The age of tea?
Please excuse me for any wrong or misguided assumptions in this post. I’m here to learn.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to individually talk with a handful of younger (20-25) people from both China, Japan, and England on a few separate occasions. Being that I am a big fan of tea, I eventually brought up the question of “Do you drink tea and if so, what kind?”
I know it is a small sample size but out of the 6 or 7 people I asked, not a single one liked or drank tea or really had any baseline knowledge of the different kinds of tea out there. I actually decided to try another unscientific qualitative measure and ask about the same number of young Americans and most actually said something along the lines of, “Yeah, I kind of like Earl Grey from Tazo” or something similar.
I guess what I am looking for is someone with better knowledge of those countries and cultures to ascertain if I just ran into coincidence with the small number of people I’ve asked or it the younger generations typically are not into drinking tea?
Thanks for helping me with my curiosity.
This is a somewhat surprising response because all three countries have their own long traditions of Tea culture. During WWII the British actually bought up all of the world’s available tea crop. China and Japan have an obvious history with tea. Maybe you just found an unlikely sample in your questioning. I guess it is possible that newer generations in these countries are less tea drinkers and more Coca Cola drinkers or such. But this would really surprise me.
That is why I was bringing it up. It was surprising to me as well because I was excited to speak with people from countries where I get so much of my tea. Its why I brought it up each time. Didn’t know if the younger generations distance themselves from it or not.
I had a Chinese coworker at my last job before the store closed. I believe he got his tea from the local Chinese grocery store. I don’t think the average Chinese person in America actually orders their tea online from China. I think that is mostly Westerners doing that. Although he did say he brought back tea with him when he visited China. I think he said he drank Green tea.
I think most of the younger ones will be converts or ones someone has helped on a smaller personal venue. I think the openness to send someone something to try is how we bring them in.
You may or may not find this interesting;
I think it was probably around two years ago but I remember asking on a tasting note what the average age of the tea drinkers on Steepster was/is. I can’t remember why exactly I was curious about it. Of the twenty or so responses I got, the average age of the tea drinkers here on Steepster was around 30-35. I was on the very, very young end of the spectrum: at the time I think I was nineteen? There were a few mid-twenties people, and a couple much older as well (50+). So, that’s a small sample group – but a little more ‘data’ to add to your findings.
Personally, my experience has been that of the other ‘young’ (20-25) tea drinkers I know that I would call more knowledgeable/experienced all of them FAR prefer flavoured blends as opposed to pure tea, and conversely the older the tea drinker I’ve found the more likely that they lean towards pure teas as opposed to flavoured.
Just more food for thought.
Then there are some of us who don’t fit into either category because we like both flavored teas and pure teas too. Although I mostly like flavored teas in herbal blends for drinking when I can’t have caffeine or flavored blends for making iced teas. Given my choice if I didn’t have insomnia I would probably drink exclusively puerh.
That is true. There are definitely exceptions to the general observations I’ve made just through the people I know ‘IRL’. I think I’d probably consider myself in that overlap of people who enjoy both flavoured and pure/scented blends pretty equally. Though maybe there’s something to be said of the fact that I started by drinking exclusively flavoured blends at 18 and the older I’ve gotten (21 now) the more I’ve leaned towards a combination of both. Give it a few years and maybe I’ll be drinking pure teas exclusively?
Out of curiosity, how old are you roughly AllanK? Did you start with either flavoured or pure teas? And how long did it take you to transition to drinking a combination of both?
I’m older than 50 but not near old enough for Social Security. I started drinking real tea during a period in my life when I was sick with digestive disorders and my stomach could no longer take coffee. I was in Williamsburg VA when I discovered real tea at a shop called Discover Teas in Virginia. They are an excellent shop. And I really started off drinking both pure teas and flavored teas from this shop and another in Williamsburg. When I got home from this vacation I was already on my way to becoming a tea drinker and discovered that there was a Teavana in my local mall where they sold real tea. I drank a variety of their teas pure and blends. I didn’t get into puerh and ordering online till somewhat later. Actually I was introduced to puerh by a local tea store called Clipper Ship Tea Company. They had one last ripe puerh bing in stock and I bought it from them. After this I began buying puerh online and just kept buying. They are an excellent store too if you want to look them up they have a Facebook page but no website. Discover Teas has an excellent website and I have ordered from them a couple of times.
