Tea Glossary

Forty terms in four groups, each with a short public explanation and one common point of confusion. Water-temperature and brewing guidance lives on the Tea Tips page instead.

Basic Vocabulary

Tea plant / Camellia sinensis: The single plant species behind green, white, yellow, oolong, black, and dark tea. People sometimes assume different tea types come from different plants; in fact almost all of them come from the same species, transformed differently after picking.
Tea leaf: The picked leaf of Camellia sinensis, before or after processing. In everyday speech “tea leaf” can mean the raw leaf on the plant or the finished, dried product in a jar—context usually makes the difference clear.
Brewed tea: The liquid produced once tea leaves meet water. English sometimes uses “tea” for both the leaves and the drink; this exhibition tries to say “brewed tea” or “tea leaves” specifically when the distinction matters.
Loose-leaf tea: Whole or broken tea leaves sold without a bag, typically offering more room for the leaf to unfurl and a wider range of aroma and strength across multiple infusions than a standard tea bag.
Tea bag: A small permeable pouch, usually holding broken or finely cut leaf (“fannings” or “dust”), designed for a single fast infusion. Convenient, but the smaller leaf pieces generally give less nuance than loose leaf.
Teaware: The vessels used to make and serve tea: pots, cups, trays, and tools. Teaware is functional, not merely decorative—its shape and material genuinely change how a tea tastes and how a gathering unfolds.
Gaiwan: A lidded bowl used to steep and serve tea, common across many Chinese tea traditions. It is one option among many, not the single “correct” Chinese teaware—large mugs and thermoses are just as common in daily life.
Kettle: A vessel for heating water for tea. Different teas favour different temperatures (see Tea Tips), so a kettle that lets you control temperature is more useful than one that only boils.
Infusion / steep: The act of letting tea (or another plant) sit in hot water so its flavour and aroma transfer into the liquid. “Infusion” is also used as a noun for the resulting drink, especially for non-tea plants.
Tisane / herbal infusion: A drink made by steeping a plant other than Camellia sinensis—osmanthus or goji, for example. Botanically it is not “tea,” though everyday Chinese and English speech often still calls it tea.

Tea Processing

Plucking: Picking fresh leaves and buds from the tea plant. Which leaves are chosen—one bud, two leaves, a coarser plucking—shapes the character and grade of the finished tea before any processing even begins.
Withering: A controlled rest after plucking that lets leaves lose some moisture and soften. It sounds passive, but timing withering correctly is a skilled judgment call, not a fixed number of hours.
Fixation / kill-green (杀青): A heating step (dry-heat or steam) that halts the enzyme activity responsible for oxidation. It “fixes” a tea’s colour and character at that point, which is why green tea stays green while black tea does not.
Rolling / shaping: Working the withered leaf by hand or machine to bruise cell walls, release aromatic compounds, and give the tea its final shape—curled, twisted, balled, or flat—which also affects how it later infuses.
Oxidation: A chemical reaction between leaf compounds and oxygen, controlled by rolling, time, and humidity, that changes colour and flavour. It is a different process from microbial fermentation, though the two are often confused.
Drying: The final moisture-removal step that stabilizes tea for storage and transport. Drying method and heat level affect aroma; done incorrectly, it can also mask or damage the work of every earlier step.
Roasting: An additional heat treatment, sometimes applied after drying, that develops deeper, toastier, or fruitier notes—common in some oolongs. It is a finishing choice, not a step every tea receives.
Scenting: Blending or layering tea with a fragrant flower or other aromatic, as with osmanthus- or jasmine-scented tea. Scenting can happen through repeated contact with fresh flowers or through blending with dried petals.
Microbial transformation / fermentation: Change driven by microorganisms over time, important in some dark teas and other aged or piled processes. It is often loosely called “fermentation,” but it is chemically distinct from the oxidation used to make black tea.
Ageing: Continued, usually slow change in a tea after processing is complete, sometimes intentional (as with some dark teas and pu’er) and sometimes simply a matter of storage. Not every tea benefits from ageing—many are meant to be drunk fresh.

