Kettle Etiquette and Discerning Palates

The Chinese are well known to possess great delicacy of taste, especially in regard to their favorite beverage, tea.

Delicacy in Taste and Hygiene

The Chinese are well known to possess great delicacy of taste, especially in regard to their favorite beverage, tea. Few would be inclined, however, to give them credit for such sensitiveness of palate as was recently described by a Chinese lecturer on tea drinking, who said that when he was a boy about eleven years old, he lived with his father, who was a little near-sighted, in a cottage in the southern part of China. One day he was cleaning out his father’s teakettle, and could not get all the tea leaves out, so he put his hand in the kettle.

About a half-hour afterward his father called for his tea, which the speaker took to him and returned to work. Shortly, the old gentlemen called him again, and asked him if he did not tell him never to put his hand in the teakettle. “Well,” said the speaker, “I did not know whether my father was peeking through the keyhole, watching me or not. So I let three weeks pass, when I knew my father was out on business, and I again put my hand in the teakettle. That evening I was called to answer the question which was asked me several weeks before. But you can rest assured from that time to this I have never put my hand in any teakettle.”  — Original in Good Housekeeping, 1892

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia