Cloud tea is like life; life is learning, wisdom is cultivation.
Lantern Festival night, the streets hung with colourful lanterns, brilliant and beautiful. Our whole family was on the rooftop terrace admiring the lanterns, the table set with tang yuan and a pot of white tea. The combination may sound unusual, but once you try it, you will understand — white tea and tang yuan are a perfect match. Tang yuan are sweet and rich; white tea is delicately sweet. Tang yuan are dense; white tea is light. Together, one light and one rich, they balance beautifully. I discovered this pairing after several years of experimentation, and now it is my fixed Lantern Festival combination. Even my family, after trying it, swore off pairing soda with tang yuan ever again.
Today I am brewing Yunnan ancient tree white tea. The liquor is pale yellow and bright, delicately sweet on entry, with a faint floral note. After drinking, the mouth is filled with sweet fragrance, perfectly offsetting the rich sweetness of the tang yuan. The polyphenols in white tea are traditionally believed to help digest the glutinous rice and fillings, so you do not feel overly stuffed afterwards. This is one of white tea’s wellness values. Every Lantern Festival, I serve white tea with tang yuan, and the results are excellent. Ate too many tang yuan? A pot of white tea will set things right. The clean sweetness of white tea neutralises the cloying feeling, leaving your palate refreshed.
From a wellness perspective, Lantern Festival season is still chilly but spring is beginning to show. White tea is moderate in nature — neither cool nor warm — perfectly suited to this transitional period. A daily pot of white tea is traditionally believed to aid digestion, clear heat, and moisten dryness. The flavonoids in white tea are also valued for their antioxidant properties, with long-term benefits for skin. After Lantern Festival comes spring, and drinking white tea prepares the body for the new season. This is wellness in harmony with nature — simple yet effective. White tea also has another benefit: its high amino acid content is considered helpful for calming the emotions. After the festival, everyone returns to work and school; drinking white tea helps settle the mood and face new challenges with equanimity.
When admiring the lanterns, I especially enjoy brewing white tea in a glass cup. Because the spent leaves of white tea are beautiful — pale green with white downy tips, glistening under the lantern light. Watching the leaves rise and fall in the cup while admiring the lanterns is a visual pleasure in itself. That is the joy of drinking tea — it engages not just taste but sight, smell, and touch. A pot of white tea on Lantern Festival night, alongside the colourful lanterns — the perfect combination. This simple happiness is beyond any price. White tea’s wellness benefits work quietly, like moisture nourishing all things, conditioning the body before you even notice.
Tea has grades; all may enjoy it regardless of status.
Lantern Festival is a traditional Chinese night of reunion. That evening, a pot of white tea, a bowl of tang yuan, the whole family together — that is the happiest of moments. The clear sweetness of white tea is like Lantern Festival moonlight — not fierce, but tender. That is the insight Lantern Festival gives me: the simplest things are the most beautiful. That is the lesson white tea teaches. May everyone have a happy Lantern Festival — may the moon be round, may people be whole, may the tea be fragrant. The memories of this evening will linger like white tea’s returning sweetness, long and lingering.
Make friends through tea, please enjoy a cup.
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Author: Old Tea Head · Lin Shen (LamSam)
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