Drinking Apparatus of Chinese Tea
Drinking apparatus are another important part of Chinese tea ceremony. Different times have different sets of tea apparatus in fashion. Lu Yu, in his The Book of Tea, recorded 24 kinds of apparatus and making methods, including wind stove for frying water, clips for clipping coal, bamboo clips for stirring water, etc. Tea apparatus can not only fully exhibit the fragrance of tea, but its visual aesthetic beauty as well. Lu Yu held that the color of white, yellow and brown were not suitable for tea apparatus, because ther were too similar to the color of tea. This is for the same reason why we use glasses to drink green tea, with a view of observing the floating and sinking of leaves in the glass.
