The Gong Fu of Tea

A friend sent me this. It's from the monthly newsletter of Teance, an up and coming tea company. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to the full article. I've excerpted a portion below.

The term gong fu applies not only to martial arts, but to any activity where a skill developed over time. Wu Wei is a Daoist term which can be loosely translated as "without effort."

What do these two things have to do with tea? Read below, or better yet, click on the title of this post.

The term 'Gong Fu' may be more familiar than it sounds - generally it is associated with martial arts; it is more commonly spelled as 'Kung Fu'. Translating from Chinese as 'great skill and effort,' Gong Fu is required in both martial arts and tea - the practice of one reflected in the other - and is embraced as one of the founding principles here at Teance.

Though the practice of martial arts is fast and furious, in the beginning, minute attention is paid to practicing correct form. The art and the practitioner become inseparable, and every action is then executed effortlessly and expertly. The practitioner can now freely respond to circumstance and spontaneously express his intentions.

Like martial arts, the Gong Fu of tea also requires much practice, skill, and effort - and some very good tea leaves, ideally. But to truly achieve Gong Fu tea, the Taoist idea of 'Wu Wei' must also be applied: doing without doing. With Wu Wei, one is so good that the action seems completely effortless; others should not notice all the meticulous attention that took place to make that perfect cup.

Why is the Taoist idea of Wu Wei necessary in Gong Fu tea? Here we break from martial arts: The spiritual practice of mindfulness, concentration, and deliberate intention through tea is ultimately used in the service of others. The guest should be moved by his experience without imposition; the generosity and spirit of sharing one's best effort should be felt without display. The guest should experience, wordlessly, the years of artful practice that brought to life the leaf as intended by the tea masters' equally skillful crafting, somewhere far away in the mountains of Asia.

To achieve Wu Wei, Gong Fu is required of our staff at Teance and is applied in every aspect of their training. They begin by learning the height and speed of the pour, how to turn the wrist for efficiency, and how to arrange the tasting cups. They learn all of the formal presentation steps designed not for show, but to produce the best cup of tea possible. They learn to recognize the temperature of the water by feel, to observe the passage of time intuitively, to know the portioning and steeping specifics of each tea.

... All the Tea in China

A friend sent me a newspaper article about a village that grows tea in China. It's an interesting read. I've put an excerpt below. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to the full article.

A Tea From the Jungle Enriches a Placid Village

By THOMAS FULLER

PU’ER, China — The sky is nearly cloudless, the breeze is bracing, and the tea plantation where Yao Kunxue works resembles a giant green amphitheater absorbing the last rays of a setting sun.

The tea itself? No thanks, he says. He grows it — what he calls industrial tea — but he does not drink it.

The rolling hills of China’s southern Yunnan Province are the birthplace of tea, anthropologists say, the first area where humans figured out that eating tea leaves or brewing a cup could be pleasant. Today tea farmers preside over large plantations, but they want their tea the way their forebears consumed it: brewed from wild leaves, and preferably from ancient trees in the jungle.

“It has a fragrant smell,” Mr. Yao said of his favorite, harvested from trees at least a century old. “And when you swallow there’s a sweet aftertaste.”

From relative obscurity a few decades ago, tea from Yunnan, especially Pu’er, has become a fashionable, must-have variety in the tea shops of Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing. Surging demand for Pu’er — often advertised as wild tea even if it is from the plantations — has made farmers here rich and encouraged entrepreneurs to carve out more plantations from jungle-covered hillsides.

Ninety percent of the 23,000 tons of Pu’er tea produced last year was grown on plantations, officials say. Local residents seem more than happy to send it to distant locales. They complain about its hard edges — too bitter — and the chemicals that are regularly sprayed on the plants to repel bugs, viruses and fungus.

“The pesticides come through in the taste,” Mr. Yao said.

Here, tea has never been something bought at the market; it grows in the backyard, like blueberries in the woods of Maine.

Domesticated tea plants are trimmed into hedges to make harvesting easier. In the wild, they grow to resemble the old and gnarled olive trees of the Mediterranean but with bigger and more abundant leaves.

Peng Zhe, deputy secretary general of the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, a tea-growing district here, compares the wild tea to fine vintages of Bordeaux or Burgundy.

“To appreciate Pu’er tea is similar to enjoying wine,” said Mr. Peng, who also leads the local tea promotion board. “You need to understand the different areas where tea grows. The fragrance is different from one mountain to the next.”

A Teahouse in Hang Zhou

The current post at Martial Views is about energy drinks. It reminded me of tea and kung fu, which reminded me of a post I made a long time ago, about a teahouse in Hang Zhou which has a unique way of serving tea.

Kung fu is expresed in may ways. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to a NY Times photo essay on this unique and fascinating expression.

Tea

Below is an excerpt of an article in the New York Times, regarding tea in India. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to the full article.

High Tea, India Style

By MATT GROSS

THE Himalayas rose almost out of nowhere. One minute the Maruti Suzuki hatchback was cruising the humid plains of West Bengal, palm trees and clouds obscuring the hills to come; the next it was navigating a decrepit road that squiggled up through forests of cypress and bamboo. The taxi wheezed with the strain of the slopes, and the driver honked to alert unseen vehicles to our presence — one miscalculation, one near miss, could send the little car over the edge and down thousands of feet, returning us to the plains below in a matter of seconds.

