There is a very famous saying wide spread among local Tibetans that people get stagnant without tea for one day and get sick for three days. In an extensive sense, Tibetan tea refers to all kinds of tea in the history that generations of Tibetans have been drinking. Narrowly speaking, Tibetan tea especially refers to the brick tea that has been inherited and has been drinking since the Tubo era, which is mainly made in Ya’an city of China, containing the small-leaves-Ya’an tea as its major raw materials. Tibetan tea bears a long history of more than 1300 years, evolved and developed from the ancient soli-tea, cake tea and Sichuan brick tea. It is introduced to Qinghai-Tibet Plateau by Han people through the ancient Tea-Horse Road, which benefited the Tibetan people and can be regarded as the “tea of life” “tea of people” that has promoted the development of Sino Tibetan civilization.
The raw material of Tibetan tea is different from that of other ordinary tea, which is made of very mature tea leaves grown for more than 6 months. In addition, Tibetan tea also differs from general commodity tea in its production process, being the most complicated one in production technology and procedure among current tea species which involved even 32 processes. After the raw material is rough processed, it always takes more than one year to age it till it completely becomes finished products. Hence, most of Tibetan tea is deep-fermented tea. Due to its unique raw material as well as special manufacturing process, Tibetan tea experienced a long term of aging procedure and deep fermentation process so that tea components occurred in a variety of biological and biochemical reaction which fully activated microorganism’ secretion of extracellular enzymes, targeted on over 500 substances of tea including catechuic acid, polyphenol, polysaccharide and fibrin etc. and also formed a special aroma.
By aging, fermentation production and unique technology, Tibetan tea will have a very stable color, taste and air effect, which is convenient for producing, transporting and preserving. Tibetan tea has some characteristics such as keeping its color and odor unchanged with no deterioration. On the basis of the particularity of the producing technology, Tibetan tea juice can drink with many kinds of food and other drinks such as a variety of Chinese herbal medicine, cereals, fruits, salt and sugar etc. Besides, the way of drinking Tibetan tea also diversified that you can have it by frying, boiling, brewing with hot water, extracting juice or dry-chewing. Tibetan tea can be drunk before meals, after meals, before sleeping, or after sleeping, hot or cold is both available. Regardless of sex and the old, the young, healthy people as well as the disabled all can drink it.
Modern scientific research has confirmed that in addition to various health care functions that other sorts of tea also have, Tibetan tea plays some other more prominent roles in keeping healthy. Tibetan tea is able to significantly reduce triacylglycerol in the blood and the content of low density lipoprotein and ultra-low density lipoprotein that do harm to people’s health. Drinking Tibetan tea can also increase the content of HDL that is beneficial for health and promote the excretion of cholesterol and lipid compounds. Apart from that, Tibetan tea also benefits the decomposition of fat in the body, lower cholesterol and neutral fat accumulation in blood and liver. If drinking frequently, Tibetan tea is betterment for retarding the aging process, anti-radiation and so on.
