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When I was in Hangzhou a famous tea house where the tea was served with this practice was closed. Few days ago in my country (Italy) I was so lucky to be able to watch this art.
The performer comes from Sichuan and his family grows tea.
So I have made a video to share it, I hope you like it.

I never get this kind of performance... it does not make the tea better in any way, more likely worse.
Skillful, but pointless circus.

Bok wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 19, 2019 7:20 am

I never get this kind of performance... it does not make the tea better in any way, more likely worse.
Skillful, but pointless circus.

@Bok Don't be so churlish. The spectacle certainly adds nothing to the tea but like many circus performances it can be great fun to watch.

@Tillerman true. It just gives unsuspecting people the wrong idea... I am probably a bit allergic to this kind of flashy, beautiful, yet empty performances as they are common in the martial arts world as well.

Bok wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 19, 2019 7:20 am

I never get this kind of performance... it does not make the tea better in any way, more likely worse.
Skillful, but pointless circus.

Ditto. It's like hibachi hijinks: so much silly effort.

Speaking of hibachi, I'm so glad someone lampooned hibachi nonsense here on YouTube. If you don't enjoy Sichuan tea circus, you might be the kind to enjoy this. Sound is definitely recommended.

I wouldn’t choose a tea shop that used this technique for serving tea, but it was entertaining to watch the video, so thanks for sharing.

Maybe 6 years ago we were in a Chinese restaurant in Bangkok and a man was serving tea with one of those pots with a very very long spout. It was frivolous but fun, and that technique doesn’t hurt the tea, which in this case was a shou puerh.

Seems odd coming down on the negative side but I'd rather see someone juggle or do magic tricks, and I'm not that much of a fan of people juggling or doing magic tricks.

Thankfully it has not appeared as such in this thread, but, at the risk of sounding priggish, I am quite tired of seeing the term gong fu used as a verb or gerund.

I enjoy gong fu brewing

not

I enjoy gong fuing

Shudder.

Tillerman wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 21, 2019 12:57 pm

Thankfully it has not appeared as such in this thread, but, at the risk of sounding priggish, I am quite tired of seeing the term gong fu used as a verb or gerund.

I enjoy gong fu brewing

not

I enjoy gong fuing

Shudder.

I for one enjoy embiggening the language with perfectly cromulent words but really gong fu as a verb would annoy me nearly as much as when people say things such as "go to the walmartS"

Oh and I thought the tea show was neat enough, probably not suited to sencha and thus not for me but neat.

Edit 2: I'm now picturing The Matrix "I know kung fu" and Neo busts out a tea set.....

@Tillerman, I couldn’t agree more. To take it one step further, I am uncomfortable calling this way of preparing tea Gong Fu Cha.

What we collectively think of as Gong Fu Cha is distinct from other forms of tea making but I tend to think of it, at least in my internal dialogue, as simply “making tea”. However, when I am making sencha I think of it as “making sencha in the Japanese manner”. Perhaps this is because the former is more natural to me than the latter.

Anyway, I would like to eschew Gong Fu Cha for a better name if I could find one that avoided potentially nationalistic overtones. Ideally, it would be a name that alludes to the contributions of the various cultures involved in this manner of tea making.

Baisao wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 22, 2019 12:23 am

Anyway, I would like to eschew Gong Fu Cha for a better name if I could find one that avoided potentially nationalistic overtones. Ideally, it would be a name that alludes to the contributions of the various cultures involved in this manner of tea making.

An interesting point, and one that is going to probably become even more important over time. While saying you brew something grandpa style is pretty clear, western style also being pretty clear at least for the time being, but calling something gong fu brewing is and is probably going to become even blurrier territory. At present to me it implies the higher leaf/water ratio and going for multiple shorter steeps, but it is obviously both much more and less than that depending on how you want to dig into it.

Or even just as various styles of teaware or brewing technique get mixed together things get blurry fast. Heating water in a tetsubin and using a shibo to flash steep a high quality unbroken darjeeling - then what do we say we are doing? Or if I brew bancha but decide to use a pitcher to try and distribute the tea evenly that way rather than through my pouring method directly into a cup... so on.

Typically I'm brewing just for myself or my partner or one friend, so I get off easy by either having to say nothing at all or just "should I make some good tea?". Having or wanting to educate someone about various tea cultures, history, or brewing is something that luckily doesn't really fall on my shoulders.

Bit of context, since I recognised the festival where this video was taken :
The Festival dell'Oriente is a three-day festival of anything remotely related to the East. Exhibitions there range from mildly interesting to cheesy to "Edward Said is spinning in his grave". You can find Mongolian throat singers, and good food, but also people selling healing crystals or casting I Ching coins for you.
As others have guessed, this is just a stage performance, not supposed to be taken seriously in any way. Personally I didn't like it, but I can see why some people might.

I thought this thread would be about the bubble tea chain "Kung Fu Tea".

I believe I saw in a tea documentary that these long spout pots originated in Sichuan tea houses to that guests could be served from a distance.

There is an article I saw about it here.

+1 @Baisao @wave_code to your comments on gongfu.

I tend think of "Gong Fu Cha" as having two meanings:
1- making tea "with skill"
2- making tea "with pretension" (*nothing wrong with that)
Luckily i don't need to choose. can simply make tea. and try to learn to make it better.