For an hour or more, as we climbed ever higher, all I saw was jungle — trees and creepers on either side of us, with hardly a village to break the anxious monotony. Finally, though, somewhere around 4,000 feet, the foliage opened just enough to allow a more expansive view. From the edge of the road, the hills flowed up and down and back up, covered with low, flat-topped bushes that looked like green scales on a sleeping dragon's flanks. Tiny dots marched among the bushes and along the beige dirt tracks that zigzagged up the hillsides — workers plucking leaves from Camellia sinensis, the tea bushes of Darjeeling.

Flying to a remote corner of India and braving the long drive into the Himalayas may seem like an awful lot of effort for a good cup of tea, but Darjeeling tea isn't simply good. It's about the best in the world, fetching record prices at auctions in Calcutta and Shanghai, and kick-starting the salivary glands of tea lovers from London to Manhattan.

In fact, Darjeeling is so synonymous with high-quality black tea that few non-connoisseurs realize it's not one beverage but many: 87 tea estates operate in the Darjeeling district, a region that sprawls across several towns (including its namesake) in a mountainous corner of India that sticks up between Nepal and Bhutan, with Tibet not far to the north.

Each has its own approach to growing tea, and in a nod to increasingly savvy and adventurous consumers, a few have converted bungalows into tourist lodging, while others are accepting day visitors keen to learn the production process, compare styles and improve their palates — a teetotaler's version of a Napa Valley wine tour, but with no crowds.

Still, such a trip requires a certain amount of fortitude, as I discovered when I set out to blaze a trail from estate to estate last March, during the “first flush” harvest, said to produce the most delicate, flavorful leaves. (The second flush, in May and June, is really just as good.) It wasn't just the roads — once marvels of engineering, now tracks of terror that produce daily news reports of fatal plunges — that made the journey a challenge. It was the egos.

The men who run the estates are royalty — and they know it. When visiting their domains, you are at their disposal, not the other way around. At times, this can be frustrating; at others, delightfully frustrating.

I HAD my first such encounter — the latter sort — at Makaibari, an estate just south of the town of Kurseong, around 4,500 feet above sea level. Founded by G. C. Banerjee in the 1840s, during the region's first great wave of tea cultivation, Makaibari remains a family operation, run by Banerjee's great-grandson Swaraj — better known as Rajah.

Rajah is a Darjeeling legend: He's arguably done more for Darjeeling tea than anyone else in the district. Back in 1988, he took the estate organic; four years later, it was fully biodynamic, the first in the world.

Today, it produces the most expensive brew in Darjeeling, a “muscatel” that sold for 50,000 rupees a kilogram (about $555 a pound, at recent exchange rates of around 41 rupees to the dollar) at auction in Beijing last year. You won't often spot his logo — a five-petaled flower that resembles the underside of a tea blossom — on grocery store shelves, but you'll find his leaves in boxes marked Tazo and Whole Foods.

After checking into one of the six no-frills bungalows he has erected for tourists, I marched into the Makaibari factory (opened in 1859), climbed the wooden steps to Mr. Banerjee's office and sat down across the desk from a vigorous patrician with thick gray hair, a clean-shaven angular jaw and black eyebrows in permanent ironic arch. What, he asked, smoking a borrowed cigarette, did I hope to accomplish at Makaibari?

“Well,” I began, as the smell of brewing leaves wafted in from the adjacent tasting room, “I guess I'd like to see how tea is made.”

“Ha! You've come to the wrong place for that,” Mr. Banerjee declared with an eager grin. “This is the place to see how tea is enjoyed!”

Then he poured me a cup — bright but mellow, with a faint fruity sweetness that lingered on my tongue. It was to be the first of many perfect cups.

The Classic of Tea

If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to the Wikipedia article on The Classic of Tea. Enjoy.

Huang Pu Zheng's poem about Lu Yu

Saw Lu Yu off to Pick Tea
Thousand mountains greeted my departing friend
When spring tea blossoming again
With indepth knowledge in picking tea
Through morning mist or crimson evening clouds
His solitary journey is my envy
Rendezvous in a temple of a remote mountain
We enjoyed picnic by a clear pebble fountain
In this silent night
Lit up a candle light
I knocked a marble bell for chime
While deep in thought for old time.

Tang Dynasty Poems, #23: A BOAT IN SPRING ON RUOYA LAKE

The Tang Dynasty was a Golden Age of Culture in China. Art, especially Poetry, was revered.

During the Tang Dynasty, no occasion was too small or mundane to merit a poem. I mentioned this to a friend once, who responded, "what a lovely way to live."

Thinking about yesterday's post, maybe we could learn something from them.

If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to an online version of the famous anthology, The 300 Tang Dynasty Poems.

If not poetry, maybe we should take a page from the Ming Dynasty scholar, Li Ri Hua who said:

One should clean out a room in one's home and place only a tea table and a chair in the room with some boiled water and fragrant tea. Afterwards, sit salutarily and allow one's spirit to become tranquil, light, and natural.

