Tea With Friends

Western people are accustomed to treating guests with coffee while Chinese people prefer tea. "Present tea as wine to a guest arriving on a cold night while water is boiling in the bamboo stove on reddening fire." Host presents a cup of fragrant tea to show his hospitality. Generally, apparatus for guests to drink tea should be dean, and the rule of "tea 50% full and wine 100% full" should be observed when serving tea. Because hot tea tastes better, and it will get cooler if the guest cannot finish a full cup of tea. When there is only 1/3 of water left in the cup, host should re-fill the cup. As tea can help people digest, it is bad for the stomach if one drinks it with an empty belly. So when treating guests with tea, host usually serves some delicious snacks as accompaniment.

Because of the differences in grade, quality and price of tea leaves, the Chinese usually keep the best leaves for good friends or honored guests. According to legend, the poet of Song Dynasty—Su Shi—once visited the chief monk of a temple. At first, the chief monk didn't know who Su Shi was and didn't take him seriously, simply asking him to sit. Talking for a while, he found out that Su Shi was not a common man, so he said "pleas take a seat" and asked his monks to "bring tea." At last he realized the man in front of him was the celebrated Sir Dong Po. The chief monk deeply regretted his not knowing better and repeated. "Please take a good seat" and ordered his men to "bring good tea." What kind of tea the host serves the guest well illustrates what kind of position the guest takes in the eyes of the host. When Mr. Nixon—the president of America—visited China in 1972, Prime Minister Zhou Enlai personally invited him to Hangzhou—the heaven on earth—to have a taste of the typical Chinese good tea—West Lake Longjing.

To treat guests with tea is not a custom confined to Han nationality. Ethnic groups do so, too. For the Bai nationality of Yunnan, the most respectful way of treating a guest is to serve "Three-Course Tea," which has a parlance of "firstly bitter, secondly sweet, and lastly aftertaste," implying the vicissitude of life. When honored guest arrives, the hospitable Bai people lead him in to sit in front of a fire. After the water boils, host takes out the special grit jar for tea making, puts it on the fire, and adds leaves into it. Host will shake the jar to evenly warm the leaves, and add boiling water later. When the water enters the heated grit jar, the steam will make an enormous thunder-like sound. So this tea is also called "Thunder-sound Tea." When the tea is ready, it is served to each guest. This is the first course-bitter tea. The first course has the color of amber and tastes bitter and acerbic, but leaves a mouthful of after fragrance, totally dispelling the journey exhaustion. Right after this the second course is presented. Based on the first course, it has brown sugar, honey, walnut powder, pine nut, and other condiments, so it is called "sweet course," tasting sweet and mellow. The last course—"aftertaste course" contains even more condiments such as ginger, Chinese prickly ash, cassia bark, sesame, peanut powder, etc., tasting peppery and hot. In the language of Bai nationality, the sound for "peppery" is the same as that of "rich," "hot,” and "intimate." The peppery and hot third course is to show that host treats the guest as relative. Meanwhile, it expresses the good wish to get rich as soon as possible. When drinking "aftertaste course," Bai people invite guests to dance. Both host and guest sing and dance together, enjoying themselves to their hearts' content. The leaves, tea cups and plates for “Three- Course Tea" are all specially made, and the decorum of serving tea involves 18 steps. Each course is served by two girls or boys, one of whom holds the plate and the other takes a "tea serving" bow to the guest first and then holds the cup with both hands to the height his or her eyebrows, to show his or her respect for the guest. Tea is not only to show welcome but refusal as well. In the world of officials in Qing Dynasty, there was a custom of 'serving tea and showing the door." When a guest came to an official's home, he was generally treated with tea. But tea drinking was different from wine drinking. Host might persuade guests to take tea, but he wouldn't raise the cup for a toast like in wine drinking. If the host didn't like the visitor, or he had urgent affairs in hand, he would raise his own cup and asked the visitor to drink, hoping that he would leave as soon as the tea was finished. The guest normally understood and took his leave, without actually drinking up the tea.