Jiangle Pounded Tea 将乐擂茶

How it is made

Jiangle leicha is generally the clear-water kind (清水擂茶). Raw tea leaves, sesame, peanuts and other raw ingredients are pounded together with fresh green medicinal herbs, and the tea is drunk as soon as it is pounded, and freshness is what counts. There are many different recipes.

When it is served

Leicha runs through everyday life in Jiangle. Families serve it to guests when they build or move into a house, at weddings, birthdays and business openings, and at festivals, in villages and in town alike.

Where it comes from

Jiangle leicha belongs to the Hakka leicha family, and the county is an important centre for spreading Hakka leicha culture; its leicha shares an origin with Taiwanese leicha. Local accounts trace the custom to people from the Central Plains (中原) who moved south into Fujian in five large migrations from the Eastern Jin onward. Archaeologists have found Sui and Tang kiln sites in the county seat that fired pottery bowls and pots, with many fragments of grinding bowls (擂钵) ridged inside with radiating grooves, and a complete grinding bowl came out of a Yuan-dynasty tomb. Some townships still keep grinding-bowl workshops.

The Jiangle leicha making craft entered Fujian's second batch of provincial intangible cultural heritage items in 2008, and in the same year the Ministry of Culture named Jiangle a home of Chinese folk culture and art for leicha. A leicha festival in August 1992 drew more than 400 guests from China and abroad, and an annual leicha performance contest began in 2006. In Dongmen Leicha Square (东门擂茶广场) stands a giant bronze grinding bowl 11.8 metres across and 3.98 metres high, recognised in 2008 by the Shanghai Great World Guinness headquarters as the largest leicha bowl.