Unlike International Tea Day, the United Nations doesn’t recognise International Coffee Day, but according to the International Coffee Organization, 1 October is it.
In the dimly lit gallery at Bankstown Arts Centre, artist Pamela Leung weaves among seated audience members and asks: “Tea or coffee? Or both?” If you request tea, she hands you a dry tea leaf hand-picked from Yellow Mountain in China. If you say “coffee”, she hands you a coffee bean. But if your curiosity gets the better of you and you say “both”, she gives you a slip of paper stained with both brews.
This token represents yuenyeung, a coffee-tea hybrid from her native Hong Kong. Named for a mating pair of mandarin ducks (yuanyang) – the male and female so very different from one another, yet a Chinese symbol of lifelong love – the beverage comprises coffee, black tea, milk and sugar and can be served hot or cold. The standard ratio is three parts coffee and seven parts Hong Kong-style milk tea.
Despite having three decades of experience as a barista (she runs a café in Kirribilli, which is humorously illustrated in her video installation I’m in but I’m not in, where she plays both barista and customer), Leung says yuenyeung is her favourite drink.
Leung is primarily a visual artist, but for the centre’s recent exhibition SerendipiTea, which she co-created with performance artist Yumi Umiumare, she gets hands-on with her craft. One experience, French Toast is Not From France, saw audience members become participants in creating a Hong Kong-style café in the gallery: together they made French toast and yuenyeung. The other was at the finale where Leung, who spends most of the time sipping coffee and quietly observing chado practitioner and butoh performer Umiumare, brings the dregs of her coffee and mixes it with Umiumare’s tea in a messy climax.
It’s a beautiful reminder that coffee and tea shouldn’t be considered either/or, but two beverages on the same menu… or even in the same cup.
This article originally appeared in AUSTCS enews 1 October 2024.