Two new kinds of tea
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Since I wrote The True History of Tea (2009; now available in a number of foreign languages and coming out in pb on 1/27/26), I've been a tea aficianado and connoisseur, so I was stunned when five days ago I learned of the existence of two types that are completely new to me.
The first is called Adeni tea, and I was privileged to taste it at Haraz Coffee House that recently opened next to Penn. It is run by Yemenis, who really know their coffee and serve mouth-watering pastries, many of which I had never encountered before.
I already had a good impression of Yemeni food purveyors when I stopped at a Country Market by the side of Old Route 30 in Svensen WA run by a mother and her son, though I didn't have any hot, freshly brewed tea that time.
The Yemeni tea I had a few days ago in Philadelphia is a kind of milk tea and is called Adeni tea. Normally when I drink tea, I like to feel the tea leaves in my mouth, but Adeni tea is a type of milk tea in which the tea is ground or pulverized into a powder, so the resulting beverage is a bit thick.
As soon as I saw the name "Adeni", I immediately thought of the Gulf of Aden, a strategic waterway that leads through a narrow, dogleg passage to the Red Sea, and thence to the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean. Indeed Adeni tea comes from the city Aden which lies on the northern shore of the Gulf of Aden just before it turns and goes up into the Red Sea.
The local names for Adeni tea are:
Shahi haleeb, shai haleeb, haleeb shai, shai Adeni, or shai mulaban…. [It] is a Yemeni milk tea. It is made from black tea powder brewed in condensed or evaporated milk. Cardamom pods and cloves are usually added to the tea, some recipes include added sugar. The tea has a very sweet taste and is popular in Yemen and parts of the Arabian Peninsula.
As you would suspect, "shai" is the phonetic transformation of "chai", and "haleeb" is an Arabic word for "milk", though milk is also referred to as "laban" in Arabic. Haleeb حليب is fresh, unsoured milk, whereas laban لبن refers to yogurt or a fermented milk drink. However, in Egyptian Arabic and, I think, in other Arabic topolects, "laban" can also be used to refer to milk. It seems that, depending on the context, "laban" can mean either milk or yogurt. Perhaps Language Log readers who know Arabic well could explain how haleeb and laban are used in daily life.
The other new "tea" I learned about a few days ago but haven't yet had the opportunity to try is miànchá 麵茶 (lit., "flour tea"). A colleague who had lived in Beijing for a couple of decades told me that it is very common there. I thought that was weird, because — between 1981 and 2012 — I myself had spent a total of more than a year in Beijing (most of my time was spent in the far hinterlands) and drunk countless cups of tea there, but never heard of "flour tea".
When I looked it up, the online translators all said something like "noodle tea" (miàn 麵 / 面 [never mind that the simplified characters borrow the sinograph for "face" to stand in homophonously for miàn 麵 ["flour", but also means "noodles", because noodles are made from flour, don't you know?). Only Google Translate had ("seasoned millet mush"). So it wasn't "tea" after all.
Somehow or other, my instinct (dìliùgǎn 第六感 ["sixth sense"]) instantly told me that this "noodle / flour tea" was some kind of Manchu substitute for genuine tea (from Camellia sinensis), like Korean barley "tea", which is liquid, not mushy).
"Noodle / flour tea" has another, equally unobvious, name:
Chatang (Chinese: 茶汤; pinyin: chátāng; lit. 'tea soup') or seasoned flour mush is a traditional gruel common to both Beijing cuisine and Tianjin cuisine, and is often sold as a snack on the street. Depending on the region, it can be made using flour from one or more of a number of grains, including sorghum, broomcorn millet, proso millet, glutinous millet or wheat. The Chinese name is figurative, not literal, as there is neither any tea nor any soup in this dish.
