Zen and the art of tea drinking
Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve put something up. A lot has gone on, and yet much of it has become typical day-to-day stuff. As I come more and more accustomed to living here, the finer details seem to stand out less and less as they fade into backdrop of every day living. I experience now what is best described as the curse of being accustom. The spark that once made everything here unique has begun to fade. The worst being that it seems inescapable, no matter where we find ourselves for any length of time we begin to take the things that make up our day to day for granted. What appeared so unique a few months ago is now routine. Sad as this realization feels, it does ask more of me. That I remain aware, take nothing for granted and keep paying attention to the details. The world reinvents itself daily, it is us that insist on viewing it the same way we did yesterday. The reserve of ‘fresh and new,’ ‘unique and interesting’ is infinite, presuming we take the time to look. This was never more clearly illustrated than when I had the opportunity to spend some time in a Chinese teashop in Kuala Lumpur.
Seated at a small table in the corner of this shop, breathing a faint musky bouquet, reminiscent of a crisp summer’s evening after mowing the lawn that afternoon, Anna and I spent the next hour consuming numerous pours of a verity of different tea. Anna is a friend of Natalie’s from High school and had come out to visit us for a couple weeks. Now this included being educated in the intricate art of Chinese tea drinking. In short, the things I don’t know about tea alone could fill volumes.
Similar to the wine making in Napa Valley, cigar rolling in Havana, or vodka distilling in Russia or Poland; this kind of agricultural phenomenon ascends the act of cultivation, and alights in a realm somewhere between craft and spiritual art. There is something about this process, this ritual of refinement and our attempt at capturing the truest essence of these botanical troves I find mesmerizing. Chinese tea is by far no exception, as it is evident the care that is taken in every step of the tea ritual.
For example the proper enjoyment of Chinese tea takes into account such variables as, the kind of tea (obviously) but in addition: the age of the tea tree, where the tree is growing, what season the leaf is cultivated in, how long the leaves are stored, (if they are caked or lose leaf) where the tea is stored or fermented. The drinking of this tea even comes down to the temperature of the water used to steep the leaves, how many pours you can get from a distinct tea, the material the teapot is made of (clay or porcelain.) and what you consume before and after your tea.
We were told that Chinese Zen masters would drink their tea all day long, never once changing the leaves- knowing how to optimize the essence of the tea in every pour. Now, I could think of a few other things I’d prefer to be really good at, but somehow sitting there among the dozens of different teas each wrapped in paper, bound with dried banana leaves and twine – the image of a bunch of weathered Chinese dudes in flowing kimonos drinking the same tea all day seemed like the coolest thing ever.
And the Chinese will keep certain teas for well over a hundred years, aging it to perfection. Then again, if it takes them all day to drink one steeping, I can see why the tea sits around for decades. The oldest tea in this specific shop was told to be over fifty years old, which, well…is unimpressive compared to the rumored 200-year-old stuff.
The tea we were drinking was at the most three years old, but the process with which we brewed and drank it seemed as old as the act of tea drinking itself. Executing several detailed steps, the Chinese girl who prepared and poured our tea told us at great length the way in which it should be done, as she gently placed a pinch of Oolong tea leaves in a clay teapot that looked as if it were nicked from a dollhouse due to it’s tiny proportion. She quickly poured the water back out, rinsing the tea. A second dose of water was then added to the leaves after demonstrating how the leaves had opened since being treated to the hot water. We waited for 25 seconds, after which she poured the tea into cups the size of communion glasses, all the while telling us that clay pots, once drawn on should only be used for that specific tea because the flavor is absorbed by the clay. This will taint a different tea if poured from the same pot. Like we would have any clue? Our western view of course is bigger, better, faster – we couldn’t be bothered with a storing a different teapot for every kind of tea we drink! In the States we’re coming from an Albertsons or Whole foods with tea bags, beautifully packaged in glossy twenty dollar boxes stamped “organic.” We then drink this tea from a mug pulled from the drying rack. The same mug we floated our brains in gin with from the night before…or some other similar scenario. But sitting in this quaint teashop we became coinsures; cup after cup engrossed in the culture of Chinese tea. It was a completely new world, where we experienced everything for the fist time. Something as simple as tea reminded me that there is too much being offered up by this world, that to waste one moment in a languid existence would be...well, lame.
Part of me even wanted to move in under the stairs next to the caged Mogwai and become the novice apprentice to a bald, wispy bearded tea guru from whom I would learn the ancient tea arts. But then one day a gang of Malaysian ruffians would storm through the rickety swinging doors of the shop and start causing trouble. They’d toss bundles of tea around, demanding the rent money with which we had none and were already months behind. Tension would escalate until eventually the goon with the eye patch would take hostage of a young peasant girl. This would be the last straw, or as the master would put it: “The last drop.” The tea guru and I would then leap into action armed only with tea scoopers. We would run dizzying circles around the gangsters, kicking the living poo-poo platter out of each and every one of them. The thugs would be tossed around the room like rag-dolls, by our mastery of “Oolong Kong,” a martial art that only the seemingly passive tea gurus know. After the ruffians either stumble or are thrown out of the doors and windows and the dust settles, we would then sit piously, enjoying some two hundred year old puer tea like nothing had ever happened. It would be super awesome.
