Friday, May 11, 2012

It smells Indian Chai

Long ago, the famous historian Dr. R.C. Majundar wrote about the traditional Chinese way of thinking. Once something belongs to China, it belongs to China forever. 
Majundar explained:
There is one aspect of Chinese culture that is little known outside the circle of professional historians. It is the aggressive imperialism that characterized the politics of China throughout the course of her history, at least during the part of which is well known to us. Thanks to the systematic recording of historical facts by Chinese themselves, an almost unique achievement in oriental countries.... we are in position to follow the imperial and aggressive policy of China from the third century BC to the present day, a period of more than twenty-two hundred years ...It is characteristic of China that if a region once acknowledged her nominal suzerainty even for a short period, she should regard it as a part of her empire for ever and would automatically revive her claim over it even after a thousand years whenever there was a chance of enforcing it
Now the problem is that even when it does not belong to China, China can appropriate it. I am not speaking about Tibet here.
This article found on the China Tibet Online, shows that the Indian Chai has become a 'specialty' of Lhasa. 
It may be laughable, unfortunately, the same thing is happening today to Buddhism which is promoted as a Chinese philosophy.
"Please China, return to India what belongs to India."

Sweet tea: special drink of Lhasa
China Tibet Online
2012-05-02
Yanina
Tourists visiting Lhasa, capital of Tibet would never miss the sweet tea caffs scattering about the city. Sweet tea has become a specialty drink of this noted historical and cultural city.
Then how is the sweet tea made?
The tea is made from black tea, milk powder and white sugar. The making process is as follows:
(Note: The amount of the materials used in this article is as much as that needed for making 20 kilograms of sweet tea.)
The first step: to boil the black tea. Put 50g of tea in a cloth bag and boil the bag in boiling water for about five minutes. Then remove all the water from the bag and get the remains out of the bag.
Using the cloth bag is to filter the tea remains.
When boiled in water, the bag is carried and swayed.
The second step: put two kilograms of milk powder into the tea and stir it up. When the milk powder is added, froth will lather and the mixture should be stirred and slowly the froth will fade away.
The Third step: to add about 650g of white sugar into the tea and stir it up.
(Note: the mixture must be boiled, or you will feel swelled up after drinking.)
The forth step: to put 100g of black tea into the bag and boil it for five minutes in the mixture again.
The fifth step: all the processes are completed and the sweet tea is ready for drink. The tea can be filled into thermos to keep it hot.

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