But in southern Fujian province, like most of China, the tea ceremony isn’t historically so much a ceremony as it is a method. Lately, though, it seems to be turning into a bit of a fashion in this region as well.

Back in the post “Hell Freezes Over (And Other Cultural Changes Afoot in China),” I alluded to the fact that folks in Fujian’s Jinjiang area, between Quanzhou to the north and Xiamen to the south, are even making the art of brewing tea a competitive social event, replacing some of the older social habits in practice when men get together to talk business:

So if men aren’t offering each other cigarettes and drinking themselves into silly stupors with bai jiu when getting together at one another’s home or sitting down to talk business, then just what are they doing?

The answer contains a new twist on an old theme: around here, they’re now into seeing who makes the best pot of tea. And I don’t mean just putting the kettle on and pouring it out. There’s a skill to it, and a great deal of competitive pride, and all this seems to have revitalized the tea culture here in southeast Fujian province in a way that’s quite surprising to me. They’re even showing up at each other’s homes or businesses with their own tea, which formerly would have been unthinkably rude, and with small portable tea sets.

The method of making tea in this region is referred to as Gong Fu Cha (功夫茶), or if you prefer, the “Kung Fu Tea Ceremony.”

What the novice will notice first in this “Way of Tea” is how small the teapots and teacups are. The first time I was served Gong Fu Cha style tea, I felt like we were using little girls’ dolly-size make-believe tea party cups and pots. They’re that small and dainty. Not like in Chengdu, where your manly tea cup is nearly larger than your rice bowl.

But in the Gong Fu Cha “ceremony,” it’s about quality–aroma and taste–not quantity, something that took me quite some time to appreciate. Put another way, Gong Fu Cha is about tasting, not drinking. In any case, I’ll attempt to describe this method in this, my

Lao Wai’s Illustrated Primer of Gong Fu Cha

Before starting up the tea brewing, make sure you’ve got all the necessary tools of the trade–at a minimum, that probably means a drip tray, a teapot, a tea pitcher, tea cups, and the tea itself. Let’s take a look:

Instead of big bags or containers of loose leaf tea, the locals now go for these small containers with airtight individual serving pouches. These small canisters contain perhaps 10-12 packets, each with enough tea for one small pot and between a few and several brewings each:

You’ll also need a drip tray to catch the spills and overflows. Most driptrays in everyday use are plastic, with a catch-pan that slides out to be emptied, but you can splurge on fancy ones carved from rare wood if you like, decorating them with all sorts of little ceremonial tea knick-knacks:

Then comes the teaware proper. In addition to the small teacups on the left and right, here we see the brewing pot (many of which lack a handle, as pictured), the tea strainer, and the tea pitcher:

Next, on the left, we see that some fancier driptrays have hoses that drain into two-level receptacles: Trash goes on top, overflow water and tea is piped into a secondary bucket below. As shown on the right, you’ll also need a method of boiling water. This year, everyone seemed to be using this particular model from Japan:

And by the way, just as a cultural aside, teacups aren’t typically taken away for a good sudsy washing between uses, just “sterilized” by either dipping them in boiled water or pouring boiling water over them:

And in case you’re wondering: Yes, I have been served teacups with remnants of lipstick on them before.

Next, put the tea in the brewing pot, and fill it to the brim with just-boiled water:

I’ve noticed two approaches to the next step. Some people quickly drain off this water as soon as they’ve poured it, in order to “rinse” the tea leaves, then refill immediately to start brewing. Others use the pot lid to “scrape” any foam or bubbles that appear from the top of the brew:

In either case, many tea brewers then use the pot lid to gently “press” the tea leaves, perhaps helping to release better flavors.

I like my tea a bit stronger, but most folks let it steep for less than a minute.

After this, you again have two choices.

If you aren’t using an intermediary tea pitcher (and are more likely brewing in an Yixing style pot with a spout), you will have moved the tea cups into a bunch in the middle of the drip tray, and then will pour the tea out over the tea cups, circling over the cups a few times, so that they’re all gradually filled at about the same pace–meaning that they’ll all end up at about the same strength. If you were to fill one cup first, then move to the next, the first-poured cups would be too weak, the last ones too strong.

If you are using a tea pitcher, you’ll instead pour the entire brew into the pitcher, using the lid to hold the leaves back, so that the tea mixes to an even strength before you pour it into the cups. Note the strainer placed into the pitcher to catch any stray bits of leaf or stem:

Now pour out into the cups:

If you’re feeling all fancy, use one of these contraptions to move the tea in front of your guests:

Last step: Enjoy!

In case that was all too remedial for you, try this Wikipedia entry, which takes a more linear approach to Chinese tea ceremonies. This one adds a few more details.

Or I guess that would technically be “Condo,” since she owns it…but whatever.

This is fairly close to the Anhai Hospital, where she works as a statistician, and looks across a field area to another area with more buildings.

