A tea pet, or cha chong (茶宠), is a small figure kept on the tea tray during gongfu tea. Leftover tea is poured or brushed over it, and over time it takes on a soft luster and a faint scent of tea. People's Daily Online describes tea pets shaped as mythical beasts, human figures and small animals, each carrying a good wish.
Feeding a tea pet
Keeping a tea pet is called yang (养), the word for raising an animal. A 2016 study in Scientific Reports, quoting Geoffrey Gowlland of the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, says the name plays on a second meaning: building a shiny patina on clay by pouring tea over it again and again. A 2017 report in the Harbin paper Shenghuo Bao shows a tea seller pouring the first infusion over her tea pets, while other keepers brush tea on.
Purple clay and the slow sheen
Many tea pets are made of zisha, or purple clay, the iron-rich clay of Yixing in Jiangsu province that is also used for Yixing teapots. Zisha ware is unglazed stoneware, and the Hong Kong Museum of Art notes that its fine porosity makes it highly absorbent. Tea tannins sink into the surface, the Scientific Reports authors explain, which is how a clay tea pet slowly changes color and gains its shine. Glaze seals the pores of a ceramic body, so a glazed tea pet does not soak up tea the same way.
Pixiu, toad, Maitreya and the zodiac
The pixiu is a winged lion of Chinese myth. In a legend retold on Beijing's official tourism site, it eats gold and silver but cannot pass them, so it stands for wealth that stays. The three-legged toad belongs to Liu Hai, a Daoist immortal who teases it with a string of coins. The Cleveland Museum of Art notes that Liu Hai became a god of wealth and that his toad stands for wealth too. By custom, the Harbin report says, the toad faces out to draw money in and the pixiu faces in, so wealth only enters.
The laughing, big-bellied Buddha is Budai, a 10th-century monk believed to be an incarnation of Maitreya, the future Buddha, according to the Met. Zodiac tea pets show the animals of the Chinese zodiac, which assigns each year in a 12-year cycle to one animal. Lucky cat tea pets borrow Japan's beckoning cat, as our lucky cat guide explains.
Color-changing tea pets
Some tea pets change color when hot water hits them and return to their first shade as they cool. The behavior matches thermochromic pigment, in which a leuco dye changes color above a set temperature and changes back as it cools, as a U.S. patent describes.
Caring for a tea pet
Rinse a clay tea pet with hot water, let it air-dry and use no soap. Yixing teaware is washed with water only, because the unglazed clay absorbs traces of what it holds. A keeper quoted in the Harbin report warns against leaving a tea pet to soak in tea: soaking colors it fast but leaves it patchy.
Tea pets at Buddha.store
Find our tea pets in purple clay, ceramic and resin, and kung fu teacups for the same tray, in home and incense.
