I think this refers to the tea tongs (茶夾 chá jiā) used for rinsing & moving cups around (with one arm of the tong usually in the cup):Andrew S wrote: ↑Tue Dec 28, 2021 3:54 pmIn case it assists, I saw a reference to this in an article that was referred to over here (viewtopic.php?p=16883#p16883):
"Some practices also appear to be changing. In my observation, while shopkeepers and others drinking gongfu tea on pavements often practised tang bei gun bei, among the more highly educated participants in this study, using one’s fingers was considered unhygienic (even with boiling water) and had been replaced by the use of wooden tongs."
Peter d’Abbs, Tea Art as Everyday Practice: Gongfu Tea in Chaoshan, Guangdong, Today (2019, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology) at 10
Andrew
Tang bei gun bei is a kind of rolling warm-up rinse with fingers:
The curious cup holder seems to be for serving the final liquor where you probably don't want to dip the tong arm. I wonder what the Chinese name is and whether it's a relatively recent invention (as part of the "classic" gongfu utensil set--I know the tool itself is quite old, I remember it from when I was a kid and my grandfather used something similar to pull hot jars out of a boiling cauldron).