a little hard to define, but basically how old people in china hang out. the wikipedia article makes it sound all high class and pro, but its actually super chill. whenever i go pretty much anywhere outside, i bring a backpack with a big thermos of boiling water, and a tea set. at any point i can do a tea session with anyone. its just what i do to hang out. my favorite type is puerh, which isnt super well known in these parts. if you’re ever in the byward market area, lemme know if you wanna try some and if im free we can do an impromptu tea sesh.
heres my tea set: (ill put some images at some point)
heres me drinking tea with some highschoolers on top of a giant rock we found:
tea sesh with online friends during a meetup in slovenia, under a bridge cuz it started raining:
you may be wondering, why are your cups so small, what the heck is that bigger cup, where’s your teapot? that bigger cup is called a (link)gaiwan. its a lidded cup that you put tea leaves in, then use as a teapot. after putting hot water in it and waiting a bit, you tip the lid inwards, and pour the steeped fluid out. keeping the tip angle small, the leaves stay in the vessel. simple.
i prefer this apparatus over traditional teapots as its easier to steep tea multiple times. the strat is to load up the gaiwan with much more tea than you normally would using other means; think 4g+ for a 100ml vessel, compared to a standard bag of tea which has about 1.5g to make a 200ml cup; then steep it many times (upwards of 8 to even 20 or more!) for a few seconds each, effectively taking “snapshots” of the tea, evolving its flavor over time.
different people have different preferences for the leaf ratio, my favorite is around 7-8g/100ml, which is on the upper end of average amongst the tea folk on the tea server but not too high. as i said above, my favorite type of tea is puerh. specifically ripe puerh (shou) over raw (sheng), though i like raw too. i probably would like sheng more if i had the opportunity to try more of them.
whats this about ripe, raw, shou, sheng, whats puerh? just another kind of tea. theres green tea, black tea, white tea, oolong, and theres also puerh, which can be subdivided further into shou and sheng. sheng is greener and processed similarly to green tea. has a more floral/vegetal scent. shou looks completely different, its dark brown and smells like dirt. well its more like earthier, woody, mushroomy and musky. that class of aromas.
probably sounds unpleasant. when making tea for random people, its the one i most often choose to make. its hit or miss, but mostly hits. 90% of people really enjoy it whereas the other 10% try to politely say they like it, but also dont finish the cup and dont want more. its ok lol you wont hurt my feelings, you just have bad taste.