#23 A BOAT IN SPRING ON RUOYA LAKE

Five-character-ancient-verse

Qiwu Qian

A BOAT IN SPRING ON RUOYA LAKE

Thoughtful elation has no end:
Onward I bear it to whatever come.
And my boat and I, before the evening breeze
Passing flowers, entering the lake,
Turn at nightfall toward the western valley,
Where I watch the south star over the mountain
And a mist that rises, hovering soft,
And the low moon slanting through the trees;
And I choose to put away from me every worldly matter
And only to be an old man with a fishing-pole.

Tea

An excerpt from an article on tea houses in the SF Bay area. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directged to the full article.

Tea's time
Bay Area artisan teahouses offer tastes to rival the complexity of fine wine
Olivia Wu, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
More...
At Teance, the tea bar and store in Berkeley, co-owner Winnie Yu takes her place behind the sleek concrete and copper tea bar and, with suppressed excitement, pours the first of the 2007 winter-picked wulong (oolong) tea. The wulong has just arrived from a Li Shan estate in Taiwan, one of the world's foremost centers of this complex varietal.
Proprietors of other fine Bay Area teahouses, including Roy Fong of Imperial Tea Court and Donna Lo Christy of Far Leaves, are heading to China, Taiwan and Japan to oversee the harvest of artisanally grown Camellia sinensis.
All of them are bringing the best of the leaves back to the Bay Area for the growing numbers of artisan tea aficionados.
January is the start of the premium tea harvest. More of this tea will come through the Bay Area than through any other American gateway. San Francisco historically has been a major center for tea in the United States, and in the 21st century promises to reinvigorate America's tea culture as never before.
"The Bay Area is the center of the current tea renaissance. No other city has this range and depth," says Gaetano Maida, executive director of the Tea Arts Institute in Oakland.
The popularity of artisan tea is being fueled by places such as Far Leaves and Teance teahouses, Starbucks-like cafes such as Teavana and food-and-tea restaurants such as Samovar. These ventures have moved today's tea culture beyond the traditional Chinatown establishments to urban destinations, suburban neighborhoods and even shopping malls.
The world of artisan teas in many ways parallels fine wines. The cognoscenti resemble wine connoisseurs, developing discriminating palates to appreciate the teas, and using a language that parallels wine appreciation -- vintages, single estates, harvest time and method, not to mention all the descriptors for the taste of tea, such as acid, tannins, weight, fruit, earth aromas and mineral characteristics.
Premium teas are whole leaf teas that come from specific estates or gardens, and are designated by varietal and year of harvest -- like vintage wine. They're different from blends of chopped or scented teas, such as English breakfast, Earl Grey and Lapsang Souchong, and very different from the mass-market tea bags made of finings, the dust left on the floor after the tea leaves dry.
The current interest in premium tea, and teahouses, is just the latest development in the growing mainstream appreciation of tea, which began 20 years ago as Baby Boomers searched for a low- or non-caffeinated alternative to coffee. Reports about tea's possible health benefits also fueled the boom.
Today's boom is planted on fertile ground. Tea packagers such as Republic of Tea, Mighty Leaf Tea Company, Numi, Leaves and Silk Road all began in the Bay Area, and now command a national market.
The focus has expanded to artisan teahouses and suppliers, such as Teance, Far Leaves, Imperial Tea Court and Lupicia, to name a few. Here's a look at these major players in the Bay Area's new tea scene.
Winnie Yu, Teance: Teance, which opened last fall, is the reincarnation of Yu's first tea store, Celadon, which she opened several years ago at a different location in Berkeley.
Yu, 37, came to the United States from Hong Kong as a child and attended UC Berkeley. Missing the types of teas she drank from age 4, she began acquiring, exchanging and investing in premium teas with devotees and friends who traveled to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and China.
"I wanted to introduce the public to wonderful teas,'' she says. "And I wanted to support the small farms that make a living out of growing tea." Yu's sources range from gardens that cover one hill to plantations in the Anxi region of China that occupy four mountains.
At the heart of Teance is a circular, heated and stone-imbedded concrete bar in the shape of the Chinese gaiwan, the classic, covered cup-bowl used for some Chinese tea services. Patrons can choose from a menu of any of the 60-plus teas in the store, from white, green, wulong, black, herbal and puer teas, for $5 per person.
Taking a cue from wine culture, Teance offers tasting flights of tea, ranging from $5 for a single tea to $15 for three or four teas. A suggested pairing with tea-flavored artisanal chocolates from Charles Chocolates of Emeryville is also on the menu.
Yu offers classes in fine teas and tea making, but offers these tips for neophytes:
