Homo Laborus glutto. Glutto chugs tea, and is identified by the enormous mug at its workstation. Just as salmon instinctively find their way upstream, you can will observe glutto’s well-worn path and bee-line movements toward the nearest toilet several times each day. If you are of the glutto variety, you are better served by a tea-maker. Zarafina has one, and Breville’s will soon be available in the US.

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Homo Laborus ritus. Ritus uses tea as an oasis of calm, a form of comfort in the workaday jungle. Observing ritus in its natural habitat, you will see a creature of habit. The tea may change, but the process follows a form. Think of a bird’s nest- each bird constructs a little differently. Ritus may use a single serving pot to avoid over-steeping tea. Other ritus fill their own muslin or filter bags. Ritus, however, may be labeled as time-wasters by gluttoes.

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Homo Laborus sippus. The Sipper adapts the behavior of glutto or ritus, modifying the practices of either. Whether quenching thirst, seeking a break, or using tea as a social lubricant, sippus will use a variety of tools, including a brew mug. Although not producing the quality of tea ritus is known for, sippus can still pause and savor tea more than gluttus.

Guest post provided by Jason Walker of Walker Tea Review.  Jason’s site hosts online tea tastings and video tea reviews.

The Association of Tea Bloggers is hosting a series of blog carnivals, which are round-ups of posts centered around one theme and published on the same day. For more details on the tea blog carnival project read this post on the ATB web site.

Brett of Black Dragon Tea Bar, finding the specialness in a somewhat unexpected tea tool, wrote about a beautiful, elegant, rustic and functional wooden tea strainer.

I wrote about a marvelous, and somewhat mysterious, Yixing clay teapot in the shape of a hand.

Gingko of Life In Teacup wrote about the beautiful simplicity of brewing in a glass mug, and of the often humble and unexpected places that mugs of this type can be acquired.

Katrina of Tea Pages came to the conclusion that her favorite tea ware encompasses an entire category: tea wares made of Yixing clay.

Adam of The Sip Tip, after his assertion that the favorite piece of tea ware is always the most recently acquired, goes into more detail regarding his love of Hagi Yaki, a branch of Japanese ceramics.

Jason of Walker Tea Review wrote about a prized antique Yixing teapot which was given to him and his wife by a friend in Shanghai.

Kay of That Pour Girl wrote about an Alice in Wonderland themed teacup and saucer that she painted herself.

Because Examiner.com requires its contributors to use real names and photos of themselves as user pictures, I am now writing about tea with my real, legal name, which might not sound like anything of consequence, but it is a big shift in my way of thinking. Over the past few years I’ve intentionally cultivated very separate identities in different places, which helps me keep track of what I’m doing, and also prevents an onslaught of irrelevant data going to people who aren’t interested in it. Of course, there’s always some bleed-through. I don’t confine my tea-related online content to tea absolutely one hundred percent tea-related topics, but I keep it close to that, and I very rarely write anything about tea in my non-tea-related interactions with people.

So with this change I feel a little bit like Spider Man, pulling off his mask at a press conference to reveal that he is Peter Parker…except that I’ll never be as cool as Spider Man, and there’s no vitally important, political compulsion to change my tactics and reveal my real name and what I actually look like. It’s all just circumstances leading to an inability to maintain an exclusively separate, distinct, pseudonymed online persona with user pictures that are inanimate objects or murky pictures that suggest vaguely what I look like. I now have to connect at least a few of the lines between my tea-related persona and other versions of me.

In addition to the exposure on Examiner.com, there’e also World Tea Expo, where I’ll be meeting a number of people with whom I have only interacted online, and who do not know my actual name. In this situation it’s going to be pretty useful for people to know that my real name is Virginia since I generally don’t use the name Cinnabar in the real world, and I would never introduce myself as Gongfu Girl to anyone. This whole thing feels a little strange, and even a little uncomfortable, but I’ll try to accustom myself to it. If you see someone who looks like these pictures while you’re at World Tea Expo, it’s probably me, so say “hello” if you get the chance.

