解，绿茶

Apparently, green tea, no matter Chinese or Japanese, while elegant, sweet, bitter and delicate all at the same time, is a 'cooling' sort of tea that shouldn't be drunk daily. Honestly, for me, my body doesn't react to it either, so I don't care. I like the bittersweet flavors very much and will drink it often in a week. It's a lovely tea to be drunk on its own, and balances the heavy textures of mooncakes at Mid-Autumn Festival.

For two weeks, along with certain lightly oxidized oolongs and young raw pu'ers that leaned more towards green teas, other proper Chinese green teas were also tasted- Long Jing (西湖龙井), Biluochun (江苏碧螺春), Hui Ming (浙江惠明茶), Mao Jian (信阳毛尖), Rainflowers (南京雨花茶), Kai Hua Long Ding (开化龙顶), et cetera. Was very busy taking notes. Not just tasting notes, but also the ever-changing taste of the tea depending on how old it is, the quality of the tea leaves, etc. Also, to see if it's possible for me to brew a Chinese green tea similar to the notes of 'gyokuro' or a 'kabusecha'.

Generally, green tea is best drunk freshly plucked and packed. Should we want to keep it, the fridge will be a good idea. However, refrigerated teas should only be kept up to a year, and no more. By then, while it would be perfectly drinkable, it would have lost a lot of the crisp fresh floral notes associated with quality green teas. There's green tea (绿茶), and there's green tea (青茶) that's more like a young oolong or raw pu'er. Reading those notes almost put me to sleep. The lines, varieties and production methods of green tea are as 'cheem' as the pu'er. Haizzzzz.

Importantly, I also experimented with teapots to see how best to bring out the flavors of the green teas from different regions. The teacher decided that it was high time for me to learn about teapots and how its clay, color, shape, height and size affect the flavors of different teas. This thing about teapots, is going to be a life-long learning journey. There're like a zillion things to learn about teapots. How I wish they can just talk to me and I can skip the step of trying to remember all the pointers read in order to select the most appropriate teapot to brew the tea of choice.