October 5, 2010

Lately we have been starting with a meditation session. Aaron’s inner tea room has a wonderful silence about it and when we are sitting in there, its easier for me to calm my mind. The fountain makes a pleasant sound, a stream rolling over rocks. While sitting for around a half an hour, I focused on my breath, reminding myself that the rhythm of the universe can be found within me. If at least for this short period of time, its good to tie in with a greater consciousness and cleanse the mind a little for the tea to be drunk and felt—and to hear Aaron’s advice.

After meditating, Aaron gets the charcoal for the brazier started and we talk about some spiritual matters. Spirituality is a large portion of what we talk about at tea class. Adam and I both see Aaron as a spiritual advisor. Some might view this as unexpected or unnecessary in a tea class but it very much belongs here. We don’t want to have “cha without the Dao”. The tea that we are learning to make and understand has everything to do with the Dao.

Today Aaron spoke of reciprocity, expanding our understanding of it. Generally in the west we regard ‘reciprocity’ with a philosophy of ‘what goes around, comes around.” We treat others as they treat us, in other words. This is how the business world works, and how many of our personal relationships function as well. We will try to raise the bar a little in our relationships with others. If I feel that I have done something wrong to another, I will feel a little worse and more regretful about what has happened. If, on the other hand, I feel that someone has wronged me, I will be a little less hard on them and not so quick to condemn them for some so-called “wrongdoing”. Similarly, whatever kindness another offers me will be met with great appreciation, though when I extend the same kindness I will see it as never enough. This balances reciprocity, which is too often inharmonious due to our egos. The solace of friendship, that we all turn to when we’re tired of the business of the world, is found in the fact that amongst friends there is no “I’ll treat you as you treat me.” We can begin to stop drawing lines between people and try to rise above good and evil. This, too, can make our tea better.

We then began to discuss the tea plan for the session. Wu De would make a number of Puer teas for us and we were to try to determine whether they were sheng or shou, as well as their approximate age and whatever other details we could discern about them. The tea was all brewed in the same pot—a beautiful purple-sand Yixing from the Qing Dynasty. We are also trying to sense the effects different materials can have on the tea liquor we drink. We had the pot for brewing, and by the side lids from a modern pot made from aged, refined purple-sand (grade-A clay), and Adam’s nice purple-sand pot from the 80’s. You can tap your tea cup on the button before drinking. The button is the ‘Bai Hui” of the tea pot and it will affect the quality of the tea liquor in your cup. Some clays will distort the water and it pools in your mouth more before you can swallow it. It takes more effort push it down. It’s also rough in the mouth. Others can really smooth out the tea water and it just shoots down your throat with little to no effort. Then there are many degrees in between. You can tap one, have a sip, then the next, and so on. As expected, the Qing Dynasty pot was the smoothest. It’s as if all the ‘structure’ of the tea liquor fits together perfectly and easily—as if all the atoms were in the “right” place. It moves over your tongue and down your throat in one positively charged movement. The others were nice as well but not as nice as this one. The grade-A clay was a few steps behind the pot we were brewing in and the 80’s pot was third. You have to get real quiet to feel the differences here. They were quite obvious to us, though. It’s great to finally learn what the effect of purple-sand clay has on the tea. I feel that a lot of people speak to the superiority of Zisha (purple-sand) but don’t really take the patience to feel the improvements that it has on the tea they make. It’s also important to know that not everything brown or purple is Zisha. The clay is quite rare nowadays and the antiques are becoming more so all the time. I don’t even have one yet. I can use my years of experience with modern standard and substandard Yixing pots and compare them with one very soon.

One Gong Fu Tea tip that came up in class is the way to deal with the hot lid of the teapot while making tea, caused as a result of showering the pot. You can lift it off the teapot with your thumb and middle finger on opposite sides of the lid and your fiddle finger above on the button. It’s good to have lid rest close by on the right side of the pot so you can quickly set it down when it is too hot to handle. Even though it is rather hot, you should handle it with a steady, unflinching manner. You don’t want to drop and accidentally break it, or make your guests feel uncomfortable. Some training for your finger tips is wise. Every once in a while, dip them in some hot water so that they grow more accustomed to the heat.

Some of our ideas about the Puers that we tried were right on and others were off a bit. We had 3 shou teas, and they were all rather distinct from each other. For one of them, we were pretty sure that it was an aged sheng but found our assumption to be wrong. This is one of the reasons that Aaron made it for us: so we could see that a lot of tea merchants will knowingly of unknowingly pass a shou Puer off as Sheng Puer. Aged sheng Puer fetches much higher prices than shou. We will continue on with Puer next week.