The Vessels and Materials Used in the Perfect Cup of Tea

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The ability to brew a good cup of tea is often referred to as an art form. Just as different artists use different mediums to create their masterpieces, a tea brewer also has different tools in which to create the perfect cup of tea. Whether it is a porcelain gaiwan or a zisha teapot, every vessel will affect the tea differently, so it is important to understand each.

Gaiwan

 

You can’t truly call yourself a serious Chinese tea drinker until you can use a gaiwan. Translated to “lidded bowl,” that is literally all a gaiwan is. It’s a small bowl you fill with tea leaves, place a lid on, then pour your brewed tea out of (through a small gap you create between the lid and the bowl).

In China, gaiwans are the preferred vessel for everyone, from tea farmers to highly ceremonious “tea masters.” Usually made from porcelain, the gaiwan allows for a high amount of tea leaves to a low amount of water, to produce a very flavor-concentrated brew. The use of the gaiwan for tea is actually fairly new. In ancient times, gaiwans were much larger and used for soups and hot foods. It is unclear exactly when the gaiwan started to be used for tea, but originally people drank directly from the bowl, using the lid to hold back the leaves. It was around 500 years ago that they shrank the size of the gaiwan and started using it in the style that we know today.

The gaiwan is synonymous with Chinese tea, but is probably less popular around the world… at least compared to the teapot.

Teapot

 

If a gaiwan is a manual transmission car, the teapot is an automatic. It’s pretty straightforward: put in the tea and water, place lid, pour out of spout. The smoothness and ease of the pours depend on the teapot itself rather than the pourer.

A well made teapot has a variety of factors that go mostly unnoticed by the untrained eye, but are crucial for a good pour. Things like the angle of the spout, the tightness of the lid, and the shape of the body are all crucial for a smooth and effortless brew. The shape of the teapot as we know it began around the Yuan Dynasty. The design for the teapot came from wine and water pots, with the first tea-specific pots coming from the city of Yixing in Jiangsu province.

Normal water glass

 

Sometimes brewing tea is as easy as throwing leaves in water. Often called “grandpa-style” brewing in the West, this is the preferred style for Chinese drinkers of green tea. You see this a lot in offices and taxi cabs. Depending on the heat of the water, you can fill up your bottle, container, or glass multiple times.

This style works particularly well for green tea because when brewing green tea, it is best not to cover it because it is very heat sensitive. It is also common to see people put a strainer into their cup, so as to remove the tea between brews.

MATERIALS

In Chinese tea, there are two main types of material used for vessels, each one with its devoted fans.

Zisha

 

Originally from the city of Yixing, zisha — literally, “purple clay” — is a type of clay that is very porous. Tea drinkers who own zisha teapots will dedicate only one type of tea to each pot, being extra careful not to brew in the wrong pot. Fired at around 1,200 degrees Celsius, zisha is a lot less dense than porcelain. As the clay comes in contact with the tea it absorbs the oils and essence of the tea. At first, this takes away from the tea, often removing the aroma or more delicate flavors. Over time, however, as the clay saturates, it begins to give back. It can take a plain-tasting tea and make it more complex by adding aromas and flavors picked up from previous teas. They say a pot can become so saturated that if you just pour hot water, you will be able to smell the tea. Also, over time the pot begins to get a fatty shine, a patina. A pot with a good patina can sell for more than ten times its original price.

Porcelain

While zisha will affect the flavor of the tea, people love porcelain tea ware because it leaves the flavor of the tea pure. A type of pottery that is fired in a kiln at 1,400 degrees Celsius, porcelain is an extremely dense material, and thus will not impart any flavor into the liquid it holds. (The same concept applies to why soft drinks taste better coming out of glass bottles; glass is more dense than aluminum cans, and therefore you get more of the drink’s original flavor.)

At the mecca of porcelain in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province, you can find porcelain everything, from plates to desk lamps (and tea pots, of course). Due to the density of porcelain, and the solid glaze that goes on top, it is not uncommon to find pieces of porcelain that are hundreds of year old but still intact. In 2014 a Ming Dynasty porcelain cup was sold for 36.3 million dollars. The cup was in such good condition that the buyer, Liu Yiqian (pictured top), drank from it right after purchasing.

