Tea Emperor

In this post I introduced the winter’s “must-have-tea” – ginger tea for Chinese people, now I will introduce you another winter’s classic: Red Date & Longan tea.

As its name indicates, the basic ingredients are red date and longan, in addition Chinese often add other herbs in such as goji berries (Lycium Barbarum, goji is the way to pronounce it in Chinese) and astragali radix to enhance the effects. All ingredients have their different functions for maintaining health, but in general they help strengthening one’s Chi and make the blood circulation better.

Therefore, almost all Chinese women know that during the last part of their menstruation circle it is good to have some Red Date & Longan Tea with brown sugar, because it can smoothen the pain of menstruation and help the blood flow in a way that it doesn’t “stuck” inside. In other words, a healthy cycle help women get rid of waste in the body and Red Date & Longan Tea is helpful during the process.

Here you can see the ingredients in my kettle:

Red Date -The red big fruit-like ingredient

Goji berries – smaller ones from the kettle, orange colored berry

Astragali radix – the long-shaped one that looks a bit similar to ginseng

Longan – the black round dry fruit. From the picture you could see two longan.

Besides, I also added in some slices of gingers as well as brown sugar. As Finland is really cold now, -10 to -20 everyday, so I sort of cooked the Red Date & Longan tea and ginger tea together to keep myself warm and healthy.

The ingredients are very common for Chinese, but it could be a bit challenging to get it if there is no Chinese grocery stores nearby in your area. Let me list Chinese names of those ingredients here, which you can print it out and bring with you to stores in case you are in need of them. I don’t know how it is in the States or Canada where many Chinese reside, but in Finland, those ingredients are always big “puzzles” for many Finns. : )

Here you go:

First of all and most important of all, the Red Date & Longan tea in Chinese: (pronounced as guei-yuan-hong-zao-cha)

Longan in Chinese is: (pronounced as long-an)

You might have noticed, the characters of Longan look different from the name of the tea above, right? Actually, longan (龍眼) and guei-yuan (桂圓) refer to the same fruits. When guei-yuan has been dried up, we call it longan.

So, if you go to Chinese grocery store to buy ingredients for the tea, you should buy longan (龍眼) , but to name the tea, you should call it guei-yuan. : )

If you are enthusiastic to know all the ingredients in Chinese, here you go:

Guei-yuan in Chinese:

Goji berries in Chinese: (pronounced as goji)

Astragali radix in Chinese is: (pronounced as huang-qi)

Voila! Now you know one more “tea” Chinese drink for their health!

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According to Chinese ancient wisdom, one of the best drinks during the wintertime is Ginger Tea. Ginger has always played the role of warding off colds and flu in Chinese herbal medicine system, because colds and flu are considered as “coldness” from outside, while ginger can enhance the “warmness” from within.

In fact, it doesn’t take a Chinese medicine practitioner to know the benefits of ginger to human body, because the daily experience has long taught us that ginger always helps when we get cold, and it FEELS good to have many cups of ginger tea during freezing days.

Besides, a Japanese respected doctor and best-seller book author also recommends people to drink ginger black tea for the same reason: it keeps your body warm as well as keeping your whole immune system stronger.

Despite being called as Ginger Tea in Chinese (Jiang Cha), there is not always “tea” in itself. In fact, the most common way of making Ginger Tea, is to peer some ginger roots and slice them into thin slices, add them and some brown sugar into boiling water, wait for 10 minutes then it’s ready. If you prefer, you could also add some real tea leaves such as black tea or green tea, but most of the time Chinese drink it without “tea leaves”.

In next post, we will explain you step-by-step, how to make ginger tea.