Why write this?
Today is the first day of the Lunar New Year, and I had some reflections, so I am writing this.
As a child, New Year was pure delight - did anyone else count the days until it came?
New Year meant the new clothes we had fitted in summer but could only wear on New Year's Eve, ring candies, firecrackers, delicacies we never ate otherwise, and Grandma's sausages when we paid New Year visits. Those are the flavors of Spring Festival in my memory. Now the holiday is all worries - how could I feel that innocent childhood joy again?
This website teaches people about tea, so let me use tea as the example and talk about the joy of drinking tea.
Does the joy of drinking tea fade?
When Lin Qingxuan was a child, his father would drink tea with friends after farm work: a big iron kettle of boiling water, a tiny teapot for each man, tea leaves stuffed into the pot, sipped straight from the spout. After the adults finished and left, the tea table stayed until his mother cleaned it the next day - and Lin would sip up all the leftover tea from the little pots. It was like us sneaking treats as children; at that moment Lin must have been utterly happy, and surely thought the tea was absolutely delicious.
Later, grown and famous, Lin traveled everywhere searching for tea - and often found it not good. The teas he hunted for were surely famous ones, yet they rarely pleased him as much as the humble farmhouse tea of his childhood.
Did his joy in tea fade? No!
It was that his standards had risen.
Like New Year as a child: any meat at all was happiness, even badly cooked. This zero-to-one joy is the strongest - you normally had no meat, so New Year meat was bliss. Today we eat these good things daily, so New Year meat gives no joy; the same for new clothes, ring candies, firecrackers, delicacies and Grandma's sausages - all now available anytime, so their New Year magic is gone. Fortunately, family reunion and visiting relatives still keep some holiday joy alive.
Lin sipping the adults' tea as a child was zero-to-one joy. When grown, searching the world for great tea was two-to-three joy - much harder. Ordinary good tea no longer caught his eye: having gone from nothing to something, and from something to ordinary good tea, his baseline had reached two, and now he wanted three. Genuinely hard.
The joy of tea from zero to one - just having it is enough, happiness comes easily. From two to three, the demands jump enormously, and joy is hard-won.
Is not much of life like this?
How do you find the joy of tea?
1. Look for better tea.
Like Lin Qingxuan, whose search took him across Taiwan, then Japan, then mainland China, never stopping, buying and storing whatever he loved.
This kind of joy costs time and money but is easy to reach - which is why every spring season the famous mountains are packed with people.
2. Deepen your craft.
Lin kept a row of cups at home - 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 degrees - because someone told him Biluochun tastes best brewed at 70 degrees, and he confirmed it. My view differs from this, as I wrote in "What Is Tea Ceremony?"; I will verify it when I have time. Another possibility is that the Biluochun Lin brewed had flaws in processing or material.
Still, better craft will surely increase your tea joy. Perfect craft inevitably reveals a tea's beauty and adds happiness.
This does not contradict my view of tea ceremony: here, good tea is zero-to-one joy, ordinary craft one-to-two, and masterful craft two-to-three. Ordinary craft is very easy to reach, but going from ordinary to masterful demands an enormous investment of time; I would not advise beginners to start there.
3. Practice tea ceremony and commune with heaven and earth.
Lin loved tea, studied tea culture deeply, drank his first bowl of tea in Japan, communed with Lu Yu through the Classic of Tea, sought "zen and tea as one" in Buddhist practice, and went to Bailin Monastery to "drink tea"...
Practicing the way of tea and connecting with heaven and earth was another joy Lin discovered in tea.
4. Hold back - do not drink your best tea daily.
A Taiwanese singer (let me call him A) wrote about tea in an essay I cannot fully recall and can no longer find, so I write from memory. A loved tea and had teas he especially adored, but he did not drink them daily - even on trips he took only ordinary tea. On happy days or meaningful moments he would bring out the good tea, describing it as overflowing happiness. He formed this habit after realizing that drinking good tea too often lessened the joy - the famous tea no longer gave the bliss of that first taste.
Hold back. Do not drink your best tea routinely. Drink it when the moment deserves it, and the joy returns.
My own experience
What I wrote above is about others. I feel differently; here is my practice:
1. Rotate your teas.
I have the advantage: I love no fewer than dozens of teas. Some are not sold anywhere, but keeping a few cakes for myself is easy for a tea trader.
Switching teas often keeps everything fresh, and joy follows.
2. Focus on one family of teas for a stretch.
In spring I drink mostly raw tea, with one excellent ripe tea slipped in - pure happiness. In winter I lean toward ripe tea, with the occasional fine raw tea - also pure happiness.
3. Cultivate your mind and body.
If the joy of taste is 1, the joy of body-feel may be 10.
When you drink a tea whose qi runs smoothly through you, every pore opens - honestly, it is wonderful. But to reach that state you need such tea as the foundation, and the ability to perceive it is just as key. Unless you are naturally open in body, most of us must cultivate the mind and body.
End of essay.
I rarely write this kind of piece; usually I talk only about my own views and never about others. But I think it is worth discussing others too, and I will do it more often. After all, more craft only weighs you down (it does), and writing a little more adds a little pressure to your tea studies - which counts as helping others.
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