Since I’ve started working in Malaysia, I’ve noticed that quite a few cai fan [1] places give provide free tea to go with the food. However, unlike Japan, the tea tends to be oolong. Wondering what kind of oolong it was, I asked and was told that it was “中国茶 (Chinese tea)”.

On another occasion, the office had a little party for the Mid-Autumn festival, complete with tea. When I asked what kind of tea it was, I was told (again) that it was “中国茶 (Chinese tea)”.

Which got me thinking, what is ‘Chinese tea’? It’s definitely not a synonym for oolong because while they were confirming the type of tea in the office, green tea was raised as one of the possibilities.

I did ask my dad, who is much more familiar with Chinese history and culture than I am, if he knew what types of tea ‘Chinese tea’ referred to, and according to him, it refers to all tea coming from China. There is, however, one exception: Black/Red tea. Despite the fact that black tea/red tea comes from China as well, it’s seen as a Western tea and hence not Chinese. [2]

After that, I started to assume that ‘Chinese tea’ referred to any tea that was not a black tea that would (theoretically [3]) come from China.

Googling the question “What is Chinese tea”[4] didn’t turn up much, but I did find one article from All China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives which had this passaged that affirmed my theory:

“您觉得红茶不是茶吗？” (Don’t you think that black tea is tea?)

“我不觉得红茶是中国茶。” (I don’t think black tea is Chinese tea)

深究一下，才发现原来林先生认为红茶不是中国传统茶的品种，绿茶、普洱、乌龙茶等才是典型的中国茶，在马来的华人中间流行。 (Upon further questioning, I realised that Mr. Lim thought that black tea was not a traditional Chinese tea type; Green tea, Puer, Oolong, etc are considered to be Chinese tea in the minds of Malaysian Chinese)

The article only quotes one person so I can’t say for sure that all Malaysian (and maybe Singaporean) Chinese think this way, but it does confirm that this way of thinking is not limited to my Singaporean family and our Malaysian friends.

My final guess on the question: if you’re offered Chinese tea in Malaysia (and perhaps Singapore [5]), you’ll probably be getting green tea, oolong tea, or puer.

Notes

[1] Cai Fan (菜贩) can be translated as economy rice. Basically, it’s a meal where you choose the sides you want on your rice (rather than order a separate dish) and get charged according to the sides.

[2] Personally, I suspect that Britain’s push for an empire kitchen, which would include the shift from green tea to black tea in the nineteenth century, was a huge factor in our perception of black tea as a Western tea. Singapore would be a British colony and Johor was an unfederated Malay state (accepted a treaty of protection with the UK in 1885 according to Wikipedia) and so both places would have had significant British influence.

[3] I put in the word “theoretically” because for really cheap oolongs can be found in Vietnam as well, and I have no way of telling if the free tea is really from China or if a cheaper alternative from Vietnam or some other country was used.

[4] When I googled the question in English, I saw this article by The Star. It focuses on puer but has a very interesting passage that says:

To the Chinese, pu’er has always been thought of as a kind of “poor man’s land” — that is, it is treated like an asset that appreciates in value.

“Tea is cheaper, but like land, its value can also appreciate over time.

“In the olden days, when a child was born, the parents were encouraged to buy tea to be stored away till he reached adulthood.

“It was believed that the value would increase 10 times its original price,” Ong said.

This ‘tradition’ is new to me and I have not been able to find any corroborating sources in Chinese or English. According to someone that I greatly trust when it comes to tea, the intentional ageing of tea is a fairly recent thing (which led to the puer boom) which would mean that tea is not traditionally seen as an investment. There’s a lot of contradictory information on aged tea out there so I definitely want to look into this topic someday – this note is to remind me as much as it is something I noted and wanted to share.

[5] I keep saying ‘perhaps Singapore’ because I don’t see the term ‘Chinese tea’ as much – people are more likely to say puer/oolong/green tea in shops. The generic word ‘tea’/teh definitely refers to black tea, though, and my family uses the phrase ‘Chinese tea’ to refer to non-black tea teas so I assume that Singaporean Chinese and Malaysian Chinese think similarly on this issue.