Steeped in Tea Tradition

Since Nicole and I are Latter-day Saints, we don't do tea--green, black, white, pink--or any color that comes from the tea leaf. But, we *do* do herbal tea. We met a few Chinese tourists in Shanghai who invited us to a tea ceremony, which, we learned is steeped in Chinese tradition.

The first step in the tea ceremony involves offering the first serving of tea to the tea god. From what we can tell, he's a 3-legged toad with 7 rhinestones on his back. After pouring the offering on his back, we were invited to stroke his back for good luck. Scottie did well with the whole "petting the toad" idea. Another deity presiding at our tea party was a little Buddha, whom Scott treated as one of his plastic cars, and drove him all over the table.

After the initial offering, we were shown how to properly drink tea with three fingers--the thumb and index pinching the little cup, and the middle finger supporting the bottom. Girls are supposed to flare the remaining fingers, and guys are supposed to make a fist, obviously a show of strength. Tea drinking involves three steps: swirling the tea, smelling the tea, and drinking it in three sips.

This particular tea was handmade mountain herbal tea, and was pretty pricy. So we only did two different kinds: Ginseng and Jasmine.

The lady who led the tea demonstration.

Several kinds of herbal teas in the glass jars, plus the tea toad and Buddha on the table.

The second course (Jasmine tea) consisted of the traditional tea cup, plus an urn-shaped cup, that was used to smell the tea, use the vapor to clear your eyes, and rub the warm cup on your face and forehead.