Traditional Chinese tea ceremony

We concluded our Sunday afternoon visit to the Plum Tree Park by enjoying a traditional Chinese tea ceremony...thanks to Bob yielding to an excellent saleswoman!

Walking into the building, the four of us lined up behind a small group of people watching a family of five sitting on short stools around a wooden table engaged in what appeared to be a tea ceremony. Intrigued we stood for about 20 minutes and then started to leave. Just as we stepped to the door, a woman who had watched us asked Bob if he would bring his group back to have a Chinese tea ceremony when this one was over. Looking at the rest of us, our faces said yes, so he shrugged his shoulders and said, "Sure!"

In about 20 minutes we were ushered to the other tea table and the same young woman, dressed in a yellow, traditional Chinese top, walked behind the wooden table and proceeded to begin the tea ceremony. The color yellow, I remember Shaw explaining to me on my first trip to China, was a royal color and at one time it could only be worn by the Emperor. All through this tea ceremony she spoke the history of the ceremony in Chinese and Shaw translated. He also explained it takes two years of training and special licensing to become certified to perform a tea ceremony like this one.

Sitting on the short stools around the front of the table, we learned we were going to have Black Dragon tea, so it would be a black tea vs. green tea ceremony. They are different we learned. We watched the young woman's incredibly delicate, almost porcelain-like, hands expertly move through very defined movements with the small, clay tea pot. The pot we learned was four years old. This is very important since you use only one variety of tea in a pot and the longer you use it, the more aromatic it becomes and thus more wonderful the tea smells when you serve it.

She began the process we had seen earlier of lining two sets of cups—one cup narrower and taller than the other—for each person. With the tea in the tea pot, she poured hot tea twice—you can use the tea 9 times—over the both sets of traditional tea cups. Each cup holds about the size of one big American swallow.

As she completed the second round of pouring tea into and then out of the cups, she poured tea a third time into both sets of small tea cups. For each person she placed the wider tea cup up with tea in it and the longer tea cup empty and inverted on a wooden holder and handed this to us using both hands. We received it the same way.

First, we held the longer, inverted tea cups between our hands and smelled the tea. Our tea server explained in Chinese to Shaw who translated our next instructions. Hold the small cup filled with tea using the middle finger below the cup and the thumb and index finger around the top. It's not too hard to do, but like chopsticks, takes a bit of learned dexterity to the neophyte.

The first time you drink this tea you must sip it three times. The first sip is for your teeth, the second is for your tongue and the third is for your thirst. After that you can sip it however you like. We continued sipping tea and eating four types of seeds until we had exhausted our 9th pouring of tea from the tea pot.

We left feeling very relaxed. This was due not only from the process, time spent and new insights we gained into this very important facet of Chinese culture, but also from listening to the soothing, rhythmic rounds of traditional Chinese music that played in the background throughout our wonderful interlude at a traditional Chinese tea ceremony.