The first list is by William I. Lengeman III, publisher of Tea Guy Speaks, which is a blog that you should read if you don’t already. His description of us, from the list Top Ten Tea Blogs is:

“Thoughts on a variety of tea-related topics from Cinnabar and assorted and sundry guest contributors.”

The second was compiled by Darren Spence of Wearetea.com, whose blog is called Tales From the Teashop. His description of us, from Top Ten Tea Blogs That Aren’t Trying To Sell You Something reads:

“These ladies have an encyclopaedic knowledge of tea combined with enthusiasm in abundance and a passion for storytelling. This blog should leave you informed and amused, which is no mean feat. And from what I can gather the girls have no affiliation whatsoever to a tea company.”

He is, of course correct in that we are entirely independent of any tea companies. I liked what Darren said about the list itself:

“I selected the following blogs because tea has become big business and as such tea companies purporting to be your friend are actually trying to sell you something. The following blogs (in alphabetical order) simply celebrate tea in all of its slightly quirky glory. Enjoy!”

In case you are curious, the photograph above is of the front of a glass Chinese tea thermos. It was in a window sill steeping some delicious JING Tea Mao Jian (Organic Jade Sword) green tea when I photographed it.

Katrina, the founder and editor of Tea Pages, is assembling an anthology of writings about tea called Tea Memories. Published and unpublished writers are encouraged to submit pieces 800-1800 words in length between now and June 30th for possible inclusion. The theme of the anthology is direct personal experiences in which tea was a vital element. I expect the focus of the anthology to result in a more interesting collection of writings than a more generalized call for writings about tea itself would yield. I will be writing something for submission myself once I can narrow down what I want to write about among a myriad of possible topics. Given the number of active and talented writers among tea aficionados I expect the project to conclude with a marvelous final publication and an enjoyable read.

Have you “taken tea” in a unique place or under unusual circumstances?

Do you have a story about sharing tea with someone special in your life?

Have you made an important decision over a cup of tea?

The “Tea Memories” anthology will be comprised of original, non-fiction essays on these and other topics related to tea. Whether humorous or touching, serious or inspiring, your stories of events, experiences, and transformational moments are invited for submission.

Our intent is to show that tea is far more than something that quenches your thirst. Tea provides comfort, a time for reflection, and a starting point for conversation. Tea plays a supporting role in the stories of our lives. “Tea Memories” aims to share the ways that tea has changed our lives, one cup at a time.

Further details are available on Tea Memories: Living Life One Cup at a Time.

A complete list of the contents with summaries of each of the pieces can be found on the journal’s website. The articles span a wide range of topics, styles and different geographic regions, from the craftsmanship of teapots in Yixing, China to serving tea in a tent on the Black Rock Desert in Nevada during the annual Burning Man Arts Festival. Also included are some wonderful photographs from a mobile guerrilla chanoyu performance project by Pierre Sernet.

The online sections of content related to the current issue include a review of two books that both look like they would be valuble to read, The Tea Ceremony and Women’s Empowerment in Modern Japan: Bodies Re-presenting the Past, by Etsuko Kato, and Japanese Tea Culture: Art, History and Practice, Morgan Pitelka, Editor. Excerpted from the review:

Both books also discuss in detail how chanoyu’s economic, social and cultural “capital” have developed and been manipulated to suit the needs the tea establishment. Tea as enterprise impacted clusters of complementary professionals (e.g. ceramic craftspeople and merchants) who were able to make a living sharing the practice, even if only limitedly, to a willing and impressionable populace.

If there was such a cultural complex as chanoyu a half century ago in the USA, it would have been studied as home economics. To elevate it to the status it enjoys in Japan would require patronage by someone as pop culturally powerful as Martha Stewart or Oprah Winfrey. This is clear from Kato’s feminist approach. For example she takes us to a Japanese department store “art” gallery exhibition entitled “Saint Rikyu”. More than just “big box” stores of today, in Japan they are to women in the tea world the equivalent of men’s social clubs: natural, “safe” places that present chanoyu as “high” art and socially acceptable places for women to gather in public outside the home and tea room. I was told by a tea informant that Japanese women were more liable to travel independently of their husbands and with their female friends to national or international destinations following their grand master teachers around in the name of tea. The delegations of dozens of middle age women chajins who have visited Los Angeles over the years is proof.