-- Ninety percent of fresh teas are seasonal.
-- Tea is best unblended. "Farmers pick meticulously according to freshness. There's a 9 o'clock picking, or a pre-dawn picking, that separates batches of tea."
-- Know your farmer or elevation. Generally, the higher the better.
-- Ask about craftsmanship -- in other words, who is roasting your tea. Over-roasted tea loses its delicacy and herbaceous character. Under-roasted retains moisture and may cause mold. Your teahouse owner and dealer are critical at this stage. Many go to China and Taiwan to oversee the process.
-- Understand steeping techniques. "Oversteeping can ruin a tea in two seconds if water is too hot or steeped too long. That's when you get the, 'Oh, it's bitter. Let's add sugar and milk.' "
Yu's top sellers: White Peony, Jasmine Dragon Pearls, Baosheng Wulong.
Hidden gem: Phoenix Danchong Honey Wulong from 100-year-old trees in China.
Donna Lo Christy, Far Leaves: Christy's comfortable and serene tea shop on Ashby Avenue in Berkeley is dedicated to making fine tea accessible and affordable. Any tea can be tasted for $5, and one can sit on tatami mats, at tables or in alcoves.
"I had a customer the other day who asked for honey with her Dragonwell, so I gave it to her. Anything to get them started with good tea," she says.
Christy began enjoying tea as a university student in Taiwan. After marrying, she and her husband explored the great teas in the 1970s and 1980s while they remained in Taiwan. Christy used the word "leaves" in her store name because she wanted people to be able to "escape reality" with the experience, but also feel fully and healthfully present, she says.
Like Teance, Far Leaves offers a global selection, with teas from the best regions of China, Taiwan, Japan and India, as well as herbal infusions from all over the world.
Christy's top sellers: Pearl Jasmine, Blood Orange Herbal, Monk's Blend Black.
Hidden gem: Dongding (Frozen Summit) Wulong, one of several of the store's specialty Taiwanese wulongs.
Lupicia Fresh Tea Leaf: The tea shop Lupicia focuses on Japanese teas and carries 200 teas from around the world.
The corporation, whose strongest suit is Japanese teas, has 80 outlets in Japan, some stores in Honolulu and Los Angeles, and two in San Francisco. A third Bay Area location is scheduled to open this spring in San Jose.
"Our customers don't buy one (1.7 ounce) bag of loose-leaf tea, they buy five to eight," says John Meneses, manager of the Westfield San Francisco Centre store. "The second time they come, they buy a pot." Not far down the line, he says, Lupicia may add the classic sit-down teahouse experience.
Lupicia's top sellers: Momo wulong (Taiwan), Champagne Rose (black), Gyukuro Green (Japan), Jardin Sauvage (herbal).
Hidden gem: Darjeeling BPS, or broken pekoe stem (India).
Roy Fong, Imperial Tea Court: Fong is the grandfather of the tea movement in the Bay Area, a man of impeccable palate and unerring nose. In his 40,000-square-foot Oakland warehouse lies an assortment of puer teas that he has collected, cared for and aged for more than 20 years. Emissaries of wealthy Chinese moguls come to cajole Fong into selling them his teas, the quality of which cannot be found in China.
When Fong, 51, first bought teas in Hong Kong and China in the early 1980s, China's tea production was still in disarray from the Cultural Revolution. Fong bought large quantities of the one tea that improves with age, puer, and stashed them, aired them and tempered them in his Bay Area warehouse. The tea leaves aged naturally to an earthy brown, eventually making a brew, that when steeped correctly, is intensely amber, clear, silky and full of complexity, with earth tones and a drawn-out finish comparable to aged Bordeaux.
Fong's first retail outlet was Imperial Tea Court in San Francisco's Chinatown. In recent years, he's added locations in the Ferry Building, as well as on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, where he also serves organic Chinese food. The Ferry Building and Chinatown stores are designed like Northern-style tearooms in China, with classic Chinese furniture.
Only his friends and big dealers may be lucky enough to find Fong at his warehouse roasting teas. They might be invited into his inner sanctum, a private tearoom outfitted with Chinese antiques. And he might just pull out his 1984 early spring harvest puer, which he has personally cared for, or the 1983 late spring harvest puer, which brews a deep, silky, Cognac-colored tea, with an aftertaste that lingers for the rest of the day. "This is a living being," he says of the glistening liquid before him.
Fong's top sellers: Jasmine Pearls, Monkey-Picked Tieguan Yin, Imperial and Lotus Heart Dragonwell.
Hidden gems: Wuyi Yencha (Chinese wulong); 2000 Topaz Puer.
Like many Chinese, Fong believes that tea is a civilizing force. "Let's be human beings and drink tea," he's fond of saying.
He also believes in the health properties of tea, especially puer, a main ingredient in traditional Chinese pharmacopoeia. Its taste and effect -- to soothe and stimulate -- are healing and magical in themselves, he says.
"I'm saving these teas for my children,'' he says. "It's easy to save money for your kids, but the tea is something I cared for."

