Small tea pets, great fun, do you have one?
Beautiful tea pets are all “cultivated” by tea lovers who spend time and effort. When drinking tea, tea lovers will gently pour tea soup over their pets, or use a tea brush to apply tea soup on the surface. Over time, the tea color will be nourished, and the tea pet will become warm and pleasant, with tea fragrance everywhere.
What is a tea pet?
Tea lovers often have a few auspicious small objects on their tea tables, such as turtles, piglets, seals, pixiu, toads, and Maitreya Buddha. These are tea pets. As the name suggests, tea pets are pets nourished by tea. They are mostly ceramic crafts made of purple sand or clay. When drinking tea, they are dipped in tea soup or directly dripped with leftover tea. Over time, tea pets will become warm and pleasant, and the fragrance of tea will overflow. Common tea pets include golden toads, pixiu, evil spirits, small animals, and figures, which represent wealth and good luck.
As the saying goes, “water is the mother of tea, and utensils are the father of tea.” Then the exquisitely shaped and varied tea pets can be regarded as the lovely children of Cheng Huan in the elegant tea world. At present, the popular tea pets on the market are mainly made of purple sand, resin, clay, porcelain clay, stone and other materials. Among them, the most popular and most popular tea pets are made of purple sand. Just like purple sand pots, purple sand tea pets will become more and more moisturized, and they are also of great collection value.
Some tea pets are made with exquisite craftsmanship and have extremely high collection value. Some tea pets use hollow structures, and after pouring hot water, they will produce interesting phenomena of spitting bubbles and spraying water. But they have a common feature, that is, they only have a mouth and no anus. This determines that it can only eat food in but not out. People use this method to express the traditional Chinese concept of making money, “wealth is abundant and water is not leaking.”
To raise a tea pet, you must first have the heart. You have to like this thing, so that you can appreciate and care for it carefully. To sum up the "raising" method of tea pets, the key is "not in complexity but in care".
1. During the raising process, you only need to use tea water to wash it, not plain water. This way it will feel warm and smooth to the touch.
2. The local water quality is too hard, and the alkalinity and mineral content are too high. It is recommended to soak it in water after boiling and cooling it to room temperature, and pay attention to changing it every day.
3. Tea pets, like purple clay teapots, will appreciate over time. You can use artificial “fermentation” and natural “fermentation” to raise them: artificial fermentation is to throw the newly raised pet into the tea bucket, simmer it for 2 to 4 days according to your own preferences, and then take it out, so that it can naturally absorb water quickly. Natural fermentation can only take time and slowly form an effect.
4. It is best not to always use leftover tea to soak tea pets. It is best to gently brush them with a fine brush while drinking tea. Sand quality can be good or bad, but it is not a problem. In daily maintenance, it must be cleaned with a brush every day and rubbed with a tea cloth regularly to keep it shiny to a certain extent. It is easy to see that the pet spits bubbles with its eyes open.
5. Tea pets are not only Pu’er tea that can be raised, mainly because the quality of Pu’er tea is easy to produce results.
6. Pay attention to “dry and wet raising” and do not soak them all the time. It is better to use the method of wet soaking for two days and dry raising for three days to allow the pet’s pores to breathe. In addition, it does not matter if the pet has flowers. If it is dark in color, you can soak it in boiling Pu’er tea or black tea and wipe it dry. Repeating it several times can relieve or solve it; if it is light in color, try green tea or scented tea.
