Montreal, Canada –
A ritual.
I ordered a tea that came with a ritual.
I wasn’t expecting this.
Not that I knew what to expect.
In fact, none of this was what I expected.
After all, we’re in Old Montreal, not the Oriental Quarter.
Yes, we’re still reasonably close to the Oriental Quarter, but far enough away that we don’t expect to come across a Chinese teashop, just past what looks like an Antique Christmas shop.
But come across it we did.
And in we went.
It was early spring, and we were in Montreal.
Early enough in spring to still see mounds of snow in the corners of parking lots and other places where it had been piled up over the long winter.
And we were there for the weekend.
So, we decided to spend a couple of hours visiting the old city.
After all, a city that’s been here for a few hundred years should have a few older places to see.
You would think.
And yes, the buildings in this part of the city were older.
Most probably weren’t more than three or four stories tall.
When you’re building before the age of elevators, you don’t want to get too vertical.
After all, someone’s going to have to walk up all those stairs.
And some of the architectural flourishes reflected an older style, from back when buildings had personalities.
Not that modern buildings don’t have personalities, it’s just that now they’re less pronounced.
Or more exaggerated.
Let’s just say that they’re expressed in different ways.
A modern building might have a distinctive entrance, and something at the top.
And these will be large and blocky, meant to be seen from a distance.
Kinda like the building’s shouting “look at me” to everyone within a couple of miles around.
While older buildings would express their personality in the small details around the doorways and windowsills, and maybe all the way up the front side.
Like it’s saying hello in a normal talking voice.
It’s like the difference between meeting someone up close at a cocktail party as opposed to seeing them perform on stage.
On stage, everything they do is going to be exaggerated, broadcast to the last row in the balcony.
While at the party, everything’s more subtle, they’re communicating with those that are standing next to them.
So we were heading from Notre-Dame cathedral, the Montreal Notre-Dame, not the more famous one in Paris, towards the river when we came upon Ming Tao Xuan.
When we first walked into the shop, I don’t think either of us knew what to expect.
Yes, there were the standard jars of tea on shelf after shelf behind the counter, like you would expect to see in any Chinese teashop.
And there were the display cabinets crammed full of Chinese tea sets that you could buy to take home.
And there were the occasional decorative statue, sitting on the shelf or in a corner, to give the place the appropriate atmosphere.
And we were expecting to have a nice, relaxing cup of Chinese tea.
That was before we saw the menu, with each tea description including the medicinal benefits that the tea would impart.
OK, so there’s more to this than just ordering a nice green tea and relaxing while sipping it.
Hmm.
So, after a bit of reading, and thinking, I decided to get an Oolong tea, the description stating that it helps with digestion.
Being someone who likes to eat, I always want a healthy digestive system.
I think Dore ordered a tea with lots of stuff in it.
Kind of a “lets stuff every flowery thing we can into one tea and see if anyone will order it” thing.
Whatever it was, it was a more than straight-ahead pot of tea that you let steep, and then pour directly into your cup to drink sort of thing.
But mine? Not even close.
Once our teas were brought to our table, the waiter, for lack of a better name to call him (tea sommelier maybe?) demonstrates the ritual that I’m to use, all the while stating that the first batch is not for drinking, as he eventually pours it into the wooden box that my tea set is sitting on.
First, I pour hot water into the teapot to steep.
After only ten seconds, I’m to pour the contents of the teapot into the small pitcher.
From there, I pour a couple of thimblefuls into a tall and narrow cup that holds about half of what a normal shot glass would hold.
But I’m not to drink from that cup.
No, I’m to put the other cup, a short and wider cup, upside down on top of the tall narrow one and then flip them over, delivering the contents into the short, wide, sipping cup.
The tall narrow one is for sniffing, to catch the scent of the tea that it held for a brief moment.
And now he leaves us, and I’m on my own.
Each cupful is only a sip or two of the tea, so I find I’m having to repeat this ritual many times.
And the questions start entering my mind.
Do I have to sniff each cupful, or can I just drink from the sipping cup?
What if I bypass the snifter cup?
If I don’t perform the ritual, does that alter the medicinal benefits?
Will I anger the tea gods if I don’t do it right?
Is there such a thing as tea gods?
What’s the worst they could do if I displease them?
Give me a bad cup of tea?
Take away the medicinal benefits and reduce the tea to nothing more than flavored water?
Oh man, this relaxing cup of tea is suddenly anything but.
Or, I could ignore those questions flooding into my head and decide to just relax and enjoy my tea.
Which is what I ended up doing.
As for the tea gods?
They can go steep themselves.
I’m going to enjoy my tea, and not worry if I’m doing it right.
For more photos from Montreal, click here.
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