Gong Fu Cha (工夫茶) Tea Ceremony Fundraiser

the vibe

Calling all China-maxxers with big hearts and an appreciation for tea. Join us for an afternoon of 工夫茶 — gongfu tea in support of David Lee Hoffman, a tea collector, artist, and environmental experimenter who has spent his life making room for a different way of living. We’ll gather around three tea tables, followed by a film screening with continued tea service. Meet your tea hosts Violet Yang of Forest Well Tea is a Yunnan native and tea educator who regularly teaches gongfu cha at Duke Gardens. She’ll share her knowledge of her home region’s world-famous pu’er tea and pour with us for the afternoon. We met over tea at David’s place in Marin. Jack Hyder is a Seattle-based tea community moderator with a love for aged sheng pu’er and introducing people to gongfu cha. He’s sent more than 100 tea samples to people he’s met through the forums—which is actually how we met, mailing tea to each other! Becky Button is a San Francisco–based gongfu tea lover whose trips to China have taken her through Guangzhou’s famous tea markets, with a little baijiu along the way. She’ll pour on her custom-built tea tray synthesizer, a playable instrument that turns the gestures of preparing and sharing tea into music. Why we’re gathering For more than 50 years, David built The Last Resort on a hillside in Lagunitas: a world of handmade buildings, gardens, tea caves, and ecological experiments. Reclaimed materials became architecture, rainwater was collected for use, and worms turned waste into…