Today I was supposed to receive a package, but wasn't there to get it. I walked over to my neighbours to pick it up and was very surprised to see not one, but TWO packages. I didn't remember ordering stuff from a tea shop.

Then the penny dropped. It was the gift my Santa had sent me! Excited I opened the box, spilling foam peanuts everywhere. Inside the box was a box with Chinese characters and "zhong guo yi xing" written on it. Yixing? As in, the lovely teapots made of special clay? The pores in the clay retain some of the flavour of the tea, so they can only be used for one type (i.e. green, oolong, pu-erh).

I opened the box and there it was: a beautiful blue teapot on golden cloth, with four cups on the corners. It's so pretty, even prettier than the Yixing teapot for oolong tea I already own! Can't wait to season this new one for green tea, or maybe pu-erh!

Thank you, Santa, for this great and thoughtful gift. I love it :)

Update: 28 January 2015

A month later and I'm still very happy with this gift. I'll have to go out to buy more pu-erh, since I use the tea pot almost every day and used up a 50 gram bag of pu-erh in a month. It's become one of my favourite pots!