Gongfu Girl» Inspirations

Reading “A Tea Reader”

Cinnabar — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 17:31:22 +0000

There are books that are enjoyable to read because they are about tea, and books particularly well-suited to a read accompanied by a cup of tea. Katrina Avila Munichiello’s recently published anthology of non-fiction writings about tea, “A Tea Reader,” is both of these. The 52 essays in the book are arranged thematically into five sections, entitled “Tea Reveries,” Tea Connections,” “Tea Rituals,” “Tea Careers,” and “Tea Travels,” each one prefaced by a short introduction written by Munichiello herself. The contributions to the book range in era from a translation of a work written in Tang Dynasty China to writings by contemporary authors solicited for this book.

While all of the writings are thematically linked, centering on tea-inspired memories and the ways that tea forges connections between people, there is enough variety in the writing styles and perspectives to give nearly any reader something he will respond to. Munichiello’s skillful curation and editing have produced a book that is deceptively small in size, while containing a great deal of variation. One of the things that is especially appealing about the book is its flexibility: a reader can either delve into it straight through and traditionally, frontispiece to back cover, or browse among the different essays in capricious order, reading one or two at a time.

My own essay in the book, entitled “Immersion,” and published under my real name, is about my first explorations of Gongfu Cha, and how I fell into a compulsion toward Chinese tea culture. It was an enjoyable piece for me to write, giving me the opportunity to step back and look at a bigger-picture view of my evolution as a person involved in the tea world. I am very proud to see it in this collection alongside works by so many wonderful tea people and writers.

The book is widely available for purchase, and if you’re really fortunate you can attend one of the many reading events taking place across the country. For additional information on the book, visit the “Tea Reader” website.

Possibly Related Posts:

Infusions: an exhibit of teaware by local Pacific Northwest artists

Cinnabar — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 04:34:07 +0000

Opening this coming Saturday, March 26th, at SLAB Art in Ballard, Infusions will center around an exhibition of teaware by contemporary ceramic artists immersed in the vibrant and growing Pacific Northwest tea culture, and will also feature tea tables made by the woodworking artists at SLAB.

On Sunday following the show opening there will be tea tastings offered in the gallery space, with traditional teas provided by Floating Leaves Tea and Black Dragon Tea Bar, prepared and served with the exhibiting artists’ teawares.

Artists displaying their works in the show include Richard Brandt, Chris Shaw and Tina Pepa. In addition to the works on display and for sale, there will be some pieces of teaware from my personal collection to show similarities and contrasts with the new and local work.

(Click image to view entire poster.)

from the press release:

Once known as the home of the latté, Seattle is now steeped in the emerging contemporary tea culture. Drawing equally on traditional influences and current social media—tea blogs are burgeoning—this new trend cuts across all demographics and pulls in anyone who wants to savor a tranquil moment with friends. This inaugural show, Infusions, will highlight the leading edge of the Northwest tea culture, featuring contemporary tea sets from local ceramic artists, tea tables crafted from salvaged wood by Slab Art, and tea tastings with artisanal and traditional tea samples brewed in the artists’ creations.

INFUSIONS:
Design, Fine Craft, & Contemporary Tea Culture
Slab Art, 4919 17th Ave NW, Seattle 98107
March 26 – April 9, 2011

Sat, March 26 – Opening Reception (6-10 pm)
Sun, March 27 – Tea Tastings (10 am-2 pm)
Viewing times after opening by appointment

For additional information, contact Chris Shaw, 206.359.0792. Space is limited, so reservations are recommended for Sunday’s tea tastings. Email infusions@contemporaryclay.org to ensure a spot.

Possibly Related Posts:

Tea with Tyson

Cinnabar — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:52:36 +0000

Getting to hear Mike Tyson say that “Earl Grey sucks” is just one of many reasons that you should watch this.

Possibly Related Posts:

Tea, Haiku and Jisei

Cinnabar — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:50:47 +0000

Are you feeling writerly on a scale even smaller than one hundred and forty character micro-blogging? Consider entering Ito En‘s haiku contest. Ito En is the company that manufactures a lot of the bottled and canned green and oolong tea sold in Japan and the United States. Submissions are due by July 6th, 2009. I’m not sure I’m capable of being quite that terse myself, but I might get inspired to write something.

“From the beginning of time, poetry, especially haiku, has been used to convey the most important of messages. This year, we invite you to express yourself – your views and feelings – about these themes through the time-honored medium of haiku.

Create a haiku that reflects your vision of tomorrow based around Change, Hope and Progress and send them to us for a chance to have your haiku featured on one of our TEA’S TEA bottles next year.”

