Combing through my tasting notes or other various entries on this blog, you'll find I have a tendency to brew tea in a non traditional gongfu method. I suppose you could call it gongfu 2.0 (or not). It's a style that I inherited from some older (and much wiser) tea-friends in China years ago when I first started getting serious about tea. It is minimal and aesthetic in a way that I find to be optimal for my own tastes. From time to time I stumble upon Chinese making tea in this style and we become instant friends. Only a certain kind of "tea snob" is not fussy about their tea.
You see, I do not like looking down and seeing a cluttered mess of wet tea-things, ugly tea stains on wooden tea tray, tubes extending from water jugs and distracting reflective stainless steel kettles and induction burners all up in my proverbial bidness. Over the years I've been drinking tea seriously and contemplating form, I've often cringed at the utter mess gongfu tea produces. But it was the way I was introduced to gongfu cha - in a cozy teashop in Hangzhou on an enormous and elaborate redwood tea tray with holes for drainage and built in induction heater and built in water pump (top of the line at the time). A rough assemblage of high ceramics, clay, tea tins took up the rest of the table. Nothing seemed dirty, but it was a chaotic mashing of redundancy. We sat shoulder to shoulder on uncomfortable hardwood stools inlaid with granite. We sipped Longjing (like true Hangzhou-ren should), we bragged about business, we debated politics, and chain-smoked Zhonghua cigarettes. Like many ideals we hold in life, that first ideal experience marked my perception of tea so deeply that it was hard to surrender some of the very tenants that made me uncomfortable later on. I was convinced that brewing tea in this elaborate and ornate way was so imperative to the feeling of tea. And yes, I still believe that tea imparts above all, feelings.
So as a fledgling of tea newb-dom, I was immediately and completely overwhelmed by the stylistic choices thrust then upon me. Everything (so I thought) mattered deeply in the appreciation of tea. What teacups should I use? Would they be bowl shaped, or cup shaped? How large is the perfect sip of tea (30ml? 50?)? What color should my teacups be? What material? In the meanwhile I was drinking tea in massive tea-drunk quantities. 20 grams a day of varying cultivar, processing method, provenance. Sleepless nights were spent researching what kind of tea tray I must procure (because some will warp!), what manner of kettle? What 茶宠 (tea pet)? I am still to this day a firm believer of fundamentals. I am lucky to be fluent in my native mandarin, so resources were abundant, though sometimes utterly conflicted. For the three or four months I dove whole heartedly into deciding on teaware, I drank tea exclusively from only a white (albeit very high quality) gaiwan gifted to me by a hip aunt, and a teacup that I sourced from a little shop in Hangzhou's touristy Hefang Street. I poured tea directly from gaiwan to cup, I dumped out rinses into a large serving bowl. It was ghettobut thinking back, liberating.
The end result of my toil was this: A very large wooden tea tray with plenty of surface area so that I could entertain friends sitting across from me. From the get-go, I decided that a tray that had a built in faucet, burner, and pump was too tacky. I never quite liked the sight of stainless steel and electronics amidst a field of ceramic and wood, so I bought a separate goose neck pour-over electric kettle and set it underneath my table, out of sight. A 10 gallon spring water canister occupied the side of the table on a stand, with vertical pour spout for easy water distribution. When my family and friends realized I was getting very deep into tea, they endowed me with a plethora of good quality teaware. Yixing teapots actually sourced from Yixing in Jiangsu Province (which is close to Hangzhou, actually), a multitude of celadon 龙泉(longquan) teacups, all handmade, more 天目(tianmu) teacups from an uncle in travelling through Taiwan on conference. As is the case with most Chinese families, tea gifts are given every year regardless of if the recipient actually drinks tea. If you are a known tea-lover, your tea gifts increase tenfold. Needless to say, I have a substantial collection. My tea table started to look every much that tea shop.
A part of that configuration still exists in my apartment, though mostly it collects dust. The teapots are in their original gift boxes in my office in China. The teacups are in steady rotation in and out of my personal daily drinking rituals. The odd traveler or dear friend passing through my humble home will sit down and we'll drink. I'll brew them something fragrant and welcoming like Dancong oolong or Anxi baicha in a ceremonial way - splashing water, washing cups, using tongs, overfilling gaiwans and make a grand show of it all. This is not my tea. It's tea I make for people that don't necessary care about tea, but like to see what the fuss is about. In my daily drinking habits, and in more intimate tea-circles I have a whole different aesthetic and procedure.
I make tea in a precise, patient style that requires perhaps more concentration and thoughtfulness than I've done it in the past. The ritual is slower and more enjoyable to me. Lightheartedness comes over me, jovial, generous, I sip and I pour and I wipe and I drain. No tea tray, no mess.
The evolution of our form will come with experience. I wrote in a previous article about what gongfu cha is in a general, easily digestible sense. However, I would never preach to anyone the merits of one form over other. I still enjoy tea sometimes in the presence of heavy chain smokers, on granite inlaid stools over stained redwood tea tables as the feeling of that tea is in itself thoroughly enjoyable and nostalgic. The conversation is loud and obnoxious, the smoke and smell of tobacco is as thick as the laughter. I also enjoy the quiet tea prepared by some other friends, in old dusty Chinese tea-rooms on heirloom table rags with rusty teaware. Those dimly lit rooms smell like books and are filled with antique electronics that no longer work. Their tea is a different sort of pleasant.
I hope that when tea friends visit me, they will say my tea is cheerful, easy to drink, bright and cozy. I want them to know tea the way I know it, if only briefly, as an expression of the type of person I am. I brew tea hard, and bitter. I use too much leaf, and I use water too hot. I talk loud over cups of tea, and I joke often about the weather.
