The Tea Maid

In the south market stood a tea house, and in it a woman named Chuan, skilled at brewing. People called her the Tea Maid.

Whoever drank her tea would see in the cup the one they longed for—a dead parent, a far friend, a love of old. Others at the table saw nothing; only the drinker saw. A widower drank and beheld his late wife mending by the lamp, her face as living; he wept, and the maid said nothing, only slowly poured again.

People suspected her of sorcery and whispered. She heard, and smiled: "No sorcery. Clear tea clears the heart; a clear heart sees what it truly holds. I worked no art—you simply never forgot."

A merchant, long from home, drank and saw his old mother leaning at the gate, hair white as frost. He understood he had not visited in ten years, and the next day packed and went back.

Yet the drinkers grew few. Some feared seeing what they could not bear; some understood that seeing helped nothing, and stopped coming. The maid did not urge them.

A year on, she vanished, none knowing where. The house changed hands; the new owner brewed poorly, and the cup held only color, no wonder.

It is said: men do not see ghosts—they dare not forget. What the maid showed was not the spirit of tea but the drinker's own heart. A heart that clings sees its reflection in all things; a heart that lets go finds the cup empty.

Alas—men strive by many means to forget, yet what they cannot forget is often the plainest cup of tea.