Hui Sup tea: the drying by drinking paradox (去濕茶)

am always on the lookout for new herbal teas. This time I spotted this bag in a Chinese supermarket. Its strange name was what caught my eye: Dehydrating Tea (去濕茶) .

Now you drink tea to replenish liquid in your body, not the other way around. I consulted my Singaporean friend Han-sheng, aka Hon-sang, if you choose to call him in his native Cantonese. He is an accomplished graphic designer and a very erudite man, versed in both Oriental and Western cultures.

According to him, the Chinese drink this herbal tea in summer, when our water intake understandably increases. As a result, our yin aspect, the moist and inactive element, goes up. This makes us feel battered and listless. Hui Sup tea (去濕茶) is made of herbs that increase the dry and vigorous yang aspect without depriving our body of the essential liquid. Quite a trick , isn't it: drying up by drinking?

"So what do you do living on the equator, where the summer never ends?", I kept quizzing. "We just drink it year around." There is no outwitting the Chinese.

For those of you who can't get hold of it where you live but want to fix a yang-boosting infusion themselves here's the ingredients breakdown:

• Artemisia capillaris (20%)
• Flos gossampini (30%)
• Flos puerariae (17%)
• Rhizoma dioscoreae (13%)
• Honeysuckle (7%)
• Juncus effusus (4%)
• Rhizoma alismatis (9%)

Bombax ceiba or wood cotton flowers (木綿花) can also be added to the mix as they clear excessive heat from the internal organs and help regulate the kidney function.