I’m in my mid-30s now but started out drinking tea in my mid 20s, bagged stuff like Stash and flavored tea from Teavana. I was a casual tea drinker for the longest. Coffee has always been my go-to drink and it’s only been a couple of years since tea surpassed my coffee consumption.
It doesn’t surprise me that young people aren’t interested in tea. Most people in their 20s prefer strong drinks like coffee and alcohol. Tea requires a mature palette to be able to appreciate.
In Taiwan, they call gongfucha “old people’s tea.” We did an informal survey over there in January and almost all the young people we asked were into bubble tea, and thought gongfucha was for old people. Some young people do drink it with their grandparents though.
I’d say the tea scene in HK is similar. People drink more Indian-style red tea, but with milk or lemon. Chinese tea consumption is pretty much only with meals at restaurants for the younger generation. Similarly it is people in the 40+ category who tend to take their tea seriously here. I remember buying tea from a store that’s been around since the 50s. A young couple came in to buy traditional storage ripe pu erh and just asked for ‘bo lei.’ No discussion of grade, even though the store has several, and sells both loose and cakes.
The pu erh scene in HK tends to be people buying broken up pieces of aged ripe cakes, and rarely, sheng, that have been through traditional storage. You buy the quantity you need and you’re done! The age is never really given at those places—just an approximation of quality (good, superior, etc).
Thank you for the insight. I know bubble tea was popular among younger generations there. I wonder if they wouldn’t consider it tea when asked if they drink tea or if it falls into a different category for them.
So it seems that it is a less fussy type of transaction. Or maybe, less of a specialty hobby like it is for those of us on here?
It depends who you ask. There are eight million people in this city, and 95% of them are Chinese. You can walk into an old tea shop and just ask for pu erh and take what you get, or you can go to specialist merchants and buy a cake that costs as much as a new BMW!
I was always curious about the same related to China. I’ve been to Japan and China, twice each, but even spending a week in a place you really can’t get a feel for what people like for beverages. Working with some Chinese people was more informative, since I could ask about them and about people in general. The normal story is that young people are just as likely or perhaps more likely to prefer coffee now. To some extent tea is associated with older culture, and coffee with a more modern perspective (again bearing in mind that only a few people have mentioned this). If you talk to a tea producer of course they are part of that tea culture, a different story. One younger professional Chinese guy working here (Bangkok) was into tea enough to mention where to get Longjing in Chinatown awhile back, so of course that’s going to vary by person. It’s a common story that the best teas are given as gifts by the wealthy, often in stories related to higher placed government employees, and it seems likely there is plenty of older tradition in no hurry to switch to coffee, or maybe now also bubble tea.
As an expat here I know plenty of British people, most online. The rule for them is that they do like tea-bag tea but have no idea what loose tea even is. One younger guy was an exception; he’d been introduced to Lapsang Souchong, as part of some sort of a trendy avante garde type culture. An online Thai tea related friend confirmed that after living in England a few years, that there is minimal awareness of better teas there. Of course it doesn’t take many for it to seem otherwise online; if only a few thousand people in the UK are really into better tea a British version of Steepster could still thrive, and some shops.
Thanks for this insight. It seems I am hearing different people’s experiences confirm a little bit of what I suspected. That perhaps tea, in the traditional loose leaf sense, isn’t as popular with a younger crowd. I get that. I myself didn’t get into good quality tea until around the age of 30, despite having drank grocery store tea bags here and there for most of my 20’s.
I didn’t take up loose tea until I was around 40, in spite of drinking tea from tea bags and a lot of tisanes from my early 20’s on (more tisanes / herb teas). I didn’t mention Thailand, where I live now, although there is more story about here. Thailand is most heavily influenced by Chinese culture, and one story is that early migrations from Southern China 1000+ years ago initiated the modern population of Thailand more than native people did. Thai language is based on Chinese, and other sources, and tea plants are growing in the north that are centuries old. But the average Thai only ever drinks bubble tea, lemon tea, or variations of “Thai tea,” iced black tea with condensed milk or else black tea with spices added. I’m in Thai Facebook tea groups, three of them, one with 10,000 members, so there is other interest out there, it just doesn’t relate to meeting many people we might consider tea enthusiasts. Teas sold as loose tea are produced in the north, both black tea and oolong, and although there are few specialty tea shops (outside of Chinatown, and not so many there either) tea is around, in malls, cafes, and grocery store complex booth stands. It’s a bit odd that Thais are re-discovering better teas given that they’ve always been here, at least for the last 1000 years or so—probably.
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