On August 21, 2004, the Chinese Culture Center featured a lecture by Terese Tse Bartholomew on the “Four Styles of Yixing Ware” to coincide with the CCC’s exhibition “Purple Sand, Fragrant Tea: Contemporary Yixing Master Works by Artists from China.”  Ms. Bartholomew, a curator for the Asian Art Museum for 36 years, offered an informative and entertaining talk on Yixing ceramics.  She explained how and why Yixing teapots are considered to be the best tea-brewing vessels in the world, and have been for hundreds of years.

The second lecture related to our Yixing exhibition was held on September 25, 2004.  This event focused more specifically on Chinese tea and the traditional Chinese brewing technique, and featured two speakers.  First was Mr. David Lee Hoffman, owner of the Silk Road Teas Company and writer of the forthcoming book, Teas of the Silk Road.  Not only discussing the origins of tea, Mr. Hoffman, using images from slides projected onto the auditorium’s big screen, revealed a personal account of his travels in China researching the tea plants, and living with and learning from farmers in the country’s rural areas.  Guests were transported into the heart of China’s tea-making industry, and were treated to a tasting of three of China’s most popular teas.  Following Mr. Hoffman with a traditional Chinese tea ceremony was Ms. Kathi Wong.  Ms. Wong demonstrated the process of brewing tea, a high art, based on her study of the ancient Chinese Book of Tea, written during the Tang Dynasty.