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Rules of Engagement:
Surviving the Tea World
喝茶界装１３指南

'hetao'
Translated by Lawrence Zhang 張樂翔

Fig.1 The well-accoutred tea enthusiast (Image: Xie Yufei 谢驭飞)

1. First—tea leaves. Of course, you must understand the current trends really well, but you cannot simply be following whatever is fashionable. Everyone all know about yancha and zhengshan xiaozhong, so what you need to do is drink things like Oriental Beauty, or pu'erh that came back (to the Mainland) from Taiwan. If you must drink yancha, then it has to be tea that is from a famous maker. You cannot ever say anything about buying tea, as all the tea you drink must be gifted from friends or famous personages. If you don't want to explain, you can simply put up pictures of you with said famous makers. If you must spend money to get tea, at least it has to be specially made tea, and not commercial grade stuff. Whether or not you can finish your tea collection in your current lifetime, you must have a lot of tea in your collection. When it comes to pu'erh, whatever '7542', '88 Qing', or 'old square brick', you must have all of them. Have ten different, large Yixing pottery jars each labeled with different years and storing pu'erh of different vintages, and then specially order some rosewood shelves specifically for the storage of pu'erhcakes. Prepare thirty different Jingdezhen porcelain jars from famous makers and store various kinds of famous dancing, yancha, and the like in them. These must be placed strategically so that when you take pictures they will form the background.

2. You must appear in various occasions where tea is evaluated. When you evaluate teas, you have to immediately and incisively point out the flaws in the tea you're drinking, especially on the points of roasting techniques and aftertaste. If you accidentally said something as bland as 'great fragrance and smooth mouth-feel' then you would have lost all effects from your appearance. If you can figure out which mountain, which hole, or which ditch this tea is from, all the better and you'll score full points for that. At this juncture, you must go for the kill and not only do you need to point out whether this tea is from a certain ditch or not, but you have to tell us if it is from the edge of the ditch or the bottom of the ditch. This is a little more difficult, and newbies should avoid trying this at home.

3. You must redecorate a room in your house to make it your tea-room. Rosewood furniture, supersized tea table are of course a plus. On the tea table you must have at least three different Yixing pots, all made by famous artisans. The cups cannot be run of the mill either. Even though Taiwanese makers are now a bit old-fashioned, a few of those might be good, and you can always throw them onto the rack behind you and only explain their origins if someone asks. Small cups from Jingdezhen are always good to intersperse in your tea drinking, but if you can find qinghua or famille rose cups Kangxi or Qianlong periods, then this is probably best. What you use to boil water cannot be mundane either. You must possess a few antique tetsubin [鉄瓶] from Japan. If you're still using induction plates or alcohol burners to boil water for your tetsubin, then this is way too lame. You have to use a stove made with top grade red clay, and paired with olive-pit charcoal. At the same time, you must point out clearly that using olive-pit charcoal to boil water is not the same as using electricity. If you want extra credit, find some friend who's from another province to provide you with mountain spring water from their region. Of course, such solutions can't always work for you, but still you can't just use regular purified water. If you can insist on driving fifty kilometres every week to a nearby mountain for water, that'll add a lot of points. Also, if you're drinking tea at this level and you don't burn incense, then you're just not doing it right. The incense burner and storage cannot be any run of the mill objects, and the incense itself has to be agarwood. Over the course of a night you have to burn off an entire iPhone4S worth of agarwood incense. Moreover, you gotta learn how to play an ancient Chinese zither, or guqin song. There needs to be a space in your tea room for a Chinese zither, and when you host top flight tea people in your tea room, you play this song, and that will just be your killer move.

4. You have to have a full-frame SLR with a top-flight zoom lens. Since you always have to upload your photos, such a camera setup is essential. All your pictures should be taken at night, the blurrier the better. The chaxi has to be changed constantly, and dead, dried out bamboo can add points to your setup. Unless you're Chen Daoming or Zhang Jiayi, try not to show your face in the photos. A good way to do this is to only shoot a female hand with a cup, only showing hands and no faces. This way you are simultaneously mysterious while letting everyone know that you're not some loser drinking tea by yourself at home.

5. Find a friend who's good with writing, and ask him or her to help you compose one-hundred short poems and store on your computer. Whenever you need you can pair it with a photo and put it up on your twitter stream.

