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Hey friends!
Welcome to our channel. It's a beautiful Sunday morning here in Ottawa, and I just
finished my workout. I love to have some green tea to refresh, and then I thought,
why not have some tea with you together? I'd love to show you another way to use a Gaiwan.
Most of the time, we think a Gaiwan is a vessel to brew tea; however, it's also a great vessel to
drink tea from. So, grab your favorite green tea and a Gaiwan, and let's enjoy some tea together.
The green tea I want to enjoy now is this Mingqian Guzhu Zi Sun. It's a lovely green
tea from Zhejiang province. Guzhu Zi Sun has a long history dating back all the way to the Tang
Dynasty. It's considered the best tea by Lu Yu. I don't know if everybody would still think this tea
is the best tea in today's tea world, but there's no question it's a very lovely, delicious sip.
Okay, my water is boiled, and I'm ready to start. I'm using boiling water, but it depends on what
tea you're brewing; feel free to change the water temperature to what suits you best.
As always, we're going to rinse and warm up the Gaiwan.
The leaf amount I'm going to use to match this
size of the Gaiwan. My rule of thumb is lightly cover the bottom of the Gaiwan;
it's roughly around two to three grams depending on your intention. Like today,
I'm going to go a little bit heavy-handed because I like to enjoy this tea the whole morning.
And we're going to let it steep. While the tea steeps, I'd like to talk about
the Gaiwan a little bit. If you're new to Kung Fu tea and Chinese tea and would
love to learn some basics about how to use Gaiwan, how to choose your first Gaiwan,
we have a fantastic video covering all the basic techniques and important details that are very
handy for beginners to know. So be sure to check out that video. Sometimes I get a comment about...
"Gaiwan is such a great tea brewing vessel; why do we have to bother drinking with that?"
Well, honestly, Gaiwan is initially a drinking vessel. For hundreds of years,
it has been a drinking vessel until very recently.
Ah, it smells so good, so relaxing. It's actually a little bit sweet. It has that bean, not pea.
I guess by saying bean, not pea, I feel like pea has more of a greener, fresher smell to me. While
beans are like starchier, just really gently starchier and sweeter kind of profile. It's
actually very simple to drink from the Gaiwan. Intuitively because this is hot, we want to
hold the saucer, and we will use the lid to gently cool as well as get the leaves away from our lips.
Oh, this is so good.
And it's hot, be sure to slurp it; it's good to cool the temperature
to protect your mouth and also get you more of the flavor of the tea.
I love to have green tea before or after a workout because the vitamin C also helps with breaking
down the fat cells, so that's my little trick. Do you think it's worth doing a video on vitamin
C and tea? I have been doing some chemicals and tea, like less popular chemicals, but I
feel like vitamin C is so well-known; there's no point in doing it. But on the other hand, I guess
there could be many misunderstandings about vitamin C and tea. So let me know
by commenting below. It's also okay to give it a little blow to cool it.
Gaiwan, this vessel, actually usually dates back to the Tang Dynasty, where it was first
a bowl. Then, by book record, it was a Tang Ning's daughter who invented to have a saucer
with it because she and her father both loved to drinking tea and found it's quite hot and
could burn a hand, uncomfy right? So she came up with the idea to have a little saucer. Later on,
in the Ming Dynasty, they started to have more real Gaiwan-shaped Gaiwan,
meaning the cup and the saucer started to have more lids on it and eventually
evolved into today's shape that we're all very familiar with the Gaiwan shape.
You can also use the lid to help hold the leaves away from your lips if that helps.
Suddenly, I feel like I'm a noble because if you watch some old shows, especially from the
Qing Dynasty, that's how people drank, especially royal families and stuff. Yes, in the Qing Dynasty
and the royal families, usually, this is how they drank tea. Also, even today, if you go to Sichuan,
we have a vlog in Chengdu showing you how comfortable people are in the park having
tea. Their tea house is literally in the park, and basically, it's just a space in
a park. It's not like in a house as a tea house as it's supposed to be. Very, very comfortable,
leisure, under the sun, you know, in that humid climate with the sun, with the tea, it's a social
gathering. It's a community; it's just lovely. And for those people, this is how you drink tea.
Usually, we say,
with green tea when you sip till there's about one-third in a cup, you can add some more water.
In my case, because I put extra leaves, I'm going to do it a little bit early, like around half.
And this is how you do multiple infusions. So you just sip like this before the liquor is all gone,
you add more water until at the point you feel like this is empty, and that will be it
for tea. What we see today in Chinese tea, that we use a Gaiwan as a brewing vessel,
actually is borrowed from Chaoshan gongfu cha. The beginning of Chaoshan gong fu cha, they were
actually using teapots; it's considered one of the key components of chaoshan gong fu tea. And
later on, because Gaiwan is so convenient, easy to rinse, easy to control the flow and everything,
it slowly transitioned to the popularity of a Gaiwan. Overall, I think this is a
great vessel. If you want to brew with it, it's great; if you want to sip with it,
I think there's nothing wrong with it. Actually, I love it; I feel like it gives me that elegance
that nobility feeling that is not quite in my character. So, it's totally up to you how you
want to use a Gaiwan, and there's nothing wrong with drinking from a Gaiwan at all.
This is a wrap for this video; I'm not done with the tea at all. I'm going to keep drinking it as
I do all the house chores. Hope you enjoy your weekends. Don't forget to hit the like button if
you enjoyed this video, consider subscribing to our channel, and hit the notification
bell. Looking forward to seeing you again. Until next time, keep steeping.
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