Unusually, the Chinese tea ceremony emphasizes the tea, rather than the ceremony.  Such
as what the tea tastes like, what it smells like, and how one tea tastes compared to the previous
tea, or in successive rounds of drinking.  This art of drinking and serving tea plays a major cultural role in China, inspiring poetry and songs.  The word ‘ceremony’ doesn’t mean that each server will perform the ritual the same way; it is not related to religion.  Each step is meant to be a sensory exploration and appreciation.  Having tea is also an opportunity for quiet time with
someone.  Most of the teas used in the ceremony are grown in the mountains of Taiwan at
around 4, 000 feet.  These teas are particularly refined, such as oolong teas, which are lightly
fermented and red teas that can be moderately to heavily fermented.  This type of tea drinking
uses small cups to match the small, unglazed clay teapots; each cup is just large enough to hold
about two small swallows of tea.  This particular use of tiny cups is practiced in Fujin and
Chiujao in southern coastal China above Canton.  In Shanghai and Beijing they use large cups.
The two cup method became popular in Taiwan where the tea ceremony has been elevated to a
gourmet level.
     Green tea, or ‘an oolong’, is unlike Japanese tea, which is powdered, not strained, and drunk with the tea.  The leaves of the green tea are not broken, but dried into little buds.  Most teas cost from $50 to $100 a pound, although there are teas costing as much as $200 to $500 a pound.  The teapot is made from red sand clay, which is dug deeply in China just to extract the particular kind of clay.  The teapot is also hand built, not shaped on a wheel.  It is not glazed, and when a new pot is used, it is considered raw.  To seal the inside, you boil old tea leaves with water for three hours.  This seals the inside of the pot as the oils from the tea leaves fill in the pores of the fired clay.
     The first step in the ceremony is to take boiling water and rinse the teapot.  Then, using chopsticks or a bamboo tea scoop, fill the teapot approximately 1/3 full with tea leaves and pour boiling water into the pot.  Hold the teapot over a large bowl, letting the overflow run into the bowl.  The tea leaves are rinsed by filling the pot half full with hot water, then draining the water out immediately, leaving only the soaked tea leaves.  Next, the pot is filled to the top with more hot water, then cover and pour additional water over the teapot resting in the tea bowl.  One important thing that is taken into consideration is that bubbles are made sure not to form in the pot.  This is because, when mixed with the tea, bubbles form a foam that is not really visually pleasing.  The tea should not be steeped too long; the first infusion should be steeped for only 30 seconds.  Then in less that a minute, the tea is poured into the sniffing cups by moving the teapot around in a continual motion over the cups so that they are filled together.  The first sniffing then comes next.  Afterwards, the tea is poured into the tasting cup and a second sniff is taken of the sniffing cup.  The scent should change with more sniffing.  Up to five infusions typically can be made from the same tea leaves.  Each pot of tea serves three to four rounds and up to five or six, depending on the tea and the server.  The goal is that each round tastes the same as the first.  Creating consistent flavor is where the mastery of the server is seen.