A Teahouse in HangZhou

If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to a photo essay with narration, which describes a teahouse experience in Hangzhou which is unlike any other you're likely to encounter.

Spring Harvest ushers in a new season of Green Teas

The following is an excerpt from an article about tea in China. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to the full article.

Spring harvest ushers in a new season of green teas
- Olivia Wu
Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Shanghai -- Editor's note: This is the first installment of Olivia Wu's food columns from China. They will appear regularly over the next several months.
I
n a city of some 20 million residents, the signs of spring are easily smothered, whether by smog or glitz or the trampling of 20 million pairs of feet.

Riding into the racy tempo of Shanghai, which one of my friends describes as "New York and Las Vegas on steroids," Giorgio Armani arrived in early April to open a retrospective at the Shanghai Art Museum.

The following week the Rolling Stones gave their first concert in China.

First flowers emerge Amid such noise and flash, the fragile buds of the season are quietly pushing through in the gardens and parks of the city. Pink and white flowers, as well as tender green leaf buds, are making a brave show in the ground and in planters. Among them are large, hot pink camellias. The flowering camellia is a close cousin to Camellia sinensis, the perennial bush also known as Thea sinensis, or tea.

San Francisco Japanese Tea Garden

If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to original on line news article, where you'll find more pictures.

Thursday, January 19, 2006
(SF Chronicle)
SAN FRANCISCO/Tempest in Japanese Tea Garden/Move to restore fidelity to design, oust the schlock
Charles Burress,
Chronicle Staff Writer

A conflict over cultural sensitivity is brewing at a Bay Area landmarkfamous for its image of tranquility -- the Japanese Tea Garden in GoldenGate Park. The generic souvenirs and junk food sold in the 5-acre garden's tea houseand its gift shop are a glaring intrusion of tourist schlock, someJapanese American community leaders contend. The 112-year-old oasis, the oldest public Japanese garden in the UnitedStates, should more accurately reflect Japanese culture for hundreds ofthousands of visitors annually, the community leaders say.

"We're very uncomfortable with the products being sold at the tea garden,"said Rich Hashimoto, president of the Japantown Merchants Association."They reflect more a Chinese culture than a Japanese culture. And thequality of the products doesn't meet our standards."

Hashimoto and leaders of other Japantown organizations are backing a bid from a Japanese American cafe owner to take over the concession from the current operator, a Chinatown business owner, and bring in more Japanese-themed food and items.

The concession battle includes the open-air tea house, where tea is served with a fortune cookie and other cookies for $3.20. Critics point to the racks of American candy bars and chips and to the casually-fitted robes the waitresses wear, which are meant to resemble normally snug kimonos.

Another irritant is that the tea menu is topped by jasmine tea, more of a Chinese staple. The fortune cookie in the tea service is no problem, however. The tea garden is the reputed birthplace of what has become known as the "Chinese fortune cookie," an American invention ubiquitous in Chinese restaurants in the United States but not commonly found in China.

In anotherJapanese-Chinese admixture, a scene for the recent film "Memoirs of a Geisha," which drew criticism for casting Chinese actresses in Japanese roles, was filmed in the garden.

The gift shop contains some Japanese items such geisha dolls, as well as some Chinese items like tomb-warrior figurines, but the lion's share ofthe merchandise could be found at a typical tourist shop in San Francisco-- cable-car mugs, giant lollipops, Alcatraz caps, little license plates bearing common American first names.

Carol Murata, who sits on the Japantown Merchants Association board and owns Murata's Cafe Hana, a cafe and flower shop in the Japan Center mall, submitted a proposal to the city's Recreation and Park Department to takeover the concession from Fred Lo, whose Chinatown Fashion House Inc. has held the contract for 14 years.

Murata's supporters stress fidelity to the heritage of a garden established by wealthy landscape designer Makoto Hagiwara for the Japanese Village exhibit at the California Midwestern International Exposition of1894. The Hagiwara family ran the garden until the World War II Japanese internment in 1942. Lo, who also has the Coit Tower concession, wants to keep the contract.

City staff members gave a higher bid score to Murata and recommended giving her the concession. The Recreation and Park Commission will consider the issue today.

"I don't know why they gave higher scores to her with no experience," said Lo.

He called Murata's projected 100 percent increase in revenue impossible. He also criticized her plan to offer higher-quality, more expensive goods, saying tourists don't want to spend much.

The city cares about the tea garden's finances because the Recreation and Park Department budget included $200,000 in rent from the concessionaire in fiscal 2004-05. The city received $1.1 million from visitors paying the$3.50-admission fee.

Lo's concession grossed $648,299 this past fiscal year, according to city records. He has hired two attorneys to represent him on the bid and what he called "a specialist ... to create a whole series of Japanese items."

Murata declined to comment, saying city staff members advised her not to. Her plan would add upgraded Japanese-themed gifts and menu items such assushi, miso soup and Japanese desserts, as well as Japanese cultural programs developed in cooperation with Japantown organizations.

"Japanese Americans operated it for many, many years," said businessman Allen Okamoto, co-organizer of the Japantown centennial commemorations this year.

"There was a little consternation in the community about a Chinese American taking over the Japanese Tea Garden." Lo said ethnicity, like gender, shouldn't matter: "You don't need a woman to design the latest dress."

When he took over from the former Japanese American operator, some workers were wearing Raiders' jackets and he helped restore authenticity, he said. Douglas Dawkins, a great-great grandson of Hagiwara, agreed that race is not the issue but said Murata's Japanese American background and ties to Japantown do matter.

"From the Hagiwara family perspective, it's not a racial issue," he said."It's an affinity for Japanese culture issue."

E-mail Charles Burress at http://us.f524.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=cburress@sfchronicle.com&YY=33309&order=up&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b.

New Imperial Tea Court Newsletter

If you love tea, you might want to check out the issue of the Imperial Tea Court's newsletter. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to it.

Tea House Reviews

I'm in the Bay Area this week on business. On Tuesday, I spent the day in San Francisco.

After my obligations were over, I hung out at the Ferry Building. I stopped into The Marketplace for an outstanding hamburger and a Guiness.

Then I went to the Imperial Tea Court to meet a friend, and had some outstanding Green Oolong.

