Taiwanese gongfu tea and tea-art teaware

Follow one infusion

In Wu Deliang’s illustrated lesson, the pot pours into a pale pitcher. The pitcher then fills the small white cups. Figure 2 shows both transfers. The pitcher gathers the infusion before the server divides it. This is an instructional demonstration, not a record of every Taiwanese household’s routine. The text also describes a gaiwan pouring into the pitcher before serving.

吳德亮《台灣的茶園與茶館》 · PDF 36–38 · 圖2 / fig. 2

Two cups, two actions

Yu describes tea entering the tall aroma cup and then being transferred into the drinking cup. The tea is now ready to drink from that second cup. The first cup is empty and still warm: bring it near the nose to appreciate the remaining aroma before drinking. This gives each cup a clear job.

余舜德 / Shuenn-Der Yu, 2018 · 128 (PDF 6)

Keep serving tea and waste water apart

Before that serving, Wu sends the pot-warming water into the tea boat in wet preparation, or into a separate shuifang in dry preparation. Neither is the pitcher receiving the drink. Names need context: Li Bingyan and Lin Nan call a washing basin chaxi, chachuan or chahai. In Wu’s lesson, chahai means the serving pitcher. Follow the action before translating the name.

吳德亮《台灣的茶園與茶館》 · PDF 36–38 · 圖2 / fig. 2 · 李炳炎、林楠《潮州茶器（1860—2020）》 · 第四章 第六节 器型 · 三、茶洗、茶盘、茶垫 · 圖4-106

What the example does—and does not—date

The illustrated transfer explains why a pitcher is useful here; it does not identify its inventor. The 1982 and 1984 reports cited below already mention a zhong, while later accounts give different origin dates. Evidence of use is not evidence that every tea table adopted it. The separate aroma-cup account is not a missing step in Wu’s figure 2.

吳德亮《台灣的茶園與茶館》 · PDF 36–38 · 圖2 / fig. 2

From Minnan gongfu tea to 'old men's tea'#

Tea habits came to Taiwan with migrants from the south-east coast in the Ming–Qing period. The National Palace Museum's tea gallery says early Taiwanese tea culture kept the Minnan gongfu tradition and its four treasures of Chaoshan: a stove, a Yushu kettle, a Mengchen pot and Ruoshen cups. A Qing site at Bengang in Chiayi yielded a marked red-clay pot fragment and Dehua and blue-and-white cups.

By the 20th century the everyday version was simple: a red-clay pot, four cups and a tea boat that caught the hot water poured over them. It was common in old men's teahouses and on temple grounds, and as coffee came into fashion it got the nickname 老人茶, 'old men's tea', for being slow and fussy. An anthropologist notes that Taiwanese tea people still use the name for the older Chaozhou-style practice.

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At Shuijiaoshe in Tainan, a Qing burial yielded a small pot whose lid was missing. The catalogue gives the surviving height as 4.6 cm and the mouth diameter as 4 cm. These measurements describe the excavated body. The height of the assembled pot remains unknown. (荊溪朱泥：明清宜興朱泥壺研究 (2010) · no. 8 · p. 48 (PDF 50))

The tea-art movement#

From the mid-1970s Taiwanese tea was steered from export toward the home market, and in the late 1970s and early 1980s tea-art houses (茶藝館) and tea classes spread through Taipei and Taichung. A study of East Asian tea culture says Lou Zikuang (婁子匡) proposed the word 茶藝 in 1977; a later essay says the word was chosen to keep the practice apart from Japanese chadō.

A magazine report of February 1982 describes the Lu Yu Tea Art Centre (陸羽茶藝中心), founded at the end of 1980, running free eight-hour courses with more than 2,000 graduates. A later account divides the period into a teahouse era (1980–1990), a time when tea-art culture took shape (1990–2000) and a period of varied tea settings (茶席, 2000–2015). Teahouses declined from the late 1990s and tea gatherings took their place.

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From tray to pot stand#

The 1980s tea-art table sat on a large rectangular tea tray of metal, wood or bamboo, often with drainage: pot, tea boat, pitcher and four to six cups, usually as one matching Yixing-style set. These trays spread to mainland China in the 1990s. By about 2014 many Taiwanese practitioners had swapped them for a shallow pot stand that holds little water, and the arrangement of the whole table, the 茶席, had become a subject of its own; a 2013 museum article says the word had been popular for about twenty years.

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Yixing pots and Taiwanese pots#

In 1984 'Yixing pot' was already the general name in Taiwan for any small clay teapot, and collecting was growing with the tea trend. Yixing pots remained the most used brewing vessel. Local making began by copying red-clay Yixing pots: the Yingge museum records slip-cast Yixing-style sets from 1953 and a Yingge workshop turning to red-clay pots in the 1970s, and a 2014 thesis says cheap slip-cast pots spread with the popular tea-art boom. When a Yingge teaware firm started in 1983, buyers still told it that Yixing pots sold better. The slogan 'Taiwanese pots for Taiwanese tea' and, from 2008, an international Golden Teapot competition marked the turn to local work. See also Nantou and Taiwanese wood-fired ceramics.

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Three bamboo utensils

A photograph identifies three bamboo utensils by 翁明川. From left to right the caption names them 茶則, 茶匙 and 茶荷. The caption gives a maker and a name for each piece in this particular setting.

吳德亮《台灣的茶園與茶館》 · PDF 33