Five Flower Tea - 五花茶 - Ng Fa Cha

Guangdong folks drink herbal teas 涼茶 leung cha and I believe this is more of a regional sort of thing. They’re pretty bitter and drunk for general regulation of health for its cleansing properties. Part of the reason is also that it reflects the vegetation that is produced from the land. Both of my parents grew up from farming families so it was common for them to have pretty extensive knowledge of foraging not just for food, but also for medicine. Based on the region inside of Guangdong, these teas can vary as well based on what’s available from the land and can include endemic plants found nowhere else. These teas can also vary by the person who makes it.

I think this bitter flavor is unpopular with younger people and those with a Westernized palette, but this sort of thing is also really important to Cantonese cuisine and shows how seamless cuisine is tied with health and general well being. It’s really tricky to learn this sort of thing over the phone, so it’s a great time for me to be able to sit down with my dad to help identify these plants for these teas. He’s said it’s a lot harder to record 涼茶 leung cha because certain plants used in the 涼茶 leung cha he’s familiar with with are unavailable in America and is endemic to the area where he grew up in Zhongshan. This is the sort of stuff I think is probably going to get largely ignored by many American born Chinese, but I think it’s still worth trying to write this information down in English for those that may feel lost in trying to reconnect to this.

五花茶 ng fa cha (five flower tea) serves a more specific purpose out of the more broad herbal teas 涼茶 leung cha. It’s more focused on maintaining the health of your 腸胃 cheung wai (digestive tract). Different people make them with different flowers, with a minimum of five of them. Traditional ones will stick to just five and they can vary by whoever that makes it.

According to my dad, these are the five flowers that are traditional to him and listed next to them are briefly what purpose they serve. There’s a lot more behind the medicinal purposes, but that goes deep into a topic about Chinese medicine that I know very little about so for the sake of simplicity, I’m only going to list the most broad information my dad told me.

(pictured left to right)
木棉花 Kapok flower - generally good digestive tract
葛花 Kudzu flower - general cleansing
雞蛋花 Plumeria - generally good for digestive tract
金銀花 Japanese Honeysuckle - very fragrant and sweet, also kills bacteria and removes toxins
夏枯草 Heal-all - kills bacteria and removes toxins

My dad has this really old book of traditional Chinese medicine he bought about 40 years ago when he was in Hong Kong. He still refers to it, but in that when it comes to 五花茶 ng fa cha, it has a slightly different combination. Instead of 木棉花 kapok flower and 夏枯草 heal-all, it includes槐花 sophora flower and 厚朴花 magnolia flowers. My dad says he sees 菊花 chrysanthemum flower more commonly these days in other pre-mixed bags, but from what he was familiar with, 五花茶 ng fa cha generally never had chrysanthemum in it.

I won’t include too much of a recipe because each batch can be different in size and this includes premixed packages. For the premixed ones, it’s also not necessary to use it all at once. The general rule of thumb though is you don’t want it to be too bland tasting. The stronger the taste, the medicinal properties are stronger in the brewed tea.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Before steeping. In a large bowl or pot, mix in some water and use your hands to gently mix the dried flowers for about a minute. This will help wash out any dirt on some of them. Gently squeeze out the pulp and strain the pulp out into a pot. You can reserve the water if you want to or use fresh water for the tea.

If you choose to keep some of the reserved water, let it stand for about a minute and most of the dirt sediment will settle to the bottom of the bowl/pot that you were washing the dried flowers in. Pour the water into the pot and discard the liquid at the bottom with sediment in it.

Bring the tea to a boil and cover for 15 minutes. The flowers can be steeped multiple times, but each boil afterwards will need a longer boil to extract more from it.

Strain out the flowers and set them aside for a second use if desired.

You can also add some 片糖 pin tong (brown sugar, in brick form, not confused with the brown sugar found in many Western grocery stores) or honey. Both of these types of sugars are also considered to be antibacterial, but honey has a stronger antibacterial property than the Chinese brown sugar. This is up to you to add this in and however much you want.

According to my dad, many pre-mixed packages now will skim out on the 金銀花 Japanese honeysuckle because it’s expensive. You can buy it separately and add it in. However, he likes to wait until the tea has already been steeped and strained before adding it in. He believes that rinsing out the flowers will remove a lot of the flavor, especially if you throw out the washing water and start with fresh water. Because the Japanese honeysuckle is grown in a tree, it’s picked in a way that dirt shouldn’t be on it already so it’s already pretty clean. He adds the extra Japanese honeysuckle into the tea after it’s already been brewed and strained of the flowers. The tea brought back to a boil, covered and steeped for another five minutes before one final strain.

Note: This tea isn’t meant to be consumed regularly. Just once or twice a month for promoting health and balancing your “cold” and “hot” and cleansing properties.