Sweet life in Lhasa with sweet tea

If you stroll on the streets in Lhasa when you travel to Tibet, you will find many Tibetan people enjoying tea and chanting happily in tea houses. For hundreds of years, Tibetans have developed the habit of sipping tea. We can find sweet life in Lhasa with sweet tea easily. Some Tibetan people say that they can eat nothing except drinking tea. Sweet tea, prepared by mixing milk and sugar with the juice from fully boiled fermented tealeaves, is Tibetan people’s favorite.

 

In Tibet, tea serves many purposes. It is a symbol of hospitality, a sacred offering, and a meal in itself. People drink the tea alongside flat cakes of ground corn, barley, or buckwheat, called tsamba. The tea is offered to guests in villages, monasteries, or private homes as a sign of hospitality, and must be consumed before conversation can begin. During your Tibet tour, you can pay a visit to a local Tibetan family, and you will be treated with sweet tea or butter tea.

 

To the Tibetan people, butter tea is a beverage that is just like coffee to the Westerners -- a wake-up and a shake-up drink to start the day on the right path. In Tibet no morning can pass without drinking some tea, usually the sweet tea, while no meal can be complete without some tea, which is almost always Tibetan buttered tea. It is also said that you’ve never made a Tibet tour if you did not enjoy a cup of butter tea when travelling in Tibet.

 

Tibetan people in Lhasa prefer to go to a tea house for sweet tea before going to work for the rest of their day. Teahouses sometimes stand as alternative places to find the ones who are otherwise expected in their workplace in the morning and in the early afternoon. When you travel to Tibet, you are highly recommended to spend at least one hour in a tea house. It only costs you RMB 0.7 for a cup of tea. So cheap!!

 

In fact, tourists are highly recommended to go to the Fine and Happiness Teahouse in Lhasa across the road of the Lhasa Middle School. The teahouse serves noodles, yak curry, chowmein, fried rice and all sorts of tea. Most importantly, the income of the teahouse is the life support of hundreds of orphans at Dickey Orphanage found by the owner of the Fine and Happiness Teahouse, Amala Dadhon who tries every best to keep the sweet home and living condition for the children though it is really very hard. Thanks for those donations from kind tourists, children in Dickey Orphanage are living a better life.  

 

When you make a Lhasa tour, you will be appreciated to bring some gifts for the kids in the orphanage. You can also go to visit the gift shop at the orphanage. They sell hand-made bags, rugs, jewelry and pottery. The income is also used to maintain the life of the children and improve their living and educating conditions.

 

Except sweet tea, there is also salted butter tea in Tibet. The Tibetan buttered tea is prepared by mixing butter and salt with the juice from fully boiled fermented tealeaves. Before serving, the mixture has to be further blended in a special blender. More often than not, a slim wooden cylinder is used for the blending. After the mixture is put in the cylinder, a piston is used to push and pull inside the cylinder. With the passing of the mixture through the split between the piston and the cylinder, the mixture of butter, salt, and tea is forcefully and thoroughly blended. If you drop a visit to Barkhor Street during your Tibet tour, you may find such cylinders at a certain shop.