Tea, in China, is different from that which I have had, in the West.  If I look at the tea that our Irish friends served when I was pre-school, it was Lipton, or one of those, teabags served with milk.  When I was in college, my hippie girlfriend introduced me to the "better" teas, like Wagner, or whatever, in the big tin, loose.

Those types of tea are a far cry from tea, in China, where it is grown (sorry, Japan: love your green teas, too).  Here, tea is hundreds of times fresher than any of those brand name teas or even the loose ones that you get in the coffee roaster shops, in the West.  In fact, it is so fresh and strong that it is only steeped for seconds and, then, poured into a teapot.

The standard set-up for tea service, in China, consists in four items (at least): 1)a pot to boil water, 2) a brewing container with a lid, 3) a teapot for holding the tea, and a tea tray with a basin to catch water with a top that has perforations to dump water of cool tea.  We show a small standard tea service kit, in th photo, below, which we took at a restaurant, this weekend.



You will notice, also, the small vacuum packed bags, in the foreground.  One of these bags contains tea leaves, and when the tea is soaked in hot water, even for a moment, it will expand to fill the covered brewer, on the service tray.  Also, in this set-up, using an inexpensive, restaurant-version of the kit, there is a strainer.  A proper teapot, like the Yixing zisha teapots, in the Leona Craig Art gallery, has a built-in strainer at the border between teapot and spout. 

So service consists in: 1) filling the covered brewer with boiling water from the tea kettle, 2) immediately covering that brewer and pouring it int the pot, which is, again, a cheaper restaurant-version of a teapot, and 3) finally, pouring tea from the actual teapot into cups, which are also show.  The service tray is, for example, a place to dump your little cup of tea, if it has gone cold, or to dump out the first brewer of hot water over tea leaves to give the tea a chance to absorb water, initially.  Just one of those little tea bags has enough tea to make 20 of those small pots of tea.  Even for Y10, we get two bags of the moderately priced tea.

Of course, there are more elaborate set-ups.  One of the more common is to have a whole table or a wooden tray that is almost as large as a table.  Then, in the larger version, it is a coffee-table-sized tea table with some sort of cut-outs to allow after to drain from the surface.  Indeed, those table-top or full table service areas can be quite large and elaborate.

The real shortcoming of the simple tea service, above, is that it misses out on the other thing that China is famous for: Yixing zisha teapots.  Tea drinking was begun, by accident, several thousand years ago, in China.  However, ceramic teapots and cups have only been around for about 1,000 years.  Moreover, those teapots are and have been made, over that thousand year period, in only one place, in China or the whole world: Yixing, China, about 100 miles west of Shanghai.

What makes them special is the so-called zisha clay from which they are made.  Zisha is, actually, a rock-paste clay, made by mining, then, aging, then, crushing the zisha rock into a powder and mixing with water to make "clay".  Zisha is a very special material.  First of all, it contains no toxins, like is the case with some other ceramics or glazes (to read more about zisha, you can read our "lens" about zisha teapots on Squidoo or go to our Leona Craig Art website).  Beyond that, the clay when baked in a kiln has a low shrinkage rate, so the lid will fit perfectly tight, it has porosity, so the pot will age well, developing a flavor, internally, and they have high tensile strength and heating ability.  I have not tested that latter two qualities myself (too expensive, plus, how could I defile art that way?), but it is said that an Yixing zisha teapot can support a mans weight, and they are supposed to be capable of putting on the stove for boiling water.   We show a modern Yixing zisha clay teapot, in the "nine dragons theme" by Chen Cai Ming (one of only two that she made), in the photo, below.  You can visit the Leona Craig Gallery to see others, in our collection.



Those zisha rocks, which come in several rich natural colors, including purple and yellow, can be found, in only one place in the world: Yixing, China.  The clay is so valuable, and there might be different clays, made, in different periods, that it is passed down from one generation to another.  In fact, we know several artists that have collected so much of it that they have extra rental space just to hoard it.

Now that we have described the basic equipment and service for tea in China: Beware!  When someone invites you to sit down and have some tea, it can involve hour after hour of this, brew and pour, brew and pour, as soon as your little cup is emptied.  It can be never-ending, and I am always desperate for a bathroom by the end of the first half hour.  You have to figure out how to gently and gracefully beg for leave before you float away.