The Haiku Project 2009 – For Change, Hope & Progress

As additional inspiration from Japanese poetry forms, here is the jisei no ku (辞世の句), or death poem, written by Yukio Mishima as an element of his full ritual seppuku. Apologies for not presenting it in the original Japanese. You can find it here if you can read Kanji.

“A small night storm blows
Saying ‘falling is the essence of a flower’
Preceding those who hesitate”

In a more strictly tea-related vein, Sen no Rikyu, the man most responsible for the development of Chanoyu (the Japanese tea ceremony) in the 16th century also committed ritual suicide.

“According to Okakura Kakuzo in The Book of Tea, his last act was to hold an exquisite tea ceremony. After serving all his guests, he presented each piece of the tea-equipage for their inspection, along with an exquisite kakemono, which Okakura described as “a wonderful writing by an ancient monk dealing with the evanescence of all things.” Rikyu presented each of his guests with a piece of the equipment as a souvenir, with the exception of the bowl, which he shattered, uttering “Never again shall this cup, polluted by the lips of misfortune, be used by man.” As the guests departed, one remained to serve as witness to Rikyu’s death. Rikyu’s last words, which he wrote down as a death poem, were in verse, addressed to the dagger with which he took his own life:

Welcome to thee,
O sword of eternity!
Through Buddha
And through Daruma alike
Thou hast cleft thy way.”

- excerpted from source linked above

Possibly Related Posts:

An introduction to çay

icprncs — Fri, 02 May 2008 22:25:18 +0000

No one comes into the world drinking tea. (I would hope not, at least.) We all have to be introduced to it. I would hazard a guess that my first experiences with it are rather different from those of other U.S. tea aficionados.

When I was 10 years old, my mother–a newly minted consular officer with the U.S. Department of State–received her first posting: Istanbul, Turkey. This was an exciting and exotic experience for a 10-year old girl, and my first weeks there were full of introductions to new experiences, new culture, new sights, and new foods. And one of those new things was çay (pronounced cha-yee, though the second syllable is very short and almost a dipthong), the Turkish way of serving black tea.

Infused or brewed hot beverages weren’t really part of my life at that stage. This was long before branded custom-made coffee in takeout cups and status-symbol teas became a standard part of the American cultural landscape. My mother drank neither coffee nor tea; my grandparents were coffee drinkers, but it wasn’t a major ritual for them, simply something they had a cup or two of (often decaf, percolated please) in the morning or after dinner. I had no history or culture of taking a hot beverage regularly, let alone as a particular ritual of serving and socializing.

I don’t remember the exact details of the first time. It might have been in a café, or possibly in a private residence, likely with some of my mother’s co-workers from the consulate. I do remember being startled that I was being served tea, since in my world up until that point, hot brewed beverages were something for adults. I was also startled at the way it was served: not in the typical porcelain cup with a saucer that I knew from my grandmother’s china collection, but in an elegant fluted glass set on a matching glass saucer. (I can’t recall if the glass and saucer were decorated. Plain glasses are common in cafés, the same way coffee shops here in the U.S. will have simple white stoneware coffee cups. The fancy banded or etched glasses were more common in private homes and upscale hotels.) The tea itself was dark, almost as dark as coffee, and bits of tea leaves swirled in the glass. (I never deliberately cut my çay with water; I don’t think I knew that was an option. Whatever strength the host or establishment provided was what I drank.)

My first taste was almost certainly tentative, and I almost certainly burned my tongue. It was powerful, bitter, deep and dark-tasting, and rather overwhelming to my young palate–a foreign, odd experience, yet not really unpleasant. I was offered cubes of sugar, and I took them, dropping them in one by one and stirring with the small spoon after each one, tasting to see when the liquid in my glass stopped being overwhelmingly bitter. Three was the final count on the cubes. This resulted in a deeply sweet liquid with a slightly bitter aftertaste that I found very pleasant. It was the way I would take my çay for the two years we lived in Istanbul, and it has almost certainly affected the taste I’ve since developed for rich black teas brewed long with sweet elements to them (though I no longer put sugar in my tea as a matter of course).

