When I first moved to the United States as a doe-eyed six year old Chinese kindergardener, it was to Greenwood, Indiana - a quaint suburb 15 miles outside of Indianapolis. My father recalls smirking, that he "threw me into the zoo with the other little animals". That's an appropriate analogy for first grade I would say, especially because I did not know a lick of English, and I was literally the first and only Asian boy most of my classmates had seen. This was not what they called a very immigrant friendly community. The demographic of Greenwood, Indiana today (25 years later) is roughly the same: 91% white. Immediately, I found myself entrenched against a formidable host of eye slanting jokesters and the ever present cadence of three Chinese syllables "ching, chong, chang". Fortunately for me, in the same way children are mindlessly cruel, they are also infinitely curious and malleable. The older brothers and sisters of my classmates were still caught up in a very real and very serious Karate Kid phenomenon in the USA. The 1986 hit sequel Karate Kid 2 worked only to bolster the mystique and exotic nature of all things Asian. It made no difference that Miyagi was Japanese and I was Chinese. The first friendships I made in the United States all stem from one question: "Hey, do you know Kung Fu?". As a child, I did not know Kung Fu. As an adult, Kung Fu is all I know.
patchwork at tea tasting in Hangzhou, China
Tetsubin, lotus
Kung fu, or Gongfu literally just means effort. We say in China, 花点功夫 hua dian gong fu, which means: spend some effort. Gongfu style tea is then directly understood as tea that requires some effort to make. Much debate exists about the parameters and intricacies of gongfu cha. To some it is a method of brewing tea that offers maximum appreciation for a tea's technical aspects: taste, aroma, texture or mouthfeel. To others gongfu cha is an aesthetic or art, where the beauty of tea lies not in the tea itself but in its very preparation. Ideally, we're all somewhere in the middle. Most of the information available to western hobbyists is rather technical, focused on what a tea tastes like, its provenance, its age and its flavor and texture profiles. That's understandable. Western cultures are traditionally not as concerned with means as they are consumed by the ends. The converse of the western aversion to procedure and aestheticism is the Japanese obsession with it. Japanese gongfu cha transcends tea and becomes rigid in its preparation down to the very attire that should be worn in its enjoyment. One could argue that the tea becomes secondary to the task. Where ever we fall on the technical vs transcendental spectrum of gongfu tea, we should all agree that if tea is to be prepared in this laborious way, there should be some quality in the cup. If we take the time to brew tea in a way that is thoughtful and insightful, it cannot be without artistic input. Ideally, these two polarizing views merge into a cup of tea that is beautiful in its production and tasty to drink.
effort
For most Chinese that brew tea in the gongfu style, it is merely how tea is made. There needs to be no contemplation of ritual or serious discerning of flavor. The organic daily occurrence of tea and gatherings at the tea table are as normal and wordless as Sunday Night Football. We in the West are so intrigued by the mysticism of the sometimes very mundane activities of others. We are enthralled in the minutiae and when we over-brew a cup of tea, we are easily jaded by our own inability to assimilate into something that comes so naturally to others. So we blame the tea, we blame the tea salesman, we blame the farmer, and we say China is a country that sells fake things. It's that very ugly reflection of our own shortcomings that makes the tea bitter. The truth is this: not every cup of gongfu tea made by the teashop girl in China is even close to being perfect. It's likely the trained way she washes cups, her slights of hand with the pot, her weaving lyrical fingers that have sold you on the notion that her's is the tea that is genuine, authentically Oriental. She is self assured, unapologetic , deliberately making you her tea, and that's a beautiful thing. When I write about this point, I cannot help but remember my classmates from first grade. I did not know Kung Fu, but I was exotic, an import, something from far away which rendered me infinitely interesting. I made many friends later on as (so I'd like to think) my true easy going, friendly nature emerged.
My advice to you is this, dear visitor. Find that ease of demeanor and the confidence in your actions to brew an acceptable cup of tea. Find within it the unyielding truth, scour its depths for the mistakes you've made and brew the next cup better. With time you will find the ritual, the tastes and textures to be most expediently revealing, and even within the most bitter tea will be sweetness in spades.