But the other part of me really had to piss.
Seated at a small table in the corner of this shop, breathing a faint musky bouquet, reminiscent of a crisp summer’s evening after mowing the lawn that afternoon, Anna and I spent the next hour consuming numerous pours of a verity of different tea. Anna is a friend of Natalie’s from High school and had come out to visit us for a couple weeks. Now this included being educated in the intricate art of Chinese tea drinking. In short, the things I don’t know about tea alone could fill volumes.
Similar to the wine making in Napa Valley, cigar rolling in Havana, or vodka distilling in Russia or Poland; this kind of agricultural phenomenon ascends the act of cultivation, and alights in a realm somewhere between craft and spiritual art. There is something about this process, this ritual of refinement and our attempt at capturing the truest essence of these botanical troves I find mesmerizing. Chinese tea is by far no exception, as it is evident the care that is taken in every step of the tea ritual.
For example the proper enjoyment of Chinese tea takes into account such variables as, the kind of tea (obviously) but in addition: the age of the tea tree, where the tree is growing, what season the leaf is cultivated in, how long the leaves are stored, (if they are caked or lose leaf) where the tea is stored or fermented. The drinking of this tea even comes down to the temperature of the water used to steep the leaves, how many pours you can get from a distinct tea, the material the teapot is made of (clay or porcelain.) and what you consume before and after your tea.
We were told that Chinese Zen masters would drink their tea all day long, never once changing the leaves- knowing how to optimize the essence of the tea in every pour. Now, I could think of a few other things I’d prefer to be really good at, but somehow sitting there among the dozens of different teas each wrapped in paper, bound with dried banana leaves and twine – the image of a bunch of weathered Chinese dudes in flowing kimonos drinking the same tea all day seemed like the coolest thing ever.
And the Chinese will keep certain teas for well over a hundred years, aging it to perfection. Then again, if it takes them all day to drink one steeping, I can see why the tea sits around for decades. The oldest tea in this specific shop was told to be over fifty years old, which, well…is unimpressive compared to the rumored 200-year-old stuff.
The tea we were drinking was at the most three years old, but the process with which we brewed and drank it seemed as old as the act of tea drinking itself. Executing several detailed steps, the Chinese girl who prepared and poured our tea told us at great length the way in which it should be done, as she gently placed a pinch of Oolong tea leaves in a clay teapot that looked as if it were nicked from a dollhouse due to it’s tiny proportion. She quickly poured the water back out, rinsing the tea. A second dose of water was then added to the leaves after demonstrating how the leaves had opened since being treated to the hot water. We waited for 25 seconds, after which she poured the tea into cups the size of communion glasses, all the while telling us that clay pots, once drawn on should only be used for that specific tea because the flavor is absorbed by the clay. This will taint a different tea if poured from the same pot. Like we would have any clue? Our western view of course is bigger, better, faster – we couldn’t be bothered with a storing a different teapot for every kind of tea we drink! In the States we’re coming from an Albertsons or Whole foods with tea bags, beautifully packaged in glossy twenty dollar boxes stamped “organic.” We then drink this tea from a mug pulled from the drying rack. The same mug we floated our brains in gin with from the night before…or some other similar scenario. But sitting in this quaint teashop we became coinsures; cup after cup engrossed in the culture of Chinese tea. It was a completely new world, where we experienced everything for the fist time. Something as simple as tea reminded me that there is too much being offered up by this world, that to waste one moment in a languid existence would be...well, lame.
Part of me even wanted to move in under the stairs next to the caged Mogwai and become the novice apprentice to a bald, wispy bearded tea guru from whom I would learn the ancient tea arts. But then one day a gang of Malaysian ruffians would storm through the rickety swinging doors of the shop and start causing trouble. They’d toss bundles of tea around, demanding the rent money with which we had none and were already months behind. Tension would escalate until eventually the goon with the eye patch would take hostage of a young peasant girl. This would be the last straw, or as the master would put it: “The last drop.” The tea guru and I would then leap into action armed only with tea scoopers. We would run dizzying circles around the gangsters, kicking the living poo-poo platter out of each and every one of them. The thugs would be tossed around the room like rag-dolls, by our mastery of “Oolong Kong,” a martial art that only the seemingly passive tea gurus know. After the ruffians either stumble or are thrown out of the doors and windows and the dust settles, we would then sit piously, enjoying some two hundred year old puer tea like nothing had ever happened. It would be super awesome.
But the other part of me really had to piss.
posted by Joel at 8:18 AM
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