Evolution of the Tea Studio
I had a request for more information about creating a ‘tea studio’ or tea room at home, and since I love to tell stories of my wild youth, I thought I’d start with a bit of background about how I got started on the whole thing.
I spent several years in Taiwan in the late 1980s-1990s. During that time I got into Chinese calligraphy, and through that, into tea. I don’t do as much calligraphy now as I should, but the tea habit has really stuck with me. I settled in Seattle in 1991, found work as an ESL teacher, and decorated my entire (rental) house with artworks I had either done myself or acquired in Taiwan. I didn’t have a lot of money for furniture, so I put a rug on the living room floor in front of the large picture window, got a low-cut square table (had to custom order it actually), and some throw pillows. I planted bamboo outside the window to add atmosphere, hung a paper umbrella lamp in the corner, and held regular tea sessions whenever I could drag friends over (or on my own when I couldn’t).
When I moved back to Taiwan in 1997, I decided to get out of the city. I was still very into the ‘tea thing’, and had also worked at a bamboo nursery (Bamboo Gardens of Redmond – there is a link to their website on my homepage), so I decided to move to Nantou county, home of the famous Dong Ting Oolong tea (Dong Ting is a mountain in the middle of Nantou’s main tea production area), and literally covered in bamboo. I ended up getting into an old Chinese style farmhouse in the mountains near a small town called Chi-Chi. I wanted to turn the main living room, which normally houses the family shrine, into a tea room. I was used to sitting on the floor to have my tea from my Seattle days, but the one small window in the room was too high, and the walls and floor were old and disgusting. I decided to build a platform so that I could have a better view into the back garden. I got some 2x4s and plywood sheets, and went to work. I built a wooden frame about 2′ high, attached it to 3 walls, and put the plywood sheets over the top.
The original room was a rectangle about 8′ x 6′. I covered the plywood with interlocking foam pads to pad it a bit, added a short table, and was good to go. A few months later I aquired a housequest – ‘Captain Mike’, a South African refugee who was new in the area, and he ended up buying me tatami mats as a house gift (if I remember right, he even had to chew a betel nut with the shopkeeper to seal the deal!). We had a great year with that tea room - listening to Van Morrison albums until 2am, drinking tea with our English students (officers from the nearby military base), and terrorizing the local cockroach population. Our tea room was also the home of the original ‘dog paw’ oolong tea – our pup, Mango (yes, he actually ate mangoes!), would usually hang out on the tatamis when we had company, and he would invariably step in someone’s tea cup in his comings and goings. We told the locals that having a dog step in your tea cup was a sign of good luck in western countries – talk about being good cultural ambassadors!
Anyway, on September 21, 1999, we had an earthquake. It’s referred to locally as the ‘Chi-Chi big earthquake’ because the epicenter was just a few miles away. The house didn’t take much damage, but in the aftermath of the quake (yes, there’s a long story there as well) I ended up moving to Ping Tung, which is at the southern end of Taiwan.
Of course, as soon as I settled into an old farmhouse in Ping Tung, I set up a new tea platform, put on some Van, and got back into the tea habit. Unfortunately I lasted less than a year there. The summer was just way too hot for my liking, and I was offered a job back in Nantou by someone I’d worked with before the quake. I also got married about that time, and since my in-laws all live in Taipei, it made sense to move back north. We lived in two different houses, and by then the tea room tradition was pretty entrenched. We found that the tatamis also make a great guest room for those who like a firm mattress, and had friends stay with us frequently. After our son was born we decided to move back to the Taipei area, where we currently live. We’ve moved twice in the past 7 years, and I’ve just recently re-done the tea room at our current place (see ‘My Tea Studio’ post for pictures).
The tatamis really fit well with the whole tea drinking lifestyle, and I strongly recommend them to anyone interested in creating a tea room. They were introduced to Taiwan during the Japanese colonial rule, and are still quite popular in tea houses and private homes. They add color, texture, and warmth to a room, smell great, and create a genuine asian feel (especially when you take your shoes off to sit on them).