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Yun Xiang Tseng stands in his tea shop, Cha Tao Tea (“The Way of Tea”) in downtown Fort Collins, where he celebrates China’s tea culture and tea’s health benefits.

The Way of Tea

Upon entering Cha Tao Tea (translated as “The Way of Tea”), customers are immediately greeted by Yun and his wife, Tiffany. The couple owns and manages the five-month old store. While Yun travels to China to buy tea and help tend to their 60-acre tea farm, Tiffany stays in Fort Collins to run the shop. “The process of the tea begins with appreciation,” says Yun, “We have 16 Taoist priests come and walk through each row of plants to bless the tea, and ultimately, the person drinking it.”

Blessing and healing from the tea come to the drinker in many different ways. First, Yun reminds us that tea was being used for medicinal purposes more than 3,000 years ago in China. One type of tea sold at Cha Tao is the Wuyi tea. According to Yun, a study in Japan showed that those who drank Wuyi lost weight five times faster than those who did not. Why is that? “The Puer part of the plant is most famous for the digestive track,” he says.

The Chinese may have weight loss tea tricks, but when it comes to healing, Yun says there’s no question that white, green, and yellow teas are by far the best for the body. “There are only three steps in making the green, white, and yellow teas. They pick the plant, dry it, and sell it. This means there are more healing parts of the plant still in the tea when it’s made to drink. It is all done with the human touch too, there are no machines or electronics involved in these processes,” Yun says.

Though there are antioxidants in every tea, green, white, and yellow are particularly good for patients undergoing chemotherapy. “The patient must drink the tea at least 24 hours after chemotherapy. Because the tea works against the drugs, you don’t want it to interfere with treatment. But if they wait 24 hours, they will feel better and more energetic,” says Yun.

The tea farm sits near 4,000-year-old temples, designated as World Heritage Sites, and sees little traffic, few people, and no pollution.

In addition to soothing the harsh effects of chemotherapy on the body, tea’s antioxidants may protect against certain types of cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, some studies have found green tea to contain chemical compounds that can help prevent against skin, lung, stomach, esophagus, colon, pancreas, bladder, prostate, and breast cancers. These chemicals may actually cause cancer cells to die in the body.

From the moment the tea seed is planted in China, Yun ensures that every step is done with the final ‘drinker’ in mind. “The tea is the ‘qi,’ which means life force. The planter thinks of you when they plant, the farmer has you in mind while tending to the fields, the Tao priests come to bless the crop for you, the people who carry the tea have you in mind while hauling a 30 pound bag down a mountain side, and the seller has you in mind when they send you on with the tea. In order to get everything from the tea, you must appreciate it and those who had you in mind all along,” says Yun. Appreciation is the key to experiencing the benefits of tea.

Japanese tea ceremony master Michael Ricci, demonstrates the ancient art of drinking tea.

The Ceremony of Tea

Fast forward a few days, when Style arrives at the home of Michael Ricci for a Japanese tea ceremony. Ricci teaches Tea Ceremony in Fort Collins and at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Ricci studied tea ceremony and Zen Buddhism for two years in Colorado before being sent to Kyoto, Japan for further exploration of the ancient art. And what he found during his two and a half years of study in Japan was just that, an art to be explored, understood, and brought back to America to appreciate.

There are four foundational principles of the Japanese tea ceremony: Harmony, Respect, Purity, and Tranquility. Ricci says, “Supposedly, if Harmony, Respect, and Purity are present, then Tranquility will automatically follow suit.” All four of these elements are manifested throughout the ceremony.

How you engage in the ancient art of drinking tea reflects what you will get out of the experience. You are a part of the aesthetics, which means that you add or detract from the experience for everyone present. Neutral colors should be worn, there should be no jewelry worn in order to remove all social status elements. All that should be present is you, no strings attached.

A formal Japanese tea ceremony is known as the Chaji (Cha-jee). It can last up to four hours with a meal and two bowls of tea. For the sake of time, Ricci performed a Chakai (Cha-ky), which is an informal abbreviated rendition of the Chaji.

To say that a tea ceremony is organized and particular is like saying a rock is hard. Every item inside the ceremony has a purpose and it is to be handled as such. You drink from the back of the tea bowl after turning it clockwise, two 1/4 turns with your right hand – and that is just the tea bowl. But with the specific procedures comes order. Relaxation follows suit.

For Mitsuko Ito, a Fort Collins resident and Japanese tea ceremony student, the lessons are a time to calm herself and re-center her hectic life. “My mother-in-law is from Japan. When she comes to the States, it’s a nice thing for us to do together. It’s also nice to get out of the house and a good time to sit in a quiet atmosphere,” she says.

Matcha is the tea drank at a tea ceremony. It is made both as a thick (Koicha) tea and a thin (Usucha) tea. Matcha tea is made from an entire tea plant ground into a powder and mixed into the water itself. Many of the components of a tea plant are lost when tea is prepared in a tea ball or packet, due to the plant remaining in the package. When one drinks Matcha, they are digesting the health benefits from the entire plant.

While the ceremony includes bowing and a few rehearsed lines in Japanese, the rest of the ceremony is about taking in the beauty and appreciating both the ceremony and life. There is a simple floral arrangement picked to encompass nature and even the utensils are chosen specifically to exemplify the season. To sit and enjoy Japanese tea is about taking in life and appreciating its balance. From the silent solitude of the ceremony to the precision of how to hold the bowl of tea while drinking it, tranquility is the end result.

The Japanese and Chinese arts of drinking tea have unique backgrounds and are practiced differently. But both cherish and encourage one thing, appreciation. If one can appreciate the tea, the culture, the work that went into preparing the tea or the tea ceremony itself, one will experience peace, harmony, and healing of the mind, body, and spirit.