6. Finally, you gotta have a title. At least you have to be a high-level tea evaluator, or you can team up with a few friends and become some general secretary or trustee of some Chinese tea aficionado association or world tea alliance. Whenever you're talking you have to mention Zen Buddhism, and have to invite all kinds of religious types to your home to drink tea, not to mention taking pictures with them. If you can get them to write you some calligraphy, all the better. If there are newbies who ask you how to brew tea, just say 'I use the ancients as guide and simplicity as my way' and end it there.

喝茶界装１３指南

hetao

一、先说茶叶。对时下的流行趋势当然要了然于胸，绝不能随大流，现在都知道岩茶、正山小种了，你就要喝“东方美人”，或者台湾回流的普洱。如果一定要喝岩茶，那必须要喝出自名家之手的。绝口不能提买茶叶的事儿，所有喝的茶必须是友人或名家赠送的。不想说明的话，可以只摆上跟名家的合照。如果一定是花钱买的茶，那也得是定制茶，绝对不能是商品茶。不管这辈子能不能喝得完，家里藏茶一定要多，说到普洱，什么“7542”什么“88青”什么“老方砖”，全都有。摆10个紫砂大缸专门放各个年份的普洱；定制一个红酸枝的架子专门垒放普洱饼茶；准备30个景德镇贵和祥或景德镇名家的茶罐，专门存放各种名枞、奇种。这些都要摆放恰当，留作拍照的时候当背景墙。

二、出席斗茶的场合是必不可少的，评茶的时候一定要一针见血地指出该茶的弱点和不足，尽量从火功和韵味上点评。如果不小心说出了“香高水甜”之类的套话，则效果立即崩溃；如果能喝出哪个山头哪个坑哪个涧的，则效果直接升到满分，此时一定要乘胜追击，不但要指出产自哪坑更要指出是坑底还是坑沿的。此一项难度较大，新手勿试。

三、一定要在家里拿出一个房间装修成茶室。红木茶桌、超大体积的电木茶盘都是首选。茶盘上要摆上至少3把紫砂壶，必须是名家的。杯子也不能含糊。台湾名家的虽然有点过气，配上几只也无坊，可以随意丢在身后博古架上，有人问起可以顺带解释。景德镇名家的小杯可以穿插使用，如果能搞到康乾时期的青花或粉彩，能起到加分作用。烧水的器具绝不能含糊，日本回流的老铁壶必须要有数把。要是你还用电磁炉或酒精给铁壶烧水，那就弱爆了，必须用上等红泥炉配顶级橄榄炭，同时要深刻指出：用电和用橄榄炭烧出的水不是一个级别的。还想再加分，可以委托省外的朋友取当地的山泉水给你物流过来。虽然远水解不了近渴，但平时也不能用纯净水草草了事。如果能坚持每周开车50公里去山里拉泉水回来泡茶，则会大大加分。喝茶到了这个份上如果不焚香，那就太说不过去了。香筒、香炉绝不能含糊，都是上好的沉香，一晚上光焚香就能烧掉一部iPhone4S。还有，至少学会弹一首古琴曲，茶室要辟出一块地方专门摆放古琴，来了顶级13客，你就弹首曲子，作为最后撒手锏。

四、一定要准备一部单反，全幅是必须的，大三元的镜头也是必需的，因为经常要拍照上传，所有的效果最后都要由这支镜头来体现，所有拍照一定要选在晚上，越朦胧越好，茶席要经常换，一株枯死的文竹能起到加分作用。如果你不是陈道明或张嘉译，尽量不要把脸暴露在镜头里，讨喜的做法是只拍一只女性素手，每次都是只露手不露人，即神秘又能显示你不是一个人躲在家里孤独地喝茶。

五、找一个文笔好的朋友，帮你整理100首无病呻吟没事儿找抽的小诗，存在记事本里，配上图，随时在微博里粘贴使用。

六、最后，头衔，一定要有个头衔，至少也得是高级评茶师，三五好友凑一起就可以扯起一个华人茶文化协会或世界茶文化联盟，理事长、秘书长什么的都可以。张口闭口要谈禅、谈佛。一定要请大师到会所喝茶，合影是必须的，能留个墨宝加持则更好。如果有新手问怎么泡茶，绝口不提技法，只告诉他“以古为法，以朴为道”即可。

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