About

This is a true story:

One day I told a Chinese man I happened to know that I was attempting to learn Gongfu Cha.

This Chinese man looked at me with confusion and said, “What?”

I was surprised that he did not know exactly what I was talking about.  Perhaps I did not pronounce the words the correct way.  How else could I say it?  “I’m trying to lean the Gongfu Cha tea ceremony.”

He still looked very confused and said, “What does the ceremony look like?”

I told him about the lose leaf tea in a gaiwan, or yixing tea pot, the multiple infusions, the small cups…

“Ohhhh that,” he said.  “We never called it ‘gong-fu-cha‘ we always called it ‘lao-ren-cha‘.”

I’d watched countless YouTube videos of Gongfu Cha, and read whatever I could find about it on the internet, but I’d never heard the term ‘lao ren cha‘ before so I asked, “Why did you call it that?”

“Well I’ve heard it called ‘gongfu‘ too.  You know that ‘gongfu‘ mean ‘with great skill‘?”  This confirmed what I had read, so I nodded to show I agreed.   “Well to make tea that way you do need skill, but it takes a long time to make the tea that way, sometimes more than an hour people will sit around making and drinking tea.  You understand?”  Again I nod to show that I understood.  “Only old men have the time to sit around and make and drinking tea that way, so we would call it ‘lao ren cha‘ which mean ‘old man’s tea.”

When I got home I checked to see if the domain name was available.  It was.  I registered it and set up this blog.