INTRODUCTION
As a Chinese, herbal tea is not a stranger to us. We often hear it from the elderly and see the herbal shops in the street. It is not too much to say that we should tried it at least once. When it comes to herbal tea, most people may connect the term with health. Yet, there are several health benefits of herbal tea. With the growth of globalization and the change of times, herbal tea has being gone into the discard of time. Nowadays, we are easy to get the herbal tea in the convenience shop and the street herbal tea shop. However, do we think about the value of herbal tea? Or just treat it as normal drinks like Coca-Cola? Hung Fook Tong is selling herbal tea as the street herbal tea also selling herbal tea. We may confuse that what is the differences and herbal tea means?
OBJECTIVE |
The objective of this study is to get a better understanding the value and changing of herbal tea. In our project, we would like to introduce the Chinese herbal tea and the herbal tea shop from the historical and cultural aspects. After that, we would evaluate the Chinese herbal tea shop by comparing the traditional herbal tea shop and modern herbal tea shop (e.g. Hung Fook Tong). Herbal tea is not usual as Coca-Cola; we believe it contains the identity value and memories. Therefore, we would discuss the herbal tea value that: can it be considered as an intangible cultural heritage or represent Hong Kong or not?
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Methodology |
Our methodology consists of first-hand information and second-hand information. First-hand information collection includes site visits and interviews whereas second-hand information includes literature review.
Site visit We are pleased that one of our group mates had the internship opportunity in Hung Fook Tong industry before which can provide a first-hand information about Hung Fook Took instead of second-hand information. Besides, we chose two local herbal tea shops to investigate, one is called Good Spring Company Limited (春回堂藥行) located in Central. The other one is called Zhang Qiuji (張秋姐涼茶舖) in Sheng Shui. We chose these two because Good Spring Company Limited has more than 100 year history and Zhang Qiuji is famous in Sheng Shui. Interview
During our site visit, we would conduct the interview with the staff and foreigner, to understand how their attitudes towards the herbal tea. We had a talk with the staff in Zhang Qiuji , and a tourist in Good Spring Company Limited. Especially in the interview with the staff, we would like to figure out the difficulties of operating herbal tea shop in the economic based society. Besides, we would like find out what is the foreigner opinions on herbal tea. How they think about herbal tea? The evaluation and analysis of first-hand information will be made in order to justify our conclusion. Literature review Books, journals and online reports are the source of information to enrich our analysis. We can evaluate the findings in a more objective way and link the relationship among the past and now. The second hand sources can help us to define herbal tea and help us to understand diverse opinions toward herbal tea. |
Limitation |
Frankly speak, the two herbal tea shops in Central and Sheng Shui cannot represent all the herbal tea shop in Hong Kong. We wonder that it may narrow down our findings.In addition, herbal tea is a Chinese term. Most information is written in Chinese, some Chinese texts or historical texts are hard to explain and translate the exact meaning in English.
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