The Art of Tea; Move over, latte fans. Tea drinkers can be just as pretentious. But $50 for a single cup?

Byline: Alexandra A. Seno

Rowin Tsang is perched on a wooden stool in the dim light of Hong Kong's Ngan Ki Heung Tea Co. store, taking careful notes. She is listening to a lecture in Cantonese by Wong Hon-kin, a tea specialist with the mystical air of a martial-arts expert. It's Tuesday, the night each week when Tsang, a bubbly 33-year-old insurance underwriter, and seven classmates--all young Chinese professionals--crowd around a scratched table among racks of tea leaves and paraphernalia to learn the finer points of China's favorite beverage. The students rub the tea between their fingers, identifying the correct teapot to use by the sound the leaves make. Tonight's lesson is on Chiuchau Kung Fu tea, a brew so strong that it is served in thimble-size cups. "Master, how do you arrange the cups for three people?" asks one of Tsang's classmates. Wong nods sagely, clinking three tiny cups as he deftly arranges them in a triangle on a small porcelain tray.

Move over, coffee snobs, with your triple no-foam caramel macchiatos. Tsang's group, which meets under a paper map of China divided into tea regions, represents the new generation of tea connoisseurs in Hong Kong--a small but growing number of residents who take their tea very seriously. "Before, Hong Kong people only knew cheap tea to drink with dim sum, but that has changed and more know about good tea," says Ngan Ki Heung owner Tony Ngan, who has been in the trade for more than 40 years. The trend is spreading across Asia: Taiwan, too, has seen a proliferation of high-end tea salons. In Bangkok, the Peninsula Hotel now offers a pricey tea menu. India's leading hotel chain, the Taj Group, has hired a professional tea taster, James Labe, to develop a new tea menu. Labe experiments with varieties of tea leaves, vintages, water temperatures and steeping times to produce refined brews.

At the heart of the trend seems to be a greater sense of pride in tea as a truly Asian drink. While coffee culture has captured the imagination of young Asians in particular, it comes in a Western package; tea is a drink they can truly call their own. "They now have Starbucks in the Forbidden City," says Leo Kwan, the founder of Ming Cha, a chic tea bar in one of Hong Kong's toniest food halls. "It's ridiculous. This is why we have to make the tea trend live again." Vincent Chu, owner of the fashionable Hong Kong tea salon Moon Garden, says young executives have asked him for tutorials because they are doing more business with mainlanders who value ...