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The decision of what vessel to use is a personal one. While there are general rules — i.e. it is unwise to use a zisha for greens — it is up to the brewer to decide what is the best choice for the tea and the environment. It all depends on what he or she is most comfortable and skillful at using. The vessel by itself cannot guarantee good tea. It must be in the hands of someone who knows how to use it and is able to execute a calm, controlled pour. Knowing which vessel to use takes time and experience. But once you have found your favorite, it becomes almost an extension of yourself; the number of possible flavors becomes endless.

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Meet Yukes: The American Guzhengist Making Waves in China (Interview + Debut Music Video)

Click here for the Chinese version 中文版，请点击这里

“So now, I play about 20 instruments.”

Musicians who play more than one instrument are painfully quick to make it known. But Yukes (government name Justin Scholar) tries to be low-key about it.

“I’m not masterful at all of them, by any means. But instruments are like languages – once you learn three it’s not so hard to pick up more.”

A few of Yukes’ string instruments at his cabin home

Yukes’ repertoire could be called intimidating. From ukulele, trombone, bass, and piano, to more esoteric offerings like the mountain dulcimer, Maschine beat pad, Filipino bandurria, and Chinese bawu, his musical pedigree is a two-sided document in its own right. His cabin studio in the forests of upstate New York is littered with bizarre tools of music-making. He puts the “multi” in “multi-instrumentalist.” But the instrument that connected with him most came as a total surprise:

“I traveled to Shanghai to discover myself as an artist. I was studying at Tisch, one of the greatest film schools in the world, but I was too wrapped up in being a technician – a professor told me to seek the old arts, brush and paper, if I wanted to feel like an artist.

“When I got to NYU Shanghai, I was encouraged to participate in a small cultural outreach program, where they had cheap rentals of an instrument called a guzheng. As soon as I got my hands on it, I could swear I knew it from a past life. I’ve never learned something so quickly – within minutes I could play the angelic music I’d always wanted to make.”

But he didn’t last long as a member of the formal class. Picking scales along with his classmates felt like a disservice to the instrument that had stolen his heart so abruptly. He would rather spend the hours alone with the guzheng, exploring the range of sounds he could squeeze out of it. He left the class, and went back every day to meditate, practice, and develop his own relationship with the instrument.

“I don’t play it properly. I tried going to class, but I wanted to play the instrument on the opposite side, and I didn’t like using the finger picks. Eventually I stopped going to class and learned my own way. A year later, I’ve got my own guzheng in New York, and another in Los Angeles, and it’s replaced the ukulele as my primary instrument.”

After spending a few years developing his guzheng capabilities, Yukes was able to incorporate the millennia-old instrument into modern music, in ways that had never quite been explored before. In his first year of study, he was already headlining contemporary guzheng performances at huge venues, and selling CD’s of his playing. But recently, Yukes has been spending his time wandering all across the United States, focusing in on the intersection of the traditional Chinese sound and his own folk roots. When asked about his specific genre, he pauses to think.

“It’s hard to say. I’ve listened to so much music growing up, and even my favorite artists have a hard time describing their own music. Chamber Pop is a good one, I think. Bon Iver is my biggest influence and they pioneered that.

“I was trained in jazz, but old jazz like Benny Goodman, and Glen Miller. The trombone was my first primary instrument, and I played in a big band for six years. In high school I listened to lots of bright indie pop, like Passion Pit and Freelance Whales. I loved music that felt excruciatingly happy, but in retrospect was really sad and somber.

“In college I started to get into ambient soundscapes & post-rock, like Brian Eno and Explosions in the Sky. I try to build complex and beautiful textures like that in my music. As I get older, I really like listening to folk from around the world, and any modern music inspired by old stories and mythology. The Decemberists do that best, though Annais Mitchell’s ‘Hadestown’ is my most-played recently.

“If I had to give myself a genre, I think I’d be considered a fusion of Chamber Pop, Post-Rock and American folk. But it’s hard, because even I don’t understand it.”

