Tan Mei has come to see us again.  We asked Henry round. I thought she would find him interesting.

This time she has brought her daughter, a lovely girl of thirteen with her black hair cut straight across her forehead. Her English name is Cherry.

We had been given tea sets as gifts. Tan Mei said she would show us gongfu tea preparation using one of the the earthenware tea sets I had been given.

We went out to our summer house which has an electricity supply and wooden furniture.

She laid out the set.

First she boiled the kettle and poured water into the little earthenware teapot and cleansed all the pieces with the boiling water.

Then she filled the little teapot two thirds full with green tea leaves and poured on water, holding the kettle about six inches over the pot.

“This is called cleaning the tea”, she said. “We say: high to rinse, low to pour.”

Then she poured the tea into the little jug or pitcher.

“You have no tray to catch the water. If you had tray, I would pour this hot tea over all the cups and the teapot.”

“The little jug mixes the tea to be sure each tasting the same for everyone. But this we throw out.”

She emptied it away into a bowl.

“Now we have finished cleaning the tea.”

Then she poured water into the tea pot again, this time closer.

After she had left it to steep for a little while, she poured tea first into the jug, then into the tiny, shallow cups.

“Then take a short sip, then longer, then short again.”

She repeated the process three or four times.

“The first tastings are sweet and the last tastings are bitter, like life”, she said.

Then she sterilized all the pieces with boiling water again.

“Leave to dry”, she said. “Never use soap.”

Egypt’s army has removed President Mohammed Morsi from power. Henry has written about it.

“I think there will be a war in Egypt, just as there was in Algeria, a terrible war. Educated people will not be ruled by mullahs and desert jihadists. But they will need an army to help them. Will the army then step back?”