Brewing vessels

Everything on the table between the dry leaf and your lips: the brewing vessel, a fair cup for the decanted liquor, small cups, and a tray with a basin underneath.

In gongfu cha every infusion takes the same route: from the brewing vessel into the fair cup, then into the cups, while the water used to warm the teaware drains into a basin. The vessel is most often a gaiwan, a porcelain bowl with a lid and saucer, usually 100–150 ml. It is traced to the Kangxi reign (1662–1722), became the standard gongfu vessel in the 1970s and 1980s, and suits any type of tea. A Yixing teapot is shaped from unglazed zisha clay, as it has been since the 16th century, and each pot is kept for one type, usually oolong, black or dark tea.

How a pot pours depends on its anatomy: a spout that runs straight or with up to three bends, the filter, the hole in the lid. Chaozhou gongfu calls for pots of 90–150 ml. The whole infusion goes into a fair cup of 150–300 ml, which stops the leaf from steeping. This vessel joined the set in Taiwan in the 1970s and 1980s and has no place in classic Chaozhou practice. Cups hold 30–50 ml, two or three sips, and everything stands on a tea tray, a slatted top over a basin made of bamboo, wood or stone.