I have myriad wonderful memories of moment and sense wrapped up in my experiences with çay. The sun shining through a glass as I stirred in my sugar, glinting off the metallic bands or delicate etching of the glass, giving the tea a gorgeous, translucent reddish cast, and highlighting the swirling bits of leaves that were never entirely filtered out. The friendly noise of cafés, filled with raised-voice Turkish arguments (always friendly) and the clatter of backgammon pieces and the moist warmth of steam and the red-bitter scent of tea brewing. Dozy Saturday mornings spent at our favorite rug vendor, located in the oldest part of the Grand Bazaar (the part that was originally a caravansarai), where they would give us çay to sip while we sat in the stone alcoves in the walls and they spread rug after rug out before us for my mother’s review and approval, stacking the rugs in a pile that might reach three feet high by the time we were done, while morning sunshine slanted through the high window and highlighted the dust stirred up when the rugs were unrolled. Breakfasts during our school ski trips (yes, you can go skiing in Turkey!), rows of prepubescent kids seated on benches at long rough-hewn tables, served our tea out of white porcelain pots along with fresh-that-morning bread and sweet butter and rose-petal jam, a combination of flavors that even now makes me happy when I so much as think about it. Çay is an integral part of one of the most formative periods of my life, and deeply tied into my senses.

We didn’t continue with tea, let alone çay, once we returned to the U.S. My mother wasn’t interested in investing in a samovar or the time required for brewing and serving çay according to tradition, and I’m sure we would have found it difficult in those days to get Turkish tea leaves; and since we hadn’t had that history of regular tea-drinking before going to Istanbul, there wasn’t much to keep us doing it once we left. It would be a decade before tea returned to my life as a regular feature. But there is no doubt in my mind that çay is the foundation of the interest I developed in later years, and I treasure my memories of experiencing it in Turkey. I hope to return there and experience it again soon.

(allaboutturkey.com has a brief overview of the history of tea in Turkey and information on preparing çay the Turkish way. The articles “Taking Tea in Turkey” and “Turkish Tea in Istanbul” from turkeytravelplanner.com give a more…spirited view of the experience of çay.)

Possibly Related Posts:

I want the top leaves too!

Cinnabar — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 22:49:43 +0000

This adorable Japanese commercial is for a green tea made by the Thai company Unif. The ads were done by BBDO Bangkok. More of them, with English subtitles can be viewed here. The award-winning commercial featured on that page, called “Mother’s Day,” is brilliant. These cute-as-a-bug’s-eye caterpillars are called “worms” in the English translation of the advertising campaign name.

Possibly Related Posts:

Indoctrination

Cinnabar — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 21:23:20 +0000

I remember my introduction to Gongfu Cha quite well. My friend and I happened into a smallish shop in the Chinese section of the International District in Seattle called “New Century Tea House & Chinese Classical Furniture,” not knowing much about what we were after, but always interested in new tea experiences. It was a tea-infused Saturday as we had launched the day with a lovely pot of jasmine pearls a few blocks away at the Panama Hotel Tea House. Upon entering the tea shop, we were convinced by the proprietress to sit down and let her serve us tea. I was suspicious of the hard sell, but was quickly won over as she began to talk to us about the tea and how best to prepare it. We were captivated by the process – so unlike the strictly formal and minimalist Japanese Tea Ceremony – but so specific in the ways of preparation and of service. She served us a very nice Pu-ehr, which we bought 4 oz. of. This initial experience, not unexpectedly, led to the purchase and frequent implementation of the traditional tools used in Gongfu Cha and an ongoing search for wonderful teas to use them on.

Introducing other people to Gongfu Cha by serving them tea can be a very rewarding experience. I have had the opportunity to do this a number of times over the past few months, and with the exception of a brother-in-law who did not have the attention span to remain at the table through the final infusion, the guests have been quite interested in the experience and have enjoyed it. The format of the ceremony lends itself nicely to a casual, yet highly formalized, environment. Conversation is fluid and encouraged – There can be be talk about the tea itself and talk about the tools of the service – The guests can gain information and caffeine simultaneously, tiny cups and tidbits of information at a time.

Serving tea in the Gongfu style to people unfamiliar with it does feel a little like prosletizing, particularly with all of the focus on the specifics of accoutrements and protocols and the reverence for the tea itself. But if people find themseves underhandedly indoctrinated into the world of Chinese oolongs and pu-erhs, that’s probably not such a bad thing.

Possibly Related Posts:

When to get rid of it.

Colleen — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 19:36:18 +0000

As the new year gets rolling, I’ve found it a good time to dig through the baskets and drawers and shelves full of tea and decide what to keep and what to toss.

Judging by the odor of my desk drawer at work, some of my stash had gone stale. Others were just abandoned in favor of other varieties – especially in the last several months, as I’ve developed a more discerning palate.

But how long do you keep tea, and how should you store it? This is a question that is asked over and over, so I did a little digging to see if I could find an answer that most people agree on – and that’s no easy feat. But there were some good guidelines to go by:

Store in a dry place.
Keep out of direct light – light will degrade tea.
Please don’t store in the freezer or at any other extreme temperature.
Store away from spices and other strongly-scented items.
Outside of an air-tight container, tea loses its quality after 2-3 weeks.
In an air-tight container away from light, tea should last six months to a year.

