Porcelain Gaiwan

Thumb and middle finger on the rim at three and nine o'clock, index finger flat on the lid knob. The lid does the straining: slide it a few millimetres off-centre to open a gap the width of a leaf stem, tilt the whole thing as one unit, and pour in one continuous motion. Hot fingers mean you are gripping the bowl instead of the rim. The rim is flared so you do not have to.

Gongfu is not a recipe so much as a habit: a lot of leaf, a small vessel, and short infusions you keep repeating until the leaf gives up. The numbers below are a starting point to adjust from, not a rule.

1. 01Rinse the empty gaiwan and the cups with boiling water and tip it out. This warms the porcelain, so the first infusion does not lose ten degrees to a cold bowl.
2. 02Leaf: roughly one gram for every fifteen to twenty millilitres. A 130 ml gaiwan takes about 7 g of rolled oolong, and less of an open leaf like a white tea, which takes far more room for its weight.
3. 03For rolled or compressed tea, fill, count to five, and pour it straight out. That is a rinse, not an infusion — it opens the leaf, and it is discarded.
4. 04First infusion ten to twenty seconds, then a few seconds more each round. Five to eight rounds is ordinary, and the third or fourth is usually the best one.
5. 05Pour it out completely every time, into a pitcher or straight into the cups. Water left standing in the bowl keeps brewing the leaf and the next round comes out bitter.
6. 06Leave the lid off-centre on the bowl between rounds. A closed lid steams the leaf, which flattens the later infusions.

Gongfu brewing is many short infusions, so the vessel is sized to one round of tasting cups. A 130 ml gaiwan brewed five times gives you more tea than a 350 ml pot brewed once, and every infusion tastes different. If you want a mug of tea, a gaiwan is the wrong tool.