When new tea arrives on the market, we savor its freshness and sweet fragrance. On special occasions, we carefully taste treasured aged teas, feeling the powerful impact of Tea Power and Tea Qi on the body, and appreciating the profound charm of aged aroma.

Tea Power typically refers to the effect of the tea soup on taste and vision, the reaction of the palate. The five-colored, five-flavored tea soup enters the mouth, its energy stored in the stomach and intestines. The stored flavor can nourish the Five Qi, providing nourishment for life itself. Modern science has found evidence of Tea Power in components like tea polyphenols, enzymes, and alkaloids.

Tea Qi is usually manifested as a series of physiological reactions such as feeling warm, sweating, burping, and passing gas. Tea Qi comprises the Five Qi. The energy of Qi is quite marvelous, seemingly related to the activity of microbial communities. The Five Qi enter the nose; the fragrance enters the nostrils and is stored in the heart and lungs, relating to the respiratory system and lungs, all the way to the kidneys. The returning sweetness and generation of saliva in tea tasting are considered 'clear'; the clearest part of this clarity rises upward, refreshing the mind and spirit. The turbid part within the clarity descends and is expelled through the San Jiao (Triple Burner), providing a sense of thorough relief.

The function of good tea to 'ascend the clear and descend the turbid' plays a role throughout the entire process of Qi transformation, promoting a healthy spleen and harmonious stomach. Historically, Lu Tong, revered as the 'Tea Sage Second Only to Lu Yu,' captured the divine and genuine understanding of tea in his masterpiece, the 'Seven-Bowl Tea Poem.' The first three bowls describe the efficacy of Tea Power, while bowls four to seven depict the effects of Tea Qi. This resonates with the body wisdom often discussed by contemporary incense master Fu Jingliang: 'When the Yangming Meridian is unobstructed, all meridians are unobstructed.'