|
Reader question: Please explain “cup of tea” in the following passage: Mr Porter added: “My girlfriend loves the tattoos although she doesn’t have any herself as they are not her cup of tea. My mother hates the fact I have them but it’s my life – that’s the way she looks at it.” My comments: Mr Porter has tattoos all over the body (I assume) and his girl friend loves them. Yet she doesn’t have them herself because she doesn’t like them on her own skin. It’s a matter of taste, choice and preference. Porter’s mother hates them – she, on the other hand, would not want them herself at all, not for all the tea of China. In short, tattoos are not to the taste of Porter’s mother and girlfriend. It’s just “not their cup of tea”. This colloquial expression, not somebody’s tea, is a way of saying that one doesn’t like a particular thing. I don’t know the origin of it but presumably (again I assume) this could easily have come from the practice of tea drinking. In tea ceremonies for example, people take drinking seriously. But there are many teas around to choose from. For example, green tea, which is unfermented and full of vitamins, is the favorites of folks from around the Yangtze – there people eat fresh fish and vegetables and therefore have milder tastes for everything. Further down the southeast, on the other hand, people drink oolong tea, which is half-fermented and gives a stronger fruitlike fragrance. In other places people prefer black tea which is fully fermented and gives ripen, sometimes bitter but not unpleasant, aromas. Taking things to the extreme, people in Yunnan quaff Pu’er which, a totally fermented tea put aside in store for years before it is allowed the light of day again, tastes like rotten wood - to beginners at any rate. | 
