by: Lingnan Cheng

update: Feb 22, 2015 05:49 GMT+8

Chinese tea culture on rise in US

Coffee has long been a cultural obsession in the United States, but the growing availability of alternative hot beverages from around the world has led Chinese tea to witness a spike in popularity.

Jeffrey Mclntosh, a big fan of Chinese tea culture, said he fell in love with Chinese tea after he stepped into a tea house in Seattle six years ago.

"I drank there and I sat there. I drank some tea and all of my stresses went away. I was at peace for the first time in a long time and I realized that this is what I wanted to be doing for the rest of my life. I wanted to have a cup of tea in my hand," said Mclntosh.

He quit his job and went to Yunnan Province in southwest China, where famous tea varieties like Pu'er are produced, to experience the tea culture first hand and learn its related customs.

"The more I drank it, the more I interacted with it. I fell in love with Pu'er tea because of the depth of it and the culture and the meaning. And I really did believe that if you could just give someone a cup of tea and make them happy, just like I had that same feeling when I first drank tea, then I feel like I would be successful if I could do that," said Mclntosh.

With Chinese culture becoming more popular in the United States, more people like Mclntosh are finding themselves fascinated with tea. Statistics show that U.S. consumers spent $10 billion on Chinese tea in 2013, five times more than in 1990.

Roberta Fuhr, who worked as a senior executive at a bank for more than 20 years, decided to resign in 2011 and open a tea house on the outskirts of Seattle to introduce the inseparable part of Chinese cultural legacy to more U.S. citizens.

At her tea house "Tea Experience", Fuhr teaches her students how to properly prepare a tea ceremony and how to make and taste different varieties of tea. She says this gives her students a feel for the tea culture, which often differs from their expectations.

"It helps people understand cultures without knowing the language. You know, appreciating tea shows respect for a culture that values tea," she said.

Virginia Wright, founder of Phoenix Tea House, also based in Seattle, said word of mouth and increasing availability are helping attract more people in the United States to try out Chinese tea.

"We have a lot of customers that bring their friends into the shop because they themselves are really interested in tea and so they think that their friends will be, and so they bring them in. That's one way that the customer base grows enormously," said Wright.