There's yet another whimsically named variety:
Seasoned oily flour mush (Chinese: 油茶; pinyin: yóuchá; lit. 'oil tea') is a variety of seasoned flour mush made by stir-frying, or sometimes pan-frying, the flour with animal fat, typically beef fat. Beef bone marrow may also be added. After frying, it is served in the same manner as seasoned flour mush.
Just as I was about to close this post, I remembered that I used to relish something called tsampa when I travelled in the Himalayas:
Tsampa or Tsamba (Tibetan: རྩམ་པ་, Wylie: rtsam pa; Chinese: 糌粑; pinyin: zānbā) is a Tibetan and Himalayan staple foodstuff; it is also prominent in parts of northern Nepal. It is a glutinous meal made from roasted flour, usually barley flour and sometimes also wheat flour and flour prepared from tree peony seeds. [1] It is usually mixed with the Tibetan butter tea. It is also eaten in Turkestan and Mongolia, where it is known as zamba.
Note that tsampa has some actual Tibetan butter tea mixed in with the glutinous meal and other dry ingredients.
If anyone can tell me where in the Philadelphia area I can get "seasoned millet mush" or Tibetan tsampa, I'd be much obliged. Also, I'm still looking for good mushu / moo shu served in thin pancakes (a friend kindly made some for me at home, but I'd like to be able to buy it in a restaurant too).
"Muxu meat dishes: the art of bricolage" (7/30/24)
Selected readings
- "Two brews" (2/6/10)
- "The mystery of 'mouthfeel'" (11/2/16)
- "English incorporated in a Sinograph" (11/18/19)
- "Sinographs for 'tea'" (1/10/19)
- "Multilingual tea packaging" (4/7/18)
- "Caucasian words for tea" (1/26/17)
- "Trump tea " (1/13/17)
- "Free Tea" (11/15/16)
- "Ace love" (4/4/24) — boba tea that tastes like real tea
- "cactus wawa: the strange tale of a strange character" (11/1/14)
- "Cactus Wawa revisited" (4/24/16)
- "Bubble tea blooper " (9/28/17)
- "Lap Sangsouchong " (12/3/14)
- "Kung-fu (Gongfu) Tea " (7/20/11)
- "Lap Sangsouchong " (12/3/14)
- "Taiwanese Twosome: tea and Sino-Korean" (6/25/25)
- Victor H. Mair and Erling Hoh, The True History of Tea (London: Thames and Hudson, 2009), especially Appendix C on the linguistics of "tea".
wgj said,
August 2, 2025 @ 11:10 am
It's always been my strong suspicion that 面茶 is a misspelling of 面碴 (flour grind), the same way corn grind (and corn grind soup) is called 棒子碴 in northern China. It has in fact absolutely nothing to do with tea.
Nick Kaldis said,
August 2, 2025 @ 11:11 am
Hi Victor, your description of Adeni Tea and its appellations calls to mind the orchid-tuber powder-based drink popular in Turkey, Greece, and elsewhere: Σαλέπι/Sahlep/Sahlab
Victor Mair said,
August 2, 2025 @ 1:40 pm
@wgj
"面茶 is a misspelling of 面碴"
That's a brilliant suggestion. The two writings are perfect homophones: miànchá.
I think they substituted 茶 for 碴 because it's much more familiar and easier to write.
Your suggestion of bàngzi chá 棒子碴 ("corn grits") as an analogous term is also excellent.
Victor Mair said,
August 2, 2025 @ 1:49 pm
Nice to know about Σαλέπι/Sahlep/Sahlab. Do you know if it is served anywhere in Philadelphia — or Binghamton?
wgj said,
August 2, 2025 @ 3:29 pm
Besides flour tea, Beijing also has almond tea 杏仁茶 – a thick, white soup that is slightly sweet and tastes like almond. It should be noted that the classic Chinese almond is made from apricot seed (as indicated by the Chinese word), which is different from the Western almond made from almond seed (both plants belonging to the genus Prunus), and has a slightly sweeter and less bitter taste.
