Suanmeitang
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Suanmeitang
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Suanmeitang (Simplified Chinese: 酸梅汤; Traditional Chinese: 酸梅湯; Pinyin: Suānméi tāng) is a traditional Chinese sweet-sour beverage made by simmering smoked dark plums (乌梅, wumei) with rock sugar and aromatics such as hawthorn, dried tangerine peel, or osmanthus. It appears on the Chinese Drink hub as a classic soft drink, especially for hot weather.[1][2]
Characteristics
The finished drink is usually deep brown-red to amber, tasting sharp-sour from the smoked plum with a rounded sweetness from rock sugar. Good cups smell lightly of dried fruit and, when osmanthus is used, a soft floral finish. It is typically served well chilled; older Beijing street service relied on ice or ice-cellar cold water rather than modern refrigeration alone.[3]
Suanmeitang is not fresh green-plum juice. The core fruit is processed wumei (smoked or dark preserved mume), which gives a different aroma from fresh prune or plum nectar. Bottled supermarket versions are widespread; stall- or kitchen-simmered pots still define the “old Beijing” image.
Ingredients (overview)
Smoked dark plums (乌梅), rock sugar or crystal sugar, water; optional hawthorn, licorice root, dried tangerine peel, osmanthus, or rose. Proportions shift by weather and shop—hotter days often run more sour in traditional Beijing practice.[2] Overview only—not a recipe or medical formula.
History and culture
Chinese materia medica long recorded wumei and plum decoctions. A soft historical line treats early medicinal plum soaks (including notes associated with the Six Dynasties physician Tao Hongjing) as antecedents of later sweetened plum drinks; those medical notes are background lore, not a continuous branded recipe from antiquity to the street cup.[3]
As a popular summer soft drink, suanmeitang is strongly linked to Qing-period Beijing and Tianjin street and tea-house life. Period miscellanies such as Qingbai leichao and the early-twentieth-century Yanjing suishi ji describe iced plum drinks sold in the capital; essayists later praised dense, ice-cold shop cups. Famous Liulichang and other old Beijing confectionery-tea shops (for example Xinyuanzhai in cultural writing) are remembered as landmarks of osmanthus plum drink—named here as cultural memory, not as advertising.[3][2]
Today the drink is nationwide: home pots, restaurant pitchers, and industrial bottles. It is often ordered with fatty meals such as hot pot or roast meats because the sour-sweet profile cuts richness—a dining habit, not a health claim.
Serving and variations
Cold glass, bowl, or bottle. Osmanthus-forward Beijing style, heavier hawthorn versions, and lightly spiced commercial concentrates all circulate. See Chinese Drink, Hong Kong Milk Tea, and Yuenyeung for other soft-drink categories on this wiki.