Shopping: Hong Kong : Buy a Little Teapot : Born of a special clay from China’s east, pottery that brews leaves to perfection

Aficionados of the many varieties of tea found in China have, for hundreds of years, extolled Yixing teapots as superior to all other types for brewing it. Ask any shopkeeper, antique dealer or tea drinker and they will tell you that these teapots make the difference.

The teapots are made from the signature clay of Yixing, an area in Jiangsu province in eastern China where Shanghai is located. Highly prized for its porous nature, which is excellent at absorbing the flavor of tea, Yixing clay is made more valuable by being kept at home. The citizens of Yixing refuse to sell the raw material to the Taiwanese, who are maniacal tea drinkers and rabid Yixing collectors, or to the Japanese, who prize Yixing ware bonsai pots.

In factories and studios in Yixing, each piece is shaped by hand on a potter’s wheel and left unglazed, both because it makes better tea and because doing so allows the color of the clay to shine through. Yet the majority of these wares, including the best studio pieces, are sold not in China but in Hong Kong, where they can fetch greater prices: from $10 to $20,000 and up.

The teapots are made of clay that occurs naturally in three characteristic colors: light buff, cinnabar red and purplish brown. Other colors are created by mixing these three, or by adding mineral pigments. All the characteristic Yixing colors are called zisha, “purple sand,” which refers not just to the teapots but more narrowly to the most prized, dark brown color.

One of the special attributes of a Zisha teapot is its ability to retain heat. Minute pores produced in the clay during firing retain both heat and flavor, and the low shrinkage rate of Yixing clay allows the skillful potter to make a closely-fitting lid (one of the signs of a well-made pot) that inhibits oxidation and therefore the deterioration of the tea’s flavor.

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Zisha teapots are neither as costly as the more famous porcelains once made for the Imperial Chinese court nor as ancient as some other stoneware types (zisha teapots date back only to the early 1500s). But their unpretentious earthy tones and subtle beauty have been prized since the Ming Dynasty (14th to 17th centuries), whose scholars and connoisseurs took pleasure in the arts of poetry, calligraphy and tea-tasting.

For centuries, Yixing’s purple clay has been used to manufacture objects for the scholar’s table--brush rests, brush pots and water droppers, as well as vases, jars and roof tiles. But the most important part of production has always been teapots.

Production of Yixing ware stopped in 1937, with the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, and started up again only in 1954. Then, although collectors continued to seek out fine old teapots, contemporary wares were little noted outside the People’s Republic of China. Few potters signed their works, which were marked simply, “Yixing made in China.” It was mostly due to the late K.S. Lo that contemporary zisha has become so popular.

Lo was born in Guangdong province in 1910 and educated in Malaysia and at the University of Hong Kong. He went on to found Vitasoy Int., which markets soy milk.

Over a period of 30 years, Lo accumulated a collection of early zisha teapots. And it was he who persuaded the Chinese government, in the late 1970s, to allow potters in Yixing to produce teapots in the older styles, as well as newer works that would meet Lo’s exacting standards.

It took several years for the first promised lot, but when they were finally exhibited at Hong Kong’s Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware, a branch of the Hong Kong Museum of Art, they sold out immediately. Since then, the number of zisha importers has grown significantly.

With earlier zisha ware becoming increasingly rare, most of the antique pieces on the market now are from the early 20th Century. But they command much lower prices than the most highly regarded modern works. Collectors pay $27,500 or more for teapots by Yixing’s best contemporary potters, such as Gu Jingzhou.

For those who are not interested in investing vast sums, the array of zisha teapots found in Hong Kong department stores and specialty shops is overwhelming. Any newcomer to the subject should first stop at Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware, a gracious, early 19th-Century building in Hong Kong Park, in central Hong Kong.

The core of this superb collection was donated by Lo and provides a benchmark against which other Yixing pieces, both antique and contemporary, can be evaluated.

The museum’s shop, stocked by Lo’s import company, Sheung Yu Ceramic Arts, offers a changing assortment of Yixing teapots, most of them priced under $140 and starting as low as $5. Some are reproductions or variations of famous old teapots; some are original shapes. The shop usually displays a small number of more expensive pots by famous artists, so that the customer can view examples of particularly fine work.

The teapots sold by the museum tend to be undecorated, strong forms. One of my favorites, when I was there this spring, was a reproduction of a pot by Ming-era potter Shi Dabin in the shape of a square chop (or seal) wrapped in a cloth--the outlines of the lid cleverly concealed in the folds of the cloth ($55). Around the Lunar New Year (Feb. 19-21, 1996) most shops reduce prices 30% to 50% in honor of the holiday. The shop also sells catalogues of past and current exhibitions.

The shapes of Yixing teapots vary from the simple, strong and geometric, with swelling curves or stark angles, to the elaborately representational and naturalistic, embodying a segment of bamboo or pine, a magnolia or chrysanthemum blossom. Others are embellished with appliqued plum blossoms, lions, insects, frogs or nuts in realistic detail, or their surfaces are decorated with blue or polychrome enamel glazes.

