Yixing Teapot ALL-STAR
Yixing Zisha Teapot All-Star Show
Beginning from Ming dynasty to now, in this over 400 years there shows up a lot of great Yixing teapot works. Gongchun is the first Yixing master that left his name, he created the special Yixing making art, after him the history showed up another great master whose name is Shi Dabin, whose works is the oldest that still we can admire it today. Time went to Qing Dynasty, the Yixing art met another flush time, Zhang Ming Yuan who brought other arts like Poem, Writting, Painting into traditional Yinxing art and started a new era. The Yixing getting more and more eyes, including the Literators, Chen Mansheng who was a famous poet, calligrapher, he is the first literator that participated in the making of Yixing teapot. He designed the shape, the writting, the painting and let his friend Yang Pengnian finished it, from that on Yixing Zisha teapot became a complete artwork.
束柴三友
古树新壶
英雄壶
竹段壶
六方壶
小天际
双色供春壶
绫皮壶
心经水平壶
马上封侯
蚕桑壶
三足大彬如意壶
To be continued……
FAQ of Yixing Zisha Teapot
Posted by daniel in Teaware, tea culture&tea stories on September 16, 2009
FAQ of Yixing Zisha teapot
Gong Chun teapot
I love Zisha teapot, it’s not only a gift of nature but also crystallization of human art. In China if you’re really a tea lover or tea master, you’ll find a Yixing Zisha teapot in his home; you’ll find it in most of the tea house as well. Especially for tea ceremony, Zisha teapot will not be absent. 100 tea wares, led by Yixing.
1, Question: Can I use the same Yixing teapot to brew all kinds of teas?
Answer: Yes, you can, but not really. First, the Yixing Zisha teapot can absorb the tea juice that result amazing that is you can get the tea aroma when you only pour water into the teapot without tea. So you’d better use different teapot to brew different tea if you want to get that teawater without tea;
Second, black tea is full oxidation and green tea is oxidation-free tea, so you can choose tall teapot with narrow mouth to brew black tea and choose short teapot with wide mouth for brewing green tea in order to protect it from braised bad. For Oolong tea, you can choose middle height teapot, Chinese call this kind of teapot as MengChen teapot.
2, Question: How to know the value of a Yixing Zisha teapot?
Answer: there are 2 ways to figure it out, firstly choose it by the man who make it. There is a famous man theory, if the teapot is made by a famous master, it will deserve lot. There are a lot of famous Zisha masters, but the most famous 5 masters are Gong Chun(供春), Shi Dabin(时大彬), Chen Mingyuan(陈鸣远), Chen Mansheng(陈曼生), Gu Jingzhou(顾景舟), they are representative of each era. Fortunately if you find a teapot with their names, you’ll be good took care of in the rest of your life.
The second way is more complicatedly, you can choose it by its physical and the artistic. As physical,
- you can use your hand to feel how is the teapot, there are 3 kinds of clay, red clay, green clay and purple clay;
- use your fingers to take the teapot up see how is the balance;
- infuse some water and press the hole in the lid to see if the water can go out, if there is no water out means it’s good. Tight junction of the lid and the teapot is very important.;
- pour the water out to see if it goes out smoothly;
As the artistic, it’s personally, there will be poem, painting, writing, seal cutting etc on the teapot, good or not is according to your level of appreciation.
3, Question: When I bought a new Yixing teapot, do I need to do anything before brew it?
Answer: Yes, there is some earth smell with the new teapot and some dust maybe, you can put the new teapot into water with some tea or old Tofu or tender sugarcane root, and heat it slowly for an hour. This is named opening teapot.
4, Question: How to raise a Yixing Zisha teapot?
Answer: Raising? Am I wrong? No, it’s real, raising a Yixing teapot is just like raiseing a baby, you’ll have feeling when you have more time with him. There are some rules you should follow:
- clean it with water only, no detergent or other cleaners;
- clean the teapot after you finish the brewing, and keep it dry;
- keep it away from other smells, dust;
- don’t pack it up, you use it more it will get more beautiful;
- watering some tea water onto the surface of the teapot when you’re drinking.
