The Ch’i of Tea

1904, Chung Du city, Szechwan province, China. Jing Hua stops at the local tea house for her daily cup of tea before resuming her journey to the outdoor markets for fresh fruits and vegetables. The tea leaves she orders are common and affordable for everyday consumption — as opposed to what might be bought for entertaining guests or giving as gifts.

“Gift tea would have come from the tips of the stems that are freshly sprouted” — as it still does today — explains Ling Pao, Jing Hua’s great-grandson . “Everyday tea would come from the lower part of the stem and be strong enough to last throughout the day.”

Jing Hua takes a few precious sips of tea to begin her day’s journey, greeting friends and neighbors all the while. Not wanting to linger too long, she has only two refills, then covers her half-finished cup of tea with a lid and places a leaf on the top.

“This would signify to the hostess of the tea house that grandma Jing would return that day to have the tea refreshed with hot water,” Ling said. “As long as the leaf remains on top throughout the day, no one would remove my great-grandmother’s cup. She could again relax, sip tea and visit with friends in the afternoon when she had nothing to do. This was the traditional Chinese lifestyle.”

The only rule of the tea houses before the Communist Revolution was that no tea could be left overnight. Tea leaves had to be repurchased every morning. Tea now …

Ling Pao grew up in Cheng Du, where he studied at the Cheng Du University of Traditional Chinese Medicine before coming to the United States to finish his studies at the International Institute of Chinese Medicine in Santa Fe.

When he was growing up in the 1980s, Ling said, a cup of tea in China could still be purchased according to an unofficial sliding scale. A cup at the local tea house may have cost 15 cents, but if a person’s salary only allowed her to spend 5 cents a day, the tea house would accept this reduced rate. Ling paid only 1 cent for a cup of tea when he was a young student.

People engaged in hard labor or working as messengers or package deliverers would be given the tea without charge, Ling said, since their pay did not allow for the price of tea, “but they, more than anyone … needed to remain hydrated throughout the day. Tea is supposed to do something for people’s lives, to meet their needs,” he said.

“We (Chinese) don’t keep the tea cold,” he said. “We keep the tea warm. The reason is that if you are sweating , a cold cup of tea makes you feel better, but if you take a big glass of hot tea, your body will keep on sweating , and your body will cool down naturally. So instead of blocking the pores with a cold drink, which is bad in regards to Chinese medicine, it allows your heat to move.”

In the winter, when one is cold, warm tea works as a tonifier — something that makes the body more comfortable in Chinese medical tradition — and is good for the body.

“Just as when the hands are cold someone will hold a warm cup with both their hands, and they feel much better,” Ling said.

Tea has been given many meanings in Chinese culture, he said. For one thing, tea is a lifestyle as well as a drink.

Tea, Ling said, is not to be drunk quickly. Only when people are relaxed, he said, will they have tea.

The Chinese believe drinking tea helps people to slow down and value life more. It is considered “a daily life ingredient” and its appreciation is an art form that can be enjoyed in different ways by different people.

“Life must be enjoyed or it doesn’t make sense,” Ling said.

Even in present-day China, he said, people carry jars or cups with lids on them called gai wan all day long, continually refreshing their tea with hot water.

Coffee is drunk quickly when people are on the go. “You will not see very busy business people with a pot of tea on their desk because they have no time to stop and enjoy it,” Ling said.

Tea also is a social tool that can indicate what a person is thinking or feeling and give others cues about how to interact with him, Ling said. For example, if a man is standing, looking at his cup and gently using the lid to brush away stray tea leaves floating on the surface, others will know this person is thinking about the topic under discussion and know they should not to interrupt him, Ling said. At other times, he added, a person can forcefully slam a tea cup down on the table to express anger or strong disagreement . A student of tea

In America, tea has become an object of serious study for some, who often use it to develop inner awareness.

Frank Murphy, who has studied tea with three masters , has explored the subtle tastes and effects different varieties and cultivars have on the body and likes to say, “refined teas refine us.”

After leaving his theological studies, he was searching for another interest when a friend brought Murphy some teas from San Francisco. He tried the most exotic sounding , a pu’erh , he said, and “I had an epiphany. I realized that I had never had anything that tasted like that.

“It wasn’t just the taste that was extraordinary, it was what was going on in my body, too. I had sensations of the tea mobilizing my ch’i in my body and different sensations of flowerings and blossomings going on in my soul. I naturally became very curious about what this was all about,” Murphy said.

From that first epiphany as a novice tea drinker, Murphy, who owns Jade Mountain Tea Resource and Information in Santa Fe, has become a judge at competitions where unique, high-quality teas are bid on at a connoisseur market , are tasted and “experienced .”

“I have been reduced to tears tasting some of these teas and having the experience of some of these teas,” Murphy said. “They take me to places in my body and in my psyche and in my heart that I didn’t even know existed; places of such profound peace and love. They break down every barrier that you have, and if you just let the tea wash over you and let the tea take you into some of these places, you begin to understand what tea is all about.”

The teas that most interest Murphy are single-estate teas from small, sustainable farms found throughout the Chinese countryside. Pesticides are not used and the leaves, Murphy said, are “all handpicked (and) hand-finished as opposed to tea-bag teas, which are picked and processed by machines and often pulverized (and) mixed with other varieties from different countries.”

His most recent tea master, Roy Fong, owner of the Imperial Tea Court in San Francisco , works directly with the farmers in China to create these high-quality teas, Murphy said.

“What we started out doing originally was recreating certain processes where we reinstituted techniques that had to do with the teas that were served to the emperor in China,” he said. So far, they’ve recreated about 50 of these historical teas.

Murphy also said we should not be afraid to drink hot tea in summer. The English were no fools, he said, when they insisted on having their afternoon tea in India’s suffocating summer heat.

Like Ling, Murphy believes hot tea cools the body down by opening the pores. He has recommended white and green teas for women who have hot flashes during menopause, too — another piece of traditional Chinese medical wisdom.

(this article was taken from freenewmexican.com)