~ Chinese Herbal Tea ~ 涼茶 ~


*Reflection*

Website Title:	Chinese Herb Tea

Category:	Culture

Audience:	All ages

Students:	Lily (Leader), Brittany, Louise, Nora, Sally, Wendy

Lead Coach:	Mr C. Lin

School:	St. Paul's Secondary School, Hong Kong

Language:	English and Traditional Chinese

Description:	Chinese Herb Tea has been listed as one of the cultural heritage in year 2006. Our site contains information relating to Chinese Herb Tea. We give a bridf introduction of the history and medical effects of some popular herb teas. There is also an interview with an owner of a local Chinese Herbal Tea shop, sharing his point of view towards Herb Tea.

Reflection of Lily:	The theme of our school this year is 'Local Mission, Global Vision'. Through doing this project, we are able to obtain our school theme. We do not only share happiness and knowledge among the neighbours, but also with the rest of the world. We applied our skills learnt in school and creativity on the web page designing. Through activities and research, we benefit a lot by interviewing famous people. We were taught by our experiences gained that we need to be well prepared for every oncoming challenge, especially before and after the interview with Mr Yeung. Before we actually meet the interviewee, we had done some research so that we can have a brief idea of what we were going to ask and to achieve a successful and fluent interview; and after the meeting with Mr Yeung, we had got much inspiration from him. We further gathered data based on the interview and what we finally achieved has already gone beyond our expectation. Thanks for the facilities that the school had provided for us to get on the Internet. It offered us a tool for more effective researching, leading us to our destination.

Reflection of Brittany:	Chinese herbal tea is a kind of drink that has been invented a long time ago. Although some of their taste is a bit bitter, it is well worth to try as it has good nutritional value. I think that people in past are very clever as they can find out different ingredients to extract their nutrition by boiling them in water, which has made much contribution to the society. However, despite the good nutritional value of Chinese herbal tea, it is getting more and more uncommon; people never treasure these kinds of drinks like the elderly. I hope that after people reading our webpage, they would know more about Chinese herbal tea and made great use of them to have a healthy body. When we are doing the project, we find it difficult to translate the technical names of Chinese herbal tea. In addition, I find it interesting to learn about the function of different herbal plants.

Reflection of Louise:	Chinese herbal tea in my mind, is usually bitter. But after this project, I knew more about Chinese herbal tea and its medical value. Before working on this project, I don't really think that Chinese herbal tea has such high medical value. Through this project, I learnt to appreciate the beauty of Chinese herbal tea, bitter but healthy. It may not cure diseases directly, but it can help us to built up a healthy body, so that we can 'fight back' ourselves. I know that a lot of young people, like me, do not appreciate Chinese herbal tea. I hope that they can learn to treasure and appreciate the culture just like I do now.

Reflection of Nora:	Though Chinese herb tea seems to have no connections with students at our age, after doing this project, I know that they are really important and essential for a healthy body, not only for the elderly but also teenagers of our age. In the 21st century, people believe in western medical treatment, ignoring the presence of Chinese type. With the benefit it will bring, I believe the status of Chinese herb tea would gradually rise. I really hope that through this project, people would have more confident in drinking Chinese herb tea as a kind of medical treatment. As the topic of our project is so special, it is a bit hard to do research on it. However, with the help of my group mates, the problem was solved finally. This project does not only expose me to Chinese culture, it also gives me a chance to learn to cooperate with each others as a TEAM.

Reflection of Sally:	I have a deeper understanding upon Chinese culture after doing lots of researches and information collection on the topic. I have found a number of interesting functions of Chinese herbal tea for example curing flu, which raises my attention towards herbs. Although the teenagers nowadays are not interested in this topic much, I still believe it is a great culture brought by our ancestor. Studying herbs is not as boring as we think. Actually I was amazed by its powerful effect on curing diseases, it definitely need teenager to continue investigating and promoting it, otherwise this effective 'medicine' would not be widely used anymore.

Reflection of Wendy:	At the beginning of the project, I found the theme was a bit out-dated. Since Chinese Herbal Tea seems to be the old fashion drinks to teenagers nowadays. But during and after the project, I know that Chinese Herbal Tea is such a great creation towards the whole society. Moreover, I appreciate a lot of the cleverness of the Chinese in the old days. People nowadays prefer to take the western medicine rather than the Chinese one just because it is more convenient. However, there may be some side effects on patients. Although the Chinese one takes much more time and taste bitter, I think it is still better than the western. I believe the continuity of Chinese Herbal Tea needs the cooperation of us, teenagers nowadays. I hope that teenagers will have a better idea and impression of the Chinese Herbal Tea and therefore help to continue the life of the Tea.