Over in China this summer Panda Jen and I tried to get a cup of tea. After all the phrase "All the tea in China" is always bandied around to mean that there's quite a lot of the stuff.
We found out that actually this is not the case at all. Spending 4 days in Shanghai looking for tea, we found ourselves in one place where we came in, ordered tea, sat there for more than 4 hours watching passers-by and leaving having been given nothing at all.
In another place when we ordered tea, they brought out two plates of vinegar, which we looked at, scratched our heads and decided against drinking.
In conclusion we decided that either China is just not a place to get tea or the Chinese just could not understand what the hell we were talking about when we ordered "tea please", asssuming that that must translate as "vinegar in a bowl please"
Anyway, I was out at a Chinese place in downtown madrid tonight after work and, lacking both Spanish and Chinese skills I ordered a bowl of rice and some tea.
A couple of minutes later she comes back with a bowl of noodles in soup and a bun, which she explained to me was tea.
Am I a retard or has the entire Chinese population not discovered tea yet?
There could be a market there ya know. Selling tea to the Chinese....
