Why drinking Lipton green tea from a tea bag makes me angry
Here I am multi-tasking again. By the way, the weather cooled off today, apparently we're expecting a cold front in Shanghai tomorrow accompanied with drizzle...thank you sun, we enjoyed you during your long visit. I'm in a café called Amokka on Anfu Road in the heart of the former French Concession. It's one of those places I hate to love but the coffee is really good and the big tables and good wi-fi connection are conducive to my multi-tasking (eating lunch and working).
But today I ordered green tea as I'm saving my coffee for later. It came in a tea bag labeled Lipton. Now, I'm going to hope that the tea was bagged here in China but I'm sorry, with all the wonderful tea on offer here, must you offer me a bag of Lipton tea? This, at a cost of 22rmb, is actually insulting.
From now on, at places with names like Amokka, I'll stick to coffee and follow my better instincts to Song Fang Maison de thé for my tea-drinking needs. I should have known better. (But shame on any self-respecting café in China for serving bagged green tea. Ahem.)
More about tea in China:
This is always the problem with expat-oriented venues. They charge premium prices for utter crap. 7 years ago I used to have to pay 30 RMB for nescafe instant, because the Chinese didn’t drink coffee and it was a premium. Now the price is the same, but I can get it from Starbucks- though none of this ‘progress’ changes the fact that a cup of joe (or a cup of Lipton’s) shouldn’t cost 5$.
do you speak spanish???
excellent blog!!
I just made this same argument to my company. I don’t know Why in China they would offer the Lipton green tea bag when the loose leaf version is so much better, readily available and I would bet cheaper if you consider you can keep the same leaves and just top up the water all day. This is one of the small luxuries of living in China afterall…..