In Japan, tea growers abstained from greasy food before picking tea, lest the impure breath they exhaled spoil the fragrance of the leaves. They also wore gloves while picking, to avoid touching the leaves directly with their fingers. No one had heard of such taboos in China, however, because gloves themselves were a luxury.
Japan, like China, produced tea, but mainly green tea, with powdered tea and sencha as its predominant forms. It was said that these techniques had been brought over during the Tang dynasty and then adapted locally. Europeans generally had little interest in green tea. Although Nick had often drunk green tea at salons before, it tasted completely different from the tea he had drunk in China.
People in Guangzhou drank tea regardless of morning or evening. Whenever the mood struck, they banished themselves into a little world suffused with the fragrance of tea.
Tea had originally been one of the Thirteen Hongs' major exports. Yet as more and more Wuyi Black Tea was exported, Xiamen began replacing Guangzhou as the principal port for the tea trade. Nick guessed that this was because Europe's water was mostly hard water, making black tea better suited to European tastes.
Dream of the Red Chamber recorded a tea master named Miaoyu, who brewed tea with snow and rainwater collected from plum blossoms. Such a thing was unimaginable in Europe.
Then there was the Japanese tea ceremony, another difference Nick had discovered between Japan and China. Before Japanese people, one had to make smacking noises while drinking tea or soup. The louder the sound, the greater the recognition and praise for the other person's labor; it meant "delicious." In China, making noises while drinking tea or soup was extremely rude. Not only would it make one seem odd, but elders would