Tea

茶 (chá) is tea, and 喝茶 (hē chá) is to drink it. 请喝茶 (qǐng hē chá), please have some tea, is one of the first things a 客人 (kèrén), a guest, hears in a Chinese home or office.

Teas by colour

Chinese names its teas largely by colour, and one of the colours does not match English.

So if you want what a British café calls tea, ask for 红茶 (hóngchá). Ask for 黑茶 (hēichá), literally black tea, and you will get a different, darker family of teas altogether.

Green tea is the everyday one: more than half of all the tea China produces is green. Oolong comes from Fujian, most often traced to the Wuyi Mountains, and Taiwan grows celebrated oolongs of its own.

Morning tea

In Guangzhou and Hong Kong, going for tea means going for dim sum. Cantonese 饮茶 (yǐnchá), to drink tea, is a morning out with the family, with small dishes and endless pots of tea. In Mandarin you would say 喝早茶 (hē zǎochá), to have morning tea.

Two fingers on the table

In the south, and among Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, people often tap two 手指 (shǒuzhǐ), fingers, on the table when someone pours their tea, instead of saying 谢谢 (xièxie). It is a silent thank you.

The story usually told is of an emperor travelling in disguise who poured tea for his servant. The servant could not kneel to thank him without giving the game away, so he bent his fingers on the table instead, a little kneeling figure. Historians doubt it happened; the habit is real all the same.

The tea that went round the world

珍珠奶茶 (zhēnzhū nǎichá), pearl milk tea, is what English calls bubble tea or boba. It comes from Taiwan in the 1980s, where two teahouses, one in Taichung and one in Tainan, both claim to have invented it. 珍珠 (zhēnzhū) means pearls, the chewy tapioca balls at the bottom, and 奶茶 (nǎichá) is milk tea: you already have 牛奶 (niúnǎi), milk, and 茶 (chá).