The third shot is really bad quality, but I’m including it to remark the fact that you can stand at her 7th floor kitchen window, look down into the street below, and watch people butcher chickens, ducks and the occasional pig during “regular business hours.”

In that shot we see someone cleaning up after a particularly busy hour of duck “processing.”

Here it is.

Thing is, the camera I was using to shoot video that day doesn’t record sound.

Hmm. Bummer.

So, rather than hunt around for some Jinjiang Opera audio recording, I’ve just added a musical background that is light years away from matching, but for some reason seems to “work” for me–probably because I’ve been going through another of my periodic Kurt Weill / Bertolt Brecht / Weimarer Republik musical tangents here lately, during which nothing else sounds good.

Anyway, here it is: Jinjiang Opera on the video, “Zuhälterballade” von Die Dreigroschenoper on the audio. Go figure.

The first one looks back at the Anhai side entrance to the bridge.

The second is another bridge deck shot.

The third and fourth are taken at the mid-span temple area.

The last one shows one of the entrances to the large temple area in Anhai before you head to the bridge itself.

Or after you return from the bridge, as the case may be.

These are all on the way from my Wife’s family’s home to Longshan Temple. Obviously, this is through a part of town where material progress hasn’t made as many inroads yet as in other parts of Anhai.

That’s the back of the Anhai Hospital in the background of the second photo, and a small (very small) temple sort of building in the fourth. “Burn N’ Go’s” (as in incense) I’m tempted to call them.

It’s pretty easy to miss the roofllines on these little mini-temples when walking through the streets. That’s because you’re more focused on watching your step than anything else (cows and goats are herded through these streets a few times a day).

Nuclear attack?

Wait, we’re talking about China. Make that, “Normally the main streets of Anhai look like one of those movie scenes where the approach of advancing Communist or Nationalist troops–depending on who made the movie–has been announced and everyone is trying to flee the city by car, motorcycle, scooter, bicycle, or ox cart.”

The scenes in the video below, though, were shot on Chinese New Year’s Eve, when it’s relatively calm–mostly people on foot, bicycles, motorscooters, and those Anhai ‘Mad Max’ Taxis that have since been outlawed and replaced with the Universal Studios tourmobiles.

This also helps illustrate the “ugly public areas” of Anhai, as opposed to the relative luxury the locals live in behind their gated courtyards, as described in Explaining Anhai.

And here is the video:

I didn’t notice this picture so much before, but for some reason am really captivated by it now.

I think that’s because it’s a family picture for me, not a still-life, taken in the courtyard of the extended family’s old “traditional” home, where my late Father-in-Law grew up as a child, where my Wife and her siblings grew up until a couple years after the Cultural Revolution, where all the extended family still reunites for funeral and memorial rites for the ancestors.

Somehow for me, all that gets compacted into a picture my Nephew took on this day of a motorcycle one of the cousins arrived on (the one I think looks like the Chinese John Mellenkamp), in front of some flowers tended by one of the great aunts.

You can see representations of the various “stages” of housing development throughout this part of town (although the video quality isn’t that great).

We’ve caught more than a few good sunsets from up there, though, and it’s also where my Mother-in-Law keeps a flower garden, hangs the laundry to dry, and where we took the kids to play with sparklers during the Chinese New Year celebrations.

This view shows you one of the neighbor’s own rooftop gardens:

Another view looking West:

And here’s the “Bigfoot Spotted!” quality video pan from the roof:

Our first visit included no police action, but was still somewhat interesting. We went just a day or two before the Chinese New Year festival kicked off, and my Wife expected it would be mostly deserted, since everyone should be off making festival preparations.

Again, things have changed considerably since her childhood, as we found the park fairly crowded, with lots “Northerners,” the migrant workers from inland who’ve come to Anhai for jobs in its factories, restaurants, KTV palaces, and so on (see “Northerners: The Other ‘Lao Wai‘”). We realized they probably didn’t have the time or money to head back to their home provinces to ring in the New Year.

Here are a few pictures from the day.

The whole time we were there, the man on the right, visiting the park with his wife and son, took his eyes off us only once–here when I aimed the camera in his direction as a “reality check”:

You can’t tell it very well from this photo, but these fellows were passing the afternoon at the pool table:

Random camera angle:

Our youngest daughter climbing her way to the top (in the background on the left, that’s a bumper car arena):

My Wife helps my youngest Daughter onto what we dubbed “The Slalom Toy of Death” after our other Daughter took a spill off it:

She remembers it being “a lot smaller,” with just a couple or so buildings, but now it’s expanded and has the feel of a small campus, maybe akin to a junior college back in the States (with Chinese middle school characteristics).

Here are a few pictures and a video from the center of the sports field to give you your bearings, and note that you’ll see a temple roof across the wall in the middle of the video. That’s the temple we visited that I described in this post.

Update P.S. This is also the school field where townspeople, including my wife and her siblings, and her parents’ generation when they were schoolchildren, were “strongly encouraged” to show up to witness public executions (1950s-1980s) as civic lessons in “what happens when people break the law.”