Tea With Lemon

There was this hottest post about lemon tea in the Hong Kong blogosphere about 4 days ago, which in Internet time is like 4 years. In a mad dash not to be light years behind this blog hype, I now shall litter the blogosphere further with my own lemon tea post. Most people have one, but this one is mine.

Here are my random thoughts about the whole thing written in the the wee hours, not an excuse for poor writing though. It's not like I write any better in the day or in the afternoon for sure.

The reason why this was hot was because it was one of the composition topics for a public exam in Hong Kong. What makes it interesting, for one thing, it's really an open ended topic, i.e. you need a bit of imagination or literary bullshit skill to crank out a short piece in the time alloted. And Hong Kong students are always perceived as lack of imagination so this seemingly innocuous topic is indeed very challenging for most of the brain dead students. The equally interesting but more controversial part is because one private tutor, a famous one I suppose, actually came up with this exact same topic prior to the exam and did a sample piece for his students. That I don't know if it's just pure luck or some shady business was actually involved.

If memory serves me well, I believe "Lemon Tea" and "Lemon Coke" were popular back in the days before Hong Kong was Starbuckazied. Cantonese usually say "lemon" first as I guess a qualifier for the tea, "lemon tea", and "milk tea." While here my experience is most people order coffee and some do like tea and we say it like "tea with milk" or "tea with lemon." One of the biggest difference I can think of is in Hong Kong, the lemon usually is cut in slices and already in the tea when served hot or cold. While here, the lemon is always cut in wedges and put on the side, so you can actually squeeze the juice. On the other hand, it's not that easy to juice a slice or slices of lemon but I guess there is some fun factor to use a spoon to pound on or rather to spear on the slices, I used to do that myself. For me, slices of lemon is more for garnishing than juicing. And sometimes if I think lemon juice is too much or hard core, I would just run the peel on the rim of the cup, the aroma of the zest and a hint of lemony flavor is just what I want. There are myriads of fruit flavored teas but I think tea with lemon is the only one that the fruit is served fresh, most others are just tea infused with that particular fruit flavor, rarely served fresh

Lemon is really a refreshing fruit but unlike other citrus, you almost never ever eat a lemon straight up. Orange, yes, grapefruit, yes, but I can't imagine one eats a lemon all by itself like eating an orange or an apple. You juice it, zest it, slice it and wedge it but you don't just eat it. Salad, seafood, meat, poultry (as tenderizer) and yes tea all can use a little lemon.

Lemon is like the best supporting actor, it makes the leading man look good. And once in a while, the supporting actor actually outshines the leading man. Errr ... sometimes, I feel like that at work too ....