Below is a review of three teahouses in San Francisco. I can personally vouch for the Imperial Tea Court. There is a link to the Imperial Tea Court over to the right.

If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to the original of this article.
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June 13, 2004
Fine Teas Flower In the Bay Area
By ALLISON HOOVER BARTLETT

AROMATIC steam spirals from the thin spout of my tiny teapot. In only a minute or two, I'll pour the emerald-colored sencha tea into my cup and bring it to my lips. I've learned that waiting too long ruins the flavor, and I've discovered that when I refill that tiny pot with water, the next cup can taste even better. My education might better be termed immersion: I've become a tea zealot--a devotea, if you will--and I'm not alone. There are more and more like me. Maybe it's the fog, or a desire to slow down, or just another excuse to partake in one more sensory pleasure. Whatever the reasons, a number of new teahouses have opened in the San Francisco Bay area, the most interesting of which offer a range of Asian or ''world tea'' experiences.

I've been a green tea drinker for more than 10 years, but pathetically limited: I knew what I liked (Gunpowder and Dragon Well), but until recently hadn't ventured any further. But after one cup of Kukicha Hatsukura Supreme at the Samovar Tea Lounge, in San Francisco's Castro District, I decided to set out on my own tasting trek. It has taken me from one sumptuous teahouse to another, all of which offered food -- from light snacks to full meals -- yet also welcomed those simply interested in a cup of tea.

My first stop was the Samovar, where more than a hundred varieties of Asian, colonial, Eastern European and Middle Eastern teas are offered ($3 to $11 per serving). The food ranges from small snacks ($1.75 to $4.95) to a Russian high tea service from a samovar ($11 including such treats as tea toasts with caviar) to entire meals (tea, appetizer, main dish and dessert are around $20 a person).

Samovar's pan-Asian interior is elegant and cozy, and with the sun streaming through the windows and world music playing softly, people tend to linger. At one end of the restaurant is a raised platform with a long table, where people sit on straw pillows under the gaze of a large 400-year-old statue of Bodhisattva Kuan Yin, who looks especially relaxed, one arm resting on her bent knee. The crowd is varied, from young couples, to writers at their laptops, to grandmothers sipping with their grandchildren.

While I was there, a number of young women were taking part in another ageless but now popular pastime: knitting. And if the eclectic crowd doesn't provide enough entertainment, the magazine rack in the corner offers such offbeat choices as Giant Robot, Surfer's Journal and DestinAsia.

My husband, John, came with me, and both of us thought we'd try oolongs, which lie somewhere between the greens and the blacks on the tea oxidation scale. One of the most significant distinctions between varieties of teas is the degree to which they are oxidized -- that is, exposed to air while drying. The process is often assumed, incorrectly, to be fermentation, which usually implies additives.

In choosing our oolongs, we were swayed by nomenclature and the elaborate descriptions: I went for the Monkey Picked Iron Goddess of Mercy (''Kuan Yin's classic elixir offering transcendence via the tealeaf''), a smooth, full-bodied, slightly floral tea that is $6 for a small pot.

And John chose, predictably, Caressing Royal Concubine (''Sip by sip, all-consuming rapture'') for $7. It tastes the way tropical flowers smell: like honey. Later I learned the reason for this tea's potent flavor; farmers take caterpillars to the tea bushes and let them devour the leaves, which causes the plants to put all their rejuvenating energy into the next season's harvest: these are the robust leaves used for Caressing Royal Concubine.

I ate Asian -- the bento box with ginger baked mahi mahi ($8.95), and John decided on a grilled sandwich (Gouda and cured ham on rye, $6.50). While the menu features some English and Russian fare, the best of it--and most of it--is Asian. For dessert, we ordered two delicate white teas, which our tea server described as ''tea at its purest.'' Apparently, because of its very slow, controlled drying process, only this type of tea retains its leaf-bud color. Our Snow Buds ($5) and Wild Rose Silver Needle ($5.50), were lovely, but were overpowered by our decadent chocolate dessert choices. Oh, the art of matching tea to food. We should have asked for recommendations.

While tea's health benefits may be one reason places like Samovar are so popular these days, good taste is certainly another. A cup of Starbucks was enough to induce many to swear off Folgers -- and there are plenty of inducements to move beyond Lipton. In addition to oolongs, greens, whites and blacks, there is the Pu Erh variety from Yunan Province in China, a dark, almost espresso-like tea that's surprisingly low in caffeine.

Pu Erhs, I learned, are also the only aged teas -- that is, they are oxidized much longer than other teas. Some of the oldest are aged for more than 100 years. Like wine, Pu Erhs are stored in a manner (sometimes buried or put in caves) that enhances taste. And like fine wines, these teas are more prized the older they get, and more expensive. I tried a pot of Jingmai Mountain at a later visit to Samovar and concluded that with its intense flavor, it would have been a better choice with our chocolate desserts.

I also noticed that the service at Samovar can be slow, which turned out to be the case at every teahouse I visited. Yet rushing would be beside the point. We were there to savor, as were the throngs of customers lined up to order at the counter. Lovely pots, cups, teas and related accouterments are for sale here.

