Cups for serving oolong tea

Gong-Fu Cha is a way of serving Oolong tea using a special kind of tea set. The tea set comes with a tea pot for brewing tea, a cup (Cha bei) for drinking made of porcelain or pottery, and a tray for placing tea sets. Cups are tiny and they are even smaller than the tea cups for serving Gyokuko (A kind of Japanese green tea). The tea pot is also quite small, and it could serve 6 cups of tea at once. So, I guess you can now imagine how small each tea cup can be! The tea ceremony of Gong-Fu Cha starts with warming the cups with the hot water. Then, tea leaves are added into the tea pot. Into this tea pot, pour hot water and immediately drain the water out from the pot. This water is not for drinking, just for rinsing the tea leaves. Next, pour hot water into the pot again, and cover the pot with a lid. From the top of the lid, pour hot water to warm the whole pot. Pour the brewed tea into the cups. When serving tea, make sure to pour the tea until the last drop. When the guests finish drinking tea, make tea in the same procedure, and serve them again. In same way, you can serve tea for several times without changing the leaves. You could also serve Oolong tea using a bigger tea pot and reasonably sized tea cups. Gong-Fu Cha is a sophisticated way of serving Oolong tea.

(Tadakazu Takeo)