Like flour tea, I suspect the name almond tea to be a misspelling as well. Today, almond tea is even harder to find than flour tea, so if you didn't know flour tea before, chances are you've never heard of almond tea either.
David Dettmann said,
August 2, 2025 @ 4:22 pm
I think the Mongol borrowing of the Tibetan word tsampa замба refers to the toasted barley flour, regardless if it is dry or mixed with tea, dairy, or anything else. I wonder if the Tibetan usage is also the same in that regard?
There is a lovely Tibetan restaurant on Ridge Ave in Roxborough called White Yak that toasts and grinds their own barley for cooking. In my experience they are willing to make Tibetan specialty items on request, especially if Chef Treley is there. They have Tsamthuk on the menu, which is a soup made from Tsampa, daikon, and spinach. But if you wanted just butter tea and tsampa flour I'm sure they'd oblige: https://www.whiteyakrestaurant.com/
It seems Millets are a common traditional tea addition from Manchuria through Mongolia all the way to Kazakhstan. In Kazakhstan today there are pushes to make traditional Kazakh foods more commercial and more globally known, and the Sandyq restaurant group has created a successful chain of cafes named Tary (Тары is the Kazakh word for broomcorn millet). Philadelphia's new Kazakh restaurant Silk Way serves тары шай (millet tea), and the Tary chain even opened a location in Chicago in 2023:
https://astanatimes.com/2023/11/tary-cafe-brings-kazakh-culture-in-heart-of-chicago/
Victor Mair said,
August 2, 2025 @ 5:04 pm
Au contraire,wgj, I did have almond tea when I was in Peking.
David Dettmann said,
August 2, 2025 @ 5:30 pm
Mongolia must have some of the world's most surprising additions to tea. Or perhaps we can count these as a range of meals that are just called "tea" because that is an ingredient?
At level one you can get tea that is boiled with salt and milk, and it only gets more layered from there. Milk tea with small meat-filled dumplings (bansh/банш 扁食) is a popular option, as is tea with shredded borts/борц air-dried jerky and sheep tail fat. Here are a few examples of noodle "teas" featured in the expanded 2nd volume of the Modern Nomads cookbook Уламжлалт монгол хоолны 99 жор ["99 Recipes of Traditional Mongolian Foods"], Admon publishing, 2018:
бантантай цай [bantang/бантан is a porridge made of tiny hand-rolled noodles with etymology from the Northern Chinese 拌湯]. In this case tea is fortified with alkaline salt, ghee, tail fat, and milk, along with the tiny couscous-like bantang noodles.
гурил тасалсан цай – "tea with cut noodles". This tea is made with the same ingredients as above, minus tail fat but with fresh cut wheat flour noodles.
And my favorite is using very hot milk tea to refresh a bowl of cold fried tsuivan [炒餅】noodles creating a rich noodle soup: сүүтэй цайтай цуйван "tsuivan with milk tea". This last one is not in the cookbooks but it is on the Modern Nomads menu as Yapon juulchin/Япон жуулчин "the Japanese Tourist", named for a tourist who struggled to find this "dish" after experiencing it likely as breakfast leftovers in a home-stay situation.
I wrote a blog post about that last item a few years ago:
https://asianmarketsphilly.com/2020/10/25/breakfast-tsuivan-submerged-in-hot-milk-tea/
Jonathan Smith said,
August 2, 2025 @ 5:32 pm
Misspellings are possible but maybe not so likely since such folk concoctions are found all over and are called the 'tea' word — e.g. Taiwanese mī-tê 麵茶, hīng-jîn-tê 杏仁茶. So the 'tea' etymon (etyma?) has lots of applications beyond tea proper — e.g. any esp. hot beverage ("coffee-tea" = coffee), or even just hot boiled water such that referring to tea proper calls for specification.
Martin Schwartz said,
August 2, 2025 @ 6:27 pm
I stumbled upon a Yemeni coffee house in Berkeley–it had
memorably unusual coffee and marvelous parstries.
