Using gaiwan makes tea steeping process easier and gives you fun to make green tea. Using Gaiwan need slight know-how not to burn your hand. But you can learn it so quickly after trying 2-3 times.

To try Gaiwan style simple tea ceremony, you will need Gaiwan, tea cup, water cooling pitcher, and loose tea. That's all!
I used my one of favourite Chinese tea - LongJing(Dragon Well) for today's Gaiwan ceremony.

First, warm your tea cups with hot water and discard rinsed water into bamboo tray. And put one teaspoon of Longjine into your cup. I usually recommend 1 teaspoon f
or Gaiwan because of small capacity of Gaiwan. Most of Chinese use more than 1 teaspoon of tea, and they enjoy strong bitter taste. But I love mellow, sweet tea.

Pour hot water into a glass pitcher first to cool down the water temperature. If you use rolling boiling water, it will make your Longjing bitter like medicine. (If you want to wake up, then I guess you can try bitter tea.) Wait for a minute by the time the water reach 80C. Now, you can put the water into Gaiwan.

Close the lid of Gaiwan and set your timer to 1 min. You don't have to steep longer than 1 min for first infusion to get ultimate Longjing flavour. Some people discard the water to rinse tea leaves for first infusion. But I like to drink the first infusion for LongJing tea. First infusion gives you strong nutty fresh aroma.

You need know-how to hold hot Gaiwan cup. Tilt the Gaiwan lid slightly to make the liquid quickly escape Gaiwan. Placing your index finger in the dimple at the top of the lid, hold the lid tightly against the cup. Use ring finger and thumb to hold saucer.


Pour tea water into tea cup. Enjoy!