He Qi Zheng Herbal Tea 和其正
This drink is a Chinese herbal iced tea, with the slogan "中国人的凉茶," which means "The Chinese people's herbal tea."
It's taste is sweet, fruity, and fragrant. It reminds me a lot of the flavors of xiakucao, and luohanguo juice. While it's not too sweet, it tastes like it was sweetened with a dark cane sugar.
He Qi Zheng Herbal Tea is very similar to 王老吉 Wang Lao Ji, another Chinese herbal tea brand, but has a little bit of a lighter taste. I also like the fact that it comes in a bottle rather than a can, and there's more than enough of it to quench your thirst.
The ingredients of Heqizheng are water, sugar, 仙草 xiancao (grass jelly), licorice root, 鸡蛋花 jidanhua (Plumeria rubra, a type of flower), 布渣叶 buzha leaf (Microcos paniculata, a type of shrub traditionally used in Chinese herbal teas), chrysanthemum flower, honeysuckle flower, and 夏枯草 xiakucao (selfheal).
It shares a lot of similar ingredients with other herbal tea-style drinks I've tried in China, a lot of which are also used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). This has caused some controversy, and this company has been sued, though unsuccessfully, by a man claiming that the HeQiZheng commercial said it could cure diseases. The claim arose over the use of jidanhua and xiakucao in the drink, but the court decided that the drink is perfectly safe and that the man who sued them was ill for completely unrelated reasons.
Luo Han Guo Juice
Imagine my excitement when I saw a juice stand at a market in Thailand. Lo Han Kao juice was one of the options. This is a dark brown juice of some fruit I have never heard of. It tastes like chinese plum or date, and is pretty good. I wish I got a picture of the juice rather than just the sign (which didn't turn out great anyway), but it looked just like a dark brown iced tea, served with ice. It is sweet and supposedly good for your skin too. It's also sometimes spelled as Luo Han Guo, which I think might be the Mandarin Chinese version of the name.
According to Wikipedia, other names for this weird fruit are arhat fruit, monk's fruit, la han qua, and even a longevity fruit. It's used in Chinese medicine, mainly as a sweetener and is even used to create a sugar substitute because it is so sweet. But is also said to help with some illnesses such as heat stroke, larynx infection, cough, and diabetes. I can't vouch for any of these "cures," all I can say is that the juice does taste pretty good.
Dragon Eye Juice – Longan Drink
This is another one of those drinks that doesn't taste like what it says it is. It's supposed to taste like Longan
This Thai drink is sweet like a plum or a date, and reminds me of the flavor of sno-cones when I was a kid. It's an artificial flavor, so of course it's not dead on to what the fruit tastes like, but I can see how you could imagine that it tastes like longan.
While I'm a little disappointed at the flavor, it's not bad for artificial fruit juice.
Golden Corn Juice from China
This bottle looks like a kid's drink, with a cartoon bear hugging a giant ear of corn, but I think it may be marketed toward adults as a beauty drink because of the nutrients.
This corn juice was being sold in 500g bottles as well as 2-liter bottles, and it looked like there was only one flavor option: corn. The foil cap on the small bottle I bought was extremely hard to open. I tried peeling at first, but it seems like it was made for a straw. With no straw in sight, I had to stab it with a pen a couple times to get it to open up.
So, the long and short of it is: this tastes like Read More >