Yukes’ latest project is a culmination of his eclectic musical origins. “Thinkinbout” is his music video debut as a guzheng-based singer-songwriter. The song is a lofty, multifaceted jam session, that fuses the instrument’s classical Chinese sounds with airy, washed-out vocals, plus modern drums and production. It’s world music, folk, post-rock and pop all at the same time. The video features Yukes alone in a dark room with the guzheng, delivering a stirring vocal performance while the Chinese characters for his English lyrics flash across his face.

“Thinkinbout is a song about the fear of losing your mind. As I get older, I’m getting more eccentric, and sometimes I’m afraid of going too crazy. It’s not always bad; sometimes it’s good to experiment with your mind.

“At my first folk festival last year, I was offered an opportunity to perform two songs on the guzheng. I only had one. That night, I shared more than a little absinthe with my neighbors – I thought it might give me some new perspective.

“The next morning, I woke up in a strange state of mindfulness. There was a beautiful little grove at the festival, with hundreds of people all nestled in hammocks in the morning. I hiked there, set up my guzheng all without a single thought. It was then & there that I wrote Thinkinbout in its entirety. My greatest fear – losing your mind – isn’t always so bad. It’s the fear itself that’s the problem.”

Yukes at the Philadelphia Folk Festival

In the wake of his solo artist debut, Yukes isn’t wasting any time. Flipping through his phone, he rattles off a list of respected Chinese musicians, social media influencers, and media figures who have all been closely following his journey. He describes his next steps with firm conviction:

“In November, I’m returning to Shanghai. I’m terrified and enthralled, because it feels like the necessary leap into a full-time musical career. My film career in New York is steady and growing, but my heart is in the music. I have a few fleeting leads to CCTV and other performance opportunities in Beijing and Nanjing, but I really hope this article finds the right people who may know how to guide me next.

“I’ve got a small team of powerful artists in Shanghai, and between the four of us, we hope to be a force to reckon with, in that intersection between Chinese and American culture.”

Panda Falls Gracefully… Over and Over

Check out this video of two-year-old Bei Bei from the the Smithsonian’s National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute in Washington DC. He’s… almost got the landing.

This almost looks like fun.

This isn’t how you climb:

Wheeeeee:

Keep at it, Bei Bei.

(Via Deadspin)

Yin: Hong Kong’s YoungQueenz and Edgy Art Uberlord Fotan Laiki Team Up for Vaporwave Trap Banger

I wish there were a more concise way to write this headline, but this is the best I could do.

Hong Kong’s favorite anime-loving trap rapper YoungQueenz has a new song and video. This song is called Fotan Laiki, and features a verse from Fotan Laiki. If you’re confused, don’t worry, so were we. We’re about to break it down.

YoungQueenz is the leader of Hong Kong hip hop collective WILD$TYLE. His music delves into themes not normally explored in hip hop – anime, video games, and the South China grit of his hometown – and combines it flawlessly with traditional rap motifs. He’ll rap about DMT and weed, and then about his favorite anime heroes, and somehow it all works.

Fotan Laiki is a different story. She’s the confused, art-loving everyman of Hong Kong’s lost youth, and she’s killing it. Having graduated from the Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity, she’s now doing… who knows? She bounces between odd jobs to make ends meet, and might be a waitress, shopkeeper, or bartender, depending on when you run into her. More than that though, she’s one hundred percent her own brand. You might see her face on the cover of indie band My Little Airport‘s album, Fotan Laiki. Maybe you’ll catch yourself bobbing your head to one of the songs from her group “Cooking Bitchess.” Or maybe you saw her on stage at Hong Kong’s huge Clockenflap festival, trapping like there’s no tomorrow.

Actually, that’s how YoungQueenz and Fotan Laiki got to know each other. YoungQueenz reached out to the virally-known Fotan to boost the draw of his own performance at Clockenflap after realizing he shared the same performance time with acclaimed Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Ross. The unlikely pair raged it out onstage together with some other rappers from their scene, and apparently it went well, because they decided to link back up for this wonderful, weird-ass music video.

