I saw this in the library and couldn’t resist! It’s my first documentary that I’ve watched about tea (I’m really more of a book person, as you can probably tell) so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

The Meaning of Tea isn’t a history of tea, rather, this show goes around the world and looks at how various people see tea and examines the role and meaning of tea (including bubble tea!) in their lives. Places the documentary brings us to include Morroco, China, Japan, India, and much more.

In terms of information, there isn’t much that’s new here. I did learn about this very interesting bottled matcha – the tea powder is in the cap and is released into the water when the cap is opened. You can shake the bottle to make the tea when it’s released into the water. I have to admit that I’ve never seen that in Japan, but I’m definitely going to be keeping an eye out for that.

For the most part, I enjoyed the interviews with the various people in different countries. The only thing I didn’t quite understand was the order in which the countries were featured. It might be my bias, but I expected China to be the first country since it’s the birthplace of tea. Instead, it was the last – which I get as a final destination thing, but it wasn’t a convincing order since there wasn’t much of a narrative structure.

Overall though, this is a pretty documentary about what tea means to various people around the world. It’s not really a primer on tea, but tea lovers will enjoy learning about how other tea lovers enjoy their tea.

Featured Image: Photo from Canva’s Media Library