5, Question: The teapot gets weird smell, what can I do?
Answer: Our ancestors have found a way to resolve this problem. Pouring some hot water into the teapot for few seconds, pout it out then put the hot teapot into cold water. Repeat it for several times, the weird smell will disappear.
How Special of Yixing Zisha Teapot?
Posted by daniel in Teaware, tea culture&tea stories on September 15, 2009
Why Yixing Zisha teapot is so special?
Mansheng Yixing Zisha teapot
Yixing Zisha teapot is the leader of all teaware, it’s a special and traditional art. If you’re unfamiliar with Chinese culture
you’ll be shocked by it’s price and how could a man spend so much time to play with it.
How special of Yixing?
At 9-28-2008 a amazing price was shown out in Shenyang China, the auction price is high to 1.55 million CNY(230,000 dollars), so
Yixing Zisha teapot is a good investment. It can be your treasure to be passed to your son.
Yixing Zisha teapot
Second, Yixing teapot is an amazing art, you can meet most of tradtional Chinese art here, like Poem, Writting, Chinese Painting,
Sealcutting etc. A lot of historic famous man got connection with it.
And third, for physically the Yixing clay(Zisha) is different from all others.
- brewing with Yixing can make the tea more smooth and sweet, especially for Gongfu tea ceremony;
- when you are with him for longer time, it will get more beautiful;
- tea will not go bad if you keep it in the Yixing teapot for days;
- in the cold winter, it will not break up if you pour hot water into the pot;
- it has slow heat-conduction so it will not hot you.
The Water for Tea
Posted by daniel in Misc, tea culture&tea stories on September 6, 2009
The water for tea drinking
Venus her myrtle, Phoebus has her bays;
Tea both excels, which she vouchsafes to praise.
The best of Queens, and best of herbs, we owe
To that bold nation, which the way did show
To the fair region where the sun doth rise,
Whose rich productions we so justly prize.
The Muse’s friend, tea does our fancy aid,
Repress those vapors which the head invade,
And keep the palace of the soul serene,
Fit on her birthday to salute the Queen.
——-On Tea @ Edmund Waller
running tiger spring
“Water, fire and teaware”, they are three keys for tea brewing, and “water is the mother of tea”, good tea will present you the unique flavor, taste through the water. In the long history of tea there are lots of man did research on what tea is better for tea and resulted a lot of famous books, the most three famous books are Jian Cha Shui Ji by Zhang Youxin in Tang dynasty, Zhu Quan Xiao Pin by Tian Yiheng in Ming dynasty and Quan Pu by Tang Duxian in Qing dynasty. They reserve us many good secrets that are still useful nowadays.
Mainly there are 2 kinds of theories about how to choosing the water for tea drinking. One is according to the source, see it’s come from rain, snow, dew, river, well or Spring, and Spring is the best choice. Another theory is according to its weight, light water will be better, Emperor QianLong even wrote a book on it.
running tigers dream spring
Historically there are some discussions about who is the best water in the world. The saint Lu Yu and many many litterateurs all talked about this subject, most of them had ever been to lots of famous mountains and tasted it, but time changed, different time will have different saying, Hupao Spring(running-tiger Spring) in HangZhou which is the most famous water today in China just sit the fifth place as LuYu’s Choice, he said Spring on the mountain is the best, then river water and last is the Well water. Specially the spring comes from the rock and flows slowly is more better, it’s a live water and full of CO2. And the rain, snow or dew is also a good choice, before people called it ‘Heaven Water’, though because of the air pollution it’s not a good choice any more. People think the Autumn rain is good because there is less dust in the air and oppositely there is more dust in the Summer because there is so much thunder and gale.
~~~~~~~~.~~~~~~~~
The Emperor QianLong even make a special silver measure set for water to weigh it light or weight, he had been to every famous water and measured it, at last he reported that the lightest so as the best water is Jade Spring located in the captain of the empire. So the Jade Spring is protected wholly to supply to the palace only.