The video is directed and edited by YoungQueenz, under the alias Ozma. It rocks a distinctly vaporwave-style aesthetic, filmed entirely on an old school handheld camcorder. Quick cuts, angry art basel security guards, gold grillz, and angst. It sets YoungQueenz angry, distressed rapping, and Fotan Laiki’s aloof too-cool-for-school verse against a constantly shifting, fabricated background of cityscapes, juvenile antics, and snapchats. All this over the booming 808’s and ambient trap melodies our 21st-century world has come to love. YoungQueenz shared some more of the story behind the video with Neocha:

When we started shooting the video in Art Basel, a lot of people got rowdy with us, thinking that it was an art performance. But when security showed up, their view quickly went from “I’m interacting with an art performance” to “This is a stupid prank.”

Interact with this art performance/stupid prank and see this thing for yourself.

Yin (音, “music”) is a weekly Radii feature that looks at Chinese songs spanning classical to folk to modern experimental, and everything in between. Drop us a line if you have a suggestion: [email protected].

Always Foreign: An American Live Streamer in China

Hello, I’m Taylor. I’m here to use live streaming (zhibo) to practice Chinese. Last week I talked about how one makes money using this platform (specifically, I use a program called Yingke). Here’s my fan counter:

As a child of the nineties, it is all too tempting for me to think of “The Internet” as some kind of profanity-spewing, cat-obsessed demigod with self-awareness and free will. But, it’s not (at least, not until the Singularity). Whatever your grandma saw on Fox and Friends, the internet doesn’t have opinions or sinister schemes to get your kids hooked on drugs. The internet is a soapbox, a telescope, and a megaphone – it’s an amplifier, not a creator.

I’m leading off with this vaguely Wachowskian claptrap because I’ve been thinking about the idea of the internet as an amplifier of all things human – the good, the bad, and the ugly. On the one hand, I can open up my computer in a café by Tiananmen Square and be chatting face-to-face with my friends in Washington D.C. in a matter of seconds. On the other hand, I can choose any random YouTube video of puppies or babies and find people yelling racial slurs and Holocaust denials in the comments section. On still another appendage (probably a tentacle), I can open up Google images and type “hentai,” “fan art,” “creepypasta,” etc. and recreate that scene from Event Horizon where Sam Neil tears his own eyes out.

He probably just discovered 2 girls 1 cup…

But the point is, the internet didn’t create any of that, nor did it create the opinions or relationships or, erm, desires that led to any of that. It simply facilitated and provided a platform for what already existed – my friendships, some teenager’s need to provoke a reaction, and some artist’s seriously warped imagination.

[Editor’s note: Yes, Taylor, the internet is indeed a wild and crazy place with many pros and cons. Is there a point coming up sometime in the near future?]

My point is, I’m a white guy.

[Editor’s note: Sorry, I meant a salient point?]

A young, straight white guy born in America in the late 20th century in a nice comfortable household, to be specific. If you’re not great at math, let me save you the trouble – that adds up to roughly all of the advantages a human can have.

But: I live in China. This has afforded me a remarkable opportunity – and pretty much nothing highlights my privilege more effectively than referring to this as an opportunity – to actually experience some racial discrimination.

Disclaimer: No, I am not going to complain about being a privileged white guy in China. Give me some credit for not being a total cretin. At no point should you mistake my complaints for me thinking life is in ANY WAY unfair for me. Furthermore, my pointing out racism in China doesn’t mean I’m discounting racism in America or other Western countries. That is a false equivalency, and as a good-looking and intelligent RADII reader, you’re better than that. OK?

Moving on.

When I started live streaming here, I did so with a healthy amount of… let’s call it anticipatory anxiety. This is a country where young, well-educated people will literally point at someone different and say “LOOK, FOREIGNER” (some with more subtlety than others). Waiters ask my non-Chinese speaking Asian friends what the foreigner wants to eat after I’ve already ordered for both of us. People on the subway see me reading Chinese and start discussing how the foreigner could possibly be reading Chinese without for a second considering that I might understand them. People ask to touch my hair, question whether I wear colored contacts, tell me I’m a white ghost, start every single conversation with questions about where I’m from, and assume anything I eat, wear, or otherwise consume is representative of the tastes of literally every non-Chinese person on the planet. So circling back to the idea of the internet as an amplifier, I first logged onto Yingke preparing myself for the worst.

