"More tea, Vicar?"

In Eastern China, drinking tea is a big thing.

Seemingly, almost every night, people get together and relax going through the process of making tea ("brewing up" would be doing the 'performance' a injustice)

We were invited to a lady's brother's tea room - he actually rents a 'room' down a (very dark, dingy and frankly scary) alley JUST to make tea with his friends. He had box fulls of tea, carefully labelled, some of it up to 100 years old, and very valuable. The label on the box relates to it's age, type & province where it was made. The process of boiling (mountain) water, cleaning the leaves, straining it all, and repeating each step time after time is fascinating.

We tried various types - some very dark & heavy, others light and easier to drink....wine tasting has NOTHING on this!!

The next night, we were invited out again, and I found it hard to say "no" - my hosts are so kind. This time I ended up in someone's house, but with people wandering in & out, it all felt a bit sort of Mafia-like....the guy making the tea was clearly "Mr Tea" or even "The Big Boss", like in the Bruce Lee film...a bit of a Godfather-type figure who never smiled. He did (a bit) when I plucked up courage to ask if I could take a photo. He kept looking at me, and obviously asking  / talking about me, and I kept babbling on about Earl Grey, PG Tips and Yorkshire Tea - promising to bring him some from my next trip home. Really, I wanted to be sure I'd just get out alive.

I asked what he did for a living and all I got was "The Big Boss", which made me shit my pants.

He showed me a photo on his phone of David Cameron drinking tea. He asked who he was, and then jabbered to his friends, as if to say "Kill the bastard" or "Bring me his head on a plate".

Then he showed me various photos of young ladies making tea. I asked if they were of his daughters, and some people laughed. I realised the photos were the equivalent of us Brits looking at photo's of a half-naked Kylie on a bucking bronco, or a topless girl sat astride a throbbing motorbike...

He gave me some tea as a gift. Again, very generous.

I got out alive, too, which was even kinder of him.

Maybe I read it all wrong....but, I intend to keep my promise of bringing him some tea back from England. It would be the decent thing to do...

He also has my business card with my name on it....