But as everybody know there is no possible to obtain the special water for every day’s brewing, if you live distantly. For the rich they can get the famous water sometimes but normal man will have no way. Really? In ancient days people though out some interesting ways to make good water at home. The main work is to filtrate impurity and absorb the wish from heaven.
bamboo spring
Now time changed, we’ve tap water, purified water and mineral water, are they better than the above we talked? Not exactly. The best water for tea is still the Spring comes from the rock. We know water can be classified to soft water and hard water, and should take care of the PH, dont’ let it higher than 7.
as the tap water, take care of the ferrous ion, specially for the rusty tap. It can have a chemical reaction with tea poly-phenols, it can get the tea water darker even been to brown. So for tap water, you can silent it for a day and night to get the Chlorine out and let the dust sink to the bottom or install a filter. Now most of people will choose mineral water for good tea, and just take care of the PH. For purified water, I don’t want to suggest you this water, it’s plain,nothing good, nothing bad inside too.
But one man told me “hometown water is the best”, I agree with him, no matter where you ‘re, your hometown is the best specially you’re distant away from your home. Take care.
Memories from Childhood – drinking tea
Posted by nefreez in Misc, tea culture&tea stories on September 4, 2009
Memories from Childhood – drinking tea
the stars
One of good things I remember from my childhood – tea drinking. I’m from Estonia, but my grand-grand mother and g.-g. father
lived in a village in Ukraine, it’s 2000 kilometres away from Estonia. But we all are russians anyway, at least partially. Each
summer me and my parents were visiting them for about one month.
It’s usually quite hot outside in Ukraine, in the summer, even in the night time. In the evening, after a day of hard work in the
field or a day of having fun and adventures with friends, we all were getting to one table in the front yard. A part of a big
family and friends, usually about 10 people or more.
Women were preparing food for supper, men were firing up the ovens (ovens there are using firewood) for heating russian sauna,
called BANYA. Also they were putting special thing near the table, used for preparing the tea – it’s name is SAMOVAR. Here is the
link about it form Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samovar. They have similar things in Turkey and Iran. The SAMOVAR has a
medium size metal container for water, it has a small platform for firewood in the bottom, so when you fire the wood up, the water
in container starts boiling, so you can make tea. Black tea is usual for those places. People, who lived most of their lives in the
USSR are used to black tea, ’cause it was very popular there. Though I prefer green tea now, memories are still alive and I take a
cup of oldtime black tea sometimes to refresh those sweet pictures of a childhood.
happy family with Samovar
Now, imagine such picture
In Ukraine, it’s getting dark very fast, at about 9 o’clock. After going to sauna and having a supper, there we were, at the
table in the yard, in the darkness, having one small lamp as a source of light.
And darkness around.
And an adorable sweet smell of flowers on the trees and relaxing smell of a burning wood in samovar and oven nearby.
And crickets singing\making noise in the bushes.
And the brightest stars in the sky, like it the desert. And the moon sometimes. If fire in the samovar is still burning, it is
giving a small light, which is very romantic. All people are relaxed and having a good mood, because they are a bit tired, they
have full stomaches, they went to sauna and now have a slow, sleepy talk to eachother. And they are drinking tea.
In such atmosphere you can understand other people better. It melts people’s souls and minds and puts them into one. It’s a real
unity. And even if there is someone new at the table, you feel like you know him for a hundreds of years.
It’s almost like being in nirvana, I think.
I hope to see it all some time later, again.
Oh My Computer Dream
Oh, my computer dream
computer dream
I cannot code or decode, but I can help people around me fix computer problems.
In young, my dream used to be a solider, a scientist, a hero, then a millionaire, I think I just dream to be a programmer for a
while. In the 90th, there is few computers, the big three for a family is air conditioner, icebox and washer when you get married,
no computer. The first time I know about it and touch it is when I was in high school, the OS is DOS (I figure it out years later)
, black terminal, we can just learn how to use the simple command like dir. It’s amazing but ugly I think. I don’t like it much
because we don’t have much chance to go into the computer room.
