Last week, one of the hottest topics online in China was an egg. Not just any egg, but rather an egg hardboiled in tea leaves and soy sauce. A tea-boiled egg.
Tea eggs became a major topic of online discussion after a professor in Taiwan claimed that many people in the Chinese mainland can’t afford to purchase them. Tea eggs sell for about 30c an egg in places such as Beijing and Shanghai.
The point is that tea eggs are delicious and cheap, and that Chinese netizens are pissed that a professor in Taiwan is calling them poor.
The mockery and “anger” in China is so extreme that one rich man in Guangzhou has gone out and started giving out tea eggs across town. The man behind this act is businessman Yu Ying.
Realistically, tea eggs aren’t too expensive, but they’re not exactly a treat that many people in China can afford on a regular basis, either. What I mean by that is, the professor in Taiwan is right in a sense, because amongst the 1.4 billion people in China, there are a lot of really really poor people.
At the same time, netizens are right to call the professor in Taiwan out of touch and ridiculous. Tea eggs are pretty much just average snacks. There is a subtle saltiness to a tea-boiled egg and the flavour is very complex, but by no means is it an expensive dish. All you do is put eggs into a pot of tea water and soy sauce and cook on low heat for about an hour. It’s not like it’s foie gras or caviar.
Comments
21 responses to “How Tea-Boiled Eggs Caused Controversy In China”
Okay.
Hey you know what? Um…. I really have nothing relevant to say here.
Pretty much like this article.
I can’t imagine any reason for a non-sarcastic comment on this article.
Once again, the comments section is ruined by some bad eggs.
Badoom tish!
I’ll pay that.
Hey, at least the people posting those comments are coming out of their shell, right?
Just as an interesting note, the tea egg pictured in the article is a god awful example of one.
Do they use green tea to make this egg dish?
Wouldn’t it be great to have an checklist option in your profile that you could use to select which authors posts would be displayed for you. I can imagine certain ‘contributors’ that would be popular to uncheck.
Also an option to disable gifs or make them static thumbnails.
Or even up/down vote buttons on articles
Oooooh awesome idea…m
I use a greasemonkey script to filter out certain authors, it’s worked really well so far.
You’re here aren’t you?
I’m in a good mood tonight so I up voted all comments to this article.
Feel my love.
The article is pure dumbness.
Awwwww feel the love back at ya!
At first I thought it was a Bashcraft article. Then I saw it wasnt Japan.
Now Im at a loss as to why its even here.
I think it’s pretty funny how the ‘netizens’ of china get worked up over such little things.
You have like a billion people living in poverty.
You new to Kotaku comments section?
Nope.
So the tea actually infuses through the shell over an hour or so? I’m going to have to try this. Most practical kotaku article ever.