Hi again M /
@Teachronicles,
Without wishing to personally avoid answering your questions, I feel it's best to point you to the 潮州茶經 (Chaozhou ChaJing / Chaozhou Tea Classic) written by 翁輝東 (Weng Huidong) in 1957. It explains the what's/how's/why's/when's/where's of CZ brewing in great detail. Unfortunately, I cannot find a good English translation of it (and one with the illustrations). The best I could find online (so far) is here:
http://cstc.lib.stu.edu.cn/chaoshanzixu ... a/367.html
Also, to supplement the CZ brewing manual above, Lawrence Zhang wrote in "A Foreign Infusion: The Forgotten Legacy of Japanese Chadō on Modern Chinese Tea Arts", Gastronomica, Spring 2016, Volume 16, Number 1:
"While tea has been consumed in China since at least the Tang dynasty (618–907), it was not until the Ming dynasty (1386–1644) that brewing with whole leaves, which is how we generally brew tea now, became the dominant practice. Gongfucha, which necessarily uses leaves rather than powder, was first mentioned in text during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911). To these observers it was a novelty and something different from the normal. Yuan Mei (1716–1797), the famed Qing dynasty gastronome, wrote in his book on food, Suiyuan shidan (The Menu of the Sui Garden), of his time in the Wuyi Mountains, where tea was brewed in pots that held no more than one ounce of water and drunk from cups “no bigger than a walnut. ”The same tea leaves were infused at least three times and retained their aroma despite the repeated infusions. This experience completely changed his view of Wuyi Mountains tea; originally he had thought of it as too intense, bitter, and not very good, but upon trying the tea in the mountains in the method he described, he found it fragrant and comparable to other famous teas, such as Longjing and Yangxian, both from his home region of Jiangnan (Yuan 2000 [1792]: 293). Yuan did not use the name gongfucha to describe the kind of brewing he experienced, but the emphasis on the use of small cups, small teapot, and repeated infusions highlights the essential components of gongfucha."
Link to the full article here.
I hope this helps, M!
Teachronicles wrote: ↑Fri Oct 04, 2019 8:40 am
phyllsheng sorry if this is slightly off topic, but what's the idea behind pre heating the cups, why is keeping the tea as hot as possible important? Is there a reason other than its tradition? In my simple Western mind (lol) Ive always thought the quicker the tea cools down, the quicker I can drink it, so I never preheated my cups.
