Lots of interesting bits in this one... "Thé dansant" was the "tea dance", a practice also popular in England, but that I am unfamiliar with in regards to tea. A surprise for me is that they were apparently reading translations of Lu Yu in the home economics schools. Mixed green and black tea is seen as old-fashioned, while Ceylon tea is promoted. (Formosa oolong is not given the dismissive treatment of green-black blends, however.) "Russian tea" (Ceylon with lemon) is seen as excellent hot or iced, and the tea-kettle shaped tea-ball seen as a fun novelty (just as it was in 2015
). However, again there is a mention of tea served with cream, which today is mostly associated with the East Frisian style of tea from Germany.I suspect that the poem was an original invention of the author, who seemed to also be a poet. It is still interesting to me that the steep time for what is clearly Chinese tea is so short; what size was the pot, I wonder?
