Calligraphy & Tea Ceremony

Calligraphy is a first for me. Though I’ve heard of it but I’ve never done it. It’s such a coincidence that I came to the birth place of calligraphy to do it. We also learnt how to prepare tea for a traditional Chinese tea ceremony. We split into our tutorial classes and our tutorial class did calligraphy first. The calligraphy master taught us that we control the brush not with our thumb but with our middle and ring finger and the brush has to be perpendicular to the paper when writing. I learnt from my friends that the way Chinese calligraphy is different from the way normal Chinese characters are written. Certain points are stressed more than usual. It was definitely a new experience for me as I can barely write normal Chinese characters but now I had to write a more complicated method of Chinese characters but I manage to pull it off somehow and even wrote some complicated Chinese characters using the Chinese newspaper we had below our calligraphy paper. After that, we switched we the other tutorial class and we learnt about the traditional Chinese tea ceremony which is usually used in weddings and Chinese New Year. The more traditional Chinese people in China may still use it to serve their guest but it is a dying tradition in most parts. I was quite shocked to find out that there were many different tools part of the Chinese tea set. Like for example, there was a wooden curved dish to place the dried tea leaves, wooden tweezers which are used to carry the hot tea cup, a wooden scoop to scoop the dried tea leaves and a wooden spatula to transfer the tea leaves from the dish from the dish to the teapot. Different teas are made differently. First the set has to be sterilized with hot water poured over the set. The green tea was prepared by placing it in a pot with lid and hot water and then poured into the teapot, using the cover to prevent the tea leaves from entering the teapot but the teapot also has a ceramic strained but it’s just to ensure that no tea leaves enter the tea pot and they are then poured into the tea cups. When pouring the tea, one should only fill the cup to 70% of the volume. The remaining 30% is used to shoe sincerity. Red tea is prepared by pouring a quarter cup of hot water into a tall glass and transferring the leaves into the glass. The teapot is then filled halfway with plain hot water. The glass is then swirled to mix the tea leaves with the water and then poured into the teapot through a strainer. There are 6 types of tea: Green, yellow, red, black, chrysanthemum and guan ying tea and each have a different way of serving them. I really enjoyed learning about the various Chinese culture and traditions over the past few days and it has really expanded my knowledge on Chinese culture. I’m really glad that I came for this trip as I don’t think I could have learnt most of the things I learnt here back home. Even if I did learn them back home, it would not have been the proper traditional techniques.

Photos:

The calligraphy master demonstrating how to write the strokes.

Our materials

One of our 'masterpieces'.

My name in Chinese. Direct translation means Big You Down (Ta Ni Sia)

My calligraphy buddy, Gordon.

Our second 'masterpiece'.

The instructor teaching us how to pour the various teas

Joel trying t be serious and pour tea