One Gaiwan Join the circle
A tea circle on Kith Rabbit

The same leaves never steep twice.

Good tea in good company. We sit down together, pour from one gaiwan, and take a little time to notice what is passing.

Pull up a seat
A small blue-and-white cup of dark tea on a clay saucer, on an old wooden table
A cup from one of our sittings.
The path of tea

A sitting, steep by steep.

The same leaves give a different cup every time water meets them. A sitting follows them, and that is most of the practice. Some sittings are full of conversation; many are mostly quiet. Nobody has to fill the silence — the tea is enough company.

  1. First steep

    Arriving

    Hot water wakes the leaves. Phones face down; the day settles.

  2. Second steep

    Opening

    The leaves unfurl and the tea finds its voice. Some days we talk; often we just listen to it.

  3. Later steeps

    Thinning

    Each cup lighter, sweeter, different. Nothing holds still, and nothing needs to.

  4. Last steep

    Letting go

    The leaves are spent and go back to the soil. The afternoon was enough.

Dark twisted tea leaves resting in a pale wooden scoop on a linen cloth

One gaiwan, a cup for everyone.

There is one vessel on the table. The same tea, poured by the same hand at the same moment, reaches every cup. Nobody drinks a different afternoon.

That is most of what we know about connection: share the pot. Strangers become a circle somewhere around the third steep, whether or not a word has been said.

And the leaves are a lesson in impermanence. They were a hillside once, then a jar on a shelf for years, now this cup, and soon soil again. So are we, a little slower.

Something universal

Water·leaf·heat·time

Everywhere the tea plant travelled, people found their own way to sit with it: gongfu in Chaozhou, chanoyu in Kyoto, chai at a station in Delhi, a samovar in a Moscow kitchen. Different gestures, one invitation. Stay a while.

Where we sit

At a long table

Mostly in Hong Kong, around old wood, a tea tray and whoever came.

On the water

Sometimes on a boat, from Discovery Bay to Lamma, with tea poured on the way.

Wherever a gaiwan travels

A sitting in another city, when someone packed one in their bag. You are welcome with no experience at all.

Tea houses

The places that host our sittings.

Vermillion Hill · 丹丘

@vermillion_hill on Instagram

Tea, incense, antiques and poetry — “tea punk, cloud hermit”, in her own words. Many of our sittings happen at her place, and you can book one there yourself.

Book a sitting

More tea houses will join this list as we sit in them.

The One Gaiwan A4 poster: the cup on its clay saucer, the four steeps, and a QR code to join

The poster

For the tea shop counter, the studio wall, the table where you pour. A4, with a QR code that brings people straight to the circle.

Download the poster (PDF)

We are becoming.

A tree adds a ring a year and lets its old bark fall. Tea teaches the same thing, one afternoon at a time.

QR code that opens the invite to One GaiwanScan to join

There is a cup for you.

Join One Gaiwan on Kith Rabbit, free on iPhone, Mac, Android and the web. You will catch up on the last three months of what has been poured, and hear about the next sitting.

Join One Gaiwan