bao cha
for yourself, and possibly get advice about which variety is most appropriate for your constitution.

Although the ingredients of eight-treasure tea vary, the key ones, which are pretty universal, are all now recognized in the West to have benefits for health. You will also recognize them from the list of foods to prolong life mentioned in Chapter Eleven, as they are important foods in Chinese dietary therapy. Added to green tea, they enhance its health benefits with flavour. Hawthorn,
shan zha,
provides additional antioxidants that have anti-viral, anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties. Wolfberries (
gou qi zi
) have been heavily marketed in health food shops in recent years, as they are one of the richest sources of vitamin A and iron. The Chinese date or jujube (
da
zao
) is an unassuming fruit that grows abundantly in the hills around Beijing but is bursting with micronutrients, including Vitamin C and several B-vitamins as well as a host of antioxidants to fight those free radicals. Dragon fruit (
long yan
) is also packed full of vitamins, including B1, B2, C and amino acids.
¹⁶
Then there are lotus seeds, lily buds, dried apricots, or stronger herbal ingredients such as ginseng.

Chinese herbalists did not isolate vitamins, let alone fatty acids and antioxidants, but they knew a lot about the curative powers of natural ingredients, much of which the West has yet to fully understand. Hundreds of folk stories exist promulgating the benefits of Chinese herbal ingredients. There is the story of the stepmother who tried to kill her stepchild by feeding him undercooked rice, but because the child feasted on hawthorn berries (
shan zha)
from the fields every day, he did not even suffer from indigestion. Then there is the tale of the defeated army cut off and stranded on the mountain, surrounded by their conquerors. It was assumed that they would starve to death, but instead they survived by eating ‘mountain medicine’ (
shan yao
) and a year later reappeared and scored a decisive victory. The details may be blurred or exaggerated, but the messages are clear.

And like the other secrets of the Chinese diet, the tea habit is one that you can adapt to your own tastes and lifestyle. Many Western herbal teas are bursting with health benefits, some make use of Chinese therapeutic ingredients: ginger and fennel help digestion, as does liquorice, which is also an energy tonic. Cinnamon is warming, peppermint is cooling. Then there are European plants: nettle cleanses the liver and is a mild laxative, camomile is a sedative, and verveine a nervous tonic. All these options, and green tea, are now available from most supermarkets and more and more food and beverage outlets are providing them too. Look out for loose teas if you can find them since the tea-bag varieties are inferior to the fresh – with green tea in particular, they are usually made from the ‘dust’ which remains after the whole leaves have been boxed. But any green tea is better than no green tea.

Think of these drinks as an addition to your usual routine. Have them on hand to quench your thirst or fill an idle moment. As your body begins to feel the benefits you may find that the caffeine-loaded stimulants you have relied on until now begin to lose their appeal.