Hunan Cuisine · FFET10032
Eating Tea Leaves in Changsha
The Qingbai Leichao records that Hunan people chewed the tea leaves as well as drinking the tea, and that Changsha teahouses served it with salted ginger and radish.
A large clay pot of steamed mixed cured meats sends up steam, with cured pork, cured fish and sausage under red chilies, a bowl of chopped chilies sits beside it, and smoked pork and strings of red chilies hang on the wall.
The regional cooking of Hunan, leaning to sour and hot flavours, skilled with cured meats, simmering and stewing.
The entry on tea-eating in Changsha in the Qingbai Leichao, published in 1916, says that the people of Hunan did not only drink the liquid but chewed the leaves too. A second entry, on eating salted ginger and radish with tea, records that in Changsha teahouses the tea server set a small dish with one or two slices each of salted ginger and radish before every guest who sat down, and that some servings put salted ginger, beans and sesame in the tea, called sesame-bean tea.