What Is the Tea Ceremony?

What is the tea ceremony?
Is it the flowery, graceful performance of a tea artist in long robes, or the earnest serving of a long-bearded man in traditional dress, or a stage performance of tea ceremony without even water...
All of that may be called tea ceremony, but it is not what I mean by tea ceremony.

The tea ceremony as I understand it

Tea ceremony is the craft of brewing tea well.

1. The purpose of tea ceremony is to brew good tea.
2. Whining, affectless ceremony performance may fall under "tea ceremony", but it is not the tea ceremony I believe in.
3. The core of tea ceremony is the tea. When anything that is not tea takes the starring role - performance, procedure, explanation, teaware, flower arrangement, the tea table - those non-tea elements usurp the stage and we have left the scope of tea ceremony.

Tea or ceremony: which matters more?

Tea is the root; ceremony is the method.

Around 2015 I liked making a poster whose message was roughly "talking about tea ceremony without tea is hooliganism". I have many tea-artist friends, but I still made it, because I found that many tea drinkers paid too little attention to the tea and too much to the ceremony.
Tea is the root and ceremony is the method! Tea ceremony without tea is water without a source, floating duckweed, meaningless.

Good tea tastes good no matter how you brew it, because good tea has no obvious weakness.
I have tried many good teas - even heavily steeped they still taste good; strong liquor still shows the refinement of a great tea; and at the tail of the brew there is still tea flavor, not water.
Brewing good tea needs no technique.
Tea that needs technique to taste good mostly has defects - which brings us to the next topic.

Brewing with cooled water is a compromise, a last resort.

Watch those who sell aged tea: from breaking the cake to serving you the cup, it usually takes ten minutes or even half an hour. Why? To drag out the time - politely called "letting the tea rest better", and bluntly, to hide the tea's faults. Some even wake the tea at 1pm when they have arranged to drink at 3pm.
Brewing with cooled water can hide some defects of the tea, which is why many tea artists like to let the water cool before pouring - again, to conceal flaws.

At this point someone will argue with me: why make the tea taste bad on purpose? Isn't brewing it to taste good quite necessary?
That is true, but it is not my concern. This website is about learning tea, not learning performance. If you still do not get it, please turn left at the door.
If you go to the core area of Longjing, you will find old tea masters using a big porcelain cup, a small pinch of leaves, pouring boiling water straight in, and handing it to you.
Jin Jun Mei is expensive and high-end enough, right? When I visited Wuyishan, the core brands all brewed with boiling water directly.

Boiling water best reveals a tea's character - and of course, its faults are fully exposed too.
The beauty of high-end tea can only be shown by boiling water; ultimate beauty is always brewed with boiling water.
I recommend boiling water for all my teas.

Brewing with cooled water is a compromise.

So what is tea ceremony?

Brew tea well, brew it with care, and brew out its true flavor - that is the tea ceremony as I understand it.
Keeping your focus mainly on the tea is the key to learning tea well.
Forget technique, then learn tea again, and taste it again.