A Tea Reader by Katrina Avilla Munichiello

pu-erh teas, including the high-grade, lightly oxidized Tie Guan Yin that it’s probably fair to call my favorite of all teas. Initiated alongside this new-found desire for acquiring good tea was a need for accumulating appropriate teawares to use in preparing and drinking them.
    This first experience with Gongfu Cha pointed me down many more paths towards uncovering other forms of tea cultures and traditions. I’ve always been interested in learning about specific rituals and cultural traditions, and studying tea encompasses this basic interest and expands upon it into other realms of inquiry. The variety and the specificity of tea traditions in almost every country in the world is astonishing, and it provides me with rich fields of exploration—a seemingly inexhaustible source of topics for reading, writing and discovery. I find that the diverse elements involved in the inquiries into tea culture involve a great deal of what I’m generally interested in: cultural history, political history, aesthetics, art history, religion, crafts-manship, the science of materials, and at the core of it all lies the purest form of epicurean adventure: drinking delicious tea.

After the Walk
    BY G EORGE R OBERT G ISSING
    Excerpted from The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft , a semi-fictional memoir, 1903. 1
    One of the shining moments of my day is that when, having returned a little weary from an afternoon walk, I exchange boots for slippers, out-of-doors coat for easy, familiar, shabby jacket, and, in my deep, soft-elbowed chair, await the tea-tray. Perhaps it is while drinking tea that I most of all enjoy the sense of leisure. In days gone by, I could but gulp down the refreshment, hurried, often harassed, by the thought of the work I had before me; often I was quite insensible of the aroma, the flavor, of what I drank. Now, how delicious is the soft yet penetrating odor which floats into my study, with the appearance of the teapot! What solace in the first cup, what deliberate sipping of that which follows! What a glow does it bring after a walk in chilly rain! The while, I look around at my books and pictures, tasting the happiness of their tranquil possession. I cast an eye towards my pipe; perhaps I prepare it, with seeming thoughtfulness, for the reception of tobacco. And never, surely, is tobacco more soothing, more suggestive of humane thoughts, than when it comes just after tea—itself a bland inspirer.
    In nothing is the English genius for domesticity more notably declared than in the institution of this festival—almost one may call it so—of afternoon tea. Beneath simple roofs, the hour of tea has something in it of sacred; for it marks the end of domestic work and worry, the beginning of restful, sociable evening. The mere chink of cups and saucers tunes the mind to happy repose. I care nothing for your five o’clock tea of modish drawing-rooms, idle and wearisome like all else in which that world has part; I speak of tea where one is at home in quite another than the worldly sense. To admit mere strangers to your tea-table is profanation; on the other hand, English hospitality has here its kindliest aspect; never is friend more welcome than when he drops in for a cup of tea. Where tea is really a meal, with nothing between it and nine o’clock supper, it is—again in the true sense—the homeliest meal of the day. Is it believable that the Chinese, in who knows how many centuries, have derived from tea a millionth part of the pleasure or the good which it has brought to England in the past one hundred years?
    I like to look at my housekeeper when she carries in the tray. Her mien is festal, yet in her smile there is a certain gravity, as though she performed an office which honored her. She has dressed for the evening; that is to say, her clean and seemly attire of working hours is exchanged for garments suitable to fireside leisure; her cheeks are warm, for she has been making