how to hold a chinese tea cup

Many tea friends who visited chaya teahouse marvel at the size of the tea cups we use to serve tea here and wonder how one holds the cup.

Now, these tasting cups are designed to be small so as to slow you down. Despite being small, one can drink quite a lot of tea while whiling the time away with good company at chaya teahouse.

Here’s a transcript of the video:

In this video, I’m going to show you how to hold a teacup. Now, there are two different kinds of teacup – Chinese teacups. The first one is a really tiny one made for tasting.

The other teacup is more like what we’re used to, a cup and a saucer, but this one has a lid to it. Now, to hold a tasting cup, you hold the teacup using your thumb and your index finger, and if you can, support the bottom of the cup with your middle finger. When you drink tea, use your middle finger to tilt the cup so that the tea can be delivered into your mouth.

So, that’s the way to hold a Chinese teacup. So, to drink tea, I’m going to show you how. This is the way you hold your teacup, bring to your mouth, tilt the teacup so that the tea is delivered to your mouth, okay? The second way of holding a Chinese teacup is where you hold a gaiwan.

A gaiwan simply means a bowl with a lid. I’m right-handed so I’m holding the saucer like this with my left hand. Using my right hand, I’m taking the lid of the gaiwan teacup and simply stir away any tea leaves or flowers in the teapot and bring it to my mouth for drinking like this.

If you are a lady, and you like to show how you smell the tea in the tea cup, simply do the same thing like this, stirring the tea, and then you can smell the lid instead, like this manner. If you are a gentleman, you don’t need to smell tea; you can drink it straight away. And this is how you hold a teacup.

Thanks for watching video “How To Hold A Chinese Tea Cup” and thanks to the guys at Videojug, who helped me make this series of How-To videos.

Warmly,

Pei
Teanamu Chaya Teahouse
~~ Serene and fragrant TEA entices with promise of rapture in STORE ~~