How to Brew Tea in a Yixing Teapot

We thought Tea Drunk was the most ideal and perfect location to present the contemporary Yixing teapots from the Irving Collection. Yeah, the best of the best tea for the best of the best teapot. My name is Xunan Tang. I'm the founder and the owner of Tea Drunk. We're a traditional Chinese tea house located in East Village of New York City. We're also a producer of some of the world's most prized teas. There's an old Chinese saying, 水为茶之母,壶为茶之父。 In English, it means water is the mother to tea, while the teapot is the father to tea. Yes, totally. We have a Yixing purple clay teapot in front of us today. People usually like to use like a round shape of teapot to brew oolong teas. The most typical teapots people use are like shui ping or fang gu. So this is actually a fang gu. For this size, I'm using 12 grams of teas, which is a lot. But once the tea is brewed, it's gonna expand a little bit and it'll start to push the lid, which is what we want. So when we brew the tea, you always wanna go around the rim instead of pouring into the center. And I always run the water through the outside of the teapot a little bit as well to push the air out. We do not drink the first brew of tea with this style of method. What we can do is we can certainly use it to warm up the vessels. We can also give a little bit to the teapot. The fulfillment of the tea's potential is partly brought out by the teapot. So it's really like a perfect match. It's a spiritual union. Generally speaking, there are two main category of Yixing purple clay teapot. The first one is called guang huo in English. We translate it as plain solidware for daily brewing. And then on the other side, we have naturalistic ware, which is called hua huo. Although hua huo was made or designed as a teapot, it's a piece of art to be precise, a piece of sculpture. As you can see, it's a tall piece of ginger, very naturalistic. Yes, very impressive. And this artist, Zhou Dingfang, she's known for depicting scenes in Yixing in the form of teapot. As you see, this is a cube that they may have fired the teapot in. And this is a water well where they would fetch water for daily uses. Yeah, this is very nice. Actually, when I was little, we had a well, so this brings back memories for sure. So purple clay is actually not necessarily purple, right? Right. Within Zi Sha, there are three basic color. The potter, by mixing and matching different kinds of clays and firing at a different temperature, they achieve all kinds of different earth tone colors. This teapot, it's my favorite teapot in the cell. It's made by the master artist, Wang Yixian. Wang Yixian drew inspiration from a flying bird, and it's extremely difficult for an artist to do an overhead handle in such good condition and in such elegant curved shape. I think tea drinking is a essential experience for us to connect with the past and the present. It is also a great way to indulge in our senses, which I think is what art is about. Yixing potters are known for drawing inspiration from nature and daily life. I think the Irvings would have found those naturalistic creations very fascinating to add onto their collection.