So, about half of my collection has been thrown out, with a group set aside to be brewed soon, or not at all. I got rid of a lot of grocery store varieties, and I’ve been collecting small tins from a local Indian market for loose tea storage.

I usually buy in quantities of 2 ounces or less. This gives me enough to try it several times and even share with friends, and I get to go back to the teashop on a regular basis and pick out something new – and now I have the room for it!

Possibly Related Posts:

The Teacup – Pu-erh (Sweet & Smooth, 2000 Vintage Brick)

Colleen — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 21:28:06 +0000

Two small personal notes before I dive into the story for today: The husband and I were dawdling in the tea aisle at the grocery store last week, when he looked at me and told me that it was about time I got my tea at a tea store. I knew he was right, of course. I just think it’s funny that he’s the one who had to say it first.

My other little issue is that I named this site Gongfu Girl, even though I didn’t know much at all about gongfu cha. To be honest, when you find a domain name like that available, you don’t pass it over. But I wasn’t just being pretentious. I was more hoping that I could document my experiences so that people could learn it with me, and it would be about growing into the Way of Tea as much as anything else. After the amazing weekend I just had, I have a list of teaware to find and buy, a lot of stories to tell, and a lot of inspiration to fuel my journey.

Among some of the things I enjoyed on Saturday was a trip with my husband to a tiny little shop on Queen Anne Avenue, The Teacup. We took a little side trip up there after enjoying crepes at Pike Place Market, and we got there just in time to be invited to sit at a table where the manager, Brett, was serving tea gongfu-style.

Brett is a very enthusiastic tea connoisseur, and his love for the leaf and the process really shines through when he’s sharing it with his friends and customers. We sat down with Brett and six other young men, and caught the last round of an oolong with a mellow, woody flavor. He then began the first infusion of pu-erh (designated sweet and smooth, a 2000 vintage), passing around bricks for us to see and smell, explaining the journey of the tea leaf from plant to beverage.

He brewed the tea in what I can assume was a yixing pot – a small clay pot that takes on the qualities of the pu-erh over time – and he decanted the dark liquor into a serving vessel as it was done infusing. The tea was poured first into tall, thimble-like cups, and we then transfered it to the drinking cup and raised the empty one to our noses to inhale the aroma.

It’s very hard to find those aroma cups for sale, but after inviting the rich, warm air into my nostrils, it’s an experience I don’t want to go long without. I have an intense urge to share it with my friends and family. This pu-erh had the distinct smell of walking through my favorite campsite just after a heavy rain, and I felt a strong personal connection with it. Smell is one of the most intense memory triggers, after all.

The taste of the tea was not disappointing. Again, like moss and pine needles on a wet day, but in liquid form. If I had known this fragrance and taste was available to me in my own teapot, I would not have waited so long to find gongfu cha or pu-erh in my own city!

We shared several infusions from the same leaves, and there were subtle changes with each round. As we finished, one of his friends took the captain’s chair, and he got up to assist me in finding some new teas to take home, along with my first gaiwan – a simple, white, porcelain cup, saucer, and lid.

So yes, I have more teas to share with you this week. Every time someone opened a canister of tea, the fragrance would surround me and hold me hostage. It sounds dramatic, but I really felt moved by these teas.

I made pu-erh with the gaiwan for my friends when I returned home. I got six infusions from one large tablespoon, and it had the same nostalgic effect on them as it did on me. I’m anxious to get a yixing pot that I can dedicate to pu-erh, and be witness to the characteristics that the tea imparts with the clay as time goes by.

In the meantime, I will be returning to The Teacup to buy wonderful tea and teaware and to learn more from Brett, who has a lot of knowledge and passion to share. He serves gongfu cha every Saturday afternoon at 1:00. The shop is at 2207 Queen Anne Avenue.

Possibly Related Posts:

Tea Life, Tea Mind: Tranquility

Colleen — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 23:26:59 +0000

“Tranquility,” an aesthetic concept unique to Tea, comes with the constant practice of the first three principles of harmony, respect, and purity in our everyday lives. Sitting alone, away from the world, at one with the rhythms of nature, liberated from attachments to the material world and bodily comforts, purified and sensitive to the sacred essence of all that is around, a person making and drinking tea in contemplation approaches a sublime state of tranquility. But, strange to say, this tranquility will deepen even further when another person enters the microcosm of the tearoom and joins the host in contemplation over a bowl of tea. That we can find a lasting tranquility within our own selves in the company of others is the paradox.

More next week

Possibly Related Posts: