Tea and Lock Cha

Tea and Lock Cha

There are two ways to enjoy Chinese tea.

One is to drink it as a common beverage; we do not need to pay much attention to its background, history, the advanced knowledge of preparation nor the culture it consists, but we do enjoy the sensational elements like taste, aroma and the healthy properties it brings. The other way is we look for a higher quality tea, more sophisticated way of preparation, the taste of its culture and to share the enlightenment inspired with our friends, shortly speaking, we enjoy more spiritual aspects. I cannot say which one can bring you more pleasure, or sometimes, I do both.

However, as a tea lover, we can never be satisfied by only sensational response. We like to pursuit more enjoyable elements. So we start out a long journey: to the world of tea, to study its origin, background, production, preparation, history, culture and the most pleasant or important thing is to talk or to show your friends your discovery. It is just like you have to look up maps, buy tickets, make reservation to hotels, bring enough films, and then you can talk to your friends your experience and show them the pictures when you are going for a trip somewhere. Tea ceremony must be one of the ways to share this experience. So is the tea manner. Sometimes we need a proper manner to make a tea, not only for beautiful gestures of art itself, but also for a successful tea encounter and a proper way of preparation of a good tea. Japanese people are never acquaintance to this, as they have developed a vast study of this since the time of great tea masters like Sen no Rikyu. Today Japanese chado enthusiasts are still spending a life-long study with an expensive fee to learn a proper manner to prepare a good cup of tea from their tea masters of chanoyu. Today, we try to shed a little light on this scope in Chinese tea: how to make Chinese tea in a proper, healthy and beautiful way.

...to be continued.