Rickshaw Iron Buddha Tea
Posted by AxelPrice on June 8th, 2013
This is proper Chinese Tea. Its distributed by Unilever Singapore Pte Ltd out of Mapletown Business City Singapore. It has finished its recommended brewing time. And I sip.
I don’t have the words. I dont mean that as some kind of superlative. It tastes like tea without milk but of a kind that I'm not familiar with. And even if I was familiar with the subtle differences between different blends of tea and also knew enough words for flavour, words like tart, or smooth, or bitter, but more accurate than these, they feel clumsy, are clumsy, against the reality of another sip.
Its colour is orangey brown, too orangey and translucent to be beige. There is still vapour wafting faintly from it five minutes after boiling. I can see the whiteness of the cup clearly through it, it is not that strong. Not that bitter, tea without milk sometimes tastes quite bitter to me, it is not so.
As far as I can see it is best before 14th September 2013, and I bought it in July 2012. The packet has a gold rickshaw silhouette and Chinese letters on it. It is coloured rich orange on the rickshaw side fading into the a marbled faded pink white colour, with brown characters. I guess the characters colouring is supposed to look like ancient ink. I know that Chinese script has shapes that can represent their subject, maybe I can make out a rickshaw character, maybe I'm looking too hard. I guess the background colour deliberately represents the colour of the tea. Makes me think of an enormous Chinese Red Lantern, a promotional exhibit in a Singaporean mall that I snapped. I thought it was like a Chinese John Lewis equivalent.
I don't know if this tea is popular in the East. Dregs are much stronger. No spoon I guess, maybe I should try with lemon, I have another 24 of them. The packaging looks cheaper than something like PG has in the UK, so maybe not popular, but their home market has less per capita so I guess I still know nothing.
The back says that the Rickshaw Chinese Tea blend is a refreshing and aromatic cup of tea which is ideal for your hectic lifestyle. But I already had something like five coffees before I drank this, I haven't got any sugar left for coffee and there's no lemon too.
Noah Eric Bunn, from Northampton, can be contacted via facebook or his linkedin page. Mr. Noah Bunn was very impressed with the Rickshaw Iron Buddha Tea and warmly recommends it.
