The method, such as it is
A description of something people do now, compiled from published accounts rather than from practice.
Leaf goes into a tall glass, a lidded mug or a vacuum flask. Hot water goes on top. The drinker waits, drinks past the floating leaf or through a built-in strainer, and adds more water when the level drops — three, five, eight times through a day. The leaf is never removed and the tea is never timed. Strength peaks early and declines, the last cup is pale, and this is entirely accepted: the drink is a background presence through a working day rather than a sequence of considered infusions. It works because the leaf is generally green or lightly oxidised and is used in modest quantity, so that a long soak does not become undrinkable. The furniture is correspondingly minimal. A glass jar that once held instant coffee or a preserved vegetable is a perfectly ordinary vessel; so is a branded double-walled flask with a filter basket, which is the modern standard and is carried on trains, into meetings and onto building sites. Hot-water dispensers in offices, stations, trains and public buildings are what make the whole system work, and their ubiquity is the infrastructure the habit rests on.
Why this matters to a catalogue that mostly writes about gongfu
TeaHQ's own reading of well-attested general knowledge, with no single source behind it.
Speciality tea writing in English is overwhelmingly about small-pot brewing, because that is what produces interesting differences between teas and therefore what is worth writing about. The effect is to present as normal a method that is, in China, the enthusiast’s and the host’s method rather than the daily one. Most Chinese tea drinking is a leaf in a glass. Any account of Chinese tea culture that omits this describes the special case and calls it the general one, which is the same error as describing British tea drinking through afternoon tea. There is a practical consequence for a reader buying tea. A great deal of Chinese green tea is made and graded for this method — for a leaf that looks good suspended in a glass, that survives a long soak, and that does not need equipment — and judging it by gongfu criteria misses what it was made for. The visual side is not incidental: the appearance of the leaf unfurling and standing in a tall glass is part of the appeal and part of how such teas are sold.
Tea as the default hospitality of a workplace
A description of something people do now, compiled from published accounts rather than from practice.
In offices, shops, workshops and government buildings, arriving visitors are given hot water or tea more or less automatically, and a personal flask on a desk is standard equipment rather than a preference. The tea itself is often a gift: presentation tins circulate at festivals and are opened at work, so the leaf in a colleague’s flask may be considerably better than anything they would buy. This is a real and under-described part of how tea moves through Chinese life — a substantial share of good tea is given rather than bought by its drinker, which shapes what is produced and how it is packaged. The habit crosses into other drinks and other containers without changing shape. The same flask takes goji berries, chrysanthemum, dried jujube or a bought herbal mixture, and a great many Chinese drinkers alternate between those and tea without regarding it as a change of category. A tea catalogue that draws a hard line between Camellia sinensis and everything else is drawing a line that this practice does not observe.
What it does to the leaf you should buy
TeaHQ's own reading of well-attested general knowledge, with no single source behind it.
A method with a long soak and repeated refills rewards a leaf that gives up its character gradually and does not turn harsh, and it punishes the fine, delicate, expensive material that a gongfu session is built around. Green teas with some substance to them, lightly oxidised oolongs and roasted teas all work; a high-grade early-spring bud tea will be bitter by the third refill and its cost will have been wasted on the first. Nobody in China regards this as a problem because nobody is putting that tea in a flask. The practical advice that falls out of it is worth stating for a reader in a Western kitchen with no interest in acquiring equipment. Use less leaf than a brewing guide tells you, use a tall vessel, top it up rather than replacing it, accept that the strength will move through the day, and choose a tea that is not the most delicate thing on the shelf. That is a complete, functional, extremely widely practised way of drinking tea, and it appears in almost no English-language brewing guide.