Episode 1: 【My Big Tummy Teacher】

1.【My Big Tummy Teacher】

I have learnt tea ceremony with my current teacher for only 4 months. 

He has a big tummy, so I called him “Big Tummy Teacher” here. 

He is a special person. 

He teaches tea brewing/ tea ceremony class in community college. The course costs only TWD 1000, which surprises me because it is the price of going to one single proper tea ceremony gathering in Taiwan, or one lesson if I am in HK. I thought this may be a casual class, like those teaching elderly in the centers, but it’s no harm to try. Also, the teacher’s resume and experiences look promising. 

In the first lesson, I discovered that this teacher is very serious and it’s not an easy task to learn the whole ceremony procedure. 

Later he told us once that he could not let his teacher know he’s charging so little for the course, and I smiled thinking it’s such a blessing to join this class. 

OK. We talk back to the first lesson. He invited a more experienced student (who learnt the previous class) for tea brewing, and then he brewed for us. The whole procedure, tools, and tea leaves are exactly the same. We also tasted 5 brews. 

This was impressive because Big Tummy Teacher’s tea was much rounder and thick. Why is that? I could imagine he had put so much time and effort into practicing and drilling into the tea brewing skill. 

While for the lesson design. Every student needs to act as the tea host once. To master this, we have to practise and it’s not possible to learn only by seeing. Yet the time in the class is limited. 

To my surprise, Big Tummy Teacher invited us to practise in his tea studio. He wants to teach us one-by-one at least once so we could master the skill. 

What? He wants to work overtime? Is he doing volunteer work? What kind of person is he? 

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I decided to share with you the bits and pieces between my Big Tummy Teacher and me.