Rock tea is a hard tea — mineral in texture, with a fierce returning sweetness; the first mouthful often stops you. Chaozhou gongfu is a slow tea — not one of its twenty-one steps wants to be hurried. Put the two together and they fit exactly.
Chaozhou people have been brewing rock tea this way for three hundred years. Rock tea's tightly twisted leaf stands up to many infusions and suits a small pot poured from height; gongfu tea's short, fast pours strip out the peppery edge of Rougui and the mellow body of Shuixian layer by layer. Change the brewing method and the same tea becomes a different person.
On our Tea Mountain journeys the last stop is often Chaozhou. A pot of Rougui travels seven hundred kilometres from the Wuyi Mountains to a cup in Chaozhou; at the tea table it returns to the form in which it most deserves to be drunk.
If you intend to learn only one way of drinking Chinese tea, gongfu is the best value — it will make every tea you drink afterwards taste better.
A word on water temperature: rock tea needs boiling water, so do not worry about scalding it. Gongfu tea calls for a high pour and a low serve — pour from high enough that the leaf tumbles, then bring the spout close to the cup to lose as little aroma as possible. Get those two right and the same Rougui tastes noticeably different.