Tea in Media- 闘茶

       闘茶 or Dou Cha (aka Tea Fight) has become one of my favourite movies over the last few years.  The story is based on a myth which was created for the story line. Two groups created tea, Female Tea and Male Tea. Male groups tea causes aggression while the Female groups tea calms you. I am using Male and Female as those are the group names which came in the subtitles, the languages for the movie are Taiwanese and Japanese (light kansai-ben).
    After the two groups are introduced it brings up that a man from Japan is learning from the Female Tea group, to sum it up the two groups fight because of what the student says to a member of the Male Tea group.
             A curse is in place which sets the tone for the rest of the movie. Break the curse by beating the Male Tea descendant. The curse itself though was placed on all three members. It causes a lot of turmoil for the characters.
         My favourite character is quite minor, Lu Yu pops up every now and then and is event he narrator for the little myth. Very cute overall.  The best part of the movie is at the end where you get to see the predecessor of matcha being made by two characters while another is making it as it has been established to date.
      I highly suggest this movie, some of  it seems a little “dopey” but watching how everyone makes tea is worth it.

赤壁 (Red Cliff) – Tea Media

         Red Cliff became one of my favorite 2 part movie about 2-3 years ago. I was wandering through a few tea blogs and found out that tea is made (what looks like) Lu Yu Style. Quickly I sought out a copy and watched it, many times. Wikipedia’s description is as thus:

Chinese epic war film based on the Battle of Red Cliffs (208-209 AD) and events during the end of the Han Dynasty and immediately prior to the Three Kingdoms period in ancient China. The film was directed by John Woo, and stars Tony Leung, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Zhang Fengyi, Chang Chen, Hu Jun, Lin Chi-ling and Zhao Wei.

 Xiao Qiao is very skilled tea maker. I was quite taken by her calm description of how to brew tea to Ciao Ciao. Stressing the importance of seeing the stages of boil and knowing when it is ready, and not past its prime. Here are some images of her skills, but be sure to check out the full two part movie.!!

Warming up the tea before scraping needed amount

serving the tea

Ciao Ciao tries the tea
Shallow open cups allow the once boiling water cool.
The brew.