Tea Culture

Gongfu tea / 工夫茶: A preparation style emphasizing skill, attention, and repeated short infusions in small vessels, with specific regional and social histories. It is an important Chinese tea practice, not the only correct one.
Hospitality: The social work of welcoming someone with tea: buying it, heating water, cleaning vessels, serving, and noticing whether a guest is comfortable. Hospitality is a practice, not something that simply happens on its own.
Everyday care: Repeated small acts—serving tea, remembering a preference, checking in on someone—through which people look after each other day to day. It overlaps with wellness language but is not the same as medical treatment.
Living tradition: Knowledge and practice that people keep renewing rather than freezing in place. Calling something a “living tradition” is a reminder that today’s tea makers are still actively shaping it, not just repeating the past.
Authenticity: A claim that a practice, object, or flavour represents the “real” or “original” version of something. This exhibition treats authenticity as a question to investigate—who gets to decide, and why—rather than a label it hands out.
Service labour: The work of preparing, explaining, cleaning, scheduling, and serving that keeps a cup of tea (or bubble tea) moving from ingredients to customer. It is often invisible precisely because it is done well.
Customization: A system that lets a customer choose components—tea base, sugar, ice, toppings—rather than receiving one fixed drink. Customization depends on standardized ingredients and processes behind the counter, even though it feels personal up front.
Public anthropology: Anthropological work made for dialogue with a wider public, not only academic readers—through exhibitions, writing, teaching, or art. This website and the exhibition it documents are both examples of the approach.
Curatorial interpretation: The curator’s own reading of an object, artwork, or theme, offered as one informed perspective rather than a final, neutral fact. This exhibition labels curatorial interpretation clearly so visitors can tell it apart from historical record.
Harmony without sameness / 和而不同: A classical phrase (from the Analects) used here to mean that people can share a table, a city, or a culture without becoming identical. It does not mean disagreement or difference should be smoothed over.

Plants and Drinks

Goji / 枸杞: A fruit-bearing shrub with long histories of use across Asia, and a significant, still-living history in Edmonton’s river valley and family gardens since the 1890s. It is a plant and a set of relationships, not just a packaged “superfood.”
Osmanthus / 桂花: A small, intensely fragrant flower, an important seasonal ingredient in Jiangnan (the lower Yangtze region). Used to scent tea, or infused on its own—see “osmanthus tea” below for that distinction.
Osmanthus tea / 桂花茶: An everyday name that can mean either tea leaves scented with osmanthus, or an infusion made mainly from the flowers themselves without any tea leaf. The name does not tell you which one you have—ask, or check the ingredients.
Sweet osmanthus / 糖桂花: Osmanthus flowers preserved in sugar or syrup, used in desserts, drinks, and cooking across Jiangnan cuisine. It is a pantry ingredient as much as a tea-adjacent one.
Bubble tea / pearl milk tea / 珍珠奶茶: A drink developed in Taiwan in the 1980s, typically combining tea, milk or creamer, sweetness, ice, and tapioca pearls or other toppings. Its exact origin is contested between two Taiwanese teahouses; this exhibition does not settle that dispute.
Tea base: The tea component of a customized drink—black, green, oolong, or fruit tea, for example—chosen before milk, sweetness, and toppings are added. It is the one part of a bubble tea order that is actually tea in the botanical sense.
Topping: An added ingredient in a customized drink—tapioca pearls, jelly, pudding—that changes texture as much as flavour. Toppings are prepared separately and require their own timing, storage, and labour behind the counter.
Sweetness level: A menu option, usually shown as a percentage (0–100%), that lets a customer choose how much sugar syrup goes into a drink. It is a system built to make a wide range of tastes feel simple to order.
Ice level: A menu option controlling how much ice goes into a cold drink, independent of sweetness or tea strength—choosing “less ice” usually means a stronger-tasting, less diluted drink, not just a colder or warmer one.
Tapioca pearls / 珍珠: Chewy balls made from tapioca starch, the topping that gives pearl milk tea its name. They must be cooked, kept warm, and used within hours, which is part of the hidden labour behind a “simple” drink.