The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane(58)
“I wasn’t told to bring tea.”
“But you carry some with you always, I hear. What we have in our cafés and teahouses isn’t good enough for the Akha lass.”
“I prefer to drink what my mother sends me,” I admit.
“Good. Then let us taste it.”
“Do you have springwater?” I ask.
“Only.” Tea Master Sun grins first to his left, then to his right, sending a message to the people on the panel that he’s pleased with my question. “But circumstances force us to accept some modern elements.” He snaps his fingers and one of the helpers plugs in the kettle, while the other young women unwrap the various packages: teacups, a bowl, and rounds of tea cakes.
I pull a packet of A-ma’s tea from my purse. When Tea Master Sun buries his nose in the bag to smell the leaves, his impishness departs. He piles about eight grams of leaves into the bowl of a gaiwan—a three-piece slightly oversize teacup with a lid and saucer—until they rise up and out of the vessel like a hill of threads. The room falls silent as we wait for the first sounds of simmering to come from the pot.
When the water lets us know it’s ripened, the tea master asks, “Do you see how I keep my left hand on the table at a forty-five-degree angle, while my right hand lifts the pot?” He pours the hot water into seven tiny cups to warm them. Then he pours water over the leaves in the gaiwan. “As I set down the pot, I resume with my left hand. If you’re accepted into the program, you’ll need to develop strength and agility on both sides of your body.” He rotates the edge of the gaiwan’s lid along the surface of the water-soaked leaves to clear the bubbles. Then he covers the cup with the lid and tips it so that the water flows out and into the discard bowl while keeping the leaves in the cup.
“Why am I disposing of this liquid?” he asks.
“To wash the leaves,” I answer.
“Why?”
“Do you know where Pu’er comes from? And how it’s processed?”
He cackles at my questions. “Exactly! Hygiene matters. But we’re also opening the aromatic properties of the leaves. Now watch what I do. You must look at serving tea as though it’s a dance. Every movement must be fluid. See how my actions flow from my right hand to my left hand, with everything smooth?” As he talks, he pours more water over the leaves and covers the gaiwan with its lid. “Brewing will last fifteen seconds. How will I know when those seconds have passed?” I have no idea, because he isn’t wearing a watch. “By my heartbeats! I can teach you to tell time this way too.”
He pours the tea into a glass pitcher, symbolizing that every person is equal and together we can all view and drink the same brew. While we appreciate the honey-yellow color of the liquid, he uses tongs to pick up each tiny teacup and toss the warming water into the discard bowl. He finally pours the tea into the cups. “Notice how I’m moving counterclockwise. This is called the welcome style. Now I’ll put every object back in its original position.” All this he does with ease, ending by graciously drawing his arm from left to right, taking us all in. “Please enjoy.”
Then I sit there as the others discuss the maocha made from the sister trees.
“I can taste the ions,” the man I’d thought was in charge comments. “The longer the liquor rests on the tongue, the more I taste the fresh air of the mountains.”
The woman, who’d previously been so disdainful of me, agrees. “The warm and fragrant flavor strokes every cell in my mouth. The huigan—the returning flavor—comes quickly.”
“Your tea is better than satisfying,” Tea Master Sun observes. “There’s some astringency and a good amount of initial bitterness, but overall I like the clear purity of the flavor. Collectors prize tea from Laobanzhang, calling it the king of teas, because the taste is musky, masculine, and daring in the mouth. They call tea from Yiwu the queen of teas, because the taste is as alluring as a radiant woman awaiting her lover, but you can be proud of the tea that comes from Nannuo Mountain for its smoothness and subtlety. One day people will prize it as much as, if not more than, the king and queen of teas. Do you still spend a lot of time on Nannuo?”
“I haven’t been home in eight years.”
The tea master sucks in his cheeks as he considers my answer. What daughter wouldn’t return home for Spring Festival, a wedding, or a funeral? Instead of commenting on what is a clear breach of daughterly manners, he chooses to go in a different direction.
“I want to see what you think of these.” He tosses the leaves A-ma sent me from the gaiwan even though another ten infusions could be made. “Your maocha is good, as I said, but I personally prefer a naturally long-aged Pu’er. Man becomes wiser and more mature through life experience. The same can be said of tea.”
We sample five teas. Each time, Tea Master Sun guides me through the flavors. “I can brew these particular leaves up to fifteen times. With each new infusion, the taste will change, coming from different parts of the leaf and invigorating different parts of the tongue. Terrace tea is cloned, so the flavor is very consistent, but tea from wild trees is complex and enticing.”
The more I taste, the more captivated I become. The tea itself is physically seducing me. The third tea, he tells me, would cost the equivalent of two hundred yuan for a cup if I drank it in Hong Kong. It’s delicious, but to me it’s not the monetary value that’s important. I know from living in Kunming that this is arbitrary. Do you want a yellow or blue T-shirt, when a decade ago I didn’t even know what a T-shirt was? Guests at the King World Hotel have a peculiar view of value. They refuse to stay in a room if it doesn’t have a sit-down toilet. This took me the longest time to accept, because who would want to sit in the same place where someone else’s rump has been to do your private business?