A little over a year since we are back in France, and we still miss China very much. One of those little, distinctively Chinese things that we miss the most is having tea in a tea house.
When we enters a tea house, it always exudes a particular atmosphere, traditional or very modern, very refined or real den ...
When you ask to see a tea, the owners always offer to taste it. Indeed, in China, you don't buy a tea without tasting it first.
So we always find ourselves sharing tea with the owners and regulars.
And then, we quickly become a regular. Once we have bought a tea, we have become a customer and we are therefore invited to come back to share another tea.
As long as we can or that we want to communicate well, we quickly become a real regular and then sometimes even a friend ...
At each tasting, the tea is prepared according to the rules of art, in teapot or in gaiwan, according to the GongFu Cha method. But without any decorum. We are not at all in the spirit of a ceremony, but in the search for a sublimation of the taste of tea. The tea is prepared the simplest in the world. And by dint of seeing the gestures repeat, they become natural ...
We have become regulars in many tea houses in China. Even when we were on the road for several days in the same city, we bonded with tea house owners. When we had the opportunity to come back long after, sometimes years, they recognized us and welcomed us like old acquaintances ...
But there is one dear to our hearts, almost a family during our Shanghai years, the one who welcomed us on our arrival in China, advised by Vivien from Thés de Chine ...
Leave a comment