Loads of people drink Fei Yan every day and have never once turned the box round to read the side. Fair enough, it's tea. But if you've ever held a bag up to the light and wondered what all the little bits are, this is for you.
Ten ingredients. Most of them are dried herbs, the sort of thing you'd find in big jars at a Chinese grocer's. Two are actual teas, oolong and genmaicha.
The pack lists them biggest share first, so I'll go in that order.
Lotus Leaf (15%)
Ever had lo mai gai at dim sum? Then you've unwrapped one of these. Lotus leaf, he ye in Chinese, is that big round leaf that floats flat on a pond, and it's the same one they wrap sticky rice in before steaming. Dried, it goes a dull greyish green and turns brittle, so what's in your tea bag is little crumbly flakes of it. Mild taste. Bit grassy, bit earthy. It's joint biggest in the blend, and it's where the soft green base of the cup comes from.
Luffa Acutangula (15%)
Of all ten, this is the one people don't believe me about. Luffa acutangula is the angled luffa. Fresh, it's a long green gourd with ridges running down it, the kind you'll see in Chinese supermarkets, and people slice it into soup or stir fry it with egg. Leave one on the vine until it dries out, though, and the inside goes all stringy and tangled. That tangle is si gua luo. Same plant as the loofah in your bathroom. Yes. Really. In the bag you're looking for pale, strawy threads. Taste? Next to nothing. A tiny bit woody, like walking past a hay bale.
Tangerine Peel (10%)
Chen pi. Mandarin peel that's been dried and then left to age, sometimes for years. Starts off bright orange, obviously. The old stuff goes dark brown and a bit leathery, and the older it gets the more people will pay for it. You'll find it in braised duck, in beef dishes, bobbing about in red bean soup. Citrus, but don't think orange juice. Warmer than that. A bit bitter and a bit sweet, with a dry tang right at the end, and in Fei Yan it's one of the things giving the cup its gentle sour edge.
Astragalus Root (10%)
Huang qi usually comes in long, flat, pale slices that look a lot like wooden lolly sticks. Plenty of Chinese-British families just drop a few into a pot of chicken soup and leave it simmering. Taste-wise it's mild, slightly sweet, a little beany. Never bitter. You'd have a hard time picking it out of a mug on its own, but it does a nice job of rounding off the sharper stuff so the finish is softer.
Hawthorn Fruit (10%)
Remember haw flakes? Thin pink discs that came in paper rolls? That's hawthorn. Shan zha is a small red berry, about cranberry sized, and dried it's normally sliced into rings, rusty red on the outside and pale in the middle. It gets stewed into sweet soups too. Properly tart, more sour apple than sweet berry, and it's a big reason Fei Yan has some bite to it instead of tasting flat.
Fiveleaf Gynostemma Herb (10%)
Jiao gu lan is a climbing vine whose leaves grow in little fans of five. Hence "fiveleaf" on the pack. In parts of southern China people drink it as a tea all by itself. Dried, you get dark green crumpled leaf with bits of thin stem mixed in. What's interesting is the taste: slightly bitter on the first sip, then a faint sweetness turns up afterwards. That bitter-then-sweet thing runs right through Fei Yan, and this is part of where it comes from.
Stevia Leaf (10%)
The odd one out. Stevia's a leafy shrub from South America, nothing to do with Chinese cooking at all, and its leaves are naturally sweet. Not "slightly sweet if you really concentrate". Properly sweet. In the bag it's plain green crumbs, easy to miss. It's also the reason Fei Yan isn't bitter even though there's no sugar in it. Take the stevia away and you'd really notice the chen pi, the gynostemma and the rhubarb root.
Oolong Tea (10%)
Real tea, this. Same plant as green and black tea, the only difference being how far the leaves get oxidised. Green barely, black all the way, oolong somewhere in the middle. So you get something roasty, sometimes fruity, smoother than black and fuller than green. If you've eaten at a Cantonese restaurant, it's quite often what's in the pot on the table. In the bag, look for the dark twisted bits of leaf.
Rhubarb Root (5%)
Not the pink stuff you put in a crumble. Da huang is the dried root of the rhubarb plant, cut into chunky yellowy brown pieces and dried hard, and it tastes nothing like the stalks. Bitter. Astringent, too, that dry feeling it leaves in your mouth. It's only 5% of the blend, and there isn't much more to say about it than that.
Genmaicha (5%)
My favourite bit, if I'm allowed one. It's a Japanese green tea with roasted brown rice mixed through it. Some of the rice pops while it roasts, so if you squint at the bag there are these tiny white puffed bits. Mini popcorn, basically. Nutty. Toasty. Ever scraped the crunchy layer off the bottom of a pan of rice and eaten it standing at the hob? That. Only 5%, but you'll notice it, because between this and the oolong you get that roasted smell the second the water hits the bag.
So what does it actually taste like?
Toasty first, before you've even had a sip, because the smell gets there before you do. That's the genmaicha and the oolong. Then the stevia brings some sweetness, the hawthorn and tangerine peel bring a sour edge, and underneath all of it there's a mild bitterness.
Compared with plain oolong it's fuller and sweeter, with more going on. If you mostly drink jasmine, though, forget it. There's nothing floral in here whatsoever.
It tastes like what it is. A roasted tea with a handful of Chinese kitchen herbs thrown in.
Making a cup
One bag, freshly boiled water, 3 to 5 minutes. The pack says up to 3 cups a day. There's a small amount of caffeine from the oolong and genmaicha, so maybe not your last drink before bed. If you want more on brewing, there's a whole post on the site, How to make the perfect cup of Fei Yan Tea.
A tea, not a medicine
Fei Yan is sold as a food. Dried herbs and tea leaves in a bag, nothing more mysterious than that. Not a medicine, not a treatment. Just tea.
There's a warning on the side of the box and I'll repeat it here, because it matters. Pregnant, breastfeeding, got a medical condition, on any kind of medication, or you react to any of the ten things above? Have a word with your doctor or pharmacist before you start. Not one for the kids either.
That's the lot
Ten ingredients. Lotus leaf and luffa are the biggest, rhubarb root and genmaicha the smallest, and the rest sit somewhere in the middle. Most of it you might already know from Chinese cooking, plus a sweet leaf from South America and a rice tea from Japan.
Aura Nutrition sell Fei Yan Tea in boxes of 40, 80, 120 and 160 bags. Next time you open one, you'll know what you're looking at.
