"Miss Zhang, our long-expected lesson on Chinese Tea finally arrives!" On April 24th, the students of the Elementary Chinese class at the Al-Quds University had their last Chinese class of the semester - a tea party.

“This is black tea, this is green tea, and this is white tea!” When Zhang Chen, a Chinese teacher of the Confucius Institute at Al-Quds University, demonstrated three types of Chinese teas, the students carefully observed and differentiated the teas with knowledge from previous lessons. 

Warming up the tea sets, fetching the tea, brewing the tea, pouring the tea into tea cups... Different ways shall be adopted to make different teas. After observing Miss Zhang conduct a series of complicated tea-making processes in a skillful way, Muhammad can’t help but say: “Although Palestinians like to drink tea, but the tea-making steps are much simpler here. It is my first time to drink unsweetened tea, it feels wonderful.” He also said that drinking white tea for the first time is really exciting The processes of fetching tea from a tea block and washing the teas aroused his interest as well. 

During the event, Zhang Chen also introduced the other usages of tea. She used tea to make dishes, and had prepared tea eggs, tea-flavored beef jerky and Toufu with green tea in advance, so that students could really feel the magic of tea in the classroom.

The students on the spot experienced the process of cooking Toufu with green tea. "Pour the remaining green tea leaves into the Toufu, add a little salt and olive oil and mix them well. I like this taste. I also asked Miss Zhang how to prepare Toufu. She uses our local chickpeas; the process is quite simple. It seems that I can make this tea dishes for the family in the future." Tasneem said happily.

Photo and text by Zhang Chen