Our next stop took us to the edge of the Bay where Alice Waters was among the customers at the new Imperial Tea Court in San Francisco's beautifully refurbished Ferry Building Marketplace. For years, the Imperial Tea Court has been regarded as the quintessential teahouse in Chinatown, and this new branch, set in the city's bustling cathedral to cuisine (the Marketplace houses local purveyors of every imaginable gourmet food), is a refuge for weary shoppers.

Open on one side to the Marketplace, and hung with red lanterns and delicate bird cages, the Imperial Tea Court has the feel of an exotic, intimate, sanctuary; it seats about 25. We brought our kids, aged 10 and 13, who drank water instead of tea but thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

We ordered the gong fu tea service ($8 a person), which is something like a Japanese tea ceremony, but less refined.

Our waiter, a gracious young man in a silk jacket, arrived with a number of unglazed teapots of various sizes and explained (to our rapt children) that they were made from river-bottom soil. He ceremoniously bathed the cups and pots by pouring steaming water over them, which ran into the hollow tin tray beneath. He recommended the Old Bush tea, and although the political jokes brewed faster than the tea, we tried to stifle them.

Our waiter passed us a small vessel with the dry leaves, which smelled remarkably like cocoa. Then, after wetting them, he passed it again. The aroma had been transformed into something leafier, more subtle. He swept the wetted pot in a circle around the tray -- to wipe off the drips, he explained, and to move the leaves to the center of the pot. Then he poured one of the most flavorful teas I've ever tasted.

The staff at these teahouses is generally eager to impart knowledge, and I learned a fair amount while sipping (or slurping, as this waiter recommended). All kinds of tea, for example, come from one plant, the camellia sinensis. Differences in the soil, climate and topography of the growing regions, and in methods of harvesting and processing distinguish a Green Peony Rosette from a Lapsang souchong. And herbal teas are not technically tea, but rather infusions of herbs.

With the Old Bush, we ordered both the dim sum sampler ($6.50) and the snack sampler ($4). The dim sum included savory vegetarian steamed buns filled with chopped baby bok choy and shiitake mushrooms; subtly seasoned shrimp dumplings in glassy wraps; and delicately fried spring rolls, with shredded cabbage, carrot and coconut. The light snacks included ginger roasted almonds, flaky, short peanut cookies and lovely, green tea-dusted pumpkin seeds. Items can also be ordered individually ($2).

Tibetans call tea ''the water of long life.'' Based on the number of people hoping to get a table at the Imperial Tea Court, it appears many are betting on it. A steady stream of customers strolled into the restaurant with cherry blossom branches wrapped in newspapers and red mesh sacks of oranges from the Farmers Market outside.

Elegant teapots, cups and tea paraphernalia, including many beautiful gong fu services, are for sale.

Our last stop was Celadon Fine Teas, across the bay in Albany, a town next to Berkeley. It was an unseasonably warm spring day, and when we walked through the open doors, we stopped and slowly swiveled around to take it all in. A trip here is as much about architecture as it is about tea.

Designed by Fu-Tung Cheng, a Bay Area kitchen designer, Celadon radiates with subtle colors and handsome materials: grays, greens and browns shimmer through a balance of glass, wood, tile and metal. On this quiet Sunday afternoon, most of the tables were full, so we sat at the bar, an arc of olive-colored concrete, flecked with turquoise stone and inlaid with fossils.

Our waiter brought us menus and, after much ogling at our surroundings, we perused them.

While Celadon sells about 70 types of tea, the tasting menu features only about a dozen. They are listed according to variety and caffeine potency, and since John and I were both in need of a boost, we skipped over the whites and greens. I ordered a pot of Lichee Red ($4.75), a ''Cantonese favorite,'' according to the menu. Poured into a yellow porcelain cup lined in white, it was a beautiful shade of cedar and tasted faintly floral and quite sweet.

I asked the waiter what gave the Lichee Red its color, but as with other questions I asked here, I wasn't given much of an answer (''something to do with its processing''). While the waiters were courteous and friendly, they didn't seem as knowledgeable about tea as servers at other teahouses.

John ordered a pot of Taiwan Beauty ($5), a honey-colored tea described as ''floral, robust and spicy,'' but I found it more grassy, almost vegetal, with a little bite. Both our teas were exceptionally smooth, even after numerous infusions of fresh, steaming water.

There are a few selections of pastries at Celadon, ($2 to $4 each) varying from day to day. We ordered the pear ginger tart, a thin, rich wedge that was superb, and a couple of disappointingly bland mochi, Japanese rice pastries.

Between sips of tea, there was much to appreciate: the narrow river of water trickling down the center of one of the counters, the tea strainers made of small gourds with green silk tassels, the mushroom-shaped rice paper light fixtures, the antique tea tools--and many delicate tea services for sale.

Throughout my tea-tasting journey, I found alluring havens to sample tea. The only thing I didn't find was someone who could read my fortune in a cup. Once, I noticed leftover leaves that looked something like a kangaroo. At home, when I consulted a couple of Internet sources on tea leaf-reading, I learned that I can look forward to either travel to exotic places or harmony at home. I chose to believe both.

Three for tea

Samovar Tea Lounge, 498 Sanchez Street, San Francisco; (415) 626-4700; online at http://www.samovartea.com/. Open every day, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Imperial Tea Court, 1 Ferry Building Plaza, San Francisco; (415) 544-9830; www .imperialtea.com. Open Tuesday through Friday, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturday 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed Monday.