After joined the colorful univercity, I world is enlarged, I knew netbar and heard about QQ(a popular instant messenger), but still
few students own computer, no matter big desktop or laptop. But we began to learn the Fortran and I began to now about Windos98, I
love it, but it break down frequently, I hate to reload it. Unfortunately we just have computer class for one term, if you want go
to the computer room you got to pay, about 3RMB per hour. At that time I registered my first QQ account and still mine till now.
At 2001, our neighbor room classmate bought a computer, 6 men owned it together. Every night their room comes to be the most
popular room, we play cartoon, movies and some special videos you know boys always want that. We date, play basketball, play
computer and at that time I began to love computer, I borrowed a lot of computer books.
I’m a Linux fans, you know, now I’m typing on a Debian OS. Since 2006 I bought my second computer and I’ve tried RedHat,
Mandrivia, Ubuntu, ArchLinux, Gentoo, I love Open Source and the freedom. I hate virus because I’ve to use WindowsXP in Office and
get attacked by virus several times, that always disgust me, something like you’ve to aware of someone behind you. I feel free and
safe on my T42+Debian.
I am always glad to help people get out from computer problems. and I enjoy computer and thanks God I don’t have to live by it, it
just my hobby.
It’s sunshine today, enjoy our vacation.
My computer dream
Ways of Tea Drinking
Posted by nefreez in tea culture&tea stories on September 4, 2009
Ways of Tea Drinking
ways of drinking
You know, Slavian people - russians, ukrainians, belorussians etc. they all have very similar cultures, which have mixed during years. And habbits how to drink tea are mostly common too. Before the tea itself has appeared in our lands, people were preparing different herbs and berries which could have very different effects, like medical, refreshing and strength giving (similar to green tea), containing a lot of vitamins etc. Now, both, oldtime berries\herbs and eastern original tea, are called Chai in Slavian culture.
Samovar Lifestyle
Here are some ways to drink tea
-put lemon into the tea.
-different berries are welcomed too.
-You can drink tea, like russians call it, VPRIKUSKU. It’s when you take a small piece of sugar into your hand, you drink the black tea, then bite off the sugar. In that way, you can vary the amount of sugar each time. Also, it allows to feel the original taste of tea, BEFORE you bite off the sugar. In people’s minds, it is sometimes associated with drinking from SAMOVAR.
Samovar
-When you catch cold or simply need to relax and prepare for sleeping and restoring your strength, it’s very good to add some honey into the black tea. Sometimes, butter and honey are added together. It softens the feel of pain in the throat.
-One powerful energy drink I’ve discovered recently – hot, very strong green tea with a medium amount of honey in it. Guess, it’s much better for the health than energy drinks from shops. Not all my friends liked it. But I can say it gives a real boost of power after drinking.
- Some people like adding natural, homemade jam into black tea.
Maby anyone can add anything about tea drinking? You’re always welcome! 
Childhood Memories
Memories about Childhood
nice memory
Two days ago (22-07) here occured Full Solar Eclipse, it’s interesting to have day-dark experience. all man went out, no matter young or old, all watching at the sky.
It said it’s lucky to have this experience, someone will not have it through all his life.
But Moon Eclipse is not a luck sign, when I was a Child, we used to sleep under the sky, people will not want go into the room especially in the Summer. The Summer moon is so round and bright, the whole nigh is covered by the silver light. People said there is a beautiful woman lived on the moon, her name is Chang Er. There is a sad story about her. Don’t mind.
Fathers or Mathers will stop you straight your forefinger to the moon, they said the moon will cut your ears. We all got afraid of that. It’s interesting to listen ghost story under the moon, if you’re afraid, the speaker will get more excited. Sometimes it will make you unable to get sleep and dream a lot of curious things.
Before people are all very kind, no one will close they door when they go out. no door is closed. They will welcome you anytime. But adult man always need to have a sweet sleep at noon, you’d better don’t disturb them, or you will get ass beating.
I have some good brother friends. but now are all fighting for life. We can only have a meet one time a year.
How to process Tie Guan Yin(Ti Kuan Yin) tea?
