Water

Welcome to the first in a series of posts about tea. In my post about Chinese New Year I mention making tea with mountain stream water. Now, I'll tell you the significance of that report.
水
This is the word that means water. The ancient character that it derived from looks like this:
The character water looks like a stream, and mountain stream water is one of two ingredients needed for a perfect cup of tea. I know this because I have been lucky enough to drink tea with old people in their homes on a few occasions now. Of course there is more to tea than leaves and water - the tea pot and it's proper care, warming the pot and cups, and the screen filter are very important as well, but I'll get to all that later.

Why do you go to the trouble of getting mountain stream water to make tea? Well, no one's explained that to me yet, but from my perspective the taste is a big part of it. There are many, many middle-aged-and-older people who drink tea every day using very fine leaves and tea sets. I think if I drank a drink so often and put so much time and money into it, taste would be a big focus.

Of course there is also the belief among tea drinkers that they are doing something extremely healthy. Taiwanese people are natural penny pinchers. Most of them wouldn't spend too much money on something just because it tastes great. There is a strong belief that better quality tea is better for your body (again, this is my vague understanding from speaking to old guys in my limited Chinese, I've yet to learn any specifics about tea's health benefits), and better quality tea here means "high mountain tea" that as a result of its habitat and cultivation is a very limted and expensive commodity.

This brings up my last point: tea is expensive. I'll explain the details in my next post but really, it's expensive. So if you spend a lot of money on a steak, are you going to serve it with slices of a rotten potato? No. Tap water in Taiwan is rotten. Even after you boil it, it doesn't taste pure. If your tea is made with this water, you're a fool unless the tea leaves were appropriately cheap. So, any tea drinkers here with the means has a buddy fill them up a couple big water containers at at mountain stream every time they drive across the island from East to West. (Accessible on the side of the mountain highways every so often) I can't do this yet, unfortunately, but I am buying cheap spring water. One day...