A paradise for tea lovers
Hong Kong-style milk tea is one of the things that fuels the former Crown colony, and even the newly fashionable trend for drinking coffee hasn’t changed much there (although a few splashes of coffee have fallen into the milk tea, creating yuanyang, a new drink unfamiliar to most Westerners).
Completely different varieties of tea are available at the Lock Cha Tea House, from green, white, and yellow to light green, red, and black. Since 1991, the founder Mr Ip Wing-chi has been importing directly from tea farmers in China and has thus set standards in Hong Kong: the fair trade tea is unblended, pure, single-harvest, and comes from individual estates. Special packaging and advertising are deliberately avoided, so that you only pay for the quality, and nothing else. The company’s success has proved him right and now it is exporting its teas all over the world.
Info
Address G/F, The K. S. Lo Gallery, Hong Kong Park, Admiralty, Tel +852 2801 7177 | Public Transport MTR Island Line (blue), Admiralty Station, Exit C1 | Hours 10am-8pm, 9pm on Saturdays; closed every second Tuesday of the month| Tip During a walk through the park do not miss out the Youde Aviary, a huge walk-through aviary that is home to over 90 different species of birds indigenous to Southeast Asia.
The Lock Cha Tea House itself is a true temple to tea, where you can not only drink it but also admire or buy it. Particularly interesting is the Chinese Pu-erh tea, which is compressed into round, flat cakes. It is fermented twice, has a distinctly earthy taste, the colour of cognac and, like wine, it gets better with age. Some particularly valuable tea cakes are over 50 years old and in the hands of collectors.
Each table has its own kettle from which you can pour water onto the tea leaves, which are brought to you in tiny pots. One of the friendly staff members then advises you on how long each tea needs to infuse, and how to pour the golden liquid into an even tinier cup. In addition, Lock Cha offers a long list of truly delicious vegetarian dim sum, and since 2001 it has been running two music programmes on a weekly basis.
The K. S. Lo Gallery that houses the tea house is actually a new old-style extension to the Flagstaff House Museum of Teaware, one of the oldest colonial buildings in Hong Kong.
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