Posted by daniel in Oolong Tea on September 4, 2009
How to process Tie Guan Yin tea?
processing chart of Tieguanyin
Tie Guan Yin tea (TGY) is the most complicated than other teas in processing. Even you have good TGY tea leaf and pluck it at the best time, if you don’t have skilled master, you’ll make a TGY priced low although it should deserve high price. And that’s why the country secret the processing method before.
So if you want get high quality TGY, only good tea tree is not enough, Yunxiang Tea Company (www.yunxiangtea.com) has excellent tea mountain where located in Inner Anxi, 1300m high, the mountain always surround by mists, that kind of circumstance is ideal for tea plantation.. Normally we’ll have 2 tea seasons, Spring and Autumn. Here is the art pictures I took yesterday:
1, plucking TGY tea leaves.(cai qing)
There you should pay attention to the picking time, picked between 8-10AM and 3-5PM will have weaker quality than picked in 11AM-2PM, enough sunshine will get tea better, but maybe you’ll arise a question “why cannot we pick all tea in 11AM-2PM?”, that’s a good question, when the tea grows into the right plucking time you got to pick it up, it can’t wait even just few hours or we’ll get more weak quality. That’s one of the reasons that why Chinese says “good tea need to be taken care of by God”.
picking tea
And do you know in a tea tree which leaf has the best quality? bud, first leaf, second leaf or third leaf? ^_^
2, sun-dried withering. (sai qing)
tea sun-dried
Most kinds of tea leaves have to be withered by sunshine, that’s so natural and special, even some scientists wither it with man-made sun instead, but still cannot get the same result as natural sun. Normally the afternoon sunshine will be the best choice. Please don’t make the leaves burned.
3, cooling. (liang qing)
cooling tea leaves
The leaves adsorb heat from sun, before proceed to next stept we must take leaves to another place without sunshine and lay them out to cool them down, or you’ll get the leaves into yellow.
4, tossing. (yao qing)
tossing tea leaves
Shaking the TGY leaves in a special bamboo container, that’s the most important step of whole. you must take care of how many circles you’ll toss the container. The point of tossing is to bruise the edge of leaves that make accelerate the oxidation. That’s the key step why TGY can have so unique and charming character.
we’ll repeat step 4 and step 5 for several times. and how many times it will need?
5, air-conditional withering. (wei diao)
withering tea leaves
Then we’ll put the leaves into air-conditional room, there you’ll got the special flavor. Even finished the processing and no tea in that room for months, you can still smell that out.
6, stop oxidation. (sha qing)
stop oxidation
In order to stop the oxidation and keep the character we’ll use special round pan, and we can clear up the gramineous too. at the same time, the leaves will have less moisture and get more soft that make it easier for curling.
7, curling. (rou nian)
Curling will need four little steps:
wrapping tea leaves
i. first, wrapping (shu bao) that make the leaves into a ball;
tumbling tea leaves
ii. second, tumbling (bao rou) that make the special round tight shape;
breaking up tea ball
iii. third, (da san) that will break up the tea ball;
iv. fourth, (wei hong) dry it if it’s too wet and make it soft again.
repeat first to fourth for several times until you get satisfactory shape.
8, drying. (hong gan)
drying tea leaves
the last step is drying TGY leaves to make it easier for storing.
Then we’ll sort it, grade it and pack it. That’s the whole steps of processing TGY, people cannot stop once you launch the first step, it will take about 20 hours a day to process tea. so it’s really a hard work. When we drink so excellent tea, please say thanks to them, to these cute farmers.
Romance between Tea and Buddhism
Posted by daniel in tea culture&tea stories on September 3, 2009
Tea & Buddhism’s Romantic Story
taste Zen in tea
Every Chinese tea and Japanese tea lover will be familiar with this writing, in English that’s “Tea and Zen are the same feelings” or “taste Zen in Tea”, it shows the close connection between tea and Buddhism.
