Vietnamese culture explained by a cup of tea
“The aroma of this tea reminds me of burning wood fire in an old villager’s kitchen.”- said Vi, as we sit and have tea together in a very special tea house in the middle of the bustling Ho Chi Minh city.
The tea place
Hatvala is not like any other coffee shop or tea house in Ho Chi Minh. The tea is brought to this city by an ethnic woman named Nguyen Thu Ngoc. She has lived here most of her life, but still longs for the sophisticated tea taste of her home town.
Her childhood home, Lao Cai, is in the northern part of Vietnam where the most remote, most majestic mountains are. That is also the area that is home to Vietnam’s most ancient tea trees.
With a deep passion for tea, Ms. Ngoc, the founder, decided to establish her own tea business. And since 2012, Hatvala has been telling stories about Vietnam culture through cups of tea to people who stop by.
After the noise of the door being opened and closed ceases, the room returns to silence. A staff person greets me with a smile, hands me the menu and lets me have a look at the tea shelf. It was quite a new world to me when looking at the tea names and the label.
As a young Vietnamese, living in a modern world, I don’t know much about tea. I’m not even sure I like it. So I asked Vy, the staff person who greeted me, what her favourite kind of tea is. She paused for a moment to think, then she said there is one kind of green tea she really fond of: “I like to drink it in the morning, because the aroma of this tea reminds me of burning wood fire in an old villager’s kitchen. It just makes me feel warm.”
I have never heard anyone describe a drink “as warm as a kitchen fire” before, so I know what I have to do.
“I would like to try it.”
Vy nodded with a smile.
The ceremony
“First the water, second the tea, third the cup, forth the pot, fifth the people.” (Nhất thủy, nhì trà, tam bôi, tứ bình, ngũ quần anh) that is the five basic factors that Vietnamese traditional tea drinkers keep in mind when they want to make the best of their tea time.
Vy put a wooden tray on the table, with all the tea tools on it.
First the water.
Each kind of tea will have to be brewed with its suitable water condition. If the water is too hot, the tea leaves will be burned and taste bitter. If it’s not hot enough, you cannot extract the most of its taste.
“It’s important to mind the water temperature,” Vy said while waiting for the water to boil. “Usually when we have guests, we will use a small thermometer to inform the temperature. But we actually never use it when we drink tea on our own. When you drink tea long enough, you will know when it’s the right time by observing the steam.”
Not just the temperature. In the past, when tea drinking was a really important thing, people would even be picky about what water they would choose for their tea.
In July, 2019, when I was traveling to Hue and met a tea host there, Thư, made me a cup of tea from the water of a waterfall she brought home from one of her past trekking journeys.
The best kind of water you can use to brew your tea is the water in the middle part of a river, when the water does not flow too fast or too slow,” Thư said.
Water element is also one of the key elements in Vietnamese life. Because this country is nourished by the rivers, since the beginning the people have shown respect for water. There are many religious beliefs and rituals that revolve around water. In a tea ceremony, Vietnamese consider water the first factor that affects the taste of a cup of tea and put a lot of effort to getting it right.
Second the tea.
When the steam from the boiling pot started to rise high, Vy used a small wooden spoon to take some of the tea leaves out. She put them on a small tray and showed me the tea. It has a light smell and looks like small shreds of wood.
“Ms. Ngoc is really confidence about what we are doing here. She always said that there will never be a place that sells the same kind of tea,” Vy said while slowly putting all the tea in the pot. After that, she poured a bit of the hot water in and poured it out immediately.
“This is call awakening the tea,” Vy explain.
This helps to get rid of all the dust and moisten the leaves. Then she poured the hot water in the second time, closed the tea lid, and poured more water over the tea pot to keep the whole pot hot. While we waited for the tea to brew, Vy told the story of these small leaves.
When choosing the tea to sell, Ms. Ngoc has to go to the northern regions such as Ha Giang, Thai Nguyen and Moc Chau… to see the tea being processed with her own eyes and taste them with her own senses. The places she went to were not big factories but small farms of local farmers with whom she was acquainted with and trusted.
