A Person Who Can Brew Good Tea Can't Be Bad

The Art of Active and Passive

Teacher Ye Hanzhong's words awakened me: "Many people are not brewing tea, but being brewed by tea." What does this mean? When you are brewing tea, you can use your desired techniques, combined with your available tools, to fully bring out the advantages of the tea. Whether it's good tea or bad tea, you can showcase its merits, each with its own flavor.

If you're being brewed by tea, you're expressing all the advantages and disadvantages of the tea together. Even worse, you're only bringing out all the tea's flaws. That tea brew will certainly not taste good, and this tea cannot be called a work of art.

Just like using AI, if you can properly constrain this external brain, then you can make it do anything for you. But if you just randomly tell it what you want without having a framework in your own mind, it's impossible to bring out all the advantages of AI.

Twenty Years to Master the Craft

Since the essence of tea art is to brew good tea, the question arises: Why do we always fail to brew good tea?

Teochew Gongfu Tea has a saying about "three and a half masters": the tea-making master, the roasting master, the blending master, and half a brewing master. Why is the brewing master only counted as "half"? Because unlike tea-making with its fixed processes, brewing relies more on personal intuition and improvisation, making it difficult to have standardized "master" levels. Incorporating the roundness of Tai Chi into it is also not a simple matter.

This isn't meant to scare people, but to state a fact: brewing tea seems simple, but it's actually a craft that requires heartfelt understanding.

An interesting phenomenon: when I focus on the tea leaves, water temperature, and timing, my daily anxieties actually disappear. Tea provides a perfect anchor for attention. As we say in psychology, it enters a state of flow—a state of complete immersion in the present moment. The brain releases many hormones, creating a feeling of happiness.

Casual Yet Not Careless

Teochew Gongfu Tea has a saying: "One can be casual, but not careless." This phrase sounds contradictory at first, but upon reflection, it's full of wisdom.

"Casual" means the environment can change—in the mountains, at home, anywhere, you can brew Gongfu tea. But "not careless" refers to not being sloppy with your attitude toward tea and basic techniques. It emphasizes respect for tea; when tea leaves enter water, they enter another cycle. When brewing tea, one must be focused, not disturbed by external factors, showing respect for both the tea and the guests.

True tea brewing masters "brew with spirit." This sounds mystical, but he explained: like a calligrapher writing, when reaching a state of selflessness, like when he's intoxicated, the characters he writes are most beautiful; tea brewing is the same—when you become one with the tea, you naturally brew good tea.

As children playing with mud, no one taught us "standards"; we just felt with our hearts, yet we could always create works that satisfied us.

I have read gardening essays and taken gardening classes, only to finally discover that whether one's own garden is beautiful or not is seen through one's own eyes.

Experience Beyond Words

We're too easily trapped by complex tea culture theories, forgetting the simplest question: Does this tea taste good?

The first time I used a Teochew red clay teapot to brew Dan Cong tea, I didn't understand why such a small pot was necessary, or why the cups had to be so thin. But when the tea broth entered my mouth, the answer was self-evident—tea brewed this way simply tastes better than other methods!

Understanding "why" is certainly important, but more important is first experiencing "what is." Just as you don't need to understand music theory to appreciate Beethoven's beauty, you don't need to be a tea expert to taste the flavor of good tea.

Now I understand that Teochew Gongfu Tea has been passed down for hundreds of years not because its theories are profound, but because it truly brews delicious tea. We have only two goals: the first is to brew suitable tea, the second is to enjoy the brewing process.

If they want it strong, give them strong tea; if they want it light, give them light tea; whatever flavor they want, give them that flavor. In this tea brewing process, the spirit guards inwardly, reaching a state of harmony with the world.

But in this fast-paced era, even if we understand the essence of tea art, there's a deeper question: Do we still have time to properly brew tea?

The Power of Slowness

True Teochew Gongfu Tea requires you to slow down.

Starting from boiling water, the charcoal fire slowly rises, the water sound changes from urgent to gentle; selecting tea, adding tea, pouring water, serving tea—each step cannot be rushed; when tasting tea, one must savor carefully, feeling the layers of aroma, experiencing the changes of tea broth in the mouth.

This isn't wasting time; it's enjoying time.

"A person who can brew good tea can't be bad." A person who can respect tea can respect people. How can someone who doesn't even respect tea respect people? For Teacher Ye, what impressed me most was that he fought from third grade through ninth grade, until tea changed him. Tea gave him a chance for complete renewal. I want to say that in my mind, my view is that a person who loves reading also won't be a bad person.

This, perhaps, is what Teochew Gongfu Tea wants to tell us: in this fast-paced era, we need to reserve some space for ourselves to slow down and rediscover the texture that life should have.

Wisdom in the Details

During several days of learning, the interesting part was the noon time—sometimes I would arrive early and could ask Teacher Qingqing questions. Sister Qingqing explained things very clearly. It was from her that I learned the charm of metaphors.

She could use an apple to metaphorically describe the different production processes of green tea, black tea, oolong tea, and dark tea. We also discussed how tea leaves themselves cannot be made into completely stable products, but as blended teas, they can be blended into relatively stable products. When we were drinking tea there, there happened to be a pastry at hand, which became another excellent metaphor.

During the learning process, I realized that Gongfu tea has so many details I had never thought of before. For example, it can have a very complex set of utensils: various washing plates, charcoal stoves, sand kettles, etc. The utensil system is quite complex, though it has been greatly simplified now. I also learned that there's a specialized job called tea blender, whose role is to blend different teas together.

I also learned small knowledge points: when arranging cups, the pointed corners of the three cups should face yourself, so guests see these three cups forming the character "品" (taste); when brewing with a purple clay teapot, create an angle near the spout so the tea broth comes out more stable, avoiding layering; when pouring water, pour from the half near the handle, and you can control the tea flavor through high and low pouring.

There was also an interesting philosophical discussion about clouds and fog. Actually, clouds are fog, and fog is clouds—they're both water molecules. Up close it's fog, from a distance it's clouds. There's essentially no difference, but people always want to add artificial distinctions.

I later realized that it's precisely by placing our mental energy on many unimportant things, like news and gossip, that we miss the chance to address the constant aches in our lives. It's not that entertainment is bad, but we need to care for ourselves, care for the person who understands us best. As mentioned in "Antifragile," our language also limits our thinking. In Chinese, there's no true antonym for "fragile"—"resilient," "strong"... none of them are, it can only be "antifragile."

Revelations from the Mountain Tea Gardens

After several days of learning, when I stood on Phoenix Mountain again, looking at the endless tea gardens, at the sea of clouds floating in the sky, at the scattered old houses, I suddenly felt something different.

Not just the magnificent scenery before my eyes, but also the profound cultural heritage within it.

Perhaps we don't need to make the inheritance of Teochew Gongfu Tea overly complex, just like the grooves cut on a key—the more grooves there are, the more complex the corresponding lock becomes, and no one can easily open it. "The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao." I hope that after experiencing enough, I can also let go of what I cannot let go of, listen to my own voice, befriend tea, and cherish every bit of beauty that comes by chance.