I encountered a different Yemeni coffee in an Arab restaurant in the East Bay.. Yemeni cafés seem to have become popular in NYC.
Martin Schwartz
Victor Mair said,
August 2, 2025 @ 7:01 pm
One can find thousands of "麵/面碴" on the internet. It is a thing.
Han Lee said,
August 3, 2025 @ 2:57 am
Tea was first domesticated and used in beverage by Proto-Austroasiatic peoples ancestral to the various indigenous tribes of southwest china such as the Wa, Ta'ang, Blang, Khmu, Mang, Paliu, Bugan, Lawa,… and to many marginalised Austroasiatic ethno-linguistic communities in india such as the Shompen, Khasi, Pnar, Nicobarese, Santhals, Korkus,… but now it seems that tea is something that becomes mostly associated with Chinese origin and Chinese/Japanese heritage.
wgj said,
August 3, 2025 @ 12:55 pm
@Han Lee: I've had several conversations about the origin of tea processing and domestication with various Chinese anthropologists (some are Han, others not), and none of them think it's of Han origin (this is in contrast to silk, where both Han and non-Han origins are theorized). The consensus seems to be that it probably originates in the mountains of Sichuan-Chongqing-Guizhou-Yunnan, but not closer to the coast (Fujian-Guangdong-Guangxi).
Since they're anthropologists and not agricultural botanists (I haven't met any who specialize in tea yet, unfortunately), the basis for their belief is not genetic, but cultural: The most primitive way of drinking tea – sun-dry the leaves (which cause them to slightly ferment given the high humidity in the mountains) and put them in hot water, nothing else – is still found in ethnic minority communities in those regions.
There are also numerous historical literature in China more or less attesting the mysterious Bo people 僰人 who used to live in the above-mentioned Sichuan-Yunnan mountain corridor as those from whom the Han people first got tea through trade. So I'd say there has never been a serious effort by the Han to claim tea as their own invention.
Stefan Krasowski said,
August 3, 2025 @ 3:27 pm
Yesterday I tasted for the first time 黄金茶 (huangjincha). I had gotten it on my most recent visit to Sanqingshan in Jiangxi. Any small towns or nature spots in China that I visit, I ask about 野茶 (yecha 'wild'/local tea).
Sanqingshan produces a number of typical teas, and then the headliner, the merchants say, is the huangjincha. It is a strong and distinct flavor, may me take a while to work through the bag. I forget what medicinal benefits the merchants claim.
Baidu page (https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E9%BB%84%E9%87%91%E8%8C%B6/2013842) summary via Google Translate: "Golden Tea is a functional green tea made from the tender leaves of Chimonanthus salicifolius, a plant of the Chimonanthus family. This semi-evergreen shrub thrives in the pristine mountains of Sanqingshan, Jiangxi Province, and Baojing County, Xiangxi Province. Unpolluted and pure, it embodies the essence of nature and the spiritual energy of all things. This tea breaks the tea industry's myth that only high-altitude teas are good. This high-quality green tea, produced at low altitudes of 280-500 meters, boasts a theanine content of over 6%, making it the highest-quality green tea in China."
I like Sanqingshan and have been several times. It is UNESCO-listed, though overshadowed by more famous mountain spots, so not too crowded. There are two villages with cable cars. The bigger one has most of the accommodation and shopping. The other has just a handful of 农建饭馆 (nonjia fanguan) 'farm family' restaurants (the type where you pick out from what they have in the display fridge), a few tiny guesthouse and the big Hilton. 赣菜 Jiangxi food is very salty, otherwise quite tasty, and not food you get much anywhere else since they don't produce the migrants and marketing of some regional cuisines. A 5-day pass to the mountain, including cable car unlimited access, is great. The five-day pass is tied to ID and not set up for foreign passports so the ticket office staff rotate through their own IDs to sell them to foreigners. I hike each day and sometimes pop over to the busy town via double cable car trip.