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How to Prepare Tea, Teochew Style (As I Remembered It)

My father side of the family was from Swatow and as a result of that I became an avid tea drinker (and developed caffeine tolerance) at a very young age... I had my fair share of knowledge of how common Teochew people brew tea with a tea set when there are guests over and there are at least 3 person for tea. This is how my father does it as I remembered.

What tea leaves should I use?

I never really thought about that; in our family if it's tea it's good for brewing. Ti Kuan Yin is a staple, but you can just use any tea you like. (Tea leaves, not teabags. Teabags sounds absolutely sacrilegious when using a tea set, but if you have no other choices, go ahead, wouldn't want to keep you from enjoying the process...)

The process

1. Get yourself a kung fu tea set; every Teochew household has one. Get the ones with a tray and a gaiwan. Normally the tray would have a top part and a bottom part; you put the tea cups and the gaiwan on the top part, and the bottom part is the container for unwanted liquid (explained below). My family exclusively uses the gaiwan only; we never use a Gongdao cup (in fact I have never seen anyone uses one) or a teapot (we do use teapot to brew tea but not in this situation).
2. Get the tea you want to brew (of course) and put it into the gaiwan. How much tea is up to you.
3. We aren't fancy people so we almost never pre-heat the gaiwan; but if the tea is of poor quality and suspected of collecting dust on the surface we'll pour boiling water into the gaiwan filled with tea and quickly drain the water out onto the tray; we call this step "cleaning the tea" believe this cleans the tea leaves and removes some of its unpleasant taste. You'll want to do this if you bought cheap tea leaves from a Chinese store. I've drank cheap "unwashed" tea before, the taste was always shit. Sometimes we do this regardless of the quality.
4. Pour enough but not too much boiling water into the gaiwan again and brew for a few minutes.
5. Now here's the tricky part. Lift the gaiwan and cycle above the tea cups on the tray. When you go pass each cup, pour a little bit of tea into the cup. Repeat until you ran out of tea or the cups are fully filled. Normally you start from the guest's cup and cycle clockwise. You only go around and never jumps from one side to another.
6. Enjoy your tea with your peers.

2023.1.18

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