Butter Tea – A Food, A Fuel

Much maligned and spoken of with a kind of fear of what may happen to the digestive organs, butter tea for many rests in that distant category of “beverage that is interesting but I will not consume”.

For the Tibetans upon the plateau and throughout the valleys of Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai, it remains much more than a stimulant beverage – it is nothing less than a necessary food.

During the great days of caravan trade, two items were of enduring and consummate value: tea and salt. With these two commodities one could trade for any item. Tea and salt were currencies in themselves and it is perhaps more than a little ironic that both elements make their appearance in the preparation of what is known to Tibetans as ‘pu jia’ (Tibetan tea).

Butter, another constant in most rural Tibetan life, unfortunately gets the ‘plaudits’ for its addition of fatty pungency. For many it is this element, which sparks rebellion (or the thought of it) in the intestines and gall bladder.

My journey to the tiny village of Chun De (two hours north of ‘Shangrila’ in northwestern Yunnan) to speak to an old trader, wandered along a road that seemed at times to have no place further to go. The landscapes around me shimmered with barley fields and were marked by plunging valleys and all of this was striated and split by dirt paths that climbed only to disappear into the sky.

The area had long been a stopping point along the famed Tea Horse Road, a route that for thirteen unending centuries ushered tea and goods into the highest plateau on the planet. Tea, for many, was the import/export of choice.

The ancient trader whose name was ‘He’ (pronounced like huh), had a spotless home and yard with a random collection of rampaging goats and lean chickens that seemed intent on rioting. ‘He’ slept in a single bed that was home to books, clothes, and it seemed all of the old man’s worldly belongings. In fact, as I looked on, I wasn’t at all sure where he actually found room to lie. The old trader and medicine man had the lean and ascetic features of one who took from life only the bare minimum – hollowed cheeks, a fine nose, and eyes that missed nothing. His eyes had a dark fire in them, and I noticed with a kind of warmth that he absently tried to fix hair which still held onto its natural black color, although ‘He’was somewhere in his seventies.

His hands were enormous and hung like axes at his lean side as he welcomed me in. This noting of his hands wasn’t random for I had always noticed that these old traders regardless of body size, inevitably carried around over-sized cleavers for hands.

One of the first things a Tibetan home will offer when guests arrive is tea and the words “jia tong”, or “drink tea” will be heard within minutes of any arrival.

“He” looked at me and whispered that something stronger was also on offer if tea or “jia” wasn’t preferred. “Arra” or whisky is another offering but it and its subsequent consumption don’t have a place here.

Butter tea is, and was, in many Tibetans’ view, the perfect food for the heights. Yak butter, high in amino acids, proteins and vitamins, provides much needed calories in altitudes that burn them in huge amounts. The preferred tea for the Tibetans was anything with ‘bitter bite’, known as “kabow”. Teas from southern Yunnan or their lighter cousins from Sichuan, found in brick form, were preferred, but any tea would do. Salt’s addition was to provide a bit of tang and sodium, which was also needed. Electrolytes, carbohydrates and many of tea’s vegetal benefits found lacking in Tibetans’ diets in one soupy concoction: a food.

My host and his powerful little wife bid me to sit in an almost pitch black kitchen, the entirety of which was a fire pit, some pots, and three truck seats placed on the floor around the fire. A chicken soup, also laden with butter, was simmering its sweet goodness into the air in wafts.

In a dark corner, layered high in an uneven stack, were bricks of tea and in seconds “He’s” wife had ripped an informal hunk of the brick off and thrown it into a pot of water that was burbling on the flames.

Next, a huge cylindrical wooden container is placed in front of Lhatse, “He’s” wife. Within this aged wooden container sits a long branch of wood with a flat disc on the end …a plunger-like instrument of sorts. A ball of fresh butter is grabbed from a wicker container and Lhatse shoves two fingers and a thumb into the cream coloured lump and this is placed into the wooden container. A small handful of salt is then thrown in to join the butter. While this is going on, “He” is a blur of activity and words. In addition to being a trader, he runs an unofficial (and free) clinic, treating local ailments with herbs that he still collects from the surrounding mountains.

“He” is muttering, smiling, treating a young man, and screaming at a nearby goat that seems intent on eating everything not nailed down.

Lhatse waits until the tea is boiling before pouring it into a small black earthen container. Then using a thistle branch as a kind of filter, she pours the tea into the large wood cylinder. The hot tea concoction breaks both butter and salt up and then the ‘action’ begins.

Lhatse uses the ‘plunger’-like instrument in a piston like motion to begin a ritual to break up and blend the three ingredients. This goes on for minutes until finally she is satisfied that justice has been done. Pouring the froth out into bowls it is time to consume.

“He” urges me to grab a bowl and takes his own silver-gilded wooden “purre”, cup, and takes a deep draw, uttering a small groan of contentment as he does so.

One interesting aspect of the tea that Tibetans crave and consume is that never before have they turned their noses up at stems or misshapen leaves. The stems, which populate most bricks of tea destined for the highlands (but scoffed at by some), are the conduits of tannins and minerals and contain that bitter flavor so desired by Tibetan drinkers. Appearances here in the mountains mean very little.

After many bowls have made it (and remained) down the gullet, Lhatse mentions to me that what is always important is that the elements are of good quality.  “Butter must be fresh, tea must be strong, and salt must always be used”.

“He” motions that it is time to move from the kitchen to his office, which was the yard. Grabbing a well-used and battered Pepsi bottle which was full of a clear and suspect liquid we sit in the sun. It is time to sip another famed beverage…one not of a leaf, but of a distilled grain.