I heard that story while taking the first sip of my Tiger Monkey tea. The aroma was the same old familiar smell of green tea and something different… There was a smoky feeling in my nose and a bitter sweet, soothing flavor on my taste buds. The aroma and the feeling lingered long after I had swallowed the tea.
“That is why you can smell the wood fire when drinking this tea, because it was pan-dried by hand. The locals farmer but fresh tea leaves on a large pan that was heated by wood fire, then stir them for hours. Commercial green tea could never have this kind of aroma,” Vy continued.
“So, each batch will be different then? If the same kind of tea is being processed in different ways, they wouldn’t taste the same right?” I asked.
“Yes, the aroma depends on many factors: the climate, the weather and the workmanship,” Vy answered while pouring the hot water in the third time.
This procedure of drinking and pouring hot water in was repeated many times until the color of the tea water is light again. That means we have extracted all the flavor out.
Besides the taste, the name of the tea tells another story. The name was also carefully chosen and has its meaning. I later learned that the tea I tried, “Tiger Monkey,” was named after a small festival held by the Ha Giang people in Lung Phin market. This area is also where the tea comes from.
Third the cup, fourth the pot.
The tools in a traditional Vietnamese tea ceremony are also different from the ones Westerners use. The pots and cups are usually smaller in size and extremely diverse in shape.
One tea ceremony will require these tools: a pot, tea cups and a decanter, like the one Westerners often used in wine tasting. When a tea reaches its brewing time, usually 2–3 minutes depending on the tea, the tea host will pour all the tea to the decanter first, then into to the tea cups.
This is to make sure all the tea cups have an equal temperature and intensity. If you pour directly to the cups, the first one will be lightest in taste and the last will have the highest intensity. A decanter also prevents the tea leaves being over brewed by the remaining water inside the pot.
When finished poring all the tea out, the tea host have to make sure the lid is off the pot to let all the hot steam out. If the steam is kept inside, the tea leaves will be over brewed because of the high temperature.
Fifth the people.
When we try a second tea, I notice the small tray where Vy puts the tea tools on. It is similar to the one I saw once in a Chinese tea ceremony.
It is true that Chinese tea culture, influenced many countries around the world. Vietnam was no exception. It is popular to say Vietnam gets most of its tea drinking culture from the Chinese. But there is still this one thing, this fifth factor that makes Vietnam tea drinking different from the rest of the world: the people.
“Fifth the people” means people to have tea with is the last factor that decide how good your tea is. In a Vietnamese tea ceremony, it’s all about the guests, not the tea.
When compared to the Chinese or Japanese tea ceremonies, Vietnamese tea ceremonies are more flexible. It’s not necessary to have a specific place built just for tea like in Japan, or many tea drinking tools and steps like in China. To Vietnamese, enjoying tea is simplified and not restricted to any rules. All we need is a space with open lights, good tea and a companion.
For example, traditionally, the living room will be the place Vietnamese people drink tea. But when the weather’s hot, the tea place can be moved out to the garden. Whereas, in Japan, the performing of tea ceremonies will be held in small buildings that were designed only for tea drinking. This also shows a clear trace of Vietnamese personality: being simple and flexible.
“Actually, it’s still quite vague when addressing the origin of Vietnamese tea drinking. Learning from the Chinese is a fact, but we also have our own tea philosophy and that is to treasure friends and acquaintances whom we enjoy tea with,” Vy said.
If all you have is just a simple pot of green tea, but you’re drinking it with a person you enjoy to be with, then it’s a good tea time. It’s this fifth factor, the people, that makes Vietnamese tea culture… Vietnamese.
Thinking back to the moment when I first stepped into this tea house: the image of the young boy and his buffalo on its way to a foreigner’s home, I realize that it wasn’t just a random passing moment, but represented a small part of Vietnamese culture being spread out to the world. At the end, maybe it is what Hatvala is all about.