And I do mean the worst

The results? If the internet is indeed a representative cultural amplifier, then I have two big takeaways thus far:

  1. For whatever reason – I have my theories and will get to them in a minute – people born and raised in the PRC really do seem to have a hard time seeing foreigners as real people, i.e. treating them as they would a fellow Chinese person (in both positive and negative ways).

BUT

  1. For whatever other reason – see above re: upcoming theories – the Chinese internet has been about a thousand times friendlier to me than I’ve ever seen the American internet be to anyone.

First off, there’s no escaping the foreigner thing. On the macro level, people are never – at least not anytime soon – not going to call me a foreigner (I am one, after all). They’re never not going to lead off by asking me where I’m from. They’re never not going to express shock that I can speak Chinese. They’re never going to stop asking what “you foreigners” eat, drink, etc. They’re never not going to assume that anything I do isn’t representative of every other foreigner (see: not a Chinese person) on the planet.

It’s like looking into several mirrors all at once

China’s many accumulated (if not necessarily consecutive) centuries of isolation has, yes, led to vestiges of xenophobia – or at least suspicion and skepticism toward the alien. Here, foreigners are not your fellow citizens and no one is asking you to accept them as such. In China, foreigners are just that – foreigners, pure and simple. They don’t send their kids to your schools. They don’t get to vote (let’s not go there), they’re not represented in government or the media, and most importantly, they are not now and will never be Chinese.

The American experiment, in a way, spits in the face of evolution by asking a whole bunch of different tribes to live together in harmony – how well it’s working is certainly up for debate, but the point is that China has never considered trying such a thing. Everything is a product of random historical chance, and China’s isolation has resulted from a whole bunch of trends and forces that could have played out any number of other ways with a re-roll of the dice. The Chinese education system – in this rare case, I speak with some level of experience and professional authority – is a huge part of what promotes a lot of robotic and illogical thinking in China, and that’s a politically motivated phenomenon that is – just like everything else – in no way shaped by skin color.

I’m not making a value judgment here. I think the American experiment is an admirable one with a lot of successes and flaws, but I also think that Chinese society has proved itself one of the most durable and adaptable in human history.

(Let me add here that I’ve seen people write on Reddit – and heard other foreigners say from the comfort of plush bar stools – that the Chinese are inherently xenophobic, which is just a big ol’ layer cake of hypocrisy. It’s not like the Chinese are currently chanting “build that wall!” [they already tried that], nor is there widespread public hatred for foreigners of the kind we seem to see more and more every day back in the States. There’s open disapproval of foreigners from certain segments of the population, but, let’s be real, we’re the ones who elected Trump, not the Chinese.)

I’d like to end with a hypothesis that neatly sums up how I feel on Yingke. In America, we go on the internet and treat each other like shit because everyone is our permanent roommate. In China, I’m (mostly) treated with politeness on the internet because I am and will always be a guest. And that’s how live streaming and China in general feels: like I’m a guest in a home with a billion strange yet polite hosts.

They may ask me the same few questions over and over again, but they’ll tell me I’m handsome and compliment my Chinese – so who am I to complain?

POSTSCRIPT: I can’t encourage strongly enough my fellow white Americans to go live abroad for a few years, preferably where they will be loudly referred to as “foreigner.” Personally, I think this should be the basic requirement of any office that gives one power over immigrants. But there I go again with my crazy liberal fantasies.

| Zhibo Column Archive |

WeChat Takeover: China’s All-in-One App That’s Leading the Pack

Walk outside during rush hour in a big city and you see cars, lots and lots of cars. Now imagine these cars as different apps on your phone, all used to perform daily tasks: one for paying bills, one for buying movie tickets, one for chatting with friends… and the list goes on. But why use 10 cars when you can use one to fulfill all your needs? While the US app system is not far from the former depiction, Tencent’s WeChat messaging app in China has included so many features that it is truly providing its users an all-in-one experience.

WeChat launched in January 2011 mainly as a messenger app. Since then, the platform has blossomed, reporting revenues of $1.8 billion in the first quarter of 2016. In contrast, WhatsApp reported $49 million, and Facebook messenger reported $0 in the same time period. As of May 2017, WeChat has reported a total of 938 million active monthly users.

