At a new, quaint teashop in the Historic Center of Macau, Rui Rocha, the store owner and current director at the Department of Portuguese at City University of Macau, sips green tea while he recounts how his fascination with the plant boomed decades earlier while on a mission in the Azores.
Sent by Portuguese authorities to comply with best practices set by the International Labor Organization, Rocha was on a mission to classify and detail the workers of the tea industry on the Portuguese Atlantic islands. What he found, to his surprise, were Chinese characters dotted about the tea production process.
“The first time that I went there, I noticed water tanks with Chinese motifs inscribed on their side,” he said. “I wondered ‘why?’ [… It turned out that] in the nineteenth century [the islanders] had recruited two tea experts from Macau to take care of the plantations.”
Explaining that his mother was from Macau, Rocha said that from an early age he used to drink Chinese tea in Portugal, which had been transported from the then-Portuguese-
administered enclave.
Indeed, true to the Macanese style, Rocha’s shop – “Casa da Rocha” – fuses elements of Chinese and Portuguese cultures, in a sense following on from the tradition he spotted during that early visit to the tea plantations.
Located on the corner of Calcada da Rocha and Rua de Santa Filomena, Casa da Rocha opened only in September, though preparations began in earnest in December last year. It mixes Chinese teas with Portuguese sweets and snacks such as Ovos Moles de Aveiro (Yolks of Aveiro), Tortas de Azeitão (Azeitão Tarts) and Queijadas de Sintra (Sintra Cheesecake). They come directly from Portugal, he told the Times, and go down well with both the Portuguese and Chinese living in the city.
“There are some myths about the Chinese in Macau [among the non-Chinese communities] and one of them is that they do not like things that are too sweet. I am not so sure about that,” he said. “I am not finding that.”
The shop fuses elements of Chinese and Portuguese culture, and Rocha noted that this is, in some ways, reflective of the city itself.
“Looking at Macau, you have this 3 percent [which is the] Portuguese community and 97 percent Chinese community,” he postulates, “so it is nice to have the same traditions in this space.”
The wooden tables at which tea is served are formed in a distinctly Chinese shape, including the symmetric right angle patterns commonly found in historic Chinese design. On the table’s surface lies a five-by-five grid of traditional blue and white Portuguese tiles, depicting paintbrush illustrations of mostly birds and flowers. Rocha informed the Times that they were purchased from the Casa de Portugal in Macau.
Although it sells traditional Portuguese sweets and snacks, the main focus of Casa da Rocha is, of course, tea. Rocha’s shop offers around two dozen different types of tea including green, white and red teas, as well as two varieties of oolong and two types of pu’erh (Cantonese: po-lay).
He wants his shop to be somewhere that locals and tourists alike can discover different types of tea as well as socialize with their friends and family. Rocha also believes that it can help to elevate tea consumption into becoming a social activity in itself.
“I think that this is becoming a social place for locals on Saturdays and Sundays – not only for the Portuguese but for everyone who passes through,” he said.
To promote this agenda and put the shop truly on the map of Macau, Rocha said that he doesn’t always charge customers for tea – unless they consume a lot of it, he quickly added. “I think it is better this way because it helps to attract people.”
Once they like the atmosphere, Rocha is betting that they will want to come back.
Nevertheless, putting the shop on the map is still more a figurative intent, rather than an actual one to have it listed on Macau’s Cultural and Creative Map. This is a possibility for the future, Rocha said, but he wants to be careful with attracting tourists due to the store’s size and inability to serve large numbers of customers daily.
“I am interested in having both locals and tourists come to the shop, but I need to be a bit careful about this,” he warned. “We have [in Macau] 30 million tourists every year, so I need to be careful with the publicity […] because if 1,000 people came here, I would not have enough [products] to sell them.”
Tea culture better preserved elsewhere
Rui Rocha
Rui Rocha told the Times that the way in which tea – as a cultural institution – has been preserved in China differs greatly with other parts of the world, as does the way it is enjoyed. The shop owner said that tea in China is often consumed out of large decanters, which allow the leaves to brew for too long, spoiling the taste in his opinion.
Nevertheless, the consumption of tea in China is very much for the sole purpose of enjoyment. Contrast that with Japan, which has managed to preserve its ‘tea heritage’ through traditional and ritualistic tea ceremonies dating back in part to the late-Tang and Song dynasties of China, when the beverage made its way across the East China Sea.
“The traditions in Japanese tea ceremonies are to me very ritualistic. The Chinese nowadays have a much more simplified tea ceremony, with a lot more focus on the flavor, the color and the taste. […] I think [for the Japanese] the end is not to drink the tea, but rather the concept of this kind of mystic ceremony. […] It is more ritualistic and less about the enjoyment.”
“I am not fundamentalist about tea,” jokes Rocha, taking a step back from the seriousness of the Japanese ceremonies, “because, you know, we are not monks.”
It is not just Japan that has managed to imbue tea as a part of its national culture in a way that seems to still elude the Chinese. Britain too, is rising in popularity as an exporter of Chinese tea, with a renaissance in interest among Chinese tourists for what is essentially their own cultural product repackaged in British warehouses.
According to data from Britain’s revenue and customs institution, British tea exports to Hong Kong nearly tripled in the first five months of 2016 when compared with two years earlier, while they doubled in the mainland China market.
The phenomenon prompted Rocha to recall an instance shortly after he arrived in Macau and was offered tea from a well-known British manufacturer of beverages; a brand called “Tetley.”
“I think that is quite unusual, but is probably due to [globalization],” said Rocha. “These new concepts and ideas coming from the West are part of an exchange […] if you can find Buddhist temples in Switzerland, it is really not surprising to find Tetley tea in China.”
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