Celadon Fine Teas, 1111 Solano Avenue, Albany, Calif.; (510) 524-1696; on the Web at http://www.celadontea.com/. Open Tuesday through Thursday, and Sunday, 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Closed Monday.

A new blog, plus a tea update

If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to The Pragmatic View, which is a new blog. It contains many articles on strategy, historical figures that are prominent in strategy, and so on. Take a look, it's well worth it.

Also, the Imperial Tea Court has a new issue of their newsletter out. Please visit their site at:

http://imperialtea.com

Tea Quotes

A friend of mine and I were talking about tea the other day; the next best thing to drinking it. Anyway, it got me thinking about tea quotes. If you have others of a similar vein, please post them, either in the comments, or on the tagboard.

The first one is my favorite.

"Although my neighbors are all barbarians,
and you, you are a thousand miles away,
there are always two cups on my table."

Tang Dynasty


"The first cup moistens my lips and throat.
The second shatters my loneliness.
The third causes the wrongs of life to fade gently from my recollection.
The fourth purifies my soul.
The fifth lifts me to the realms of the unwinking gods."

Chinese mystic
Tang Dynasty


"Better to be deprived of food for three days, than tea for one."

Ancient Chinese Proverb

"So I must rise at early dawn, as busy as can be,
to get my daily labor done, and pluck the leafy tea."

Ballad of the Tea Pickers
Le Yih
Early Ch’ing Dynasty, 1644

"Kissing is like drinking tea through a tea-strainer; you’re always thirsty afterwards."

Old Chinese saying

"I am in no way interested in immortality, but only in the taste of tea."

Lu t’ung

"In my own hands I hold a bowl of tea; I see all of nature represented in its green color. Closing my eyes I find green mountains and pure water within my own heart. Silently sitting alone and drinking tea, I feel these become a part of me."

Soshitsu Sen
Grand Master XIV
Urasenke School of Tea

"Tea is drunk to forget the din of the world."

T’ien Yiheng

"The tea ceremony is more than an idealization of the form of drinking—it is a religion of the art of life."

Okakura Kakuzo

"What is the most wonderful thing for people like myself who follow the Way of Tea? My answer: the oneness of host and guest created through ‘meeting heart to heart’ and sharing a bowl of tea."

Soshitsu Sen
Grand Master XIV
Urasenke School of Tea

"The best quality tea must have creases like the leathern boot of Tartar horsemen, curl like the dewlap of a mighty bullock, unfold like a mist rising out of a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by a zephyr, and be wet and soft like a fine earth newly swept by rain."

Lu Yu (d. 804),
Chinese sage, hermit.

"A wave of rare incense is wafted from the tea-room; it is the summons which bids the guests to enter. One by one they advance and take their places. In the tokonoma hangs a kakemono—a wonderful writing by an ancient monk dealing with the evanescence of all earthly things. The singing kettle. . . sounds like some cicada pouring forth his woes to departing summer."

Okakura Kakuzo
Book of Tea (1906)
Describing the last Cha-no-yu by Rikiu, a great tea master



"Tea is nought but this:
First you heat the water,
Then you make the tea.
Then you drink it properly.
That is all you need to know."

Sen Rikyu
Zen Tea Master
1522-1591

"Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things."

Okakura Kakuzo
Book of Tea (1906)

Imperial Tea site updated

Click on the title of this post to be directed to the updated website for the Imperial Tea Court. It's beautiful.

I am a little teapot ...

Clicking on the title of this post will take you to an item at the Imperial Tea Court, called
the "Lotus Seed of Friendship".

Would you like a cup of tea?

"Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in the beautiful foolishness of things."
Okakura Kakuzo Book of Tea (1906)

All my life, I had been a coffee drinker. I’d drink it by the pots, if not by the urns. I’d have an occasional cup of tea once in a while. Maybe iced tea on a hot day, but I was never really a tea drinker.

A couple of years ago, I caught a terrible flu. I lost close to 15 lbs. I also largely broke the habit of drinking coffee. While I was sick, it was really unappealing to me, and I simply got out of the habit of drinking so much of it. I came around to liking the taste of tea.

It was around that same time, when I was developing a taste for tea, that some martial arts friends of mine had turned to tea, and I was exposed to some good teas, as opposed to the ubiquitous Lipton Brisk, which is a barely digestible mixture of some red and black teas.

I’ve tasted some various teas, and developed some taste. I still drink coffee first thing in the morning to get me going, but the morning tea I like the best is Oolong. It goes well with a bagel. It has a heavier taste, in the direction of coffee, but not so extreme. The aroma is pleasing too.

In the afternoon, I like a nice green tea. Green tea has a very clean taste. After lunch, I feel that a cup of green tea cleanses any aftertaste from whatever I’ve eaten. I still have the caffeine effect in that it helps me stay alert in the afternoon, but without the coffee jitters.

I’m continuing to learn more, try different teas, and just follow my tastes.

A book on tea for beginners, that is really beautifully laid out is The Way of Tea by Lam Kam Chuen ( http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0764119680/ref=pd_sxp_f/103-7411287-7955859?v=glance&s=books ) .

For very good tea, accessories, etc, try www.ImperialTea.com