It’s been over a week now since I stopped drinking diet sodas and Rockstars religiously. I’ve had maybe two or three sodas since then, which is less than my daily soda consumption before. I’ve returned instead to my tea-drinking habit.
Two of my favorite aspects of Korean culture are heated floors and corn tea. If you’ve never had it, you must run right over to the nearest Korean grocery to get some.
There is a very interesting article here that talks about why such things as corn and barley teas became popular in Korea. It says that some teas were seasonal while some, such as corn and barley teas, were consumed year-round. This was a means of ingesting and thereby utilizing the different chi energies of various plants. Aside from corn tea and barley tea, there are Korean teas made from pine needles, pine pollen and honey, azalea blossoms, and jujube, for example.
There is also a connection between Confucianism and the popularity of corn tea as opposed to green and black teas. Buddhism and tea made from Camellia sinensis spread together to Korea from China, and they remained associated with one another. When Confucianism became Korea’s national religion during the Choson Dynasty, black and green teas fell into decline along with Buddhism.
Yes, the winters in Sacramento are bleak. But one of the great things about living here is the variety of ethnic markets. There’s a big Korean supermarket in nearby Rancho Cordova. Next time I go there, I’m going to look for pine needle tea. I’m sure any kind of tea has better chi than diet soda.