The more geometric forms are most modern in sensibility and, in the estimation of some collectors, are the best suited to the relaxed and unpretentious appreciation of fine tea. They are sometimes inscribed with a few lines of poetry and a brief landscape, blossoming branch or scholar under a pine tree.

The method of forming the teapots is as distinctive as the clay. Except for the mechanized preparation of the clay, the pots are built by the hands of a single artisan, rather than by a team.

The potter beats a lump of prepared and aged clay into a flat sheet. The walls, bottom and lid of the teapot are all cut from the clay sheet, sometimes with the aid of templates. The pieces are assembled on a simple, hand-turned wheel, stuck together with a mixture of clay and water, the joints strengthened with a spatula. Round pots are beaten into shape and smoothed out with tools made of wood and buffalo horn. Decoration is cut into the clay before firing. The calligraphic quality of lines carved into the hardening clay has been greatly admired, and in the past, famous painters and calligraphers adorned the work of some of the finest potters.

As early as the 16th Century they marked their pots with clearly inscribed characters or, later, stamped them with seals bearing their names. This tradition continues today, and even completely unknown artisans working in the factory-workshops of Dingshu proudly impress their seals onto the bottoms of their finished teapots.

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The sensuous forms and unglazed surfaces of Yixing teapots acquire a lustrous patina with repeated use and handling. To make new pots appealing under display lights, however, many shops coat them with wax before they go onto the shelf. In order for a Yixing pot to age well, this wax should be removed before use.

To do so, place the new teapot, with its lid beside it, on a dish towel inside a pot at least twice as high. (A large sauce pan is fine). Fill the larger pan with hot water. Boil it gently for 30 minutes, pour off the hot water and rinse. If wax remains on the teapot, repeat the process.

A zisha pot should never be used for more than one type of tea, lest the flavor be contaminated. (If you’ve ever made tea in a pot that had once held coffee, you will understand the principle). After use, the pot should be emptied and rinsed with cold water only--never soap or detergent.

The close connection between Yixing ware and tea-drinking cannot be over emphasized. It can be experienced at shops that both serve fine tea and sell Yixing teapots. Taikoon-Lock Cha is located at the western end of the Central District. Its simple white walls and dark wood beams and careful selection of beautifully formed teapots enhance the pervasive feeling of quiet. Taikoon’s extensive tea menu is available in English as well as Chinese.

The bilingual staff at the main shop of Fook Ming Tong, in the Prince’s Building across the street from the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, will make a sample pot of tea for customers interested in teas, as well as teapots.

Pots by recognized contemporary masters in smooth, lustrous clays range from $35 to $2,700 and more. But simple, elegantly shaped pots start at about $10. The staff is helpful, both in answering questions about teapots and the brewing and drinking of fine teas.

In addition to shops specializing in zisha teapots, many Hong Kong branches of mainland Chinese department stores sell contemporary Yixing wares in their traditional ceramics departments, and some have antiques departments that occasionally include older pieces. Most stores carry inexpensive mass-produced (but all handmade) teapots, as well as pieces by recognized potters for $110 and up. Quality and prices vary from shipment to shipment and store to store.

Make a point of checking out the Park Lane branch of Yue Hwa Chinese Products Emporium, and also the Yaumatei branch; Chung Kiu Chinese Products Emporium on Hankow Road and Chinese Arts & Crafts, Silvercord Centre--but the interested seeker should also look into the other branches of these stores.

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GUIDEBOOK

Tea-ing Off in Hong Kong

Here’s where to buy teapots and tea in Hong Kong:

Chinese Arts & Crafts, Silvercord Centre, 30 Canton Road, Tsimshatsui, Kowloon; tel. 2375-0155.

Chung Kiu Chinese Products Emporium, 17 Hankow Road, Tsimshatsui, Kowloon; open daily 9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; tel. 2376-3480.

Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware, Hong Kong Park, Central Hong Kong; open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed Wed., admission free; telephone locally 2869-0690.

Fook Ming Tong Tea Shop, G/F, Prince’s Building, Ice House Street, Central Hong Kong; open Mon.-Sat., 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; holidays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; closed Sun.; tel. 2521-0337.

Fook Ming Tong Tea Shop, 200 A, Second Deck Ocean Terminal, Hong Kong; tel. 2735-1077.

Taikoon-Lock Cha Tea Shop, 290 Queens Road Central at Ladder Street, Sheung Wan; tel. 2805-1360.

Yue Hwa Chinese Products Emporium, Park Lane Shoppers Blvd., 143-161 Nathan Road, Tsimshatsui, Kowloon; open daily 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.; tel. 2739-3888; also at 301-9 Nathan Road, Yaumatei; tel. 2384-0084.