Chinese Tea Ceremony

Before coming back to England, I had an amazing 2-month break in Taiwan. I met a lot of interesting people, like Huáng (黄: one of the family names) dàgē (大哥: literally means "big brother" but is commonly used to address an experienced or elder male in Taiwan), a tea manufacturer who has already spent more than 30 years in the tea industry. Also he has been very active in the annual tea competition in Taiwan for years.

We had a wonderful tea drinking experience together and I was so amazed by his tea knowledge and experience, especially, he can tell the weather condition when the tea was picked on the tea farm by just drinking it. Our talk inspired me to learn more about Chinese / Taiwanese TEA - how it is grown, how it is produced, how it is brewed, and etc. So I took the Chinese tea ceremony course and explored some tea farms in Taiwan.

Photo-taking during my tea ceremony course -

my dear teacher & the tea setting

And an idea just popped out of my head - I can also introduce Chinese tea culture to my students apart from just teaching the language itself. Why not holding a tea ceremony and drinking tea with my students while teaching? Chinese people always say: "以茶会友" (yǐ chá huì yǒu：literally means using tea to meet your friends, which implies tea-drinking also functions as a media among human interactions in a social way). For me, many of my students are my friends outsides of the classroom. Most of time, I think I learn a lot from them.

It turned out that I really like the idea and decide to put it into practice. Right before returning to Bath, my tea ceremony teacher accompanied me to find myself different tea sets in Yīnggē (莺歌;鶯歌: a so-called "Ceramic Town" in northern Taiwan). The experienced tea manufacturer, Huáng dadàgē(黃大哥), also helped me to choose several different types of tea grown in Taiwan. I also found a famous tailor to customize my own tablecloth with my favorite two colors - 黑 (hēi：black) and 红(hóng：red) for tea ceremony.

After my return, I had a go at holding a 2-ppl tea ceremony with my xuēshēng (学生: pupil), Ming. Basically, holding a tea ceremony requires specific ways of arranging the tea set, brewing tea, and serving tea. I didn't explain much, instead I played the tea ceremony clips. So Ming could try to copy it first then figure out if it's sensible for him later. Initially, Ming started placing the tea plates, tea bowl, drink cups (short cups), aroma cups (tall cups), tea holders (to place 1 drink cup and 1 aroma cup as a set), and so on. Primarily, Ming placed them right but he found an interesting question, that is: why do we need 12 cups on the table and what's the difference between drink cups and aroma cups?

From a culture perspective, Chinese people would prefer even number (2,4,6...) than odd number (1,3,5...). Even numbers imply the concept of "双"( shuāng：two, double, pair, both) or "对"(duì：couple, pair). Many auspicious expressions involving even numbers such as "双喜临门" (shuāng xǐ lín mén：two simultaneous happy events reach the door),"好事成双"(hǎo shì chéng shuāng：good things come in pairs).

To apply in a tea ceremony, usually there are 6 drink cups and 6 aroma cups to make 6 sets of cups as a standard for serving tea. Apart from number "八" (bā : eight), number "六" (liù : six) is also a lucky number in Chinese culture as we can see in a very obvious example - 六六大順 (liù liù dà shùn : literally means double six suggests a good luck).

We can easily tell the function of "drink cup" and "aroma cup" by their names and shapes. Each of them is respectively called "饮杯" (yǐn bēi：drink cup) and "闻香杯" (wén xiāng bēi：smell aroma cup). The former is shorter in length and wider on the top; the latter is taller in length and narrower on the top to keep the aroma inside.

Ming and I also set up the timer for different rounds of tea-brewing. For example, 5 seconds to wake the tea, 35 secs for the 1st round, 45 secs for the 2nd, and 60 secs for the 3rd. Those numbers are not fixed because the size of the teapot (how much tea leave and water to put in) and the temperature of water (90-100˙C) all affect how long it takes to brew a pot of nice tea in different rounds.

Our first round of tea was cold and tasteless because the water temperature was too low to brew the tea ( we were talking about the proportion of water and tea leave and forgot the boiled water was getting cold..:P). In this case, we decided to add up a little bit more tea leave and be aware to pour the water immediately when it is boiled. Our second round tasted much better and I also served a local Taiwanese dessert - pineapple cake to go with the tea. Well, I didn't plan very well to match the taste of tea and dessert (it is supposed to match - you can see how thoughtful the tea host is from that :P). But Ming and I had a nice 2-people tea ceremony together apart from Mandarin-learning. Well..generally nice, haha....you can tell from Ming's face! ^__^

2-people Tea Ceremony with Ming