Do you know where does tea come from? The legend says in Southern and Northern Dynasties, Dharma slept unexpectedly when he was practicing self-cultivation in Shaolin, he was so angry about that and in order to stop sleeping next time he took off his eyelids onto the ground. At the next year there was a tea tree on the ground, and the green tea leaf fell into the pan when Dharma’s Service was boiling water, and after drank tea water Dharma found he will not feel sleepy. That’s the mythic story of the origin of tea.
Jingshan tea festival
Chinese tea festival
Can we find Dharma in tea today?
Still we can meet Dharma in tea in the 21st Century, but you know not every one can hear his voice. In Jiuhua Anhui Province which is one of the 4 most famous Buddhism Mountains in China you can take a drink of Jiuhua Buddhism tea (Jiuhua Fo Cha), in HangZhou, you can go to JingShan Temple for JingShan tea. JingShan Tea Banquet is the origin of Japanese Tea Dao.
old yard
In Southern Song Dynasty (about 1235 AC), Japanese Master Shenyi came to China and learn from Master Wuzun in JingShan temple. He went back and introduced The JingShan Tea Banquet to Japanese and which gradually evolved into Japanese Tea Ceremony. But for now JinShan tea in China is not so famous as in Japan.
We have so many more famous teas like Tie Guan Yin, Buddha Hand, Da Fang tea and so on. There is a story about the source of Tie Guan Yin which is the most popular tea in China now. In Qing Dynasty an old man named Wei Yin who believe in Guanyin and offer a cup of tea everyday morning. One night he dreamed he went out and found a tea tree near the river and at the second day he found the tea tree by tracing the way in the dream. He moved the tea tree into a iron pan. He thought the tea tree was gift of Guanyin, so named it as Iron Guanyin(Tie Guan Yin).
Jiuhua Buddhism tea
Why Monks obsess on tea?
Tea has three virtues: for Buddhism, it can help you touch Zen; for body, it can help digest; for soul, it can help keep your heat awake.
Zen and tea
Tang Dynasty is a very important time for Tea and Zen, Tang is also one of the most powerful countries in the world. Its economic was powerful and the more important is it absorbed everything that’s excellent from other races and countries. And the most important book of tea was born in Tang as well.
buddhas pick tea
Cha Jing, also named Tea Classic was wrote by Lu Yu in 761 AC, this book is the first book covers the whole tea circle in the world. Lu Yu has a very close connection with Buddhism, he was a foundling and was brought up by Zen Master ZhiJi, but Lu Yu didn’t like Buddhism and ran out to be the circus clown, fortunately Governor Li Qiwu recognized his gift and let him follow and learn from Zhou Fuzi, and another important man named Cui Guofu also appreciated him, they’re very important to his growing. Do you know Lu Yu in Tang Dynasty was famous for his literature not tea? Surprising? It’s true. He was one of the most famous litterateurs, when he came to one city, the chief will welcome him personally. And certainly tea is one of his hobbies, his Shifu Master Zhiji loved tea very much and also was a tea Master, so Lu Yu had connection with tea in the very young age. One of Lu Yu’s best friends Jiao Ran was also a Monk, a very famous poetry Monk. If you take a look at the whole life of Lu Yu, you’ll find the birth of Cha Jing has so close connection with Buddhism.
Chinese old tea party
Zen and tea’s fable
The most famous fable about tea and Zen is ZhaoZhou Monk.
One day two monks came for learning Zen, ZhaoZhou Monk asked one of them, “have you ever been here?”
“No.”
“So go to drink tea!” ZhaoZhou Monk said.
“No, I’ve not been here.” Another man answered.
“You drink tea too!” ZhaoZhou Monk said.
“Why do you let them to drink tea no matter they have been here or not?” the abbot wondered and asked.
“You go drink too!” ZhaoZhou answered.
Can you get the Zen from what ZhaoZhou Monk said?
No matter you understand or not, here is another interesting fable.
One man came to NanYin for studying Zen, NanYin welcomed him tea, he poured tea water into cup and didn’t stop though the cup
tea damp
was full. The man said:” Master, the cup has been fulfilled. ” Master NanYin said :”You’re just like the cup fulfilled with your ideas, if you don’t make it empty, how can I teach you Zen?”