Experts and government officials have often treated China’s lack of democratic freedoms as a sort of determinism for a future without tech innovation in the country. The growth and rise of WeChat alone contradicts that vision. Not only has WeChat burgeoned rapidly since its launch, US companies have rushed to learn from the app’s success.

WeChat’s market rise through convenient payment methods

As China is the country with the most smartphones made and used globally, WeChat entered a market already being primed for its arrival. Currently, Chinese individuals have largely skipped personal computers, opting to access the internet largely through their phones. Today in China, over half of internet sales are made through phones, as opposed to roughly one third of internet purchases made by phone in the US. The messaging service has also helped to boost its parent company internationally; Tencent appeared as number eight in Brandz 2017 rankings of the world’s most valuable companies.

WeChat has experienced different stages of growth, with each stage revealing brilliant marketing techniques. One of those stages was the introduction of red envelopes. During Chinese holidays, older people customarily gift physical red envelopes filled with various amounts of money to younger family members or the children of close family friends. On the eve of the Spring Festival in 2014, WeChat partnered with CCTV to debut electronic red envelopes that would allow users to send traditional holiday cash packets through their phones. Tencent invited viewers of the Spring Festival CCTV television marathon to shake their phones and receive a random amount of money in a red envelope through WeChat.

The debut of red packets led to an increase from 30 million WeChat users to 100 million users in one month. That figure later ballooned to 3.2 billion users after one year. Also, for those who did not have WeChat Wallet before the shake-a-thon, receiving and opening a red packet automatically created a WeChat Wallet in the app for that user. The Wallet made services like purchasing movie tickets, paying household bills, and taxi hailing services available through the app. This led to a massive increase in users who linked their bank accounts to WeChat and started making payments through the app. This past Spring Festival celebration, more than 420 million users sent a total of 32 billion red envelopes, ten times the number sent in 2015.

Oddly enough, Alibaba actually introduced the concept of digital red envelopes in 2012, but the company was more limited in its approach, only allowing individuals to pay other individuals rather than making payments in groups. The feature did not take off at the time. However, since WeChat’s red packets took off in 2014, Alipay, Baidu, Weibo, and other Chinese companies have started to copy the messaging app’s payment services.

WeChat has integrated payment and red packets with its group messaging experience. Unlike other apps, WeChat allows its users to make payments or send red packets to groups of people, thus increasing the likelihood that users will create groups and interact to a greater degree. As a WeChat user with family in China, I can personally attest to the rush that accompanies opening and sending WeChat red packets. Our family shared an estimated RMB 200 at least in our own family group this past Spring Festival celebration. Sending red packets was its own regular activity each night of celebration. When I wasn’t sending or receiving red packets, I was watching other extended family send and open red packets to their own private family groups.

US copycats and the difficulties of an all-in-one app in the US

Facebook has taken note of WeChat’s successes, and is attempting to implement some of WeChat’s strategies in a US market through Facebook Messenger. Facebook Messenger now allows users to make payments between two individuals, location share, and purchase flowers and limited retail items. Despite the increase in payment functionalities, Facebook has stuck to advertisements as a model for revenue. WeChat largely uses fees associated with payment transaction fees to garner profits from its payment functions. Facebook’s attempts at internal commerce, as well as the attempts of other social media platforms in the US, have largely fallen flat.

The heavily guarded nature of information on customer habits in the US will likely also act as a barrier to the growth of any all-in-one app. Unlike WeChat, which has access to vast amounts of information on its users due to the app’s essential monopoly on messaging and payments in China, US retailers provide customers memberships and rewards specific to their company, allowing these individuals to set up payment methods specific to that store. Tailored membership programs contribute to keeping payments methods diverse in the US market. US retailers and credit card companies hold tight to the information gained from customer transactions. The lack of information sharing (or information monopolization) in the US creates a barrier to creating an all-in-one app for anything, let alone payments.

Once an underdog in the tech industry, China is now nearly leading the pack. Though previously thought of as the world’s tech copycat, China’s innovation has proven strong in the past few years, leaving US companies as copycats themselves. So rather than count them out for their political landscape, the US finds itself watching and learning from the country for future tech innovations.