I would encourage anyone interested in tea and tea traditions to read all of the online related content, but while it’s still available, I strongly recommend trying to pick up a copy of the magazine itself, which contains a great deal of excellent content unavailable in any other form. It has a cover price of $12, which, in my opinion, is a great bargain. I imagine that there may be some bookstores that carry it, but you can buy it online from In Pursuit of Tea.

You can follow me on Twitter. My tweets sometimes read as strange, overly-verbose haiku because I set a rule that every one of them, including replies to other people, had to be exactly 140 characters, the Twitter limit. This allows for me to use Twitter without an aneurism and provides me with a perpetual language puzzle. It’s particularly challenging when I post photographs from my phone and can’t get an accurate character count automatically until I exceed 140 including the TwitPic URL, but I like those sorts of challenges.

You can friend me on FaceBook. Admittedly, I used an obviously fake name. For the most part I have to keep my tea-related persona somewhat separate from the other online manifestations of myself. This is entirely practical, to keep the content in the places that people are interested in it, and to help me keep track of what’s what.

You can also become a fan of GongfuGirl on our FaceBook Page. This is the first time I have promoted it anywhere, so please give it a visit.

There is a certain amount of cross-delivery of written content between these sources, but I minimize it. My Twitter account feeds to my FaceBook account, for example, but there are different photographs in each place and they function differently. The photographs I post to Twitter or FaceBook will never be photographs that have been used in any GongfuGirl posts and will never be posted in multiple places. This is kind of nice because it gives me a logical place to make more of the millions of tea-related photographs that I take available to view.

I believe in the value of reciprocity, so I’ll usually add people back. Given an opportunity to expand the possibilities of social networking even further, I’d invite each and every one of you over for some tea, so if you’re ever in Seattle…

Organic Rou Kuei Oolong from auraTea is a wonderful and unusual tea. It is a darker oolong with pretty long red leaves. The dry leaves emit a nice woodsy scent, foreshadowing a nice tea liquor. The brewed tea has a rich flavor that tastes almost like it has been roasted, like mesquite coated in molasses. Its slightly bitter floral undertone was quite pleasant and it held up admirably to at least five infusions. Rou Kuei means “cinnamon” in Chinese, which is a fitting analogy. It is one of the varieties of Wuyi Rock Teas grown in Fujian Province.

For the initial tasting of this tea I brewed it gongfu style in a yixing pot. It’s a tea well-suited to the warmth and darkness of clay and slow, small servings.

I have had other Wuyi oolongs that I found exceedingly dull, but I enjoyed this tea very much. It’s a tea to give full attention to, not one to drink in the background while performing some other task.

One of the ways that this strange weather has affected me is that I have not been able to get any more spring water from the grocery store for brewing tea. There are many, many varieties of tea in this house, but no good water. This is not a monumental hardship, but it led to some improvisation.

A few days ago I had the idea that melted snow would be a good source of pure water for tea. So, taking up a couple of large containers, I gathered up as much snow as I could, skimming just the surface off of the freshly fallen snow blankets. It’s quite startling to realize just how much snow it takes to get just a little water. After finally melting enough snow, I brewed some Silver Needle White tea with it. The tea tasted quite nice, although brighter than I expected. It did taste good, and did not taste like it had been made with tap water.

The following day I melted another batch of snow and used this water to brew a pot of genmaicha in a cast iron teapot. This time the tea tasted quite harsh and metallic. It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t anything I’d do again. I do not know exactly what the chemical breakdown of our particular snow is, but the water did not react well with iron. It did not taste toxic or dangerous, just brash, without the smooth warmth that the genmaicha exhibits when made with spring water.

The experiment lost its charm after that. The tap water here isn’t that bad, and melting snow is a lot of effort for little reward. It was a good experience in any case.