The Tibetan drink of choice is “butter tea,” black tea with yak butter. Most Westerners cringe at the thought. Most of the folks in my study-abroad group professed love or at least like for it. Me, I did not care for it. It tasted about what you would imagine black tea with unsalted butter would taste like–unimaginably bland.  It does not help that if Tibetans like you, they will see to it that your teacup stays filled to the brim. The only way you can keep it from being refilled is to not drink it, but you feel so impolite if you don’t at least sip it.

On the other hand, in restaurants and guesthouses, if you ask for tea, you get a little cup of tasty. Tibetan sweet tea tastes like the milk that’s left after a big bowl of Lucky Charms.  I’m assuming that it also is composed of black tea and yak butter, but it also contains lots of sugar.

In Chinese establishments, asking for tea usually gets you jasmine tea. The better jasmine tea is a hot cup of lovely; it has a wonderful floral nose and a light taste that needs no sugar. (I’m a Southern girl, okay? Sugar in tea is important.) The lower-quality tea is pretty much a cup of leafy water.

When it comes to Chinese-style teahouses, it pays to point randomly at jars of teas that look vaguely yummy. I did this in the tearoom in our first Lhasa hotel, and got a fantastic concoction. I can’t read Chinese, but I knew I didn’t want the usual jasmine tea, so I went up to the counter and pointed at a jar filled with leaves, berries, and flowers. The waitress took that jar and a few others which were filled with rosebuds, goji berries and other dried fruits, and rock sugar, and mixed me up a tisane that was sweet and fruity and deep red. Of course, it was mostly stuff and not a lot of tea, since the tea mixture expanded when the hot water hit it.

Speaking of which: Teabags are a stupid invention of greedy companies, and contain the crap that’s left at the bottom of the box when they’ve removed the real tea, for the most part. In Asian countries where tea is truly valued, you get a cup with actual tea leaves in it, and water is poured into the cup. None of that sissy straining crap; if you get a leaf in your mouth, tough, you’re drinking real tea. Sometimes you get a teapot with a strainer, but you still might get a leaf.